4 Tips for Indie Writing

4 Tips for Indie Writing

Anybody Can Write a Novel

Chapter 9 “Types of Writers” – Section 3 “Indie Writing”

With Links to Supplementary Material

Continuing with our series on types of writers, today we'll discuss indie writers. Indie writers are characterized by originality, their abundance of ideas, desire for superb quality, and creativity—countered by a strong repulsion against trends, popular literature, and traditional conventions of writing. The challenge is to balance these two sets of tendencies, and to put indie writing in the most constructive context possible.

Tip 1: Think of writing a story like a recipe—in terms of its elements.

The most common type of indie story I encounter tries to be so creative and so unique, that it vaguely resembles anything close to a story. I want to like it, to applaud its originality, but it simply does not serve the purpose of telling a complete and coherent story. If you lose enough of the story's ingredients, the plot (meat) the many varied characters (spices), and the beginning and end (top and bottom buns), you'll eventually not even be making a burger. Look at your story in terms of its elements—know exactly what you are changing from the tradition of storytelling.

Tip 2: Replace every lost element with an equal or greater counterpart.

Once you completely understand the traditional format of the story, and are familiar with how the elements work, and have a full mastery of them (the only possible proof being the completion of a very good traditional story), then you will have the understanding required to know how to replace elements of your story. Make sure that every traditional storytelling element that you remove has a powerful counterpart that takes the original element's place. Because, no matter how you mix the ingredients, if you replace puns with doughnuts, the meat with tofu, switch up the order of the layers, and even add purple food coloring, there should still be a reason that you can still call whatever you make a burger—or a story.

Tip 3: Seriously consider why trends and traditions are so popular.

I despise the Hunger Games movies—and personally see very little value in them whatsoever. However, many people disagree with me—especially my target demographic—and so I have watched all of them so far, and plan to finish the series. And, when I seriously think about the series, I can identify many elements that rightfully appeal to a audience—a very flawed antihero, a dark dystopian world, young people rising up bravely against their evil oppressors, and others. And by advising you to consider the story qualities that appeal to an audience, I don't mean just deciding that general audiences are stupid—creating in yourself an elitist attitude that will ultimately harm your writing. If you genuinely try to understand why these things work, you can emulate the good but with infinitely better quality; and you will also gradually teach your audience how to appreciate better literature.

Tip 4: Respect your audience.

While not always the case, it sometimes happens that indie-writers begin to lose their respect for readers. When this happens, these writers begin to write for only themselves and stop focusing on communicating their story. And no matter how good a story is, nobody will see it if you don't care enough about your audience to fully paint a verbal picture that adequately represents that initial story in your mind. So fight hard to keep that respect, even when it seems that audiences do not respect your art—not necessarily for them, but for your story. In other words, keep an ideal, intelligent, yet inexperienced reader in mind that you truly want to communicate your story to.

I apologize for the delayed post. I've been traveling and will continue to be traveling for the next two weeks, and have not had the time to write like I thought I would. Then, when I finally finished my article, it was a week before I had strong enough internet to post it. But I've been spending my driving time thinking about future articles (and, admittedly my stories, haha), and will be posting as often as I am able. And, of course, my posts will pick back up when I get back to my big beautiful desktop computer, Leviathan. Thanks for all your patience and continued support of my articles!

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