Writing to yourself

[magicman]

I read a really good article on writing the other day, and it suggested that I write letters to myself in order to express my anxieties and feelings towards my writing. I wrote one, and it really helped me alot.

Okay, this is my letter that I wrote to myself on my story "Rose of Sophronia"

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Letter Concerning the “Rose of Sophronia” by magicman.



Dear Tony,

I have enjoyed the prologue of your story entitled “Rose of Sophronia”, although there are some aspects of it that I would like to discuss. First of all, I don’t feel completely comfortable with the character interaction in the story so far. At first Clarissa seems very submissive to Richard in the beginning but at the end she seems very defiant and aggressive towards Richard. Unless you want your character to have a split personality, she isn’t going to be very believable if she plays a large part in your story. This prologue will greatly improve if you make sure all the characters stay true to a certain personality you have chosen for them.
Another thing is that the readers are left in the dark about why Clarissa is being taken captive by Richard in the first place. I’m not saying that being ambiguous in the beginning of the story is bad, though, because it will most likely cause the reader to want to keep reading to find out what happens next. All I’m saying is that you should seriously consider just how much you want to leave out.
Also, looking at the story as a whole, considering what you have told me about it so far, I’m not sure that the central conflict is strong enough. You also might think about adding more characters to the mix to make this story more interesting. These are just suggestions. All I’m trying to do is help you improve this story because I think with some hard work and imaginative thinking; this could turn into a very interesting novel.

Sincerely,

Meemis Elfan Eye

***
This really helped me to realize the problems with my story and it became much, much easier to find solutions for these problems.

The article I read this in is at this website...

www.steampunk.com/sfch/writing/ckilian/

It has a lot of good advice on a broad range of topics related to writing.

So if this advice is new to you, write a letter already!

[Crysi]

This is similar to the "Letters from your Characters" thread, and I agree - it's very helpful. Sometimes you just need to write down what you're thinking to sort everything out, because then it gives you a focus.

[magicman]

I know. After writing it down I went to edit my story and was able to fix some of the problems I wrote about.(my brother caught me writing to myself and now he won't talk to me cuz he thinks I'm a weirdo. YES!!)