How to Share your Writing and Get Support

If you're an unpublished writer, you probably get crushed by that mortified look people get when you bound up with a new story asking them "Do you want to see this?" You're looking for support -- and getting rejection. Here's how to ask for support in a way that'll actually get it!

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. There is a real, logistic reason why the same people who love you will cheer and applaud and say "That's nice" to anything you draw, but cringe and have to force themselves (or make excuses that they're too busy) when you've just finished a story, article or novel chapter.
   
   It takes one moment to look at an artwork and as much effort to find something nice to say about it as it does to see what color it is, when a friend shows you art. It can be an abstract, but it's emotional support for real to look them in the eye and say "The colors on this are great!" and maybe, if you're educated about art, "There's a lot of motion in it" or "The composition's balanced" -- useful positive critique. I do this around artists all the time.
   
   But it takes fifteen minutes to an hour to read through an unpublished writer's first draft, worse if they write longhand and you can't even read their scribbling, and look for something true and nice to say about it. That's an hour of your time you will never have again wading through a lot of beginner errors that you're screaming to point out so that next time you don't have to deal with rambling plotless nonsense or overly descriptive verbiage and inconsistent spelling. Let's assume same category of beginner skill here. On top of everything else, there's a good chance the unpublished writer who's related to you has a passion for a genre you wouldn't read unless you were locked in the bathroom for eighteen hours with diarrhea on a desert island. You read mystery and she does romance. Or you read romance and love it but he does space opera shoot-em-ups where the greatest emotional expression is the cheer of victory at the end on top of a heap of alien bodies.
   
   This is a natural logistic problem for new writers getting support for their creative efforts. It's easy to get critique. Just ask for it from people who like your genre. Getting support is a lot harder -- yet it's possible, and now if I just want a moment's pat on the back for doing my thing, I am able to get it without disrupting my family's lives. And also give them the useful feedback that I have been working and producing something all those hours when I was staring at the screen or playing computer games or staring out the window.
2. In asking for support, make it clear that's what you want. Discuss that with them. Make it clear to friends and family that you are not asking for help with it and a line by line edit. When you want a line by line edit, be clear about asking for that. Writers' groups are the best place to ask for that. If you write genre, find a group that's in your genre so that the romance writers don't clutter your space opera with mushy emotion and disappoint your readers who want more pulsing green ichor and explosions and chases.
   
   That is the first sensible thing. Just make it clear that you're asking for a "That's nice" instead of "Here's how to improve it." You actually need both, but "That's nice" is important for maintaining morale. The next step is maybe the most important key to actually getting it honestly instead of their forcing themselves to say it.
3. Snippet! Don't expect them to read the whole story. Don't even tell them the plot. It's much, much more effective to pick out just the best line and tell it like a joke. If there is anything funny in your story and the setup is less than a paragraph, practice it and tell it like a joke. Quote it the way you would if you were quoting a good line from a favorite published author. Assume that the rest of the story is good.
   
   It is, or at least it will be when you're done editing it. There is no such thing as a bad idea, just a finished edited professional quality story or one that still needs some work.
   
   If you share it at the moment you wrote it, share the moment you laughed out loud while writing. If they ask "What are you laughing about," that's when to tell them. They asked. This is not the same thing as coming up while they're trying to win a computer game or finish an email or in the case of other writers in the household, their precious story that is fully as immersive to them as yours is to you. It is not an interruption.
   
   So you tell it like a joke. Synopsize the setup: "My hero and villain are fighting on the staircase, and the prisoner who had a stone-to-food wand just busted out using it, so they fell into about six feet of cream cheese and they're covered in it, and my narrator just goes 'Cheese is not an adequate building material.'"
   
   Like Christopher Titus says in "Norman Rockwell is bleeding" -- "I want to hear your pain. I just want to hear it in joke form."
4. Create a teaser.
   
   You're burning to tell the plot anyway. But the only person in the world that you should spill the plot to before their reading the whole story that makes it make sense is the editor who's deciding whether to buy it. So look at the first part of your story, and take the opening conflict situation.
   
   Write it up in a paragraph of less than four sentences, suitable for Internet posting. Tighten it till it screams. You're presenting the idea of the story in a way that a TV Guide reader could decide whether to watch the episode or not.
   
   The shorter the teaser, the more powerful it is. You will find this improving your prose too, weasel words will start looking ugly in the actual story and extraneous repetition will bore you on the edit pass. So this approach also helps improve the quality of what you're presenting.
   
   In the end, you will need a back cover blurb for your novel that sets up interest for the book without spoiling the twists and especially the twist ending. So practicing on friends and family turns your bids for a moment's support into a real test of your ability to write blurbs!
   
   When your blurbing skills get to the point that your family members are saying "I want to read that," and "Give me that manuscript," it is genuine applause and a lot more solid for building morale. Chances are by then your story isn't dreck either. Real compliments beat politeness any day of the week.
5. This support request never fails. You could be the rawest beginner. You could be creating the Legend of Weepy Wallow in the cheesiest fan fiction ever written and Mary Sue could be the heroine whose every diamond-glittering tear is precious, but this bid for attention will get you real attention and encouragement. (Reciprocate with the rest of the fan club if that actually is your genre. Just be nice to their Mary Sues and you will get support).
   
   Give your family and friends who don't read your word count.
   
   This method of cheering progress originated for me and many other people with Nanowrimo. I'm listing the link for Nanowrimo Org after this article, because if you want a community of support for being an amateur novelist or future professional novelist, the National Novel Writing Month group is perfect for you. Tens of thousands of other writers all doing novels in a month will cheer you on, and the world's most solitary art form turns into something like the Boston Marathon online.
   
   You can be a nutter among ten thousand other nutters and then you're not a nutter at all, and your friends and family who don't read will at least know you're having fun and achieving something. If they actually like you, this makes them happy. Especially when they don't have to read the whole thing before it's finished, which is like serving egg and salt and sugar mixture to someone who's waiting for a cake and asking if it's good before you even put in the walnuts and chocolate, let alone baked it. Finished writing is real entertainment. Rough drafts are -- more like that goop in the mixing bowl that only makes sense by taste to other chefs.
   
   But progress by quantity is as easy to applaud as your bowling score, and well meaning others, even if they hate reading and never will like the book, will be proud of you for having done so MUCH of it. Announcing your word counts for a moment's applause and then not following it with the plot synopsis and spoilers or waving the printout in their faces will help them be able to give that support without forcing themselves to lie and say it's good when it's not good yet.
   
   Trust that it will be. Prose, especially electronic stage, is more erasable than even graphite pencil artwork. You can keep reworking it for literal years before it's gold, so it has that potential and you have that potential. You are immensely talented as a writer because you actually got on your butt and started writing!
6. Tell them about your successes, not the content that earned them. "I dared to send out my manuscript" really does deserve a pat on the back and if they like you, they'll give it knowing you had to struggle to do it. "I won the contest" or "I got an acceptance letter" will get a cheer even from people who don't read.
   
   "I got paid, want to come out for dinner to celebrate?" will get a cheer from anyone short of an abuser.
7. If you apply all of these strategies and still get discouragement instead of "That's nice" or "Congratulations," then stop and look at the relationship. They may actively have a reason they don't like your being a writer. It may be rational or not.
   
   Well meaning people can be discouraging. "You could make a lot more money if you spent that time learning chartered accounting" is well meaning, from someone who honestly does not want you to be a writer. Stay out of their way. Don't even mention your successes. Don't bring it up to them. Talk about it only with people who are supportive of your goal.
   
   If you're in a conflict with a family member that is not the time to ask for support on your personal goals. They aren't feeling kindly at that moment -- even if that's when you feel insecure and need emotional support. Go online. Look for other writers. Look for readers in your genre. Look for friends who are not involved in the conflict and have nothing vested in its outcome, ask for support and get it. Same as if you're looking to lick your wounds after a fight -- look for people who are kind, have the time and have a tendency to be a good crying shoulder anyway. Then spread it out among many different people a little at a time so that no one confidant gets overwhelmed.
   
   You may need more support than one trusted friend can give you -- and that's fine, because the world is full of people who will happily give reciprocated support. Try any writer's group, the other unpublished writers of the world (or burned out professionals) may be just as much in need of some support. Give support and you'll attract people who reciprocate. And then give more attention to those that do instead of those who don't, because there are also emotional spongers out there that don't have the energy to reciprocate because they are too wounded at the time. (Yes, I'm being kind to them, there are some people in the world with serious problems who also can act in extremely obnoxious ways while recovering from them or never will recover, and you can't tell which until or unless they do).

Tips & Warnings

• Practice telling jokes. Study real comedians for style of presentation, and when telling your own best lines, rehearse them. You won't stumble over the setup if you tell it a dozen times to a mirror before telling a live person.
• Approach when your friends and family are in a good mood and won't mind the interruption. Wait till you hear the win screen music on the game your family member's playing, congratulate on that score and hear the rundown, then show off your success by telling a good line like a joke, giving a teaser or a word count.
• Don't give someone who doesn't read your genre anything but word count progress and the vaguest descriptions. They're not interested. What they care about is that you're happy and you achieved something that's important to you. Share your feelings, not the details. If they hate the best examples of the type of thing you write, don't set yourself up for disappointment by expecting them to like yours just because you wrote it.
• Don't ask for support from anyone who's angry at you about anything else because they are not in the mood to give it and may get snappish just because they're mad.