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Good(?) Writing Advice

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
So there's a thread on bad writing advice that's getting some attention.

I figured I'd ask a question that's slightly related but from another angle.

1. What good writing advice have you received that you...
a) ...follow?
b) ...don't follow but that you feel you ought to?

2. What's your favorite good advice to give to others when it comes to writing?
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
Even though most advice is subjective really, I'll comment on some things that have helped me.

Advice that I follow is to constantly write. If I'm not writing short stories, I'm working on a novel, or doing freelance writing. By writing all the time, I'm honing my skills the best I can.

Advice that I don't follow, but probably should is sticking with something even if it's bad. I just can't seem to do it. If I feel something is so far gone it can't be salvaged, I rather just move on and try something else. I hope I can break out of that soon, but it's been a hard road for me to stick with something. I'm getting closer and closer all the time though. I understand most first drafts are going to be bad, but there's "bad" and then there's "complete unicorn dung."

My favorite good advice is to read in the genre you're writing in. Read and read some more. Read classics of the genre and know who the heavy-hitters are, past and present. In addition, read outside the genre you're working in as well. It will help add new perspective.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
2. What's your favorite good advice to give to others when it comes to writing?

If you want to create an engaging story, give your reader a relatable character progressing through a series of tense situations that promote change, and filter those events through the emotional lens of your character.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
1. What good writing advice have you received that you...
a) ...follow?
Track your daily word count

b) ...don't follow but that you feel you ought to?
Save the editing & revision until you're finished.... Sometimes I can't stop myself from making revisions, even though I know it may be wasted time.

What's your favorite good advice to give to others when it comes to writing?
Limit adverb use.... It's an easy way to illustrate how small understandings of craft can dramatically improve a beginner's writing.
 
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Leuco

Troubadour
I think it was Neil Gaiman (maybe Stephen King) who said something along the lines of "read outside your genre." Try to get as much exposure to as many different subjects as you can. Not only could these things inspire you, but they give the knowledge you may need when you're trying to describe non-fantasy things. I suppose that's kind of like doing research when you're not really doing research.

Ray Bradbury said something similar about ravanous reading. He wrote a book called Zen in the Art of Writing, which is a collection of essays on the topic. I highly recommend it for inspiration.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Reading outside of genre is huge, in my opinion. Other genres have their strengths, and you'll learn a lot from them. Read classics, read thriller/mysteries (particularly good at lean writing, pacing, and establishing character with an economy of prose), read romance to see how they handle those elements, read horror to see how writers build up a sense of dread, and so on. You can't go wrong, in my view.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Allow your self to suck, meaning let yourself make mistakes and don't get caught up in making mistakes, just learn from them, and just write.

Challenge yourself. If you're too comfortable in your writing, you're not growing. With each new story, try something that makes you uncomfortable.

Don't force the words. Meaning don't get too fancy with the words. Let the words come out naturally and honestly.

Broaden your horizons. As said above read outside your comfort zone. You'll be surprised at what other genres have to offer and what you can learn form them.

Be a student of writing. Understand "the Rules" so you can break and bend them to your will.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
So there's a thread on bad writing advice that's getting some attention.

I figured I'd ask a question that's slightly related but from another angle.

1. What good writing advice have you received that you...
a) ...follow?
b) ...don't follow but that you feel you ought to?

2. What's your favorite good advice to give to others when it comes to writing?

hmm... I have 3 pieces of advice printed out on little slips of paper and taped to my monitor. The first, I follow with all my heart. It's from Robert Zelazny - "Trust your demon."

The second is, I think, from Stephen King, and I try to follow it but honestly I'm a bit ADHD and it's a challenge. It reads, "Keep your butt in the chair."

The third I actually don't remember where I came across it, but finding it was a revelation for my writing and I pass it along at every opportunity. It reads, "Conflict = Story"

I agree that reading across the genres is exceptionally helpful, and can only improve one's writing. For that matter, I also think watching TV and movies with a writer's mind is helpful. I think of writing as being part stage direction, being an extremely visual person, and seeing writing as a visual medium as well as a literary one can help bring that element into one's prose.
 

Weaver

Sage
hmm... I have 3 pieces of advice printed out on little slips of paper and taped to my monitor. The first, I follow with all my heart. It's from Robert Zelazny - "Trust your demon."

There was a time when I could have quoted to you the entire paragraph that comes from. As it is, I could only sort of paraphrase it (and my books are all in storage so I cannot just go and look it up *sigh*). Something about how, when you think you should just stick to something easy and safe in your writing, but that little demon whispers, Go ahead, take a risk, do something wild and new that you've always wanted to try, you should trust your demon.

And feed it honeyed dormice. :)

(Okay, I made that part up. Dormice are optional.)
 

TheokinsJ

Troubadour
"Keep it short". If something can be summed up in a sentence, write it in one sentence. The best piece of advice I've gotten which is particularly applicable to me is "Keep looking forward, never look back"- can't remember who said it, but the idea is that you need to keep churning through the pages, keep making progress. For someone like me who procrastinates about everything, I can write ten pages in a day, then when I go to edit them I hit a brick wall and I won't write for two months. It's only after I finish a first draft do I dare to look back on all I've written and then begin editing and re-writing, it helps me make progress with my writing and also gets me out of my bad habit of procrastinating.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
The best advice I've received recently was to use the first draft to write 'what' I want to say, and to change 'how' I want to say things during editing. I found this suggestion freeing and clarifying.
 
Lots of good advice here already so I'll try to say something different...

a) don't try too hard to impress - establishing yourself as a writer is all about finding your natural writing voice. Trying too hard will just make you sound like someone else.

b) read a great deal (and include some non-fiction, esp historiography)

c) do it in your own time. It takes (for most people) a really long time to become a writer worth reading, so don't set your heart on it as a means of paying the mortgage. Have a decent Plan B which pays OK and do all in your power to make your way gradually towards Plan A

d) enjoy it. Getting published is utterly exhilarating but writing itself can also be so - if you're not enjoying it then take a few months off and try again later.
 
and one more thing:

e) always keep a notebook handy for writing down ideas (including remembered snatches of dreams and bits of random dialogue overheard when strangers are talking)
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
1) Be prepared to kill you babies. [If you think a phrase/sentence/paragraph is wonderful - be ready to edit it out of the text if it doesn't work.] (this is advice I don't follow often enough...)
2) When you think you're done and the story is finished, put it away for a week/month/three months. Then go back and look at it.
 
Limit adverb use.... It's an easy way to illustrate how small understandings of craft can dramatically improve a beginner's writing.

Definitely a great specific bit of advice. I also like a variation on this: get comfortable with good verbs. When you can see "the cat padded--" instead of "ran" or "ran softly," you're thinking like a writer.

My other favorite advice is, if it's hard to write... it's usually hardest to start writing each time, even for twenty-year professionals, and much easier once you tough your way through the first minutes. My "Scary Bicycle," that you always remember how to ride but always looks harder at first.
 

Trick

Auror
Good advice I follow: In my signature, that quote... I have a tendency to think, "It's probably been done already, I'll just forget it." That quote makes me put the time in to make the notes about an idea and do the research to make sure I'm not just mimicking something without realizing it.

Good advice I don't always follow: I gave a short work to a friend when I was first trying my hand at writing. He was a big fantasy reader and wanted to check it out. Afterward he said, "Details, man! Details!" My writing was flat and boring. I don't know if there was one descriptive word in the whole thing. I always work to change that but sometimes I let details fall away and have to surgically put them in later.

The advice I give is to read! Read the greats and the unknowns.
 

PaulineMRoss

Inkling
Some advice from Dean Wesley Smith: have fun. Good advice? You decide.

The New World of Publishing: Having Fun |

Cliff Notes version: don't outline, don't endlessly rewrite, don't aim for perfection, don't bother with agents and traditional publishers, write what you want to write and self-publish it.

I should point out he's in a different position from most writers here, since he's a long-established author with a vast back-catalogue (over 100 books). Still an interesting perspective.
 

Scribble

Archmage
This is some advice about creating a good story, from an online acquaintance of mine, Marcus Geduld. He's a writer and Shakespearean director.

What makes a story great?

There are always exceptions, but if I was planning to violate any of the following rules and principles, I would seriously think about why I was doing it. Also note that aesthetics are largely subjective. The following will help you write stories that will satisfy someone like me.

1. A great story is constructed to hook me and refuse to let me go. There are many techniques authors can use to do this, including creating high-stakes drama, making me care deeply about characters, piquing my curiosity, etc. At each point, there must be something driving me to move from one sentence to the next.

2. It overflows with sensual detail. The story is told, as much as possible, in a way that makes me feel as if I'm seeing things, smelling things, hearing things, tasting things, and touching things. Orwell describes a character's experience eating a rancid sausage as "bombs of filth exploded in his mouth." That hooks me much more effectively than, "The sausage was disgusting."

3. Its characters should obey "Stanislavsky's Rules." Stanislavsky was a Russian actor and director who formalized (amongst other things) a system of analysis many actors use today. It's based on the premise that characters pursue goals. They're not necessarily self-knowing: they may not know what their goals are. But, still, they have goals and they pursue them.

For instance, a particular character's goal might be "to marry the girl." Conflict occurs when a character's goals are thwarted by a competing character (another suitor), by a force of nature (the girl dies), or by his own inner qualms (shyness). If a character achieves his goal or is permanently thwarted, he must either form a new goal or be out of the story.

The author needn't communicate his character's goals, and doing so is often a bad idea. As a reader, I just need to feel that the characters are psychologically plausible, even if I can't explain how.

Despite its title, this is a great book for writers: A Practical Handbook for the Actor. So is this: Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis.

4. Its characters need to be distinct from each other. One doesn't necessarily have to draw them as broadly as Dickens, but Dickens is a great teacher. In great stories, characters (even minor ones) are never collections of quirks. "He always scratches his beard" isn't a character. Neither is "He's continually sarcastic."

5. Its stakes must be high. That's not to say all the characters must be in life-or-death peril. Some great stories have been written about high school kids with crushes. But I need to both understand and, more important, have a visceral feeling of why it's vital Shelly get a date with Dan. The author must make me care!

6. Its plot must be plausible. By that, I don't mean it must avoid dragons or giant robots. I mean that stories should obey whatever logic they set up. If it's established in Chapter One that the sultan has a flying carpet, the author has to explain why, in Chapter Two, when he's locked in his bedroom, he can't fly out the window.

7. Either its plot or characters (or both) must surprise me. If a story doesn't have plot twists—if it's clear what's going to happen—then I must be surprised by how the characters get from Point A to Point B. "This is a love story, so I know the woman is going to fall in love with the man, but he ruined her business and she hates him! How is he going to win her over?"

8. Its writing style must either move out of the way or reveal an interesting (often invisible) storyteller character. Great writing (in the stylistic sense) can be matter-of-fact. It can be so simple that you don't notice it: you only think about the plot and the characters. Much brilliant genre writing is like this, and it takes just as much skill to write as "flowery" prose. It's vital that the author remove all clunky phrasing and he must make his writing as sensual as possible.

Or he can make the narrative voice a distinct character—one that calls attention to itself. He can use obscure words, noticeable rhythms, complex metaphorical systems, wordplay, and so on, as long as this is in service of a distinct voice: the evocation of a storyteller I enjoy spending time with. (It's worth considering Stanislavsky's Rules for this hidden character, even if he's an unnamed 3rd-Person narrator.)

9. It uses metaphor to make the abstract sensual. Here's a simple example from "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helene Wecker.

She tried to imagine herself chatting and laughing with a roomful of strangers, completely at her ease. It seemed an impossible fantasy, like a child wishing for wings.

"An impossible fantasy" is an abstraction. Wecker makes it visceral by likening it to a child wishing for wings. This is the primary use of metaphor in fiction. It's why, "I'm describing something abstract" is never an excuse for not making it sensual.

10. It lacks gratuitous elements. As a reader, I don't need to understand exactly how everything fits together, but I must feel that it does. The main difference between a story (if well told) and a real-life sequence of events is the former is a coherent whole and the latter isn't. Nothing should be in the story because the author thinks it's cool, unless it simultaneously serves the story, moves it forward, and/or helps the reader experience something in it. This is what is meant by "kill all your darlings." Cut anything that's gratuitous, even a single sentence.

Also note Chekhov's rule that if a gun appears in act one, it must be fired in act two. (Otherwise the gun is gratuitous.) Every detail must exist for a reason!

11. Even if it's a tragedy, it contains humor. Shakespeare understood this, well. Most readers shut down when subjected to page after page of misery. If there's no humor, the story had better be damned interesting.

12. It must avoid awkward exposition. There are only two acceptable sorts of exposition: (1) straight-forward description that doesn't pretend to be anything else (e.g. the text crawl at the beginning of "Star Wars") and (2) exposition that's so deeply hidden, the reader doesn't notice it.

Let's say you, the writer, need to get the reader to understand that Sarah is Bill's sister. You can not have him say, "Sister dear, please pass the butter," unless you've established that he always talks to people in that stilted way. In casual conversation, most people don't label their friends and family. They just say, "Pass the butter."

You must either be overt—"Bill turned to his sister and said, 'Pass the butter'"—or incredibly stealthy: "Remember when mom used to buy that really salty butter?"

13. It's shouldn't be too "on the nose." Many contemporary stories (especially ones written for film and television) violate this by giving their characters too much self-knowledge and having them express their wisdom via the language of pop psychology: "I now realize that I pushed him away because I saw too much of myself in him." Most people don't know why they do what they do.

Also, most of the time, unless we're talking about something trivial, we don't say what we want. We've all swallowed social rules that make us temper or hide our desires.

So, if George wants his wife to quit fussing over her face so they can get to the party, he probably won't say, "Quit fussing over your face so we can get to the party" (unless their relationship has reached an intense moment of crisis or he's a specifically antisocial sort of character). He'll glance at his watch and say, "Do you think they're wondering where we are?"

14. It should avoid judging its characters. Let me, the reader, decide whether they are good or bad. In the best stories, that's difficult, because the "good guys" have negative traits and the "bad guys" have their charms.

15. It should avoid didacticism. Let me, the reader, draw my own moral or conclusions. In the best stories, all conclusions are complicated. If the entire "message" of a book is "bigotry is bad," the writer could have just told me that, and I probably know it, already.

A great story about bigotry involves me in a world in which bigotry is a force and helps me feel what the characters feel, both the sufferings (and lusts for revenge) of the victims and the fears of the bigots. The story has the confidence to let me live in its world and emerge however I emerge. It doesn't drive me towards a school-lesson conclusion.

16. It should contain just the right level of ambiguity. This is the most difficult effect for stories to achieve, and so we generally find it (along with other traits) only in the world's greatest literature (films, plays, etc.). If a story answers all its questions, it's forgettable. It might divert me as piece of light entertainment, but once it's over, I rarely want to read it again. If a story is too ambiguous, it's confusing. I get irritated because I have no idea what's going on. So the trick is to find the sweet spot between these extremes. Great stories haunt without being confusing. In my mind, a great example of perfect ambiguity is the ending of Bergan's film "Fanny and Alexander."
 
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