What is Reddit's opinion of Writing Fiction For Dummies?

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If you go to any bookstore, you'll find a section filled with books about writing that outline all of these things in detail. Writing Fiction For Dummies is actually a good place for beginners to start, as is Story Engineering.

A blog about how you start from scratch would be fun. Especially if you keep it up, you will be able to look back on it as a professional years from now and see how far you've come.

For writers of large worlds (I have my own persistent universe for my science fiction), I do recommend one thing: It is possible to have a universe that is TOO big. To avoid drowning your audience is needless details, be sure to learn how all the story elements PLAY TOGETHER. Characters advance the plot. The setting is the world that characters interact with. Characters run into conflict. Plot is all about the conflict. Etc etc .... all story elements are interconnected in every which possible way. If nothing works cohesively together, then you will run into disjointed issues in your writing.

To learn how these story elements are interconnected in a sort of "web-of-storytelling", I've enjoyed the Writing Fiction for Dummies book to help explain the basics. It definitely does NOT cover everything, but it's a good high level view of all story elements. Each element (i.e. plot, setting, characters, dialogue, etc) can and does have its own books by themselves. If you feel you are lacking in a specific element, you can potentially read up further into it.

Your fictional writing courses should help out as well. Again, be aware that you will not learn everything there is to know in your coursework.

I have a disclaimer though: Reading about writing, and taking the time to write are two different things. Do NOT spend a lot of money in hopes that self-help books alone will teach you everything there is to know. Most skill comes from experience and practice. This is where your blog will come into play. It will keep track of how well you improve over time.

You can do it!

This book, Writing Fiction For Dummies, is an easy read and a reasonably decent guide to the structure of a modern novel. It also includes some useful info about the ins and outs of publishing, for when you're ready to climb that hill.

To save you a couple of clicks, here's the table of contents:

Introduction.

Part I: Getting Ready to Write Fiction.

Chapter 1: Fiction Writing Basics.

Chapter 2: What Makes a Great Story?

Chapter 3: Finding Your Audience and Category.

Chapter 4: Four Ways to Write a Great Novel.

Chapter 5: Managing Your Time . . . and Yourself.

Part II: Creating Compelling Fiction.

Chapter 6: Building Your Story World: The Setting for Your Story.

Chapter 7: Creating Compelling Characters.

Chapter 8: Storyline and Three-Act Structure: The Top Layers of Your Plot.

Chapter 9: Synopsis, Scene List, and Scene: Your Middle Layers of Plot.

Chapter 10: Action, Dialogue, and More: The Lowest Layer of Your Plot.

Chapter 11: Thinking Through Your Theme.

Part III: Editing and Polishing Your Story and Characters.

Chapter 12: Analyzing Your Characters.

Chapter 13: Scrutinizing Your Story Structure.

Chapter 14: Editing Your Scenes for Structure.

Chapter 15: Editing Your Scenes for Content.

Part IV: Getting Published.

Chapter 16: Getting Ready to Sell Your Book: Polishing and Submitting.

Chapter 17: Approaching Agents and Editors.

Part V: The Part of Tens.

Chapter 18: Ten Steps to Analyzing Your Story.

Chapter 19: Ten Reasons Novels Are Rejected.

> Like...it would be passable if she was struggling.

I've read Writing Fiction For Dummies for fun, and I know how to structure a story better than this.

Does anyone know of a collection/overview/comparison of all known writing paradigms? I'm reading about craft these days (e.g. "Writing Fiction for Dummies," "Plot & Structure," …) and new creative paradigms and variations thereof keep cropping up. As a newbie writer, it would be useful to have an overview of different patterns and methods.

My current understanding is that all writing paradigms lean towards one out of two extremes: those that include upfront planning ("outliners"), and those that don't ("pantsers"). Somewhere in the middle lie methods that pick and mix from both extremes. It would be interesting to see a visualisation of activities that go into writing a novel on some kind of visualisation/infographic, and then gather data on which ones are the most commonly used.

I come from the world of software development, where we have such books as "Code Complete," which gather common architectural patterns, as well as patterns on the creative process itself. Different paradigms/creative processes for writing code have been heavily researched and documented (for better and for worse). Of course, the creative processes for writing computer code and fiction are different and thus not directly comparable… But maybe some cross-pollination of these two fields is possible. Any other computer programmers/writers feel the same way?