Guided Writing Exercises? Or jump right into writing stories?

[X Equestris]

I'll take a look at it, but I'd really like something focused on short story, novella, and novel style writing.

If you’re looking for courses, Writers of the Future has an online workshop that takes you through the process of developing and drafting a short story. Even as a fairly experienced author at the time I did the workshop, it had some useful insights, so I’m sure it would be especially helpful for someone just starting out.

 

[Tallyfire]

Writers of the Future has an online workshop

Do you mean this one? Looks pretty interesting.

I am looking either for A. a self guided course (book or online) on fiction writing or B. people to tell me "that's a bad idea, just start writing that project you have in mind".

I think you've already heard enough about B, so for A I'd recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft. She doesn't talk much about overarching story planning, but she has a lot of good advice on what makes a good piece of writing, and she has exercises that are specifically tailored to get you both writing and to make you think about your choice of things like POV, sentence length/structure, and wording. You can apply all of those concepts to a current writing project (which is what I did). It's short and immediately hands-on.

 

[twiget]

If you’re looking for courses, Writers of the Future has an online workshop that takes you through the process of developing and drafting a short story. Even as a fairly experienced author at the time I did the workshop, it had some useful insights, so I’m sure it would be especially helpful for someone just starting out.

I didn't even know the Writers of the Future was still around. I loved L Ron Hubbard's books when I was in high school and I read many of the Writers of the Future anthologies back in the day. I'm gonna have to check out that workshop too.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

You want prompts? The forum's own prompt suggestions.

I learned to write fiction by reading about a zillion novels and maybe half that number of short stories. When my own work didn't measure up to my ambitions, I started paying more attention to how other writers structured their work, how they used words to evoke emotions, what they did that worked for me, and what they did that didn't work for me. About 30 years ago, I did a lot of research preparatory to teaching creative writing for adult continuing education at the local college. Even if you're not going to teach writing, preparing that kind of leasson plan using a couple dozen resources is a great way to educate yourself.

In no particular order (except Strunk and White which ALWAYS comes first), some of my favorite books on writing:

The Elements of Style. William Strunk and E.B. White

Getting the Words Right: How to Revise, Edit, and Rewrite. Theodore A. Rees Cheney

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertanining Guide to Understanding Literature, from The Great Gatsby to The Hate You Give. Thomas C. Foster (This is soooo readable)

Writing Down the Bones. Natalie Goldberg

The Artist's Way. Julia Cameron. (You want prompts?)

 

[X Equestris]

Do you mean this one? Looks pretty interesting.

Yeah, that’s the one. I did it back in 2020, so the exact curriculum might’ve changed, but it was definitely interesting.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

Let me make sure I understand. Just start writing the current story I'm thinking about. Write it until it's done, in the format I see it being in (novel.) Then get feedback on it? And the practice loop is just "write shitty novels (or whatever format) until you write a not shitty novel." Or should I be workshopping passages here as I go?

Or write till you get stuck. Then drop in here, start a thread, and see what you get.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

Ye could both check out even the voting pages or the winner announcement pages of past contests. My experience is that the sentiments expressed are genuine and reflect the good natured tone. While, clearly, effort is put in to make the stories the best the writer can, the overall is about participation and not proving superiority. I've won a few and done more than one Norway in the Eurovision (0 points) amd, to be honest, will sometimes defend more resolutely those that fared miserably as things I'm glad I wrote. I can say it gave me a focus to get writing, get stories finished, get on to the next thing. It can also be interesting to see the widely divergent takes on whatever the prompt might be.

I thought it was always "Luxembourg, null point."

 

[FFBurwick]

Something to guide writing may be really good. But I still think spending time writing and writing more is the most helpful, which I reasonably assume is preceded with reading enough. I seem to have really stunk at writing when I was picking it up with seriousness well over a decade ago. But I didn't stop. It shows I was not doing as well with it long ago with what I was showing of it recently with not altering any of that to start with, from that long ago, and would have let the development of my writing ability be shown as I continued with it over a long time. I had better responses to writing I have shown in some writing competitions since. Continuing with writing with good frequency does help in itself.