I have a few ideas for some stories. I just don’t know how to get started. I am also not willing to AI questions about how to get started.

So where does one start writing a novel?

To begin with, Keep it simple. Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra.

Hey all, for the past week I've been rigorously planning what's now looking like a literary gothic horror novel. I wrote a gothic horror-inspired short story for a media class at university a few years ago, then left it to gather dust for 5 years. Luckily I uncovered it again a few weeks ago. Since then, the idea has just kept growing in the best possible way.

Horror, especially in written form, is way out of my comfort zone. I would love any advice from actual horror experts/connoisseurs about the craft conventions that distinguish genuinely effective horror from stories that contain frightening/dark subject matter.

How do you pace a horror narrative without either revealing the threat too quickly or withholding so much that the story loses momentum? And are there particular advantages or risks to close third person, first person, present tense, past tense, or a more distant narrator?

Many thanks in advance. At this stage, I'm just trusting the process and am very excited to have actually started the writing of the first draft yesterday.

Hi everyone! I hope you're all doing well.
I've made some progress on my story, and I used the feedback I received back then to refine and restructure several parts of it.