. "Make this sentence more active", "cut out filter words", "don't use adverbs" is about the least useful advice someone could give me, compared to "I don't feel Bob's pain".
You see, I'm the opposite. "I don't feel Bob's pain" is terrible. And that's not because the person is wrong. They really aren't feeling Bob's pain, but they also are making the comment without really knowing where you're going with anything. It goes back to my statement about the tree not being magical enough.
I've read stories in a writing workshop, where the moment I pick it up and start reading, I can tell they submitted this story before. And it's not because it's good, it's because it's awful.
One example, was the opening scene was this kid running away from the bad guy. And I asked the writer, "Why did you choose to start there? Where are you going with that? Why didn't you start with him waking in his bedroom? Or going about his day?" His response was, "Oh, I did that originally, but people thought it was boring. People tell me this is much better and more exciting now!"
I had to agree. It was objectively a more exciting way to open the story. It also wasn't a good way. It was confusing. There was nothing to build up the tension. And he put himself in a position where, instead of using later chapters to advance the plot and build the characters, he'd have to spend time catching the reader up. Which presents its own challenges.
I wish someone had told him "make this sentence more active." "Cut out these filler words." "Stop using so many adverbs." But instead he got advice from what is effectively a focus group. And instead of helping him tighten up his prose, which could have made that first chapter easier to get through, he decided to "fix" it that way. But what else was he going to do? All he was reading was that the chapter wasn't exciting enough. No one said it wasn't exciting because he was using a lot of fillers, which made the chapter sound like it was dragging through mud.
Sometimes, the only thing a writer needs right that second, is just building and developing their fundamentals. Let's not worry about putting someone in the dregs of Bob's pain or making the tree magical enough. Let's just get you writing good, strong sentences. That leads to good, strong paragraphs, which leads to good, strong prose. Which, while won't fix everything, will fix a lot.
