How to write fiction in 10 steps (Do the Wikihow listed steps really work?)

Take 4

7. Write a manuscript:

With the exception of Isaac Asimov (who practically wrote stories in one go and without the need of editiong) and Napaul[1], from whom a famous editor[2] used to say he wrote perfectly and without the need of edition; everyone else we write the best we can and then… we throw it in the garbage bin to rewrite. Whatever you write is a sketch until you self edit or have someone doing it. Editing is a very important step. You might end up rewriting four … or six times more.

8. Be careful with your spelling. If you don’t know how to spell a word, look it up in the dictionary or ask:

This is controversial. Xavier Velasco, Mexican writer, says bad spelling is like having a black bean skin on your teeth. Because you can’t take seriously anyone with bean skins on their front teeth… Yet, then you go to the museum and listen to a probable literary critic praising some Argentinean woman writing a whole book using “b” instead of “v”; as pleased as if he had found oil in his garden…

What you truthfully can, at least, is turn on the spelling of the word processor programme… because spelling is secondary if you’re the cat who defecates the best coffee.

Oh! A writer needs to learn and collect fancy words to impact her readers. Forget that.  

We learn words to know when and where to use them.

A word well used is worth more than five badly chained. Because  of love to the page… research, learn, look up. Writing is an every day business.

9. Read it all over again and ask help from family or friends:

But never ask more than once the same person to do it; they’ll think you’re a pest.. No, for something they’refriends with you or family. But it is better trying after you have read it at least five times and aloud. There is the problem of it being legible, breathless dead avoided, aloud.

It is better to get more professional help. Unless you’re surrounded by crazy ones like you who(or even more passionate than you in the chosen media; they probably have not the faintest idea how to help you to get better asides from saying: “it is boring” or not reading because it is impossible for them.

10. Do write it again with the fixing:

Yeah. Definitely, write it all over again.

WARNING:

This blog tries to answer to the question: How to write fiction step by step. Not in a very orderly fashion but commenting what I’ve read in books about writing, some others totally unregarded books and podcasts or simply listening to BBC podcasts or in Ivoox. All topped with s bit of cinism and ingenuity since I’m not a published author. Which doesn’t mean I’m in possession of the whole truth and only the truth. Hilary Mantel would say reality is distorted in the exact moment it goes through filter: a camera, time, your brain and many other things. GO AND READ SOME OTHER BLOG. There must be one good enough for you to come back and tell us,

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[1] Unknown writer. As soon as you start getting yourself immersed in a topic, you realize how ignorant you are. There are lots of things I haven’t read and will not because life is not enough to read them all.

[2] He is famous but I never memorized his name.