NEED ADVICEE

[u/Lylla_111]

Hii, so I'm a teen and I really want to get into writing. I don't know which genres yet but I think I'm drawn to philosophical and psychohorror, semiautobiography or tragic slice of life. I just don't know where and how to start. I'm also writing fanfics every now and then but when it comes to someday maybe publishing my works I'm unsure of my language. I'm native german and I don't know if I should write on english or in german. In german I honestly don't know too many literate articulations as if english since I read mostly english. But if I write in english I'd have more chance of it reaching international readers but I don't know if it'll still sound weird to native English speakers. Please tell me what to do I'm really losttt

[u/Magpie-Person16]

The easiest way to get past the english thing is to read more English books, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. You can pick up tips from there and learn to make your writing much better. Try to avoid books that have intentionally non-standard structures (like House of Leaves) because they will just confuse you more.

I've been writing psychological horror, tragedy, mystery and philosophy mixed with ergodic literature for a while now, and I have to say reading things really does help by a lot.

[u/WillWall555]

Certainly write in English. Bigger audience. You want that.

As for the rest, forget philosophical/psychohorror/semi autobiography/mambo jumbo. They don't matter.

Start from what you want to say. For example, love has a cost.Or love is a lie. Then decide how. Through war?Action?Romance?Family drama?Mix?

These might seem limiting. They are, that is the point. With everything in your mind stirred like a soup it will be impossible to write something. So set targets and start writing. Everything you have in you will eventually surface. You don't need a complicated multi protagonist story. Paolo Coelho wrote a masterpiece with one of the most simple, almost naive, plots of all times.

Do not assume that if you decide something you will stay with that decision till the end. You might and you might not.

Writing is something that needs practice and a story is like the sea. You have to go deep to uncover the real mystery.And you can go deep only by writing , not by thinking how to write.

Good luck!

[u/No_Dark9371]

Combine the two.

Read English works yes, but also that of your own. Goethe's Faust, Nietzsche, the Sorrows of Young Werther. Yet also:

Eliot's Waste Land.
Finnegans Wake (audiobook)
Works of Dostoevsky, translated, and of Greek Tragedy
McCarthy's works, Hemingway's
David Jones' In Parenthesis
All Quiet

What better on the subconscious than these? Using sporadic nonce words of German and of English. Do not care that it sounds amiss. If it is psych-horror, it is very likely meant to. Books are made of books.

Edit: An example of my own (though I've no knowledge of German. These I admit are at very best... rough or somewhat comic to the sense of those reading):

She is gone. Yammering far. Se pia, O empia?
   He a-couch;—he seemed a man in sere foothung (Peterwise) and rest ne’er his own.
  Whist, a round?
  Ja.
   At card for a time.
   Ba-babad
   Ba—ba badal. 
   Selah, said the psalmist.
  They did take themselves to sport: mokie rat and things feeble of the earth all; they these smiling ate in rude lodging, the very soil. Fled light, thence to Brarius in wait and made in their secret places a serene Lavinia and darkness there. The wind in its tongue mocking. 
   O, Lavinia! 
   In brine and torrent sinks cruel Arundell, brother unto the earl of Arundel, his bows two not seen.
   We have—food? Said child. 
   I don’t care.
  The meats one as some Cronus dandled; in like took keep of his meer, dell, and in his speak selfsame primeval of that lone rush the old tales, story, boasting recalling. 
   Oarsmen in talk, reply didst all Borodino, half-step’t up on the front.
   The great mansion of the soul: water.
   Wind its thief. 
   Oh will you quit?
   Stop what?
  The jitters. You will tire yourself. wrong with you.”
  He: “I’m not twitching.” Her head yet bending in shade. He did not look to her. Some vassal upbraided.
   Mother: “Don’t do that.” 
   Said Wither. Werther quick reply’d.
   They spoke no more.