Jody Lynn Nye, bestselling science fiction and fantasy writer, co-ordinating judge for the Writers of the Future Contest, gives some advice to aspiring writers...
Jody Lynn Nye is an old name in the industry (for reference, she was an established name in my childhood, and I’m 40), but given the Writers of the Future contest is associated with Scientology, and the books she recs are all old, there’s better ways to get up to speed if you’re an aspiring writer.
My two recs would be:
Look at your bookshelf. If you’re not reading widely in the genre you want to write, start. Then take the books you read (whether you love, like, or dislike them), and open them up and analyze what’s on the page. You can answer most basic writing questions this way, by going to the source, looking at an actually-published example (using several books and authors to see different styles), and figuring out how they did it.
Hit up author’s websites and start looking for blog posts and FAQs and the like for writing advice. Hell, start a bookmarks folder in your browser to collect it all and sort it into categories. Most authors have at least something on at least one topic, and it’s good to gather many examples to contrast and compare, as not all writing advice works for all people.
Ultimately, to be a writer, you actually have to study the damn craft. That means reading actual books, and then spending brainpower to pick it apart to figure out how it was constructed. Then you try to take what you’ve learned and put it into your own writing.
Wash, rinse, repeat for 1,000,000 words. Eventually you’ll get better.
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