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Pretty much any advice that purports to be black and white is probably bad. A good writer can get away with almost anything if they can pull it off correctly.
This is why my answer to the "can I break X rule" posts is:
If you have to ask, then you're not ready to break it.
Meaning, you need to understand why the rule exists and why your writing is different from the underlying issue of the "rule."
Take "don't open your book with a character waking up."
The Hunger Games starts this way, but so do a lot of really bad books/fics/etc. The difference with HG is that it doesn't violate the underlying, unspoken truth of the rule: don't start your book with a description dump no one cares about." There's enough characterization of Katniss and District 12 to hold the reader's interest and each detail Collins shows us is relevant to the scene and not an excuse to info dump.
Or "don't open with a prologue"
ASoIaF is famous for its prologues because Martin uses them effectively. They offer a POV outside the main characters and show scenes that add dramatic tension to the main chapters. The readers now know more than the characters. The problem with prologues is that it's easy to fall into a worldbuilding dump or a meaningless (to the reader) philosophical moment that will only make sense at the end of the book. Martin doesn't do that.
If you have to ask, then you're not ready to break it.
I love this!
My 9th grade English teacher told us the same thing using Picasso's classical training as an example. You have to learn and even master the rules so you can meaningfully bend/break them.
That's a great example.
This is why my answer to the "can I break X rule" posts is: If you have to ask, then you're not ready to break it.
I would iterate on this.
If your goal is commercial success, it's not can I break rule X?
It's should I break rule X?
"don't open your book with a character waking up."
Like in Kafka's Metamorphosis, perhaps the most iconic opening in literary history?
Yes. Spirit of the law vs letter of the law, so to speak
For real though. I saw a movie about the holocaust quite a while ago that said it was about two people being deported, but it only happened after 50% of the runtime.
But that's what made it a great movie, because you knew what was about to come but didn't have a choice but to bond with the characters. Had the catastrophe happened right in the beginning, you wouldn't have bonded as much.
And i took the same approach and spent a good 35% of the first part of my story building up the catastrophe but mostly just talking about my characters daily lifes. I already got the feedback that it did, in fact, make all the rest way more effective and didn't feel boring as well. I dare even say it might push the reader through the very bad times.
Yet most advice is to rather throw your reader into the story and always have something plot televant happen.
Oh right. Life is Beautiful.
That's the movie, yeah (i kinda forgot the name lol)
I like this - same way as they say that you should learn the rules before you break them. Most things can be done, just requires a bit of skill.
Pfft, how are you going to learn the rules if you don't shatter them into a million pieces and analyse the bits? đ
This was my answer! Anyone who tells you to break rules without explaining why it works in your specific case.
"Active voice is showing, passive voice is telling"
In my experience, people that say stuff like this don't even know what true passive voice is.
I love the âby zombiesâ test for this reason. If you can add âby zombiesâ to a sentence, itâs passive voice, bucko. Makes it so much easier for people to spot the difference between active and passive.
âShe brushed her teeth [by zombies].â Doesnât work; thatâs active.
âHer teeth were brushed [by zombies].â Aaahhh⌠thatâs passive.
(And yes, I brushed my teeth, all on my own, with no help from zombies, about 90 seconds before I posted this comment.)
I'm stealing this for the next time I have to explain passive voice.
"She brushed her teeth by zombies" makes it sound like she brushed her teeth while next to zombies.
"Where should I brush my teeth?"
"Someone's using the bathroom, so you can brush over there by the zombies."
True, but that was just an example I came up with quickly. You understand the idea (by zombies) / the idea was understood (by zombies).
Oh, I was just pointing out a funny way to misunderstand it. It was not meant to be a criticism... by zombies.
She brushed her teeth by zombies.
"It wasn't an ideal location, but the zombies were hardly going to judge her as she spat foamy-toothpaste-spittle out the second floor window onto their heads. They were polite like that."
Her teeth were brushed, by zombies. Not those flesh eating horrible zombies. These were kind benelovent zombies. They also happened to possess a great sense of style. And lets not gloss over their obsession for oral health.
Opening of my new book.
Seiously, this may be the best tool to check for active vs passive I've seen, even if it wasn't suggested by zombies.
Wait, you're not zombies right?
Mistakes were made ... by zombies.
On her way to the door, she snuck by zombies.
I started working as a reporter years ago. And my editor never could get active/passive to make sense to me. She kept explaining in nuts and bolts what it was, not in practical terms.
Flash forward to years later, when Iâm telling new writers how to write. I use the same thing but âby a dragon.â
âPeople saw the house [by a dragon]â is active.
âThe house was seen [by a dragon]â is passive.
Itâs like imagining a dragon flying by something - passively, with a look of supreme âI give nary a solitary fuck whatâs going on.â
Can you give an example of when itâs actually good to use the passive voice in fiction? Or is it more of a âpeople tend to fall into it by mistakeâ kind of thing?
I can think of a couple of cases where you might want to use passive tense.
One is if you want to emphasise the object: "An alien spaceship was seen over London" (passive) emphasises the spaceship. "A bunch of people saw an alien spaceship over London" (active) focuses on the bit we don't care about - the randoms who happened to see a spaceship over the city.
Another is if you deliberately want to ease back on the immersion and create a little distance. (Can't think of a good example for this off the top of my head).Â
EDIT: And yes, people also often lapse into it unintentionally.Â
Itâs really good to show something is unimportant to a character
Passive is also good for using a more lyrical style - but lyricism relies heavily on word choice.
âHe sank to the bottom of the ocean.â
âHarold was pulled [by a dragon - so itâs passive] down, sinking into the frigid, eldritch depths.â
Both do the same thing - poor Harold sinking like a brick next to the beach.
But the latter has a different flow to the reader, and paints a more vivid image. You can do that in active voice -
âHarold shivered. He sank [the âby a dragonâ test doesnât work, so itâs active] down, haunting feelings and images enveloping his mind.â
But it reads a little differently. It feels moreâŚactive. More pressing. More diving quickly than slowly sinking.
Thatâs why it tends to be easier to just say âdonât use passive.â
You can almost always accomplish the same thing with active - itâll just feel more direct/active to the reader. Usually, thatâs a good thing. Itâs easy to fuck up using passive voice, much more so than active.
And using active - tends to force writers to be more descriptive and use more imagery to get their point across.
Other great examples in this reply section. But I'd add mysteries:. "Mary Smith was murder on the night of January 8th."
You don't want to reveal who murdered Mary because that's presumably the point of the novel. You could rewrite it as "an unknown assailant murdered Mary Smith on the night of January 8th" to avoid passive voice, but this is pointless to do.
Belated addition: It also comes in handy when you either want to be coy about who the subject is - for example:
Bob looked up with puppy dog eyes, "The lamp got broken somehow".Â
or when the readers and/or characters don't know who the subject is:
"The murders were committed in this room".
(That one probably falls under "when you want to focus on the object" as well.)
"She brushed her teeth" by Zombies
IDK, it works for me if "Zombies" was a band name and "She brushed her teeth" was the name of one of their songs. /jk
love this lol
The knowing that happened wasnât to them.
Mistakes were made!
Thatâs the name of my autobiography! I didnât think anyone had read it. Go Leafs ;)
Wait is this a thing people say? How does active/passive voice even factor into show vs tell?
Telling is passive and showing is active so I can imagine people getting it confused with active/passive voice. Never seen that myself, though.Â
tell them what you think isn't working and NEVER tell them how they should change it
I actually like suggested changes, both giving and receiving, not because I expect they'll be implemented but because I think they give an illustrative idea of the crit partner's thinking and get creative juices flowing.  Â
But this should never be told, like you say. Rather, 'In your shoes, this is what I would do.'
People saying how they would handle whatever theyâre critiquing is so useful.
If Iâm presenting my work, itâs as good as I could get it given the constraints I had and I am at a loss for how else to improve it. There can be plenty of things I dislike but just donât know what to do about. Hearing how other people would fix the problem, if they even see it as a problem, is what gets the ideas going and is something I can add to the list of considerations for the next time Iâm in a similar situation.
Just saying itâs a problem is telling me something I already knew and kind of frustrating.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've seen too many posts make it sound like a big taboo, which makes me think people are either being a bit too precious or don't know how to frame things as suggestions.
Even when a suggestion massively wide of the mark, that you'll never use can be useful as it can clarify your thinking in opposition to it.
If Iâm presenting my work, itâs as good as I could get it given the constraints I had and I am at a loss for how else to improve it
Very much this. Especially when you sense something is a little off, not quite clicking, but you're too close to see it.
Same. Straight criticism without suggestions reminds me too much of the people I knew who would give pointless critiques seemingly as a passive-aggressive way of showing off their own "knowledge" and "expertise". They could never tell the creator how to fix the supposed issue, or why, just that it was bad and needed improvement. (Granted, some people are genuinely well-intentioned but are not great at expressing themselves in words, but that doesn't make for especially helpful critique either.) Throwing in some suggestions, and making it clear that they are indeed suggestions rather than expectations feels like a gesture of good will. It helps avoid the risk of looking like you're criticizing it simply for the sake of your own ego.
Absolutely. Though I think sometimes people pick up on something not working but lack the precise language or knowledge to point out exactly what. It really is about being able to set ego aside (on both sides) and recognise good faith engagement.
That said, I've always attached myself to in-person workshops, and I think what I said above is so much easier when there's body language and tone of voice in play. I can see why maybe predominantly online groups might play it safe in that regard. Misunderstandings have been known to occur on the internet from time to time!
I teach high school English and we have writing groups for most pieces of writing (after first draft). The feedback includes What I Liked (3 things, linked to the text) & What I Would Have Liked (2 things, linked to the text). That way, it's all about the reader's experience -- what was received positively and what was missing for them. The writer gets to decide what they care about and choose to improve. But... if 3 different people say the same thing is missing, it might be a good idea to look into that. : )
Some of the worst advice is never stated directly but somehow gets transmitted anyway, such as, âgood writing is when you prefer using big words you donât really knowâ and âstart with novels instead of short stories because, as a raw beginner, your initial mistakes are precious and need to last a long time.â
An indisputably veracious cognisance. You are indubitably of maximised sagaciousness!Â
Might be school specific but back in school my teacher told us to really hold on tight to grammar rules for dear life and never start a sentence with and/but and so on. But boy do i find it effective to toss all of that aside and really toy with the reading voice in your head. Grammar can be all what i want it to be! And many stylistic elements of literature only got their status because someone broke the rules with them and it was effective.
Ugh the whole "don't start a sentence with but" still messes with me! They pounded that into our heads
i break this rule all the time. no shame
You need to know and understand the rules and why theyâre there in order to break them effectively, though, which is why theyâre drummed into you - the ârightâ way should be automatic, so breaking the rules is a considered choice rather than an accident.
That's true and i can understand this rule mostly affects non-fictional works and essays you might have to write for school. I wouldn't bend grammatr when writing an essay since i don't have to have my words reach the same effect as in creative writing. I'd find it nice if a teacher dared say that if you're writing creatively, you are allowed to alsp be creative with grammar to convey the feelings better. I also did actually quite like my teacher and she didn't make a big deal out of it when we did it for creative texts. In fact, one of my best grades was a speech where i started the sentence with "but" or "though" quite often.
Yup, if I didn't tell the kids I work with not to start a sentence with and or but they would start every sentence with them. They always say, "but so and so does it in their book." To that I say, "you have to know the rule to break it the right way."
Grammar can be all what i want it to be!
I mean... yes... and as a pure descriptivist, this take warms my heart. But there does need to be a balance between doing whatever you want and following some of the "rules" of grammar, or else we'll have chaos lol
Of course, things have to at least be understandable. Messing with grammar at some points may enhance the subject portrayed but at others it may come across at disrupting. You have to be careful when you do it and not overdo it but it's fun when you do it.
I you with the agreement does be.Â
Not my teacher but my brother's he literally told his classmates that Writer is not for everyone who just write but to needed to publish the actual book not like in any sites or fic
Huh that's a weird thing to say. You can write whatever the heck you want. One could even consider writing a diary writing. If your hobby is writing, then you're a writer. If you publish, then you're an author. If your language is weird and the word eriter isn't really a thing, then you're an author regardless of what you're writing.
I usually try to write what sounds best when I read it out loud. Works for me lol
So I CAN use commas in dialogue to symbolize a pause in speech!
You absolutely can :)
Though i like to use commata to symbolize someone being really hasty in speech or panicked in a scene. I find your reading voice becomes way faster if you use a lot of commata. When i want a pause in dialogue, i usually do something like ""So it really was-" His shoulders became heavy with the realization. "Henry?""
Though of course things might work differently depending on who uses it how and where.
"If you can remove it, you should."
You could remove just about any single scene in just about any given story and the plot will still largely make sense, but that doesn't mean you should remove it. Just because it doesn't directly benefit the plot doesn't mean it's entirely unnecessary. The entire first chapter of my WIP book consists of moments that you could remove and you would be left with a coherent plot, but the insight it gives into the characters' lives gives it much more depth and makes the plot even more coherent.
"Don't use adverbs" and "never use said"/"only use said" They exist for a reason. Everything is about moderation, people.
"never use said"/"only use said"
Random fact: about a hundred years ago, 'said' was considered overused; budding authors could send a few cents in the mail to receive a small book of synonyms, known as a 'said book'.
That lead to the development of a trope known as 'said bookism', where an author goes out of their way to avoid using the word 'said' and ends up with bloated purple prose.
This reminds me of primary school when we taught never to use said. It makes me laugh now, thinking back to what we would write.
'Hi,' shouted Paula.
'Why are you shouting?' asked John.
'I have no idea,' replied Paula.
'Well stop it,' laughed John.
'I have no choice,' screamed Paula.
And then there's the use of the adjective said, or legal said. I noticed in the fanfictions I read that the authors liked to refer to characters as, "the said NPC", or "the said person".
I use "aforementioned" more than I probably should
Backstory - Im kinda a book/publishing historian.
That whole episode is a brilliant example of early marketing. Creating a problem to solve. The people behind those books went hard at pushing their product to the point that itâs still advice repeated to this day.
Itâs not that it ever was overused. People just thought it was - because of how heavily it was marketed, in early guerilla marketing - letters to editors, free samples to book reviewers and booksellers, etc.
The story behind those is one of my fave fun facts in publishing history. Because of how utterly fucking absurd the whole thing was.
This is really cool info! Basically created a market for their product -- reminds me of the DeBeers marketing of diamond rings that turned into a cultural tradition of diamond engagement rings that few question anymore.
Said is invisible. It works to go ââblahdeblah,â he said sarcasticallyâ, because you only really register the âsarcasticallyâ. On the other end of the spectrum, you can go ââhurrdemurr!â He declaredâ, because it fits the scenario. Sometimes it works to use something other than âsaidâ because it can get a more potent description across. Other times you just need to go âhe said X-lyâ
Said is not invisible. I'll go to grave with this opinion.
Right? I mean, I think said is probably one of the lowest profile dialogue tags, and there are tradeoffs to using flashier ones. But no word is invisible. (The only invisible dialogue tag is one you don't use.)
You have my sword.
An author that info-dumps the world at the beginning cheats themselves out of one of the most powerful story-telling techniques there is: narrative drive. When the characters in a story know how the world works and act accordingly, it creates the kind of narrative drive called "mystery." Mystery is one of those things that, if done right, keeps the reader turning pages.
I think the reflex to info dump the world by fantasy authors comes from a place of ignorance. They don't know how to keep a reader engaged in the story. They don't understand that reading info dumps feels like work. They don't realize, perhaps, that the reader is just one page of info dump away from dumping the story.
I think too a lot of (especially new) writers spend so much time on their worldbuilding, they feel they HAVE to shoehorn it all in.
More isnât always more. And like you say - it takes the reader out of reading a novel and into reading a textbook. Some people like that - plenty of people adore the Silmarillon, for example.
But readers who want that - tend to want specifically that, and only after falling in love with the setting (see also JK Rowlings follow ups to the HP world that fleshes out the lore).
I once entered a contest where feedback from judges was offered (in addition to possibly getting your work in front of an editor if you were a finalist). One of your judges was guaranteed to be a published author.
Well, my published author decided I had potential, so she gave me a lot of feedback. Her feedback amounted to her re-writing my entry in her voice--which was not helpful to say the least.
So what you say about not telling someone how to fix something resonates here.
I would echo the so-called rules that everyone likes to tout as being mostly bad advice. I have two rules. One is 'don't be boring,' and the other is 'if it works, you can do it.'
From a writer whoâs done it professionally in several mediums and has been roped into teaching because I am (despite my minimal patience and attention span) decent enough at it.
Most writers are horrible teachers. Editors are even worse.
My own early teachers flatly sucked at it, and their only selling point was âtheyâve done this longer than you.â
Not everyone is cut out for notes or teaching. Because of exactly that reason - too many want you to write like them. They want to break your authorial voice and make it theirs. Regardless of whether theirs is actually good or not - even when it works for them.
And I say that solely to say this - donât take it too much to heart when you get that kind of feedback from writers or editors. Because they can write - doesnât mean they can teach. Hell, just because some have a teaching cert doesnât mean they can teach. It means they can pass a standardized test and not fuck up too bad with evaluations.
I agree. I always try to respond to my students as a READER not a writer. First, I'm so much more experienced at reading than writing. Second, I may not be their target audience, so they can take what I like and don't like with a grain of salt. It helps them to focus on what they were trying to convey and did it work for X audience.
That for me is one of the hardest things to really teach and get hit home.
We all hear âwrite for yourself.â And thatâs true to a point.
But write for yourself as a reader, is the part we miss. Write the story you want to read, in a way youâd want to read it.
Writing, for all the mythologizing people do, is a performance art. If weâre not writing for an audience, weâre writing a public diary.
How do you give feedback on rewriting without it being in their voice? I genuinely donât know and Iâm curious
By pointing out what the writer is doing "wrong" (which may not be wrong in the end, just different from the way you'd go about things) and suggesting changes? I guess?
For example, you could say something along the lines of "you can make your hero more sympathetic if you gave him a friend" and not write the friend in yourself.
Or "What does this phrasing say about your heroine?" rather than re-writing it yourself.
Went to a writing seminar once, which was very 'write what you know' focused. The speaker said 'I am a 40-year-old white man, so my main characters are all 40-year-old white men.'
I felt like the whole speech lacked an understanding of psychology, empathy, understanding that every person is human, or a willingness to learn about other people's experiences.
I saw a different thread calling out adult writers for writing younger character sex scenes. Like, I used to be a teenager? I very much remember being one? And believe me, I was getting it. But now I canât write about it? Get lost. 𤣠(note: not regarding underage sex scenes (which I would not write) just a general chat on consenting above age of consent YA sex scenes. Is it okay to write about them eating and talking? Only youâre an adult how can you write about teenagers eating, youâre gross! Etc đ)
From an actual background in psychology -
Yeah that shit never fails to piss me off. Thatâs saying âI can understand literally no one and nothing outside my own experiences.â
Aside from being remarkably boring - thatâs also a red flag for some serious pathology, but thatâs none of my business.
Good writers are just talented.
Absolute BS. You didnât come out of the womb holding a pencil. Sure, some peopleâs brains are wired for greater ease in reading and writing, and some brains find it harder, but literally everyone is capable of learning how to be a competent writer if theyâre willing to put in time and purposeful practice.
Plus just because I read, story tell and write a lot doesnât mean I didnât have to practice. If people call it talent I get really pissed.
I had people stand up from the table when I was storyteller because they were so pissed by my mistakes. I said and wrote a lot of silly and wrong things about literature in school and even in university. When I edited my novel I cried because it was so hard.
And then people have the nerve to leaf through âWir sind heuteâ and tell me I had it easy because I am talented. Just because I started only three years ago to write them down doesnât mean I didnât spend 30 years of my life consuming and creating stories. đŠThey downplay years of hard work.
This is true of all art. I was actually a pretty good artist in high school, although I havenât practiced much since then. It wasnât because I was gifted in some way. Itâs because the techniques I learned from the teacher I practiced with a fair amount of discipline. People often told me, I couldnât do that. And I told them, yes you probably could, if someone taught you and you paid attention.
Exactly. Iâm a violin teacher and Iâm constantly asking parents to stop saying âyouâre so talentedâ and start saying âI can hear your talent growing.â
Talent is an interest pursued. Anything youâre willing to practice, you can do. âBob Ross
All the arts are like this. We tend to glorify âtalent.â
Talent is bullshit.
Some people innately pick up some things easier than others - but that only matters early career.
Writing, painting, poetry, music, whatever - itâs a craft. And one that near anyone can learn and get good at with practice.
Take Hemingway. Heâs remembered as a talented novelist - but he was also a journalist, a screenwriter, wrote a ton of letters, etc.
Same with Faulkner and (Hemingways BFF) Fitzgerald. They both wrote for stage and screen. Both wrote and edited extensively (as did Wilde - whose day job was editor for Harpers).
Eddie Van Halen famously practiced guitar 8 hours a day, every day, for years. Tons of singers sang for years in church or school, or took years worth of lessons.
They were good because they practiced, not because they were born great.
Prodigies donât really exist. They were only set up in an environment where that, specifically, was their reason for existing. Piano âprodigiesâ are like this. Their parents set them at a piano as soon as they were old enough to reach the keys, for the most part.
âTalentâ is a way of giving yourself excuses for saying âIâll never be that good - Iâm not talented like that.â
Not with an attitude like that, certainly.
Talent really comes from a place of âIâm going to do what I do, because itâs what I do, and Iâm going to constantly work toward being better.â
But it doesnât have quite the cachet of saying it the other way.
A good part of that kind of success is sheer right place/right time and networking. But that too is a skill.
There are no geniuses or auteurs or whatever. Thereâs only people who get up every day, do what they do, do the hard part - tearing their work apart to improve - and keep doing it, and keep getting their work out there and meeting people who can help them.
Thatâs the real secret sauce for success at anything.
Hurrah for you for writing this! I have many students who just won't try ANYTHING because they have so much pressure to be the "talented," "promising" student who has so much "potential." Carol Dweck's theory of growth and fixed mindset encompasses what you say above. Hard work is so empowering. Being told repeatedly that you have potential (but are never quite good enough right now) is deadening.
"If it doesn't impact the plot, it's pointless at best and gratuitous at worst"
Scenes, if not entire chapters, do NOT need to always impact the plot. You need to service your characters too by giving them obstacles and moments to simply be themselves. People often use this "advice" when admonishing darker topics that come up in narratives. Just because the plot hasn't taken a complete course change after the protagonist witnesses e.g. a child being hung on the gallows does not mean the moment is pointless. It adds to the world, the tone, reinforces the intended genre, adds insight to the protagonist and their mindset upon experiencing such a thing.
Not everything must serve the plot and, by extension, not every dark topic must be a central focal point to justify its existence.Â
So long as you are advancing the plot or characters, which can be mutually exclusive, the scene has its place.
Yeah I would say that everything you include needs to add to the story. And the plot is only one aspect of a story! The characters and the setting and the relationships between the characters and the history of the world and the characters are part of the story too!
People saying that content only matters when it relates to the plot bug the hell out of me. It's a terrible point of view. A rule I've long lived by, and you said as much, is "Every scene should advance the plot or reveal character."
This is how I edit. If a scene doesnât advance plot or character or pose questions in at least 3 ways (any mix!) it gets cut.
Yeah, I think a better way to put it is that it has to be advancing the narrative in general.
The things you describe do have an effect on the plot though. By affecting the characters. For example in a historical fiction book I read, a female character spends some time around older, independent women. Most of their interactions happen off the page and have little effect on the plot. But this character (who was a traumatized young girl) learns that women don't have to be passive in their world. That they can take charge, they can have sex freely, have power etc.
This affects how she handles a bunch of situations later on in the book. If she never spent time with these characters, the book would have gone much differently because she'd be a completely different person. By advancing your characters you are serving the plot in a way. It's just not that obvious.
So long as you are advancing the plot or characters, which can be mutually exclusive
This seems like a matter of perspective. I always figure plot is character and vice versa. If something affects a character, or is done by a character, that's part of the plot. Conversely, something happening in the plot is only meaningful to the extent it affects or reflects the characters.
I'm not sure you can really separate the two for the vast majority of practical purposes.Â
"If you want to learn how to write dialogue, pay attention to George Lucas." I think there was a missing "not".
Everyone who tries to teach me about writing a novel by citing f'in Star Wars deserves a copy of War and Peace to the face.
With an extra helping of Dianetics.
"Kill your darlings," and the like
The idea behind this isn't bad. Sometimes your favorite idea doesn't fit into what you are working with, so you might need to change it. My problem is with the finality of this. The idea that you need to completely scrap the idea you love, just kill it off, is very wrong to me. You can change it to fit your story, you can save it for later, you can use it in a different book of the same series. There's no need to 'kill' it.
I think a lot of this 'tough love' type advice is honesty just discouraging to new writers and not useful anymore. Sure, back in the day, writing as cut throat. To get published you'd have to do a billion and one different things, you had to dedicate every second of your life to the craft. That just isn't how it works anymore. Most writers I know, they didn't start out being authors or quit their jobs to be authors. They did it part time and sometimes still do. People really don't have to put their entire soul into their art anymore, it's just not necessary. and I don't think you should feel bad if writing isn't your everything. If you want to get published but you didn't murder yourself to make your book. Infact that probably isn't even healthy, that writing is your whole life. We really need to leave this whole 'tortured artist' bs in the 1900s. Writing is hard, yeah. But you don't have to constantly think about words, live and breathe them and sacrifice all your fun ideas and turn the writing process into something miserable just to put out a good product
"Write what you know."
Utter hogwash. I don't know anything at all. How could I possibly write if I followed this advice?
And what if I want to write about a murder? Nice try fed
A better way to phrase this advice is "write what you understand." Saying "know" can trip people up, and suggest that research is irrelevant or that creativity and empathy can't overcome a lack of irl experience, both of which ideas are obviously ridiculous.
Suggesting that people avoid writing things they don't understand, on the other hand, is excellent advice. There's nothing more cringe-inducing that bad descriptions of PTSD and points of view with no authenticity; if a writer doesn't really get what they're writing about, no amount of research or fancy prose is going to save them.
Dan Harmon talking about "Write what you know"
Don't separate yourself from what you're writing.
It doesn't mean "what people are really interested in is your life as an oceanographer" - they don't give a fuck, but they want to feel sincere writing.
There's something, when you get really honest with yourself, there's something about your life, where you've come from, it's just your map of the cosmos. You're not trying to tell other people what to think, or prove that you're interesting or cool, or that you like them or they should like you .... your goal is to say, "this is how I saw the world"
Yep. Write a about what you know or can convincingly imagine.
My mother told me, "Write what you love."
Not know. Love.
The only problem with that advice is, I love a lot of things and have a hard time choosing just one. LMAO
I feel like the true advice is âWrite something and figure out how to bullshit it into working, I guess.â
Brb, gonna interview killer pizzas to improve my short story about human eating pizzas.
Don't write what you know points at head...
Write what you KNOW points at heart...
Took me a long time to figure that out.
Yea, I think instead of "write what you know" the phrase should be "Know what you write". Whatever you want to write about, whether you've experienced it or not, just make sure you have a good enough comprehension that you can explore it adequately.
Anyone who says you have to write every day is giving you bad advice. No other profession says you don't get to have a day off. Even the president gets to go golfing sometimes.
"check out r/writing"
âSaid is deadâ
You end up with problems like Snape ejaculating his words. People donât care about dialogue tags as much as youâd think. If someone just says somethingâlike normal, everyday speechâthen just say they said it. People care more about the dialogue than the tag.
At the same time. An exchange of He said, She said with no variation isnât invisible.
Thatâs fair, but Iâve read plenty of them to know thatâs not always the case. It depends on the pace of the scene, really.
Worst advice I was given đ¤
Probably when people tell others that the only genera that sells is romance. Also when people tell others to write whatâs popular. Not great advise.Â
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2mo
I
"Romance sells better than anything else. And if you are not writing romance, you will have a harder time than normal." It's correct.
I feel like there's a missing variable here. For instance: If you're great at writing horror, and awful at writing romance...
In the case of this particular writer, I'd tell them that while they care very deeply about their world, they have to give the reader a chance to care as well. Readers are generally drawn to characters and actions more easily than they are to info-dumping about a world that they just entered, so the simplest way to get them invested in your world is through having the characters do things in that world.
As for the worst writing advice I can think of? Treating TV Tropes as a set of writing rules rather than a set of observations of some ways in which some writers have solved some of the challenges of storytelling.
I like Ernest Hemingwayâs philosophy on this - have loads of knowledge underneath but write on the surface. The wealth of knowledge you have will seep through into your writing without weighing anybody down.
"Do not use the word said."This is terrible advice. You should not SPAM said tags, but they exist for a reason. That reason is letting people know who said what. Sometimes they are necessary.
Said advice also does not fulfill its purpose, because people just replace it with other words that may or may not be synonyms with said. And in my opinion, this can be far, far worse than just using said.
I feel as though a large amount of good advice is boiled down to simple maxims to help you remember it, then those maxims are taken out of context, misinterpreted, and subsequently hated.
You do world building to create an iceberg of information. The reader only ever needs to see 10% but it needs to be supported by the 90% below the waterline.
There's a lot. "Limit backstory" is probably the worst one.
I absolutely REFUSE to limit backstory, haha. When writing a book, I'll write letters, journal entries, interviews, whatever from each character to get their voice and also their story... in my opinion, even if you don't use 75% of the backstory you've developed, it will still come through in small ways.
I mean just thinking about myself (irl), I know I have things that I have picked up from people along the way. I only watch movies with subtitles, because my best friend throughout high school was Deaf (with cochlear implants) so we always had subtitles turned on and now I can't watch anything without. (I mean, I can, but I HIGHLY prefer having subtitles on.) I have habits, and do things certain ways, and have certain preferences, because of my whole life - people I've met, places I've been, things I've learned. And while it's not really feasible to create every single detail of your character like this (it would take a very long time), I find that creating a really robust and thorough backstory, though I may not use it, just makes my characters more well-rounded and realistic in general.
Backstory is what gives everything meaning. If you limit backstory, there's no reason to care about your story. It's just such bad advice as far as I'm concerned. Self-sabotage at its finest.
Fully agree with you!
Sorry, this is in you: Never give unsolisited feedback.
The recipient must be willing to receive, if the aren't no Feedback is preferable for both sides.
Counterpoint - everyoneâs a critic.
If you put your work out there - no matter what the work is - itâs ripe for criticism. No sacred cows.
It sounds like they were taking a course where an explicit part of what they were supposed to do was give and receive feedback
Then it probably is on the professor, who has not clarified the rules.
"Avoid tropes like the plague"
Everytime I see this I want to body slam the person saying it lol
OMG, this!!! If you know how to use tropes properly, then they're great tools!
Show, donât tell.
A lot of tell is actually show, simply from a specific characterâs perspective. In fact, while âshow, donât tellâ is generally a good guideline, I fell like too often show is just a really lazy way of tell.
I hate it when people refer to it as though it was a commandment.
Every other advice on this subreddit tbh
I still remember a teacher I had in primary school teaching us to never just say "said" in dialogue tags (eg, "he groaned/mumbled/screamed, etc"). Tbf, this was probably an attempt to get kids to work on their vocabularies rather than their creative writing. That said, the guy did also happen to be a fucking moron, so I wouldn't be surprised if he thought it was good advice.
I had a beta reader who spent more time telling me how objectively bad & lesser third person omniscient was, and how I should rewrite the whole thing in third person limited instead. All of their comments were about third person omniscient as a concept, not direct comments on my writing. They just regurgitated google searches, copy and pasting the usual stuff you find about how 'distant' third person omniscient is. With a fun bit of patronizing, "wow, that's a brave choice." talk thrown in, as well. Maddeningly unhelpful and a huge waste of my time - they spent weeks typing up an essay on their POV opinion instead of reading the bloody manuscript.
At the end of their review, they said that the only issue for them was the POV, and that if I hadn't written it in third person omniscient, it'd sit high in their favorites. In the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, that's even more than maddeningly unhelpful.
All hard and fast rules. Show don't tell, head hopping, no adverbs, no 'that'; you'll find all those violated to some degree in good literature.
Shouldisms â i.e., you should do this or that, you should be putting out X amount of pages a day, you should create an outline first⌠etc.
Useless and unhelpful. You have to do what works for you otherwise youâll just beat yourself up. This of course is only really applicable if you donât have a deadline.
Regarding the info-dump, this is the moment when the screenwriters' "show don't tell" axiom can be applied soundly to prose. Having a rich and engaging world is a huge positive for a literary work. Unloading massive quantities of that detail without contemporary action can be a lot less positive from the perspective of many readers.
The solution is to show that your world is engaging by having your characters engage with the world. A wealth of details about your 5,000 year-old magic academy or 50-mile long starship can be richly entertaining if you have a major character at that institution personally observing aspects of its operations, passing by historic locations, appreciating decorative installations, etc. The key is to be sure that character is at least somewhat sympathetic, and to offer emotional reactions along with other reflections on these experiences. Even if your characters aren't human, it is fair to say the aim here is to "humanize" background exposition.
Consider these two approaches to introducing two factions at the heart of your central conflict. If your early narrative focuses on hardliners who already know all about the struggle, then you either ask your readers to take a lot for granted or you download clashing doctrines without characters learning much along the way. If your early narrative focuses on bystanders caught up in the struggle, then your readers can ride along with them as they actively seek answers to questions about the aims and capabilities of these competing factions. I wouldn't make an absolute statement about this, but I would say for most stories that second approach will tend to generate more satisfying narratives.
"Write what you know"
I hate this advice so much because it's extremely limiting to one's imagination imho.
If you don't write every single day you're not a real writer and won't amount to anything. Heard this several times said in different ways, mostly by unemployed rich kids mooching off their parents. Oblivious to the fact that most people need jobs to survive, sometimes several jobs which makes setting aside the non-existent time and having the energy to do so impossible, especially every day.
It was very disheartening and kept me from writing at all for a long time. Now I'm writing my first novel, writing about six days a week a min of 1000 words per day. And they were still wrong, this is only possible bc I can afford to take a year off, after years of hard labor and 60 hr work weeks. I have always been a writer before this even when I would only manage to write a few days every year.
I found the best advice ever thanks to trying to follow this shit one. It's never too late to start writing and it's okay for it to take a long time, even an extremely long time to get anywhere, or nowhere and just do it for fun. We're all writers :)
show dont tell is the worst writing advice I ever heard
To not describe the characters and just leave it to everyoneâs imaginations. Maybe it can work with some books out there, but I think majority that reads wants some sort of description to go off of. Doesnât have to be a whole paragraph of every detail of course, but a brief description of even just hair colour and style is nice.
This probably falls into the âall black and white rules are badâ category.
Some books the physical description of the character is very important and adds to the story. Some books giving the reader more freedom to picture the character themselves is valuable.
I find if description of a characterâs physical traits are going to be given, it should be done fairly early. If Iâm reading and I start picturing a character a certain way and then all of a sudden the author tells me that every physical trait Iâve been picturing about them is wrong then it takes me out of the story
I originally, in my novel, didnât describe characters a lot. I only used metaphors about the characters appearances in ways I thought were clever but never got explicit about it. This was because I wanted my characters to appear to be psychological types. I wanted the reader to imagine theyâre the alter egos of their friends, for instance. But I was told with a pretty heavy hand that isnât a good idea. So I changed it.
I didn't get a advice, but I noticed a lot of 1-2 chapters I have read that it has sometimes been completely insane, all from 500 word chapter to as mention above that they describe the world and the house, but the reader has no clue who is who the first 5 chapters because the environment is described. What people sometimes forget is that you usually have 1-2 chapters to hook the reader or max 5 chapters...if the story doesn't progress it's like 99% chance the reader will put the book down. It suprises me that authors who publish themselves sometimes forgets this.
I am bit of world builder too. I mostly use spreadsheets and maps along with some wikipedia like articles to build a world. The trick that your classmate is missing is the timing of introducing aspects of the world through the narrative as the main characters experience the world and learn of of it mysteries and lore..
In the fantasy settings bards, or lore keepers of some kind will share knowledge as rewards or in order to influence the people to take action along with their goals. These kinds of characters and plot constructs allows the author to dazzle the reader with the depth and breadth of his world in smaller bite size chunks.
âNever re-read your script while writing itâ
Iâve heard that one a few times and never got it, I guess the intent is to keep you going forward with the story and to just trust the drafts process. but so many times itâs helped me figure out my story and cancel writers block, like if I donât know what to write next, Iâll re-read what Iâve got so far and run into something thatâs meant to be a set up, then Iâm like âoh yea, I gotta make sure that still ties inâ and now at least I have a better idea of where to go next.
"Don't get your mental illness treated; it's making you creative."
every time i'm writing dialogue, without fail my dad tells me to spell out what emotions they're having at the end of every sentence, to avoid confusion with tone that i would normally try to solve with creative punctuation?
made up example:
"Hey, is that... KARA!"
Her focus was broken and she flipped around quickly, waving meekly when she saw John. "Oh!- Um, I didn't see you there, John!"
"Yeaaah... I was just hangin' around... yannow, haha," John flashed a grin and didn't meet her eyes quite right.
with his suggestions applied:
"Hey, is that Kara?" John said happily.
"I didn't see you there John." Kara said, surprised.
"Yeah I was hanging around, you know." John said suspiciously.
he's strangely insistent on it every time i show him my writing and i just don't understand. it's always that or telling me to ask chatGPT to rewrite it
ask chatGPT to rewrite it
That might be the worst advice Iâve seen in this thread.
Agreed -- that might be the worst.
just write!
Start small.
Screw you I don't have small ideas.
âJust write moreâ
Yeah, writing more is essential to getting better at writing (duh), but you itâs not JUST writing. You develop good taste in writing by reading. You understand why great books are great by critically analyzing text. You learn the ârulesâ and, once you fully understand them, deconstruct them.
When you get to the writing stage, you donât just âstart writingâ either. Get other people to critique your writing. Write things that target your weak points. Force yourself out of your comfort zone sometimes. Donât get stuck in a bubble.
This goes for all skills. Iâm an avid gym goer and I didnât bench more weight by just benching more. I benched a LOT, obviously, but I also looked up form. I asked other people to record my form, some of whom offered me good advice. I did other exercises to target my weak points like my shoulders or triceps.
âYou need beta readers!â
No, you donât. Too many cooks.
A teacher once taught us that you should never use âcharacter saidâ and always opt for more varied colorful options. đ¤Śââď¸
The worst advice I have heard is the idea that you can't ever edit while you're writing. Of course you can and many of us do. The idea that a first draft is all total trash is counterproductive to me, I don't want to rewrite more than I have to.
As for people saying write what you know is bad advice, don't take it asl such a limited view of your knowledge and you'll see the benefit of the saying.
You are capable of learning. If you want to write a detective novel and know nothing about police procedure, it will be obvious to readers and your writing will be weak. A bit of research on the subject gives you what you need to know to write a richer story. It's sound advice, actually.
"Show, don't tell." Some things need to be told; for the reader's enjoyment, for the narrative purpose, for representation.
I just want to say I love your posts!
Ah thank you so much :)
- Show don't tell.
THAT'S FOR FUCKING MOVIES DEAR GOD JUST READ A FUCKING BOOK.
- You need to experience things to write about them.
This is not terrible, but really not a necesity. Just do your research.
- Writing is mostly practice.
No, its really not. If I make a 6 year old play the same song on the piano, he will eventually get better. If I make a 6 year old write stories, there is a huge possibility that he will not get better. Like with going to the gym, just practicing without something that gives you form, intruction or reading, then training is absolutely meaningless and will probably make you pick shitty habits.
- Dont use adverbs
... why?
- Use youtube classes to learn how to write.
Writing intruction from people that write things that you dont like or that you consider bad are meaningless.
- Learning to write is not just reading.
Yeah... yeah it mostly is. I'm really sorry, guys.
Idk i personally think my writing really is practice mostly, but i also started when i was still in highschool and had language classes to go off on and class required books. I do read once in a while and did so in the past too, but i don't feel like it had as much effect on my writing as the sheer practice because i spend way more time writing than reading and my writing sucked back when i read more than i do now lol
Number 3: writing is mostly purposeful practice.
No, a 6yr old will not get better by just playing a piece over and over. Whatâs happening is theyâre getting aural feedback and making adjustments, we just donât visibly see the progress theyâre making inside their head. Practice isnât practice unless youâre striving towards change.
Itâs the same with basically every skill, especially music, but people just like to pretend that itâs all talent and not dedicated, purposeful, critical practice.
Show donât tell isnât just for movies, and I think you might be taking the word too literally. In regard to books, âshow, donât tellâ means is that if your story makes a claim, there should be some scenes and/or details to back up that claim; otherwise the claim just feels empty and unsubstantiated.
Donât just tell me that your MC is a good swordsman; write out some scenes of your MC training and winning some duels.
Donât just tell me that a city is living in poverty. Write out some scenes of your characters noticing long soup kitchen lines and neglected buildings as they walk through the streets.
Donât just tell me that your MC is in love. Write out some sentences about how their heart starts racing and their cheeks feel hot whenever the love interest walks into the room.
My preferred analogy is like proving a legal case. The more evidence you have, the stronger the case. You have the claim you want to make; now where is the evidence? If your MC is a good swordsman, whereâs the proof in your story? If the city is poor, whereâs the proof in your story? If your MC is in love, whereâs the proof in your story?
Thatâs what the book-version of show-donât-tell is all about. Itâs about carefully picking scenes and details to add in your story to really enhance whatever emotions, traits, settings, feats, powers, arcs, plot points, etc. that youâre trying to sell.
I find that too much "show" can lead to a lot of bloat. Not everything needs a case to support it.
I can say Rolf is a good swordsman. That's why he joined up the (insert military force). That's why he's unhappy with his current assignment, and that's why, at the first sign of trouble, he is going to do something cardinally stupid, whereupon his POV ends. He's got a few paragraphs tops. Showing he's in fact a good swordsman is not going to add much, except for wordcount.
The trouble with telling starts when the showing doesn't support it. You'd think that if you were walking the streets of a city struck with poverty, there would be at least some noteworthy signs of that fact. But if you say that a city far away is living in poverty (hence some sweet trade deals), I don't really expect to see it and I will take your word for it.
Well obviously, you canât show every single detail. But for things that are important for your characters (especially your MC) and/or your plot, Iâm going to expect to see proof.
If Rolf happens to be a mere side character, then no, I donât need his skills demonstrated to me. But if Rolf happens to be your MC and you want me to really see that heâs is a good swordsman, there really ought to be a scene of him demonstrating good swordsmanship, otherwise that claim is going to feel empty.
Same thing with the city. If itâs a city thatâs never visited, then obviously, you have no details to show. But if itâs a city that the characters visit at some point in the story and spend time in, then I expect to read some details that emphasize how poor the city is. Otherwise, you just writing âthe city that weâre in is poorâ feels boring, unmemorable, and unimpactful.
The important traits of your main characters, the important settings in your story, and the important aspects of your plot should feel like they have weight to them. Iâm not saying you should pack your story with unnecessary details, but I expect the major aspects of your book to feel strong and immersive, like I can actually envision the story playing out in front of me.
I generally agree with this list. And rules really don't have much of a place in writing. We like rules because they work almost like a promise, the idea behind it is, do this and that this way and that way and you won't fail... Except it doesn't work, for the simple reason that writing a good book isn't a predictable mechanical process. You can follow as many rules as there are and still fail; in fact, I'd argue you're more likely to fail than not to.
I sometimes watch YouTube writing videos for entertainment, but I don't expect them to magically make me a better writer.
While it originated for screenplays, the principle remains the same regardless of medium: intimating information through context and character behavior is generally superior to stating it outright.
Fair enough.
Simple repetition isnât enough, as youâve said, but that doesnât mean practice isnât necessary or shouldnât be done in high volume, though it requires intentionality, purpose, and feedback. Why would you not practice a craft to improve at it?
Because theyâre often unnecessary. Avoiding adverbs is only the first half of itâthe other half is replacing them with stronger verbs and nouns that carry the same connotations.
Then find uploads from people whose writing is good. Bad writers giving bad advice is not an inherent fault of the platform.
Not just reading means exactly that. You must also be writing to get better at writing; this should be obvious enough. Yes, reading will help, and yes, you should read a lot, but you should also write a lot. Again, why would you not practice a craft to improve at it?
I'm confused about number 3
Never using "said" or adverbs, never starting sentences with "and," "but," or "because," ALWAYS using "show, don't tell" (even when it entirely bloats the narrative with descriptions that slow down the pace), describing every single place the characters are and the characters' exact physical descriptions (also slows down pace). Gosh, there are so many more that I can't think of.
In all fairness, I see what these rules are trying at, but so many people (especially high school creative-writing teachers) take it too far.
Out of interest op, was the chapter that the guy was presenting supposed to be a finished/polished piece?
If someone has written 5k of world building for a fantasy world, then I wouldn't want to discourage them. I would probably agree that he's worked hard on it and it deserves to be there... With the suggestion that he then takes those elements and stretches them throughout the book.
As an explorative writer, I tend to info dump a lot in my first drafts while I'm learning about the world. This then gets edited down a lot, and often spread to later chapters where much of the information becomes more relevant.
The worst feedback is when people makes up feedback on the spot because they feel they have to, especially if it comes after you given critical feedback to them and they're just trying to get back at you (I'm very fine with reasonable feedback if it understands what I'm trying to achieve and helps me find better ways of achieving my goals)
Any person, writer or otherwise, to stubborn to take critique with grace is most likely unfit to do what theyâre doing.
Even if you end up not acting differently after the critique, proactive listening and being gracious to those who attempt to guide and help you are traits of a successful person.
"If your work makes your reader feel stupid, your plot it too complex."
Words of a creative writer instructor in college.
I did a prologue chapter of just world building, about 3 pages. I could've shorten it out (heck, even after being published I can still do it) but when I wrote that I was learning to write and still am, to be fair.
I wanted to establish a setting quick and most of my story resolved around an already set up world and not its origin stages.
Anyways, I got a lot of flack on a post I did a while back from loads of people about that. I've realized some things over time here and came to the solid conclusion that, no matter how well you tried or did on your book, someone else will call you out by saying they've done it better or seen better.
Well, it's their opinion and I realize that it may have been overkill to do 3 pages of this, but if the info is fun and realistic I don't see the harm in it.
Tho, I've learned my lesson and will not repeat that mistake.
Are you writing a book or a RPG setting for you to fantasize adventures? That's a big question everyone that meddles with Fantasy should be asked/ask themselves
"X is not realistic for [insert any group here]"
Whenever someone starts off with this kind of general statement, I have to remind myself that it is a GENERAL comment. No group is a monolith, and for the vast majority of cases, there's no behavior that is completely off-limits or unrealistic for every single member of a group. The top one I've heard is that my male main characters aren't realistic because they're too emotional (they were yelling at each other). Men can have emotions! Having a reaction to something bad (ie, we're losing this siege, and we don't have enough rations for our army) is perfectly normal.
The primary issue with info dumping is retention. It's easier to remember many smaller pieces of information dispersed over the course of a story rather than a large chunk at the start.
"Tell, don't show."
It just writing.... that is easy, Writers are only for registered writers or those who publish a book
âYou need more wordsâ or âI donât understand it â
Story = Character and Character = Story
I mean the ideology that it's the character that drives the plot, as if a narrative is a kind of social simulation. I'm not saying that the character can't drive the plot, but it's usually the other way around.
I think you can have a character do anything as long as you put in some preparation early enough. Of course, the character puts limits on what you can do efficiently. Some actions need more preparation.
I mean isn't this where life gets interesting? When people do unexpected things? Ultimately, stories are not social simulations. That would be boring. A narrative is designed to have an effect on the audience. So you need characters who do what the plot demands.
The good news is that people in real life do all sorts of incongruous things, don't fully understand themselves and have many faces. Real people are different when they're excited, agitated, drunk, in love, having a midlife crisis, etc. Just introduce different faces of your character, external causes, rising stakes, internal conflict and desires, or some event that shaped the character in the past and you should get away with almost anything. If necessary, you can always portray an internal conflict to make it believable.
Yep. A good writer Can get with anything if they it correctly, I agreeÂ
Someone told me to ânot worry about synopsis, theyre meant to be boringâ. âŚ.No. The synopsis is meant to make people interested.
Get a vision (totally counterproductive for absurdist)
Back in Primary (or Elementary) "Never use said or any other simple words since there's always something better you can use instead." Whenever I put something like said or asked the teacher would always make me change it to something even if the scene was just characters talking where said would fit.
My answer - âwrite what you know,â [and only what you know].
Itâs trite, and itâs over-simplistic.
A lot of advice is really from people who read a whole, whole lot. Writers in particular - we tend to get really aware of the machinery.
My own pet peeves are the mirror-scene character descriptions and some particularly lazy, tired tropes.
Most readers donât mind them. Youâll only really get criticized for it by critics (and see also - they read a lot, so they notice).
For baby writers - itâs easier to give general rules than explain all the exceptions to them and how to properly deal with them. Take infodumping.
Thereâs a difference in infodumping like, say, GRRMartin does in introducing Westeros to the reader - broken up by character-driven scenes, put into dialogue, etc, in the first few chapters of ASOIAF and the âAs You Know, Bob,â trope.
Or what too many inexperienced SF&F writers do - devote a whole chapter - or several - just to the worlds lore at the beginning.
It begins reading like a history textbook, not a novel.
Some readers are into that - hard sci-fi tends to be ok with chapters on the setting or just on the tech. Thatâs why I donât read it. But most readers arenât. They come for the story and the characters - not the setting - even when the world building is interesting.
And as above - George Martin. He goes hard into intricate world building, from each of the regions cultures to what food they eat.
But he does it in a way that he isnât spending huge swaths of prose at once on the backstory (generally. At least not enough to break the flow/immersion - when he does it - itâs relevant to whatâs about to happen, and then, usually only just-enough. Loves describing some food though - never write hungry, yâall).
Thereâs nuance. But when youâre trying to teach something - nuance tends to complicate things. See also why elementary education tends to dumb things down for kids.
We teach them how to tell time. We donât deep dive into how time is relative and perceptual, or the philosophical intricacies of what time means for us, or the physics of perceiving time as we do. Or the fact that linear time is largely a change we saw during the Industrial Revolution for marking the workday.
We teach them - hands pointing this way means itâs this time.
Writing is the same way. When we introduce things like what to do or not to do - those are simplified guidelines. Every single rule from syntax to grammar to infodumping and using tropes - youâll find an example of someone who broke those rules successfully.
But when youâre writing for a broad market (as most of us are) - you want to lean more on guidelines. See also my day job - journalism. Thereâs a reason we all go so hard on AP formatting. It simplifies the writing so that itâs more readable (and to a different extent - saves space).
Even we still break the rules. I die on the hill of using the Oxford comma, myself (the AP comma is a holdover from when that extra character mattered for typesetting).
And thatâs kinda the line for teaching things.
âIs it ok to do X,â tends to force the answer -
If you have to ask, no. Focus on the fundamentals.
We all get to a point where we outgrow those rules, if we focus on honing the craft enough. But when people ask âis it ok to infodump,â the short answer is âno.â Even when the longer answer is âyes, but.â
Telling people no - theyâre going to work harder on not doing it the wrong way. And thatâs the point. Itâs easier to say âno, this is the wrong way,â and have people learn ways around it, than explaining all the ways around doing it the wrong way.
Every craft, every skill, every trade is like that. Because there is truly no wrong way to make something - as long as it works and people like it. But fundamentals areâŚwell, fundamental.
"Never begin a sentence with and" has to be up there. Not only is it pointless pedantry but starting a sentence with And is such a powerful tool.
Iâm looking for advice
An MFA is not an investment. It can still be money well spent. But it is not an investment.
Somebody once told me that I should take drugs while writing because according to him, 'Cocaine isn't that bad'.
He cited Stephen King as an example, even though King has been open about how his drug addiction negativly impacted him.
Also I mostly wrote children's fiction at the time.
Telling people their stories aren't relatable when they're talking about something that's common.
Edit whatever you wrote the day before. Youâll literally never get done, youâll sit there polishing and obsessing over things that are too fresh.
From a publishing point of view, I always hear feedback in terms of market and how it will sell. Worst Iâve heard is completely changing a manuscript to fit the current market trend and ultimately ruining the manuscript. Market trends change all the time so something might not be right for print at that time, but if itâs strong then thereâs a chance of room when the trend changes again.
In saying that, in the example given, criticism like this is valid feedback. Many authors write like this without their reader in mind. Itâs a bit unfair to expect a reader to give over their money and then put in the effort for world building for 5k words without reward.
"You use too many pronouns" has to be the worst I've ever personally received, lol.
"go fuck yourself" -destructive readers
  However, his piece was 5k words long, of which 80% was telling me about the world. No characters, no plot, nothing. Just world.
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In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
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