The General Writing Advice Thread!

[Set2Stun]

Not quite "writing for yourself," but I never write with a particular audience in mind. I try to write stuff that people just like me would love to read. There must be plenty of readers like me, and I hope they find my work and enjoy it.

I remember plugging Heinlein's 5 Rules at the old place. They are:

Rule One: You must write.
Rule Two: You must finish what you start.
Rule Three: You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
Rule Four: You must put it on the market.
Rule Five: You must keep it on the market until it has sold.

I follow them all, but I try to keep Rule Five within reason. Most of my stories have sold after 10-12 rejections. I recently sold one that had been rejected more than 20 times, and that's probably about my limit. There are only so many paying markets where a particular story can fit, after all.

But the rest I follow fairly closely. Finish your projects when you're familiar with them. Stopping something and picking it up months or even years later, it's going to be like another writer has continued the story.

Three is important. Plenty of writers get bogged down and rewrite, edit, rewrite, edit, overthink, repeat, for literally years. Don't do that. Let it go and move on to the next book.

 

[defaux]

1. Make it exist.
2. Make it make sense.
3. Make it good.

I am trying to break the habit of trying to do all 3 of these at once. My self-imposed quality metrics would not permit me to write a sentence that didn't make sense, or didn't sound pleasant, or was too repetitive et al.
I'm only just now developing my ability to throw a concept down into a few hundred words--I don't mean outlining, I mean like a sketch-draft, to find the perspective and voice--and allow it to not be neat and tidy, to have repeated words or phrases, and then to come back later and fix the language. This is very not instinctive for me, but I think it will make me a more efficient writer.

I understand the pros, but it's not feasible for me any more. The annoyance at a missed day (because writing every day is a challenge in itself) would stop me writing the following days

You're absolutely correct -- the last thing you want is self imposed rules that prevent you from writing. Perhaps the advice is better phrased as "Write every day that you can" or "Write as often as you can." The point is to encourage engaging with the craft, to practice, to build the habit and skills required to grow and complete greater works.

Of course it has to fit within your lifestyle--I also have a full time job and a family and many other things that require my attentions. My goal is to try to write something every day, but that doesn't always happen. The other part of this is to allow yourself to not be perfect, to not let a missed session or a bad session, or a mistake set you back and break the good habits you are forming.

often I wouldn't know what to write when it came to it anyway

This is a totally separate problem, and one I'm sure we have all faced. Sitting for an entire writing session and penning no words.
My solution to face this (and it's not perfect either) is to try to evolve those ideas in my head, before I get into the seat, so that when I sit down I have a reasonable concept to try to get onto the page.
I mull over concepts, plots, characters... even specific language sometimes, while doing laundry or cooking dinner. I probably dedicate more brain power to this than is strictly necessary--or healthy--but sometimes I can't help it either, particularly when in the midst of something engaging.

you shouldn't involve the intellect at all when writing

This is another skill that is harder than it sounds. My instinct is to edit the language AS the words are flowing from my brain. Of course that interrupts the flow of thought terribly, and slows the drafting process to a crawl. It's something I'm definitely working on, but it is quite challenging to set aside ones natural instincts, to pen a sentence that I know is rubbish and tell myself "No, come back later and fix it, finish the draft now."
What can I say, overthinking is kind of my jam. It's sound advice though.

 

[Night Herald]

This is another skill that is harder than it sounds. My instinct is to edit the language AS the words are flowing from my brain. Of course that interrupts the flow of thought terribly, and slows the drafting process to a crawl. It's something I'm definitely working on, but it is quite challenging to set aside ones natural instincts, to pen a sentence that I know is rubbish and tell myself "No, come back later and fix it, finish the draft now."
What can I say, overthinking is kind of my jam. It's sound advice though.

It's darn hard, isn't it? What you describe sounds pretty much exactly like how I used to do things back in the day. I'm also naturally an overthinker, and would tend to obsessively polish sentences until they were just so. Of course they didn't actually end up any better for that treatment, usually. It was a hard habit to break, and I still sometimes fall into that trap.

 

[ellekaldwin]

I am a little bit tipsy, so the advice could come through a bit wonky. Just read between the lines.

What's that quote that's wrongly attributed to Ernest Hemingway? "Write drunk, edit sober" or something along those lines. Though I doubt he actually said anything like that. It's not bad advice.

 

[Louanne Learning]

In my inbox this morning, from Writers HQ, a suggestion for writing a "first line" - a formula that looks like this:

Time, person, action, location, reaction

Here’s some examples:

“On the first anniversary of his wife’s death [time], Xavier Redchoose [person] got up before the light [action] and went downstairs [location] to salt the cod [reaction to the whole shebang].”
This One Sky Day, Leone Ross

“Early in the morning, late in the century [time], Cricklewood Broadway [bonus location]. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975 [more time], Alfred Archibald Jones [person] was dressed in corduroy and sat [action] in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel [location] , hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him [reaction to his situation].”
White Teeth, Zadie Smith

“Many years later [time], as he faced the firing squad [bonus location], Colonel Aureliano Buendía [person] was to remember that distant afternoon [time as a location - mixing it up!] when his father took him to discover ice [reaction to the imminent threat of being shot to death].”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márques

 

[JLT]

In my inbox this morning, from Writers HQ, a suggestion for writing a "first line" - a formula that looks like this:

Time, person, action, location, reaction

Not a bad suggestion, since it locates the character in time, space, and activity. But it's a rule that can be bent with impunity.
Examples:
"Call me Ishmael" --Moby Dick (but the rest of the first paragraph did the job of introducing the context of the character).

 

[Sandor]

In my inbox this morning, from Writers HQ, a suggestion for writing a "first line" - a formula that looks like this:

Time, person, action, location, reaction

Here’s some examples:

“On the first anniversary of his wife’s death [time], Xavier Redchoose [person] got up before the light [action] and went downstairs [location] to salt the cod [reaction to the whole shebang].”
This One Sky Day, Leone Ross

“Early in the morning, late in the century [time], Cricklewood Broadway [bonus location]. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975 [more time], Alfred Archibald Jones [person] was dressed in corduroy and sat [action] in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel [location] , hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him [reaction to his situation].”
White Teeth, Zadie Smith

“Many years later [time], as he faced the firing squad [bonus location], Colonel Aureliano Buendía [person] was to remember that distant afternoon [time as a location - mixing it up!] when his father took him to discover ice [reaction to the imminent threat of being shot to death].”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márques

This is really cool. Thanks so much for sharing.

 

[Louanne Learning]

But it's a rule that can be bent with impunity.
Examples:
"Call me Ishmael" --Moby Dick (but the rest of the first paragraph did the job of introducing the context of the character).

A snappy, short sentence, followed by one that fits the formula would work, too.

 

[Also]

In my inbox this morning, from Writers HQ, a suggestion for writing a "first line" - a formula that looks like this:

Time, person, action, location, reaction

I just knew it couldn't be an organic coincidence that so many critique group pieces begin that way. The trouble with all these rules of thumb for "good" or "impactful" or (God help us) "effective" fiction that youngish editors promulgate so piously nowadays is that they make everything sound the same, so very tediously and homogenously conventional. Remember when writing was not paint-by-numbers?

As a reader, I only have patience for freestyle writing anymore. Any whiff of this kind of craft lore conformity quickly — as in, a page or two, maybe less — puts me off a book.

 

[Also]

(Because I expect the rest of it to be equally predictable in voice and style.)

 

[Homer Potvin]

Colonel Aureliano's intro jumped into my head before I even read it. Still probably my favorite book. Not the best, but maybe favorite.

 

[JLT]

Mark Twain was skeptical that "simplified spelling" would ever catch on. His take on it was:

"Ours is a mongrel language which started with a child's vocabulary of three hundred words and now consists of twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred. borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and preserving the memory of the revered crime."

You don't see the word "smouch" much these days, possibly because it has so many meanings; it could be a synonym for "smooch" or "mooch" depending on the context. Nevertheless, it is a fine word, and I intend to use it more often in the future.

 

[Also]

Premature Post, noticed too late

 

[Also]

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Earthly Powers (1980), Anthony Burgess​

One of the most famous opening sentences since Dickens, and my favorite counterexample when I hear the bromide that "good writing avoids use of inherently 'weak' forms of 'be' in favor of more dynamic verbs." Well, maybe if you want to sound like every piece of follow-the-guidebook critique group fiction ever submitted. Because you'll never sound like an original Elmore Leonard, so there's no point in trying to.

Writers of fine fiction — and few rank as high as Burgess — know that you can't get there by following hackneyed, simplistic rules of thumb, which destroy organic language like this example and replace it with stripey mint-flavored toothpaste from a tube.

You can't systematize the writing of good fiction, let alone fine fiction. I've seen far more harm than good done by all the "rules" writers quote at each other like Bible campers quoting scripture. As the iconic John Gardner wrote in The Art of Fiction, "there are no rules" of any use. Read a lot, develop a finely tuned ear — that's what all the best have done — practice a lot, experiment, and above all, remain true to your own voice and vision.

 

[JLT]

Well put, Also. My "rule" is to write what you like, and test the material afterward by re-casting it by some rule or another. Sometimes I find that the re-cast works in making the material clearer or more vibrant. At other times, I see that the original works just fine and doesn't need tampering. That's a matter of ear, as Gardner would put it, and that comes from lots of writing and even more lots of reading.

 

[Also]

Well put, Also. My "rule" is to write what you like, and test the material afterward by re-casting it by some rule or another. Sometimes I find that the re-cast works in making the material clearer or more vibrant. At other times, I see that the original works just fine and doesn't need tampering. That's a matter of ear, as Gardner would put it, and that comes from lots of writing and even more lots of reading.

Yes, I do make such a change on occasion, too, not because of the guideline, but because in that instance the change results in better tone. But for me, such conformity is an exception.

 

[big soft moose]

I tend to think that writing formulas lead to formulaic writing. You can put all those things in the first line, but you don’t have to.


The main purpose of the first line is to draw the reader in and make them want to read the first paragraph

The first paragraph should make them want to read the first chapter and so on

How you do that is up to you as author, guidance of wisemen and all that

 

[Rigor Mortis]

A thing that occurs to me about "rules" (or however that concept might be phrased) is that for every rule, there's an abundance of great works that are conssitent with that rule. There's also an abundance of great works that are in conflict with that "rule", that observe, maybe, other rules. After exhaustive research (truthfully, there's a handy webpage that lists ten of Dickens's famous first lines and another with 16 memorable first lines from diverse authors), some follow the template laid out above and some don't. The opening line serves to orientate (or disorientate) the reader and, far as I can see, the primary objective is exactly as Moose pointed out: make it interesting enough to entice the reader to keep reading.

Frustrating, perhaps, different readers find different things interesting. We need homogeneity! (Just in case, no we don't)

Another thing that occurs to me is that the first line was probably rewritten several times as the piece was composed, settling on the final version when the body of the writing suggested what was needed.

There are very many eager advisors out there who promise to help make your writing compelling. It's like reverse engineering. If you reverse engineer a complex piece of machinery, it allows you to create more of that thing and there can never be enough of that complex piece of machinery. We already have Moby Dick, though, and don't need another one.

What the great writers manage is to find the essence of the story and present it in a compelling manner, none of which is particularly replicable, in my opinion, nor does it fit comfortably within measurable dimensions.

 

[Banespawn]

A thing that occurs to me about "rules" (or however that concept might be phrased) is that for every rule, there's an abundance of great works that are conssitent with that rule. There's also an abundance of great works that are in conflict with that "rule", that observe, maybe, other rules. After exhaustive research (truthfully, there's a handy webpage that lists ten of Dickens's famous first lines and another with 16 memorable first lines from diverse authors), some follow the template laid out above and some don't. The opening line serves to orientate (or disorientate) the reader and, far as I can see, the primary objective is exactly as Moose pointed out: make it interesting enough to entice the reader to keep reading.

Frustrating, perhaps, different readers find different things interesting. We need homogeneity! (Just in case, no we don't)

Another thing that occurs to me is that the first line was probably rewritten several times as the piece was composed, settling on the final version when the body of the writing suggested what was needed.

There are very many eager advisors out there who promise to help make your writing compelling. It's like reverse engineering. If you reverse engineer a complex piece of machinery, it allows you to create more of that thing and there can never be enough of that complex piece of machinery. We already have Moby Dick, though, and don't need another one.

What the great writers manage is to find the essence of the story and present it in a compelling manner, none of which is particularly replicable, in my opinion, nor does it fit comfortably within measurable dimensions.

All legitimate writing advice (not rules) is rooted in psychology. How will the reader react to the words on the page? That is what matters.

If we look at the advice from that perspective, we understand that we can do whatever we want as long as we get the right reaction from the reader. We also understand that the writing advice isn't meant to be absolute in its application. We don't have to eliminate every adverb or every instance of "to be." We don't have to always show and never tell.

You need look no further than things like repetition and alliteration to see that this is true. Unintentional repetition is bad, but intentional repetition can be good. The same can be said of alliteration. It comes down to the reader's reaction.

Many of these things are cumulative. By that, I mean the more you go against the advice, the more noticeable it will be. If you use "to be" verbs a bit more than might otherwise be recommended, the reader isn't likely to notice or care. It's really when you get into the extremes where it becomes a problem.

The opening scene of my story Blood Oath is 2165 words. I used "to be" verbs 46 times. 18 "was", 10 "were" and 18 "would". Is that a lot? I don't think so. I'm sure I could get that number down if I wanted to but making it 36 or even 26 isn't going to make a real difference.

The best advice I've ever heard, and it's something I've repeated often, is that stories are successful more because of what they do well than what they do poorly. If I use "to be" verbs a bit too often, but the story is doing a bunch of other good things, no one will care.

As writers, we should focus more on what we should do rather than what we shouldn't. Unfortunately, it's hard to get many people to discuss the craft side of writing. People would rather discuss why rules are bad.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Don't suck is the only rule that matters. Very often, the reason somebody's writing sucks is they've broken one or many of the other traditional rules. I think of it more of a trouble shooting checklist than a list of rules. Why does this suck? Start checking the "rules."