There's a lot of great advice being dished out here on the forums. There's advice on how to write and how not to write. There's advice on how to build worlds and create characters. There's advice on how to lay out plots or draw maps or bake muffins.
There's a lot of advice here.
One thing I noticed is that along with all this advice often comes a discussion about the nature of advice and rules and about doing your own thing. It often boils down to "don't accept all advice blindly", put more or less bluntly. Don't get me wrong, this in itself is a good advice and it's always given with good intentions - as far as I've been able to tell.
However, despite the good intentions it tends to take away from or even derail the original topic and we end up with a discussion about the how to the nature of guidelines and rules and all that jazz. It's not a bad discussion. As a new writer I've fallen headfirst into the trap of taking on too much of some advice I've been given. I tend to think that if something has happened to me, it's probably happened to others as well. I'm sure you've been there too, right?
Being told that there are more than one way of doing things and that you should go with what feels right for you shouldn't be necessary, but it's easy to forget it - especially when you get overwhelmed by new and sensible advice from people who seem more experienced and more confident than you are.
I was thinking it might be a good idea to have a discussion/sticky thread on the topic on advice and writing rules and how to accept and deal with them. That way maybe the threads with the advice themselves could be kept on topic for a little longer, and people who are new and are trying to learn may pick up on some useful hints along the way.
Thoughts on this?
There's a lot of advice here.
One thing I noticed is that along with all this advice often comes a discussion about the nature of advice and rules and about doing your own thing. It often boils down to "don't accept all advice blindly", put more or less bluntly. Don't get me wrong, this in itself is a good advice and it's always given with good intentions - as far as I've been able to tell.
However, despite the good intentions it tends to take away from or even derail the original topic and we end up with a discussion about the how to the nature of guidelines and rules and all that jazz. It's not a bad discussion. As a new writer I've fallen headfirst into the trap of taking on too much of some advice I've been given. I tend to think that if something has happened to me, it's probably happened to others as well. I'm sure you've been there too, right?
Being told that there are more than one way of doing things and that you should go with what feels right for you shouldn't be necessary, but it's easy to forget it - especially when you get overwhelmed by new and sensible advice from people who seem more experienced and more confident than you are.
I was thinking it might be a good idea to have a discussion/sticky thread on the topic on advice and writing rules and how to accept and deal with them. That way maybe the threads with the advice themselves could be kept on topic for a little longer, and people who are new and are trying to learn may pick up on some useful hints along the way.
Thoughts on this?