What is one thing that you want all writers to know?
Mine is to allow your morally grey characters to make less than noble choices and deal with the consequences.
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There is a thing in art called called āslaying the white monsterāāno, not flesh toned people, but canvases are white. They are taught to fill the whole canvas in, then go back and repaint the portions that they donāt like.
Some of us need to quit fiddling and just write. Who cares if the first draft is a mess that no one should read? If you have a story in you, get it out.
That means the quips donāt have to be perfect, the jokes donāt have to be horribly bright or funny. Put the dumb dad joke in, move on with your life.
I have to remind myself of that.
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Slow down your stories. Pretty much every Wattpad book of writing advice tells you āyouād better have your main character showing up, giving us a reason to āroot for themā (whatever that means), going off on the heroās journey, and murdering at least one person with a katana in the first chapter or else your readers will get bored.ā This doesnāt automatically make your writing interesting, and it runs into the problem where once you run out of good action-based beats to hit, your momentum grinds to a halt and itās immediately obvious. Start slow and escalate, instead of going off in a sprint and immediately crashing into a wall.
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Donāt try to correct your readersā impressions and opinions about your story.
Donāt think your story is better or worse than any other story.
Donāt let the fact that you are writing impede sincere enjoyment of reading other peopleās stories
Laugh at yourself
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Every story has a message.
The message doesnāt always have to be a moral lesson. Sometimes it can be as simple as, āWhen detective outsmarts the criminal, he can catch himā or āLove wins over hate when we let it.ā
Insisting that your story doesnāt contain a message is irresponsible because it means that you donāt care what message youāre conveying. Itās dangerous.
Be aware of what youāre telling the reader with your story.
To figure out your message, think about what changes and what causes the change. It doesnāt have to be an internal change either.
Letās look at an action story (external). The bad guy threatens MCās loved one. By the end of the story, MC saves their loved one.
What changed? Life was saved, threat was extinguished. But thatās still not the message. The message is in how the MC saved their loved one.
Compare these two:
Life can be saved when the hero uses their strength to outwit the villain.
Or
Life can be saved when the hero sacrifices the lives of innocent bystanders to kill the villain.
When you summarize the story in terms this simple, you get to see the big picture, the message.
Do it for your story and then think about it. Is this really the message you want to convey? Is this what you want the world to be like?
I firmly believe that writers have a responsibility because of the influence we have over our audience. Even a fun little story that exists only for entertainment has impact. When you keep seeing a message repeated around you, you may start believing it, or at least, you grow accustomed to it.
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I wanted to add one more observation. I think it is a great idea to work on the story structure until all bits click in place, and simplify things/condense characters. However, it is also useful to accept that some stories will resist streamlining. They will just have too many moving parts. Itās okay to write such stories. Do your best to keep them cohesive, try removing some things, but if the story breaks down by simplifying and adhering to the story structureā¦ there are two things to do.
Leave the story till it crystallizes
Write it as isā¦
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Philip Pullman has said a lot of controversial/stroppy things, but I do love this quote. (We used to shop in the same supermarket so Iād see his grumpy face on a weekly basis):
āNo one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you donāt have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you donāt have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.ā
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Laugh at yourself is good advice for everyone!
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I second that.
Becoming a story structure nerd messed me up a bit because not every story fits the standard mold.
It was only after I stumbled upon Fichtean Curve, that I saw, hey, my story fits this structure much better. From that, I worked my way into a brand new structure which relies on sequences instead of acts and that feels much more natural to me.
Itās important to remember that while stories benefit from structure, thereās more than just one mold out there. And sometimes your instinct might be right when it resists the basic mold.
But in the end, we canāt make those decisions until we know what the molds even are.
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- Donāt follow everyone elseās advice to a tee. Find what works for you, and stick to that process.
- Donāt be afraid to experiment.
- Know your characters and donāt neglect them in the plotting process.
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I canāt think of any specific advice of my own right now, but I stumbled upon another writerās blog today that summed up my opinion of prompts.
https://sandrachmara.com/2017/07/11/prompts-the-writing-worlds-brainworm/
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The real world is the best inspiration
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Iāve seen people make this mistake before, so I need to say that 16 year olds do not act the same as 21 year olds.
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For me it was Lone Werewolf. It refused to fit anything, but I liked it, so I ended up finishing it anyway. Itās an important book for me and I just accepted it as such.
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that 100 pages of exposition is boring. where is the action???
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You could argue that 5 is boring. Exposition is hard to handle.
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I read textbooks. Exposition isnāt hard, but itās not a light read. Itās often textbook level.
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I love this, I also hate prompts. Following one for ONC is really screwing up my project. Iāll be glad to be done with it and get back to my original work. ONC for me and using a prompt definitely feels more like a writing exercise than an actual piece of work
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I made this mini master list of useful books on craft, I thought Iād post it in this thread in case it might be helpful. If I could recommend any advice to writers it would be to study the craft before they begin critique exchanges, reviews, or post their wok anywhere. Its something I wish I had done when I first started.
Summary
Writing Fiction that Sells
- Lisa Cron writes many books about how to understand the psychology of readers in order to sell your fiction. Wired for Story presents many fascinating chapters about the dopamine response and how the brain responds to storytelling. If you are interested in a career in advertising, her work is essential reading.
- The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells by Ben Bova. This book focuses on science fiction, but itās a great read for anyone writing any genre. Ben Bova is a very famous editor (heās won a bunch of Hugo awards for his stuff) and he knows the industry extremely well. This is a great resource about publishing and how to get your work out of the āslush pileā on an editorās desk.
- Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. These two books will teach you how to write for a Western audience specifically. The fifteen storytelling beats are very typical for Western-based storytelling. Jessica Brodyās book goes into detail about why the fifteen beats have allowed stories to sell to Western audiences in particular. This is a good method, but it isnāt the only one out there, and Iāve grown tired of seeing it repeated in recent storytelling media as of late.
- On Writing by Stephen King recounts the famous authorās story of how he broke into the industry. He discusses his writing methods, how he came to understand his audience, how he came to understand the craft, and how he learned how to sell his fiction. This is a really good resource and itās written in such a clear and engaging manner because it is anecdotal. I truly appreciate all of the educational resources Stephen King provides, both in his books and his lectures posted to YouTube.
- Hooked: Write Fiction that Grabs Reads at Page One and Never Lets them Go by Les Edgerton. This book focuses on how to tailor the beginning of your story to grab your readerās attention from the start. Edgerton talks about his personal experiences as an author and how he became successful in the traditional publishing industry. I really like the chapters on the inciting event.
- The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Mass discusses how to write fiction in a way that tailors to the readerās emotional response.
Resources on Prose, Grammar and Syntax
- Self Editing for Fiction Writers by David King. Donāt follow these rules too closely, but theyāre good to know about. Check out the section on dialogue, it was particularly helpful for me. This book is kind of your basic editing course wrapped up in a nice 200 or so pages.
- Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale I love this book. Haleās approach to grammar was the perfect review for me. I particularly found her notes on passive voice, nouns, verbs, and compound sentences to be the most helpful.
- The Best Punctuation Book, Period by June Casagrande is a very useful quick-reference for me if I have a question about punctuation,
- Writers Inc by Kemper/Meyer is a wonderful resource on basic grammar. Itās a grammar book āwritten for college students that 3rd graders can understand.ā It covers everything in a way thatās easy to understand and remember with pictures and other visuals to help. Itās a great fast reference too because of the indexes in the back. This is an old resource (it talks about dewy decimal system lmao) but the information in it otherwise is timeless.
Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik arrived a few days ago, I havenāt read it yet but I have very high expectations for it.
Writing Fiction
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The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. This book will teach you about the writing lifestyle. If you struggle with writerās block, please read this book. This book is a very encouraging piece about how to be a writer (as a person) rather than āhow to write,ā and why fiction writing is so necessary to us as 'cultural and artistic beings."
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The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. This is my favorite book Iāve ever read on craft. I gathered invaluable skills from his book, and I believe that his ā22 Steps of Organic Storytellingā are the best way to write a story. I personally prefer this method over Save the Cat (but thatās just me). I think all writers should read it, but I struggle to recommend it because itās written like a textbook and itās justā¦I mean itās dry. I learned the most from his chapters on character web, scene weave, and dialogue.
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K.M Weiland: Creating Character Arcs (and the workbook that goes with it), Structuring Your Novel (and the workbook that goes with it). She contributes a lot to the website āHelping Writers Become Authorsā which also has lots of good resources that you should check out. Her method of creating character arcs is great for beginners, but it follows the three-act structure a bit too closely for my taste. Still, she set a baseline that many authors reference when it comes to first learning about how characters work.
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I love Hello Future Me and his books on craft. He just released On Writing and Worldbuilding Volumes I and II. I am going through Volume II and it is really helping me so much. He is definitely more sci-fi fantasy-based, but I really like what he has to say about craft. Heās a self-published author and can give very āupdatedā advice on fiction writing, he frequently references George RR Martin, The Last Airbender, and LOTR both in his books on craft and his videos. I really like his stuff, I find it especially helpful if you are studying craft and worldbuilding for the first time.
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ā§ļ½„ļ¾: * ā§ļ½„ļ¾:* Give yourself permission to not have it all figured out right now. Itās okay to take a deep breath and let it be.ā§ļ½„ļ¾: *ā§ļ½„ļ¾: *
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