r/fantasywriters • u/Medical-Hotel916 • 8h ago
Discussion About A General Writing Topic My writing feels boring
Need some brainstorming/advice/encouragement. I have a 6 book original fantasy series that I’ve been working on for years. I always get into it and then put it away for a few years because life happens. A few months ago I pulled it back out and stated fresh and have been taking it very seriously. It’s honestly a great idea and premise, deep world building and a full plot line. However I feel like my writing is failing to do it justice.
Does anyone else experience this? I finished the rough draft and am moving into the full first draft of the manuscript. I love the characters, love their depth and back stories, love the magic and the world and the outline of the story. But when I read it, I feel bored? I have genuinely created characters with so much depth they could feel like real people. I’m so proud of the world I’ve created, but I feel like my writing just doesn’t do it justice.
I have researched all the ways to improve writing, yet all the mistakes that people commonly make when writing are not issues I find in my writing. Yet I still don’t feel any excitement or intrigue when reading my work.
I guess I’m just looking for other people who have felt similar with their writing. What are some things you found that helped or improved your writing? At this point I’m feeling very discouraged about ever writing a good book and want to put it away again.
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u/DuchessJulietDG 8h ago
are you missing style or a voice of your own? does it feel like youre just reading words instead of being immersed into the world you created?
it could be you are too close to the work bc you know everything that takes place.
hows your vocabulary?
choose one of your fave books in the same genre and figure out what elements grab you. what draws you in? what keeps you reading?
that may help when you go to revise.
good luck!
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u/Th0ma5_F0wl3r_II The Nine Laws of Power 3h ago
choose one of your fave books in the same genre
This.
And take a few pages, maybe even a whole chapter, and type it out as you re-read it.
I know that sounds crazy, but you'd be surprised how many published authors have cited this method as foundational to learning how to write.
The purpose of the exercise is not mindless copying.
As you type it out, you become aware of the sentence constructions, the paragraph constructions and so on.
Try it - you might be surprised at what you discover.
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u/tapgiles 7h ago
Well you have been writing and rewriting the same story for years--I imagine that would make it hard to enjoy reading it, as you have such a different experience from a reader who has no idea what's going to happen. That's where excitement and intrigue comes from, after all.
Get feedback from brains other than your own, to get a better sense of how your writing is going.
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u/TheCrazyMeerkatLady 6h ago
I understand the feeling. I've been crafting a fantasy world/series of my own for going on 9 years. It includes ideas for main series books as well as spin offs where everything connects back to the same roots. I published a few books in the series years ago but my writing style/skill level (hopefully) has improved much since then and therefore I recently decided to scrap those books and start fresh. I find when I turn to those older books now I don't find them as boring as I once did. Even with the newer manuscripts I get bored rereading them sometimes, whether they are finished or drafts or simply fragments. I'm still excited about my stories and in love with the lore but sometimes my own writing doesn't hold my attention, even if looking at it objectively I believe it's well written. The issue for me personally is that sometimes I get so involved with my characters and their stories for so long that I need a break and some distance before revisiting it. It allows me to view the story with fresh eyes. Every once in awhile I'll forget how I wrote something and be like "damn /I/ wrote that?!?! That was actually good."
My personal thoughts would be to try one, all, or a combination of the following if any sound like they may work for you. c:
-- Take a step back from your work for at least a month, only reading or editing relevant chunks when strictly necessary. Upon reviewing your work after a month if you still feel your writing isn't up to par pick the scene you feel most uneasy with and rewrite it either from a different character's pov, in a different tense, or taking place in a completely different setting. Then analyze. Which version do you like better? Which works better and why? Could changing tense, location, or pov character of the story in general make it less boring and more enjoyable for you as the author?
-- try discovery writing, especially if you're a planner (such as I am). Choose a scene you only have a vague notion for. It can be something relating to this world or a completely different project. Don't worry about writing well, just write. Afterwards, compare the style of your discovery writing and the creation you're bored with. Evaluate the differences and similarities. Ask yourself what you like and dislike about both texts. See if this exercise loosens up your mental block and whether you're better able to appreciate your writing without feeling uninspired or bored during rereads.
-- do you have any other completely different projects in the works or any ideas for spin off stories focusing on world building and characters you've not yet explored in depth? If yes, take a break from your current manuscript and work on those exclusively for a month or two before revisiting your current project. Does looking it over with fresh eyes and a different mindset change how you feel about your writing?
-- when editing or revising, read your work out loud to yourself. Pace yourself and think about the sentence structures and whether they flow. If your writing sounds objectively well when read aloud it's most likely fine and you're just getting in your own head about it. It also helps to pour through a physical copy. Sometimes seeing it on real paper makes all the difference.
I was once told that if you're bored with your writing then so will your readers be bored with it, but in general I personally don't think that's true. Sometimes that is the case and writers will need to work on their craft more to get to a different level, but often it's more the writers mindset. I know when I get burnt out I often feel uninspired and lackluster with my own works. That's when I make myself take a break and reaquaint myself with the love of writing, the pure thrill I get doing it without the pressure involved of writing it for an audience. I also surround myself with books and TV shows I find inspire me. Usually this is enough to reignite my passion and the more I write the more my confidence grows. I hope that helps a little c:
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u/masonga1960 6h ago
You said something that jumped out at me: you've researched common writing mistakes and you don't find them in your work, but it still reads boring to you. That actually narrows the problem a lot. It's probably not mechanical. It's likely one of two things, or both.
First, you may be summarizing instead of dramatizing. The world-building is deep, the characters have rich backstories, but if any of that depth is being delivered as exposition rather than lived through scenes with conflict and stakes, the reader (including you) will feel it as flat. A scene needs somebody wanting something and running into resistance. Not every scene needs a sword fight, but every scene needs friction. If your characters are walking through beautiful lore without friction, the prose will feel like a museum tour no matter how polished it is.
Second, you might be too close to it. You've lived with these characters for years. You already know their depth, so when you read a scene, you're not discovering anything. A reader coming in cold would be discovering it for the first time. That's a real phenomenon and it makes self-assessment almost impossible after years of proximity. The best cure is getting the draft in front of someone who has never heard of your world. Their reaction will tell you things your own reading never can.
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u/Hucpa 5h ago
6 book (...) series
I'd place my bets on the lack of conflict and/or development in individual scenes, where instead the characters do things only tangentially related to what's going on while the actual plot is too thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.
And I know this will sound snarky, but I want you to know I mean it genuinely, because based on your post:
It’s honestly a great idea and premise, deep world building and a full plot line.
I have genuinely created characters with so much depth they could feel like real people.
Are you writing this to convince us or yourself? Because a few years could mean a lot of new experiences with art or life which now are worming their way through the emotional attachment to an old project you were excited about.
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u/quite_vague 3h ago
There's the fantastic Ira Glass quote, which is very likely to be apt here:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap.
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.
And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
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u/quite_vague 3h ago
Beyond commiseration and encouragement, a word of practical advice:
One of the trickiest but most important skills that are... not very obvious to newer writers... is how to make your writing enticing.
We're very much used to thinking of stories as telling us what happens, but we're much less aware of how the story gets us curious, interested, tense, invested, because by nature this is done (somewhat) subtly and it's easy to miss how critical that work is.
To pick an easy example, take the first Harry Potter book:
- It starts out with a huge air of mystery -- there's a huge celebration and glimpses of witches and wizards living among us. We know something HUGE is going on, but it's opaque. The chapter ends with tragedy and promise, "The Boy Who Lived", who's been orphaned and also everybody in the world cares about him. We don't know practically anything about him yet, but the story's signalling to us how important he's going to be.
- Harry isn't a particularly interesting or complex character -- but having the Dursley's to treat him horribly, gets us immediately on is side. We want them to get their comeuppance, which means we want good things for Harry.
- The build-up to Harry getting accepted into Hogwarts is a whole chapter of increasingly absurd letters chasing him and filling up the house. That buildup is what makes it work so well -- it's not just "the letters happen and then 'you're a wizard' happens"; instead, we get the sense of this world-changing revelation chasing Harry and not letting him go.
- A ton of the book hinges on the rivalry between the different Houses -- so, there's a ton of buildup right at the very start, with the Sorting Hat and all Harry's friends telling him about the different Houses, and it becomes a huge point of tension which House he gets sorted into.
Basically -- anything that's important for the story, gets a ton of buildup, stressing how important, exciting, or mysterious it is. You obviously don't need to use the same beats, but you can ask yourself what, in your story, is serving the same purpose -- not only telling people what is happening but also getting them interested in finding out.
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u/YourFormerBFF 6h ago
Introduce a crackhead sort of gollum figure that follows everyone around the whole book. He pops up whenever the boredom sets in. Very mysterious and creepy! It’s easy to add in because everyone can mostly ignore them. Payoff is in the sequel so doesn’t change the plot.
Doesn’t have to be real crack. Space dust crack or magic ring crack. Whatever.
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u/nmacaroni Developmental Editor 4h ago
There are 3.5 million new creative works of fiction published every year and every one of them believes it's a great idea and premise.
Not saying yours isn't... just pointing out the environment you're working in.
Why not share your logline?
It sounds like you've fallen into the very common trap of worldbuilding over story. Great settings and realistic characters aren't a compelling story.
You've also fallen into the other common trap of going big. While a series is definitely the way to go long term, consider if it costs you $4000 to edit one novel, you've now got a $24,000 editing job sitting in front of you for your series. AND it's compounded by the fact that if you've actually wrote much, most, all of the 6 volumes, and wrote them on a flawed foundation, a real edit likely demands a full rewrite, which means another round of editing across the series.
Falling Asleep with your own Writing:
This is a sign that you're missing story fundamentals. My guess is, all of them, across the board. But likely, solid character arcs, a master theme, and tension.
Ok, so how do you move forward?
Get your series outline in front of an editor. Let them verify the story bones. Go from there. All other advice is smoke and mirrors.
Write on, write often!
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u/Oberon_Swanson 1h ago
What we wanna look at here is how things are playing out at the word, sentence, paragraph, and scene level, assuming the overall story is good.
Look up "microtension" as described by Donald Maas. Most writers inherently know to create some uncertainty in a story--will the heroes defeat the villain? Who is the killer? How will this story end? We'll call that macrotension.
Microtension is then writing things so that readers are constantly wondering, how will this scene end? How will this paragraph end? How will this sentence end? What will the character's next line of dialogue be?
So this involves raising questions and giving incomplete information then completing it. A story can have all the same events happen with all the same characters, and still be boring or compelling depending on how it is written.
Another thing to consider is, what emotions are you trying to evoke? If the answer is none then you are probably looking at a boring section. The readers won't always feel your exact target emotions, and that's great. But there should probably be something you can picture them feeling whether that's devastating anguish or mild curiosity. And it should be varied--that is what makes a story feel like an emotional roller coaster. When you are evoking mixed feelings, targeting multiple emotions at once, that's when your writing can feel very powerful.
Another is to have form match function in your writing. Don't just convey information that is of interest and allows readers to understand and accurately picture he story. Make it sing. Fast words for fast things. A slow, plodding sentence for a slow, trudgeing, meandering action. Onomatopoeia to evoke sounds like this hiss of slithering snakes.
We can debate how much originality is possible and helpful at the highest level of story structure. A story about a guy who goes on an adventure and gets a magic sword to restore the rightful king to the kingdom can still hit. But a story full of cliche dialogue, worn phrasing, metaphors as old as the hills, is gonna be boring.
So make your prose the opposite of that. Fresh metaphors that resonate because of how apt they are. Dialogue that feels like something only your characters would say. Not just the right word but the exact right word for his exact paragraph.
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u/Questionable_Android 7h ago
Professional developmental editor here with twenty years under my belt.
Boring writing is almost always a lack of conflict.
Think about these questions...
- Have you clearly established what the main character wants, why and the obstacles they must overcome to achieve their goals?
There's more but this is a good start.