- Thread starter
- #21
That's largely why I started this thread, Heliotrope.
First there's the sort you usually find in internet articles, which often have like 5 to 10 kind of sketchy "rules" to make your writing better, and they usually focus on not being like the stuff you see in a slush pile. Stuff like, "Don't introduce your MC by having him look in a mirror...." 'Cause apparently, that's a common thing with bad writing.
There's also been, as I mentioned in the OP, a common trend towards pushing prose that "disappears" behind your story. That means you shouldn't use fancy turns of phrase or eloquent descriptions. You should "tighten up the wording" and "focus every moment on building tension." It's often taken beyond prose into the storytelling, tightly cutting extra scenes and detail to keep things moving. And when followed through fully, it creates the kind of fast-moving, high-intensity writing you might see in most thrillers, which is probably where the advice comes from.
From there, we have the "critiquing" advice, which is often to push show-don't-tell as far as you can before somebody hits you.
Finally, there's the discussion of Hero's Journey and 3-act and 4-act and 7-point story structures, which are sometimes taken to a high level of formula (the inciting incident needs to happen around page 8 in a 200 page book...). Of course, many times people strip the "formula" but keep the jargon and take a looser approach to it, which is necessary when you have complex multi-POV, multi-volume stories.
Of these, the tightened prose, tense story approach has had a lot of appeal to many people - I would say - because it's a clear, cohesive, understandable, teachable approach to writing, if not always the most appropriate for a specific author or story. And again, it's all based on cutting the excess.
I have a copy of Maas's Breakout Novel but haven't done much more than flip through it.
First there's the sort you usually find in internet articles, which often have like 5 to 10 kind of sketchy "rules" to make your writing better, and they usually focus on not being like the stuff you see in a slush pile. Stuff like, "Don't introduce your MC by having him look in a mirror...." 'Cause apparently, that's a common thing with bad writing.
There's also been, as I mentioned in the OP, a common trend towards pushing prose that "disappears" behind your story. That means you shouldn't use fancy turns of phrase or eloquent descriptions. You should "tighten up the wording" and "focus every moment on building tension." It's often taken beyond prose into the storytelling, tightly cutting extra scenes and detail to keep things moving. And when followed through fully, it creates the kind of fast-moving, high-intensity writing you might see in most thrillers, which is probably where the advice comes from.
From there, we have the "critiquing" advice, which is often to push show-don't-tell as far as you can before somebody hits you.
Finally, there's the discussion of Hero's Journey and 3-act and 4-act and 7-point story structures, which are sometimes taken to a high level of formula (the inciting incident needs to happen around page 8 in a 200 page book...). Of course, many times people strip the "formula" but keep the jargon and take a looser approach to it, which is necessary when you have complex multi-POV, multi-volume stories.
Of these, the tightened prose, tense story approach has had a lot of appeal to many people - I would say - because it's a clear, cohesive, understandable, teachable approach to writing, if not always the most appropriate for a specific author or story. And again, it's all based on cutting the excess.
I have a copy of Maas's Breakout Novel but haven't done much more than flip through it.
Myth Weaver
