How Much Do You Practice?
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There’s a saying floating around that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an “expert” at something. If you want to be a concert pianist, 10,000 hours of practice. A primadonna opera singer? 10,000 hours. A pro football player? 10,000 hours of practice.
So why is it that writers assume they can become published after writing just one novel? Oh sure, there are some writers that do strike it lucky on that first novel. But the majority of writers don’t.
For good reason.
Just because we all learn to write in kindergarten, that doesn’t mean that you can automatically turn out a bestseller. In reality, writing a bestseller usually means that you have to learn to balance character motivation and development, rising action, plot events and twists, evocative descriptions, worldbuilding, sentence structure, grammar, point of view, and theme… all while writing a really exciting story.
Writing is easy… writing a novel is not.
If you want to write a bestseller, you need to practice and study the craft of writing.
Read a novel multiple times and analyze how the author motivated their characters, used descriptions, created tension on the page, wrote subtext into the dialogue, and twisted the plot at the climax.
Practice the techniques you found in your daily writing.
Watch a movie and analyze how actors display emotions with expressions, gestures and actions.
Practice showing characters feeling strong emotions without words.
Get a book like Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin and do all of the exercises in the book. Five times.
Visit a writing prompt site on the Internet (Seventh Sanctum, Creative Writing Prompts) or get a book of writing prompts (A Picture is Worth 1000 Words, The Pocket Muse) and use a prompt every day in your daily writing practice.
Take the last novel you wrote and revise it into the best story you can write. Get help on how to revise from writing books or from a workshop like How to Revise Your Novel.
Write.
Figure out what didn’t work.
Fix it.
Write more.
Your 10,000 hours start today.
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6 comments
yoga sutra 1.12, nonattachment & practice | The Laughing Yogini | Yoga Beauty Wisdom on January 7, 2010 at 10:47 pm
[...] How Much Do You Practice? :Learn to Write Fiction [...]
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Debbie Ridpath Ohi and Cheryl_LtWF, Clifford Fryman. Clifford Fryman said: RT @inkyelbows: Writers: promo is fine, but don't forget to practice & study the craft of writing. http://bit.ly/8i53cc (via @cheryl_Ltwf) [...]
@robertsloan2 (1 comments.) on January 8, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Excellent point! 10,000 hours of practice will make anyone good at anything they really want to do well!
uberVU - social comments on January 8, 2010 at 11:07 am
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by cheryl_LtWF: How Much Do You Practice?: http://bit.ly/54Yin3...
cccorbin (1 comments.) on January 8, 2010 at 8:04 pm
I completely agree. David Morrell, author of First Blood and the Rambo character, said it differently – Write one million words before seeking publication. Whether you measure by time or words, the end result is proficiency and, one would hope, excellence in your writing.
Writing Serendipity ¦ Saturday Writers on January 31, 2010 at 2:58 pm
[...] blogged about the need for writing practice over on Learn to Write Fiction a couple weeks [...]