How do you get better at building words?

Question

I started to post my unpublished work on an online forum. Where you post your work slowly in an unspecified time.

I posted my prologue and a chapter 1. It seems that some people liked it and actually can't wait for the rest. Which makes me guilty because the time gap between chapters is a bit long.

But, with daily life and all, and a beginner writer that started writing for fun, you could say I'm inexperienced.

My problem is that I'm a bit slow and when I do start to sit down to write, I have a hard time constructing, pacing, and connecting words.

I know basic grammar rules, I know where my story will go, I know the goal of each chapter, I know how to invoke emotion in readers, etc.

I just seem to have trouble with putting my thoughts on a screen.

Is there any advice for this?

Answer 1

There's two different problems that you could be encountering here:

1. You're unsure where you plot is going, and therefore you're having to figure out that alongside the actual writing. You may want to consider outlining your plot/scenes in more detail beforehand.

2. You're worried about the quality of your writing and are overthinking your choice of words, sentence structure etc. The advice here is to 'just write' and go back to edit/polish later. Practice will also help.

It sounds more like 2 is your issue. Many writers describe working in two separate 'modes'. The first is a freeform, creative 'writer' mode where nothing is wrong and you should just try to let the words flow. Ignore mistakes, grammatical and word choice issues - just get the words on the page without too much judgement.

Second mode is 'editor', where you put on your perfectionist hat, and read back what you wrote. Fix dodgy word choices, sentences, passive voice etc. It's much easier to improve what's already there than write perfect prose first time.