If you want to become a writer today, I've got a clear, accessible path for you to follow. This is a long video, but I promise it'll be worth sticking with. I've been writing for almost 20 years now, but if I was just starting today, the step-by-step process in this video is how I would do it. I'm Kieran. I'm a writer and a freelance editor, and I love helping writers tell their stories while having fun doing it.
So, thanks for being here. There's some chapters below the video if you really want to jump to something specific. but I'd recommend sticking with me and doing things in order if you can because there is a method to it. You'll see a bit later. I'm going to give you some practical exercises to get you started with some real writing in a little bit.
But first, let's get rid of any obstacles that might be stopping you getting into writing or just slowing you down. That might seem like it isn't going to help all that much, but give me the benefit of the doubt on this one just for a moment because so much of writing is about how you feel and it really can make a big difference. For example, you might be worried about what people will think if you say, I'm becoming a writer. Or maybe you're worried that nobody will want to read your stories. You might even be worried that you just won't be any good at writing.
Those are all really common worries but what they all boil down to is that the most likely thing that's standing in your way at the moment is actually yourself. And please don't feel called out by the way, it's totally normal. I've stood in my own way many times with my writing.
It happens to all of us creative types. In fact, from the perspective of someone who's felt, Pretty much every which way about my own writing, the whole spectrum from clueless to panicking, right on through to feeling pretty happy with my work, I know it's daunting. But if you can get past some of those mental blocks, that's one of the hardest parts of becoming a writer. Your future self will thank you.
To do that takes a lot of self-belief, determination, persistence, that's all important. But the number one thing that you need to stick with writing is the ability to motivate yourself to learn. But since you're here already, you've already looked up a video about becoming a writer, I think that shows you're willing to seek out opportunities to learn.
And you might be surprised just how far that can take you. That kind of mindset is what you need, so hold on to that. But now I want to give you five things that you don't need.
Five thoughts that won't help you and that you can put down and leave behind today for good. Number one is, I won't be good at it. Honestly, I've been writing for a long time and I still think that about myself occasionally. And I'm not trying to demotivate you by saying that.
I'm saying it's a normal worry to have. But have you thought about it this way? Who's counting on you to be good? Who's pushing for you to be perfect from the get-go? Who is it that has all of these high expectations of you?
Chances are, it's probably just yourself. So try to put all of those expectations down. Give yourself a break and accept that you'll be learning something new.
Immediate perfection is a myth. Being a bit rubbish at writing to begin with is normal. and it's not a sign that you don't have what it takes. There's innate talent in some writers for sure, but they struggle in places too. If any writer thinks that the entire process is an absolute breeze, I'd be really interested in reading their work.
Number two, I don't have the education for it. This one can definitely be left behind us. I've sort of seen this one from both sides in a way because I did go to university and I did study English but I think I only did one actual module of creative writing stuff and I didn't take a huge amount from it.
The truth, as I then figured out, is that the vast majority of learning to write comes from self-teaching. You really do learn as you go and steadily build up skills and abilities. Courses and books and other resources like this channel definitely can be useful. Check out some of my other videos by the way, I've got loads.
But the ability to learn from your mistakes and to experiment and to try things is where your real progress will come from. And if your worries are more about spelling and grammar and that stuff, if you're not the best at those or maybe you're writing in a second language, there are spell checkers and grammar checkers out there that'll do a decent job for you. Don't let that hold you back, you don't need to, you can fix your words later.
Number three, I don't have time to be a writer. This is a common feeling, especially if you want to write something like a full-length novel, does feel like a lot of time to find. But the thing is, there's no deadline except the one that you choose. You don't have to rush.
You don't have to get it done in three months or a year. If it takes you a long time to write your book, does that really matter? I'm an impatient person.
I struggle when I'm moving at a slower pace. So something that helps me when I'm working on a larger writing project, like a novel, is routine. Setting aside the same block of time each day, or however often I can to sit and get something written is really good for regulating my progress. That could be just an hour once every two weeks, if that's all you've got to work with.
Slower progress is still progress. And if you're thinking, I don't want to get to this time next year and have only written 10,000 words of my book, well the thing is, the time's going to pass anyway, whether you write those words or you don't. However, if routine is just not going to happen for you, don't fret.
Some of the best writing I've ever done was completely outside of my normal timetable because It just forced its way in. Just recently I wrote most of a short story in about 45 minutes in the middle of the day which is really rare for me. Sometimes it's just like that.
If routine doesn't work for you that's alright. Being sporadic can work too. Just like self teaching, self organizing is a big part of writing as well and figuring out how you'll realistically work best is just another thing to discover.
It's not something that disqualifies you. The headline here is there's no rush whatever time you've got. Use it for writing.
Don't think that you can't. Number four. I don't know enough about writing to do it.
Character development, plotting, world building, pacing, dialogue, structure, description, imagery, genre, conventions. There's a lot to know when it comes to writing. Can't deny that.
In fact, there's so much that it's totally overwhelming. I mean, how could anyone be expected to know all of these rules and all of these approaches and skills before they've ever even written chapter one at the top of the page? Exactly. You're actually not expected to know all of that. You don't need to, to get started.
What's always worked for me is making attempts, working things out, whatever you can manage. Then once you've got something down you can look at all those theoretical details and put them into practice on what you have so far. You can shape something into something else but you can't shape nothing into something. Beautifully worded but you get the concept. In my opinion rather than from all the rules and details so much of the best writing comes from a place of passion and creativity and instinct and that's something you have access to right now.
Let that lead you and get you going. And by the way if you just thought I don't have that, put down that thought, change that voice to one of encouragement for yourself and I'll talk about that a bit more in a minute. Number five, there's no point doing it because the chances of success are tiny. I can understand this one, the publishing world is so competitive, it's so hard to make a living from writing.
Self-publishing too is really difficult to succeed in. All of that feels all the worse when you're just starting out. But let me ask you a question. That story that you have in your mind, or that urge to be a writer, where did that come from? Was it because you saw a clear and straightforward route to success, whatever that means?
Or did it come to you from somewhere else entirely? Some kind of creative desire to tell stories? I can only speak for myself of course, but for me it's the second one.
There are a lot more reasons to learn to write besides that. outside validation and especially traditional publishing. But in case you think I'm a bit biased and I might be, I've seen this from both sides too, kind of. I've chased traditional publishing, I did it for years in fact, always found it really hard, always struggled, always doubted it would turn into something.
I had some pretty bad experiences with it really but that whole time I never stopped writing or having new ideas or enjoying building stories. All of that never dried up because it came from a totally separate space than... Success.
That place is creativity and fun. At the root of it, writing is a fun activity. It's a fun test of your skills. It's fun to write books that you want to read that don't exist yet.
None of that is reliant on success of any kind. So worry about success later because you might find that you don't actually need to. Alright, now that we're hopefully feeling a bit more confident at least, let's get on to some actual writing with some practical exercises. Finally, I know. So here's the approach.
So we're going to go through three exercises that are intended to get you from where you are now, maybe having never written fiction before or only a little bit, to having started your first story. Let's tackle some practical stuff you might be wondering about first. Rapid fire. Firstly, it doesn't matter what you used to write. Microsoft Word, Google Docs, a pen and paper, a writing tablet, back of a napkin, slice of stale bread, whatever, maybe not the last two.
Don't worry about formatting your writing correctly or making it look nice on the page, indenting paragraphs and stuff like that. making it look professional comes way later. Same goes for the fonts and the writing size and page numbers and all of that. Disregard it for now, don't let it slow you down.
Size 12 times New Roman is fine, just get a blank page in front of you and that's all you need. The first exercise we're going to complete is just three minutes of free writing and what I mean by that is I'll set as a limit of three minutes and then we'll write whatever comes to us for that time with no constraints or particular goals. It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be a story but it can be.
but it doesn't have to be fiction. It can just be I don't know what to write a bunch of times until that changes. You can't go wrong. No thoughts, only write. The reason we're doing this is to unlock a bit of creativity, to get into the right mode for turning brain waves into words.
That's all. That's the only goal. Think of it like warming up your creativity muscles so you don't accidentally pull something. I'll complete the exercise along with you with some non-distracting music in the background. You don't need to worry about the timer, just let the video play so you can hear it and I'll let you know when the three minutes are up.
It doesn't matter how far you get or how many lines you write. Pause here if you need to set things up first, otherwise the timer... Starts now. Alright, that's time.
So, how did it feel to write for a few minutes? Let me know in the comments. I use this sometimes if I've got ideas and I just can't get them started and it does help.
This time I've just written a load of, well, garbled nonsense really so, cool. It can feel a bit silly. just typing random nonsense into a document, but it gets me moving and writing, and it's so much better than sitting, staring at a blank page. Now that we're warmed up, we're going to take another step towards a story and write some dialogue this time. To be clear, we're not aiming for Shakespeare.
Experian wit here. We're probably not going to win the Nobel Prize for literature. We're just going to write an interaction between two characters That's it. And to further simplify it, you don't have to think up your own characters for this Of course if you have some that you've dreamed up and you want to use them great But if not We're gonna pick some that already exist. To remove the deliberation and the analysis of which characters might be easy to write a conversation for I'm gonna take the choice out of your hands here.
The two characters will be Number one, the main character from the most recent book or story that you read. It doesn't matter if it was a while ago. And if there's multiple main characters, it's the one you thought of first.
And number two is the main character from your absolute favourite book or story or TV show or movie or whatever. Again, if you've got multiple favourites, it's the one you thought of first. Dialogue can be really daunting because the question of what are they going to say to each other, it's always there. So to help with that we're going to give the dialogue some direction before we've even started by adding something for them to talk about. talk about.
Let's write a conversation about those characters strangest or most dramatic or most exciting memory. That way you can pull directly from their stories for it. So if I pick Jon Snow for example, he might talk about fighting White Walkers.
If I picked Clarice Starling, she might talk about battling wits with Hannibal Lecter. The goal here isn't to reveal something we don't know or to have one character beat the other or outdo them. If it goes that way, that's fine. But all we want to do is practice writing some dialogue in those characters voice, writing things as we think they might say them. That's much easier to do when the character already exists and they already have a voice, that's why I needed all this preamble.
Exercise two, just like before, don't worry about formatting what you write, don't worry about dialogue tags like she said and he cried and any of that. Just write what they say as though you're eavesdropping on their conversation and scribbling it down. You can even start with one character asking the other, Watch your strangest memory and go from there.
We're going to do this for three minutes too. Again don't worry about reaching a goal or finishing the conversation, just keep them both talking and focus on their voices and how theirs are different from yours and different from each other's. Don't worry too much about the content of what they say and whether it really is the most exciting memory they've got, don't worry about that.
Think more about what they might say and how they might say it. Again if you need a few seconds to prepare pause the video now otherwise I'll shout up in three minutes. time. Alright so that is time and that was probably a bit harder than the first exercise because there's a bit more to it, it's a little bit more restrictive so let me know how that one felt in the comments as well. After all you're writing with characters who aren't your own where before we would just doing anything that we wanted.
So it was bound to be a bit tougher. Writing natural, realistic sounding characters is a skill that develops with time and practice. But if you can master that skill, it'll be a great asset to your writing. We're almost there. There's just one more exercise we need to do.
do and as you've probably guessed it's going to be the hardest one so far. But we're still going to make it as accessible as possible and how we do that really depends on our attitude towards our own work. If I've learned anything from all of the novels that I've written and all of the short fiction and the years of perseverance with writing, it's this.
My writing very rarely got any better because I treated myself badly. Giving myself a hard time doesn't help. Doubting myself definitely doesn't help. Piling pressure on myself doesn't help.
Myself is just a surefire way to completely freeze up. So for this last exercise, we're going to be writing the opening paragraph of a story, but the real goal is to practice supporting yourself. Before you think, uh-oh, I can't write an opening paragraph, or I haven't got an idea.
or I don't know how to write it. That's exactly the kind of thought process that we're targeting with this exercise. The paragraph you're about to write does not have to be good at all. In fact, don't even think about it in that way. What's more important than what you write is how you speak.
speak to yourself while you do it. How your inner monologue sounds. In today's world of profit and content and optimization, every force and voice from outside seems to be telling us we're not good enough and we need to do better.
Trust me, I know that. I feel it in this channel, in my own writing, all of it. If your inner voice is also criticizing you and piling pressure onto you as well, that's not going to help. We have enough of that.
Instead, we need to take over that voice and use it to support ourselves instead. be thinking, I thought I'd clicked onto a video to learn how to write, not for a therapy session. I know but bear with me, as I said before your mindset really does make a big difference. So let's do this final exercise, I've got a few important points before we do.
If you don't know what to write, if you haven't got a story idea, start off just free writing again and try to build an opening paragraph from there but don't panic, just be creative and don't judge yourself. You can go back and delete stuff, start from the beginning all over again, there are no rules. If you do have an idea already though, great, try to write it, try to follow it through.
There are three things I want you to remember while we do this. Number one, this paragraph in no way has to be good, it just doesn't. No one's ever gonna see it except you, unless you choose to share it.
Number two, you need to give yourself a chance without throttling your own creativity. Recognize your doubts, acknowledge that they're there, but don't stop because of them. Number three, you can't fail this.
If you can't write a single word during this three minutes, then you're still one attempt closer to nil. nailing it next time so just hang in there. Once again we'll do three minutes and see how we get on. Relax, just stay positive, encourage yourself and be on your own side.
That's the real goal. The writing, the actual paragraph is second. Again if you need to prepare then pause the video here. If not, here we go. Alright, so that's three minutes done.
How did you find that? Let me know in the comments. Was it harder than you thought?
Easier? Did you find your inner monologue held you back or were you able to move past it? And what about what you wrote if you managed to write something?
Did it turn out different from what you wrote? what you're expecting? Is it something you could carry on with? If so, definitely do. If not, no worries.
Writing is not famed for being a quick process so expecting quick results doesn't make a whole lot of sense so be patient with yourself. For someone who started off pretty rubbish at writing and is now just 20 years later slightly not as rubbish I can tell you it's all worth it. I'm mostly joking. It is much quicker to make progress than that. If you stick with it and remember that above all else you need to be kind to yourself.
No one ever learns how to be creative while they're criticizing themselves at every turn. Now that you've started your first story, if you want some regular writing inspiration and insight I've got a completely free mailing list that I'll link below. I send something out every month that's useful for writers because that's what you are by the way.
You don't have to have published work, you don't have to be amazing at it. You don't have to satisfy some requirements from somebody else. You don't need anyone's permission but your own.
If you write, you're a writer. Welcome to the club. Check out some of my other videos.
There's loads there. Thank you so much for watching. And as always, happy writing.