Has the Common Writing Advice Changed?

It may be changing. These things often seem to be cyclical, and as one style dominates people start moving toward another one for variety. If you look back to the mid 1800s to early or mid-1900s, I don't think many had the aim of streamlining prose so it disappeared. That became a more modern approach, and seems to some extent to correlate to the rise of film and TV. But now so much is written in generic prose, where strictly in terms of prose style one writer might be interchangeable with the next, I think you're seeing works that abandon that approach resonate with some readers. There's plenty of room for both, of course.

 

Isn't this in a way something of a sign of the times?

This may be going outside of the scope of the forums, but isn't there a growing mistrust of authorities within many aspects of or lives and our societies at the moment? Within the writing scene these authorities would be symbolized by the rules of writing, whatever they are, and of the established authors giving them.
It may not be so much that the rules don't make sense or no longer apply, as it's a reaction against being told what to do.

There are all kinds of advice and suggestions about how to do things, and when you try to sum them up in 140 characters or less a lot of the nuance and detail is lost. Something that was once a reasonable piece of advice when adequately explained and applied within a certain context gets condensed into the simple directive of Don't Do This.

At the same time new advice is popping up - appealing and empowering advice like trust your instincts. (nb: I'm not saying this is bad advice).

It's not difficult to see how this kind of open and encouraging advice gains favor over strict directives.

If the traditional rules of writing can be summed up as a list of things not to do, and the new advice can be summed up as follow your heart, then yeah, I'd be more than happy to reject that mossy old list and just write whatever I feel like. Especially if the one telling me to follow my heart and trust my instincts is someone who's found great success by doing just that.

It's clearly possible for others, so it should be possible for me too.

 

Thanks Devor

I’ve been wondering the same thing.

I see (and participate, to my embarrasment) in these debates, and yet I wonder, what exactly are we debating?

The advice from the well established pros is not consistent with “write generic New York Times” best sellers. Donald Maass is all about strong writer voice and being brave. His “Writing the Breakout Novel” is written for people who have already written a few novels and are ready to move up to something bigger. He says right at the beginning not to read it unless your novel is finished.

I have found that many publishers and agents I have spoken to are looking for something different. Something that stands out. I have my eye on three small Canadian children’s publishers who are looking for something new.

When I read my favourite ezines like Crazy Horse, or Strange Horizons, or even Tor, the stuff being published is not this generic “Game of Thrones” copycat fiction we seem to think is being spewed... it is all very artistic, literary, brave fiction with strong writer voice and a focus on deep themes instead of generic “structures”... so to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure where this hate on for writer advice is coming from?

 

I think so? When I joined a few years back there was some.... odd advice being spewed.... show don’t tell, use explosions and car chases as hooks, save character development for later....weird stuff. Frankly, really bad advice. I haven’t seen it so much anymore? I’ve seen a bigger shift of story over prose.., the showcase used to be full of debates on weird ways of increasing tension (fistfights, etc) or simple, nit picky line edits... things have changed to a more holistic approach since then.

There are still people like me who believe that some tried and true methods like three act story structure, scene/sequal, heros journey, or MRU’s can be super valuable tools if you find you are struggling with saggy middle or a satisfying ending, but the advice has been more in the direction of “here is a tool you might be interested in checking out”... instead of a prescriptive a+b=c.

 

The wonderful thing about the Internet is that you can find every advice on every topic. Moreover, information gets repackaged so much, it's hard to tell what's new from what's old. For every "do this" we can find a "don't do that." Cumulatively, it makes it hard to discern trends, except locally (e.g., Heliotrope's observation about advice given here at Scribes). Maybe there has been some shift in emphasis that is genre-specific.

I tend to gravitate toward essays and books that are more "here's how I work" than "here's how you should work." I have not so much developed how I work as I've become resigned to it. I'm not going to crank out a novel every two months. My prose is going to be a bit ornate, even decorative (pace Ernest Hemingway, who was a grouch anyway). But I'm fascinated by how other people create.

 

I really want to talk to this point, because it is a good one.

Many of us are trying to sell our work. We have gone from writing for fun and exploring into the realm now working our butts off trying to get paid for our work.

Once you start investigating what is involved in trying to get paid for your work, it is like stepping into the Major Leagues after playing mini-ball. There is no middle ground.

No magazine, or publisher, or agent are looking for the same thing. You may think you can just write a great story about whatever topic interests you and submit it to magazines, but you will find out really quickly that most ezines have very specific requirements about the types of stories they will buy.

Here are the submission guidelines for Strange Horizons, for example:

Fiction Submission Guidelines

They even have a list of stories they have "seen too often", so prefer you don't submit similar stuff:

Stories We've Seen Too Often

Different ezines have totally different requirements. Agents and publishers are the same.

Unfortunately, if you want to get paid for your stuff, you have to play by their rules.

Which, in some cases means you write a story based on their requirements, in hopes you get paid for it.

But you get rejected. And rejected. And nothing lights a fire under your butt more than being rejected twenty five times after you literally poured blood, sweat and tears into what you thought was your masterpiece. You realize pretty quick, you are not good enough.

So how do you get better? You start reading. Learning rules. Devouring writing book's like crazy. And you start paying attention to the stories you love (or the ones that ARE published) and realize... wait a minute.... they all follow these rules.

The same goes for self-pub, as we can attest from Chessie, who can speak more to this if she wants. The rules for self-pub are different, but there are still rules to playing the game if you want to get paid. You can't just submit a novel and expect the coin to roll in.

So Russ is totally correct in this. The rules change depending on what you are writing, who you are submitting to, what the genre is, what the style is, who the audience is.

But they all have their own rules.

 

This.

 

Ok. Can we please define, exactly what rules we are referring to? Before we go any further with this stuff? These debates and questions and conversations about these abstract "rules"... what rules are we referring to?

Specifically.

 

Like, I feel like it is easier to debate this stuff if we have concrete examples and a real, specific, rule we want to discuss.

If I pull up a short story I see published on Tor, and I say "Gee guys, I'm noticing that this writer is using a lot of passive voice. What is your take on that? Is passive voice okay now?"

Then we can talk about that.

Or I pull up another one on Crazy Horse and I say "Hey everyone. I'm noticing that we hear a lot of "show don't tell", but this author is doing a lot of telling... what are your thoughts on this?"

But all this specific talk of abstract "rules", with no context and no examples is super confusing.