Is this a good start?
I’m trying to write a story. Don’t know how it’s headed, and am too embarassed to show it to anyone in the family. So, guys and gals, is this an ok start or a pathetic excuse for one?
As the bus stopped, I hurried inside, trying to keep myself as dry as I could from the rain that had engulfed the city. The battery must’ve been running low, cause all the lghts in the bus was out, and it was completely dark. The outlines of the fellow passengers made themselves felt as I made my way towards the rear.
And for a writing software, I don’t use Word or anything like that. My choice consists of 2 apps, both great for writing. The first app, where I write, is WriteRoom. It’s free, it’s cool, and best of all, it covers the entire screen, so that you can mute the volume and write away without any distractions. After that, I copy paste the stuff to VoodooPad, simply for the fact that I adore this software! And also that I need to save the file to a place from where I can write it to my backup discs.
noname
john
michael
Oxay
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hmmm…Should I be lenient? :) Great start what happens next….
Have you watched the movie Finding Forrester? I strongly recommend you watch it. You’ll know what I mean… when you write… let nothing bother you and I mean nothing…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181536/
Thanks for the recommendation. :) Will watch it when I get a chance.
As for the story, I’m looking for a dark suspense type of a story. Nothing romance-y or comedic.
Also, see the update for my bother free writing. :D
Somehow i dont like the 2 you seem to use. But its a matter of opinion really. As long as it gets the job done. Do try Ulysses. http://www.blue-tec.com/ulysses/features.php
I’m playing with Ulysses, and it’s good. Not good enough to replace my current setup, but yeah, it’s quite good itself.
IMHO, one thing that makes a writer is correct writing, unless you’re playing with the language, which would be a bold move while starting to write, and i would advice to be careful with that one.
then, you should have to ask yourself some questions, like: “am i writing for writing’s sake or for an audience?”, ore more general “why am i writing?”. if you care about your audience, you might want to convey a message, a state of mind, an impression, a story, and in that case, you have to picture it for your reader. it is not a bad thing, to write for an audience, Mark Twain did it excellently all through his life, and even the excentric Lewis Carroll was careful to convey the story.
funny that i read Ulysses in the previous post and thought it was a literary reading advice, thought i’d mention it as an example of not writing for an audience. but nonetheless, if you go through it, you’ll realise that even Joyce was keen to “give an impression to the reader”. and i guess my point is if you make your writing public, it means you care about an audience, and in that case, you shall address that fact thoroughly through your writing.
in a more specific tone, you could be more specific about what you’re writing and how you’re writing it at many levels:
1) “all the lghts in the bus was out”: light is missing an “i”, and “lights” as plural requires “were” as a verb. one fantastic advice for any writer is “read what you write”. if you don’t have the time to read what you produce, why should i?
1) you don’t keep “dry” from the rain, you might keep yourself “away” from it, unless you’re trying to “say” something with that adverbial-to-adjectival switching.
2) if the bus has just stopped and you just ran out of it, how did you notice the lights being dimmed? were you not in a hurry? my point being: are you conveying a moment of extreme velocity, a hurry, or do you want to get into further details? is the character escaping from something or interested about the surroundings, or what? both are ok, but they don’t give the same message, and they don’t point to a defined situation when put together in the same paragraph.
3) “The outlines of the fellow passengers made themselves felt”: sorry but i did not understand that phrase.
so my feedback is that it is both a pathetic excuse for a start AND an OK one. just keep doing it, but do learn from it. most of the writers nowadays want just to write, and most of them don’t care anymore about writing better.
victor : Thanks for the comprehensive comment. I’ll take most of what you said into consideration. I realise that this is a very early draft, and that it is full of errors. Thanks for the comment again. :)
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