# 27 Pieces of Advice From Famous Authors



## Philip Overby (Apr 2, 2013)

It was cool to see each writer do something different with their hands.  I think it shows what kind of writers they are in some ways. Some of the advice is pretty common, but solid.  

Pretty much everyone agrees:

1.  Write a lot
2.  Read a lot

Some advice varies though. 

27 Pieces Of Advice For Writers From Famous Authors


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## Steerpike (Apr 2, 2013)

Yeah, those two pieces of advice are most important. And by "read a lot," they mean read a lot of fiction (if that's what you're going to write), not endless books on how to write, or anything like that.


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## Philip Overby (Apr 2, 2013)

I like reading books about writing now and again, but I think the best learning comes from reading other fiction as you said.  You can see what writers you admire actually practice.  I've definitely learned more from reading fiction than from anywhere else.  I've always been baffled by people who want to be writers who don't read.  But to each their own I guess.


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## JCFarnham (Apr 2, 2013)

I quickly figured something out about writing advice. 

*Don't take seriously the advice of a writer you don't ALWAYS enjoy. *I loved _Ender's Game_ by Orson Scott Card. I got copies of some of his advice books. Then I read more of his work and found out he doesn't really follow his own advice. That in itself says it all I think. 

This hand idea is a very cool one!


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## skip.knox (Apr 2, 2013)

OK, I keep thinking about this so now I'm finally going to ask. *Everyone* says read a lot. That's one way to learn to write better.

But *how* to read? I rarely see anyone address this.

I suspect that simply reading the way I've always read isn't necessarily the best approach. I did read someone else's comments here saying that he picks books he has previously read and goes through them making notes. This might be where those books on how to write come in. Does Writer X follow the "snowflake" model, for example?  I can envision doing something like that. It feels a bit like drudgery, but I've not actually tried it.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to read?

It's not as silly as it sounds. I teach history and I have a whole essay on how to read a primary source. There are absolutely methodologies for approaching certain kinds of texts (biblical exegesis, for another example).


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## Nihal (Apr 2, 2013)

I read like if I was racing. It's bad, it doesn't give enough time to my brain to fixate many details and I definitively pay no attention to how it was written.

This suggestion of reading again a work - analyzing it - is a good one, I've done it too. To summarize something I usually read and write what I remembered (the main points), but when reading something to study how it was written taking notes help me. The nuances are important and you can't expect to remember them all by head. I just create a note, sometimes with a quote - always with the book/page number - pointing out what caught my attention and why.


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## ThomasCardin (Apr 5, 2013)

skip.knox said:


> Does anyone have suggestions on how to read?



What I do is put my editor's cap on. When I find a passage in a book that really works for me, I go back and analyze it line by line to find out the following things:

How are the dialog and dialog tags being handled? What is making it 'work' for me?

Are the sentences long or short, or good mix of both?

Is an active voice maintained throughout? Try to break down and learn from good sentence structure.

It has to be 'showing', because 'telling' kicks me right in the head now. How is the author handling his exposition? How long does he spend describing the world passing by the carriage window?

Also while you are reading pay attention to where you are. Are you in the story? Good. Pay attention to when something kicks you out, like telling does to me. Was it a jarring POV switch? Did the protagonist suddenly start thinking about an obvious plot mcguffin? 

---

Absolute Write's forums have a share your work thread where people post a thousand words or so and recieve critiques. First off, don't post your work there unless you are EXTREMELY brave, even perfect work will be picked to shreds. The bar is set unbelievably high. It is almost a critiqueing competition.

Read what people are posting and look for errors, issues, weaknesses. You name it, you'll find it. Now read the line by line critiques...here is where the REAL value is, you can learn a TON from these harsh, no-holds-barred crits. I read a couple every day, they definitely have helped me spot issues in my own writing.


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## Chilari (Apr 11, 2013)

Phil the Drill said:


> I've always been baffled by people who want to be writers who don't read.  But to each their own I guess.



This reminds me of Garth Merangi's Darkplace, a comedy TV series from a couple of years ago created by the people behind the IT Crowd. It's a parody of a 1970s hospital drama with some supernatural stuff thrown in, and features "commentary" from the "actors" and "writer" who apparently made it in the 1970s, from the perspective of now. One line from the character Garth Merangi, the apparent author of the books which led to the 1970s TV show, is that he's one of the few published authors who has written more books than he's read. It really stood out to me when i heard that.

Fantastic series, well worth watching. Available on 4oD in the UK or Youtube elsewhere, I think. Utterly hilarious.

My writer Sim in the Sims 3 has also written more books than she's read.


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## Devor (Apr 11, 2013)

skip.knox said:


> But *how* to read? I rarely see anyone address this.



It depends on what you're looking for.  Just reading, and exposing yourself to the language and new stories or tropes in fantasy, will help you a lot.  In that sense, read a lot, but read very different things to absorb the most scope.  Otherwise you'll see the same sources popping up in your work.

If you're trying to work on something specific - like pacing, just about everyone needs to work on pacing - then pick a couple of authors who do it well and take notes.  Read them a few times - read just a couple of chapters a few times - to make sure you're picking up on the nuances of how it's laid out.

One thing that helps, I think, is to take a chapter of an existing work, and type that chapter into your manuscript format on your computer.  How long do the paragraphs look now?  I think that dispels some of the intimidating awe.  See it like the author saw it, and like you'll see your own work.


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## thequillwitch (May 19, 2013)

I need a magic ring!


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