I just want to hear your stories. I have seen some pretty bad writing advice stories that people have shared and it fuels my soul. Tell me your stories please.
Whats a horrible piece of writing advise some one gave you that just made you die inside?
God...I hate that. It's like every character has to do a dance routine after talking now...
"Of course, " Peter pirouettes down the hallway.
"I hope he comes to dinner tonight. I mean, I know he said he would, but who knows," Charlie does a split while putting out the fine china.
I swear, that's how 70% of newer books read, and it drives me insane.
Omg I'm dying at this-
I can only think of so many descriptive and emotive ways to describe someone’s speech :( sometimes you just need an ol’ faithful said.
Said is skipped by the eye in reading, so it really is a good word. The reader registers the character name more, but understands that they're talking. Words like "pontificated" and "declared" snag the eye, and annoy the reader.
dance routine is so real 😭😭😭
Italics is my bread and butter for inner thoughts D:
Imma have to remember that one... I always end the inner speech with "he thought to himself"
I've stopped writing that a long time ago. I just write the thought in italics and give it its own paragraph, then it should be pretty clear most of the time.
Honestly, you don't really have to do either if you don't want to. Inner thoughts can be voiced through the narrator. E.g. "She stared across a bleak landscape. Was this all that was left? Not even hope left behind?"
The reader can understand and infer when necessary.
Yes, you're absolutely right! I guess it really depends on what you want to express. Often times I write thoughts like you did in your example. But to me, the italics plus paragraph, gives the thought more significance. Even more so if it's a rather rare occurance in the text. I've also used this as a tool for an inner fight, in the past. Intrusive thoughts versus rational thoughts, kind of. You can do a whole lot with italics and it can add to a story.
Of course, the opposite can be the case as well. Just as many other things in writing, italics is a tool that can be used well or incorrectly, depending on the handler.
Nabokov does this and it’s amazing and complex how the narrator just takes on a characters thought then moves along
Yup, it's a great and common technique.
I’ve heard the opposite for dialogue tags: always use “said” or sometimes “replied”
Ouch I have seen that one to many times on Tiktok, hurts my soul a bit
Someone told me the opposite but he stated it as, “writing that uses any dialogue tags other than said, is the sign of an amateur.”
Said for invisibility and flow.
Strong dialogue tags for emphasis.
Extremes are the worst.
[cries in action beats]
I never even notice how many times people use said as a dialogue tag but when they exclusively use tags like "hissed""growled""bemoaned""queried" it becomes really prominent and I find it irritating. It feels like they're just pulling words off a list which is exactly what I used to do in my early writing and I physically recoil when I read it.
"Always use ejaculated? Gotcha."
i will always stand by this: a single, perfectly deployed ‘[character] ejaculated’ can make an already humorous moment hysterically funny
I like when they 'hiss' things like "I love you". Dude, read up the definition of hissing, lol.
Oh, I didn't mean that I'm opposed to these, everything is good in moderation! I know the definition of hissing, lol. I'm talking about when they only use dialogue tags similiar to these and won't use the simple ones like 'said' and 'ask'. What I'm saying is that it should be a mix, not just one or the other. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Lol I know. I was just airing a pet peeve in general that was triggered by your example, sorry.
"Never use 'said'"—hahaha!
But why?
I think it started as advice against exclusively using 'said' for dialogue, which is perfectly reasonable, but got telephoned into "using 'said' is always bad".
There's advice against just using "said"? Kind of bad advice unless you follow it up with "but you really should be using said most of the time."
I was taught in primary school not to use "said" when writing stories.
I occasionally find myself vaguely wondering whether my English teacher genuinely believed that it shouldn't be used as a dialogue tag or was trying to get us to expand our vocabularies and didn't consider that in the long term it was really bad advice.
Growing up when I started writing, a friend's dad (a HS English teacher) told me "said is dead" when reading through a draft of something I wrote. And it'd make me so anxious when I wrote for the next 20 years. But as I got older and read more books, wrote more, I realized 'said' is very normal and sometimes even easier to read because ongoing conversation flows better when you're not obsessed with a thesaurus finding a way to say it.
I feel if you've developed the characters well, when a back and forth is happening you don't really need to always describe the way they said things.
Interesting. The advice from advisers advising on the higher-brow literary writing say that “said” is usually the best way to go.
One of our local free papers does that with "said". As a former full time reporter it makes me cringe every time I see it.
Isn't it pretty standard across the news industry to always use said? Who's running that paper lol
Some well-meaning people who have been doing it for many years, who have done a creative writing course somewhere along the line. I'd love to offer my services as a sub-editor, but I don't have time.
Yeah I shouldn't knock people genuinely trying to improve their community. Just a knee jerk reaction from being told like a dozen times by my professors lol
"Never use said and if you do, do it sparingly" said every junior and high school teacher ever.
"I'm still gonna," he said quietly to himself
And I use italics for people talking on the other end of a communicator! Like a phone or something. It helps keep track of who's who!
"Your story needs to be high concept or else it's just boring literary fiction"
Have those people just never read a simple fairy tale?
😅 wow is this person a Hollywood exec from 1993?
I... I'm horrified that the "only lit fic is real fic" people have counterparts running around on the other side. Genre elitism feels even dumber from people who spent decades on the receiving end of it.
It didn't make me die inside, but I once tried out with a potential critique partner who had once heard you shouldn't use -ing phrasings too often. So she highlighted all of mine--including words like morning and evening...
The day began morningly
The day morned and then evened.
Woah there James Joyce!
😅
Tbh that’s hilarious that she did that.
I kind of get where she’s coming from, -ing words can pile up and make a sentence clunky, but to treat them all like an error is nuts
Edit: To whoever disliked, tell me this sentence isn’t clunky:
Walking along the winding path, the chirping birds were complementing the rustling of the leaves, creating a soothing, humming backdrop to the morning's unfolding beauty.
There's a few things that make this sentence feel clunky (hanging clause, unnecessary words, long sentence, etc), but I think a succinct way of describing why it feels clunky: because '-ing' words tend to be very elementary ways of describing things. I.e. "rustling" is describing "of the leaves", so instead of four words there, you could describe it far more succinctly as "leaves' rustle(s/ing)". The adjective (rustle/s/ing) still describes the noun (leaves), but in a much smoother way.
For example, the same sentence written at a bit higher level: "Walking along the winding path, Soren could hear the birds' songs, complimenting the leaves' rustles. It created a soothing backdrop that hummed to the morning's unfolding beauty."
I once wrote a superpowers story in a college creative writing class and one of the critiques I got said "Don't use first person. I don't have superpowers so I can't relate" lol
When I mentioned that to my professor, she told me that some critiques are good because it helps us stand more firm with decisions we made in the first place.
Professor spitting 🤔
Rewrite from scratch. Just start over. “The good parts will make it into the second draft.”
Some people genuinly think "second draft" means you have to write the entire book from scratch again.
Uhm...I'm sure some people do that, but I would rather scratch my eyes out with a rusty nail.
I rewrite things as a rule, but yeah, never from scratch, that’s only if I have no choice. I rewrite in the same document, paragraph by paragraph.
I always hated first and second draft rules in school. I’d rather write a paper and fix it as I go and rework phrases little by little
I’ve also always hated them in school, I just pretended I planned and wrote drafts. In reality, I just shit all over the paper, finish a paragraph or two, then go back and make little edits to make it more cohesive. I kinda edit as I write then after it’s done do a final sweep.
Funnily enough, I don’t really know anyone who actually did rewrite their entire paper in school.
I do the same, though I open a new doc sometimes and copy and paste paragraphs that work into it, and then rewrite others. Peronsally, rewriting really works for me because my first drafts tend to be getting the plot and vibes down, then in the redraft I can refine it all and see what works and what doesn't, what needs to be added and what shoul be scrapped.
Maaaaybeeee I could see myself doing that for a short story, especially if the first draft was extra shitty, but for a novel-length work? No way. I'll start from scratch on parts of it, not the whole thing.
I just finsihed writing my second novel. I'm in the query trenches as they say with both of them. This draft thing is confusing for me. Both novels - I would go thru the manuscript making changes and then do it again from page one. I did this maybe 25 times each for both novels. I just don't know what is considred a draft. I've read different opinions about this.
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Nah man. This dude was like “put it away for six months and open up a new doc and try again.” He might have even said “Don’t even read your first draft.”
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If I make it to the end of a draft, the terrible drafts have already been discarded.
I do exactly this, too. I need the fresh page to see the scene again. If I’m working on the go and don’t have as much monitor space as at home, I copy over large useful sections into the outline on the fresh document.
I don't even do second drafts anymore. I just revise the shit out of the first draft until it looks acceptable.
I must confess, I am doing pretty much a full rewrite, but that really is more because my original narration was third person omniscient with no real character voice in it. So I'm basically reskinning the whole thing.
Write more like Hemingway. It doesn't matter what your own natural voice is, just saw off pieces of yourself until you write exactly like Hemingway. You want to write fantasy? That's shitty genre fiction; write real novels like fucking Hemingway.
I got similar "advice" in college. "You have talent, stop wasting it on horror, write 'something real'."
Fuck those people. I stopped writing at all for a decade because I couldn't make the stories I wanted to tell fit their criteria. They sucked all the pleasure out of the thing that I loved and it took years to undo the damage.
Oh yeah, I promptly ignored them, it was just pretty shocking to hear from a college professor that was supposed to be "helping".
This reminds me of what happened to me when I was in college getting my BA. I majored in English with writing emphasis and had this flaky prof who looked down on romances. I finally read one of her novels and was shocked at how bad it was. Everything she wrote was the same thing about the Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. She knew someone on the flight. Some of our teachers are actually bad writers themselves.
We have to write to please ourselves.
⬆️ this
Ha, as if reality is any less bizarre than horror.
Great idea! Whatever happened to this Hemingway fella?
Tasteless pseuds love to jack off and huff their own farts about "le heckin real litcherature" and "muh classics" but they don't fucking read those classics either, they just want others to think they read the classics.
I’ve read a huge amount of classics and I wish people would trust their own instincts and taste, and summon the courage and analysis to say ‘Ulysses - it’s a bit shit, I think’ or ‘Hamlet - nothing much happens for 3hrs 50mins and then there’s a big fight. Also Hamlet is an asshole’.
Couldn't agree more. It's all performative bullshit.
That's too funny, but true. So many creative writing profs are trying to turn everyone into Hemingway. I prefer Fitzgerald myself.
"Why don't you ask on the r/writing"
Various versions of:
Your characters, especially the protagonist, shouldn't display any type of flaw or make any mistakes unless it is going to be very directly called out in the narrative as wrong
Protagonists who don't grow and change in a positive direction are always boring/annoying/bad writing
Villains should always get punished at the end of the story, especially in a vengeful way
Right? Like why can't my protagonist get more bitter and jaded throughout the story? Their life gets worse in my story, it's an "everything sucks, then it gets worse, then everyone dies" kinda book. Sorry that made you sad, Janet.
That's called a negative arc, and yeah, you can do that.
Was your teacher Walt Disney?
I mean villains dont always need to lose depending on the story.
Definitely do not take advice from the children of Twitter.
The villain advice sounds like its coming from the Hays Code
Wow. This practically ensures a dull story.
Never use the words "you" or "your" in writing, even when writing dialogue.
I still have no idea how that was supposed to work.
Meanwhile, in CYOA style stories...
This... Feels worse than "Don't use say/said." What words did they want used instead of you/your?!
I wrote my character for a short story in class as having AuADHD tendencies (unknowingly since that's what I have) and my teacher told me to cut out the part where the character views the world differently than these normal characters, no one wants to read a story with a character like that. Keep it in and I'll give you a B, nothing higher.
My whole class loved it, and loved that character. So I kept it in out of spite, because fuck that teacher. I got a B. Best B I've ever gotten lol.
Good, I don't know what issues they had but it's the opposite: People can like stories where others view the world differently.
Thank you! Yeah, I don't know what the teacher had against a character that viewed the world differently, but it has unfortunately turned me off a bit to taking creative writing courses. I'd like to again, but I'm hesitant for this very reason.
I totally get that, and honestly think of what you really want. What will a course bring you, as compared to watching a writing YouTuber that resonates with you? Is it a sense of accountability, paid commitment, or perhaps one-to-one with a professional?
Thank you for the suggestion! I will definitely think on that and weigh the two together 😊
You don’t have to use commas if you don’t want to. I’m sorry, but what?
lack of commas hurt my inner soul 😭 all the words flow and get rushed in my head, how could you not use them 😟
idk, Cormac McCarthy’s writing is pretty good and his use of commas (as well as all punctuation outside of periods) is quite sparse. Of course, we shouldn’t compare ourselves to the pros, but limited comma use (for a purpose) isn’t so bad.
I’ll also give you Saramago, but random guy who has never been published probably should use a comma or two.
Jangada de Pedra, don't know the name in English. But that fella doesn't understand paragraphs either. It's a choice.
Everytime I read Reddit posts, they have NO punctuations EVER😭 just- run on sentences for a whole ass paragraph. And then everybody responds exactly the same; not a comma in sight. It should be second nature to immediately feel the need for punctuation. As if you're not saying what ur writing in ur head?? You can HEAR the pauses- ADD THE COMMA
I was at a writing conference once where the speaker had a sexist bias. Highly implied that men’s writing style was better as it “got to the point” and didn’t use too many descriptions for surroundings. Like: “Steve entered the room. He reached for his wallet on the coffee table.” Vs “Steve entered the worn out room, it smelled of smoke despite it being years since a cigarette was lit within it. The tarnished coffee table sat tucked between tweed couches. On the table was his wallet, nothing more. He reached for it.”
The speaker said woman often use too much descriptions and that it was bad to write like a woman. I, a lover of descriptions, was bothered by this. It messed up my ability to write descriptions for a long while.
I had a critique once about my descriptions too. That it was bad that I set up the scene before telling the story. (During that writing time I was seeing the narrative voice as something similar to a movie camera. Panning through the world a bit with story/world relevant info before settling on the main character.)
Guy literally said “too much description is bad” and then used an example as to why the description was good.
I actually liked the second one better. It set up some interesting details of either the man's personality or the environment he exists in.
Did this guy know about... Tolkien?
I loved the second one though lmfao. The speaker seems wacky. Descriptions are awesome and are a good way of not making it so bland. If getting to the point is as.. Dry(?) the first example you wrote, I'd rather read anything that has something like the second
Moral of the story I'm getting from this is "Write like a woman", lmfao.
One of the pieces I always hated getting was "outline your story". I know that's one that works for some people, and for those people, great! Starting with an outline always inhibited my creative flow.
Also "never use curse words". Our job as writers isn't to be child-friendly (unless you're writing for children), it's to use the right word, and sometimes the right word is shitass.
It's weirdly genre specific advice that gets applied really broadly honestly. For mystery stories outlines are far more relevant than romances, for example.
Yeah, as long as it's not kids supposed to read your books, readers should be able to handle the word fuck.
Sometimes the right word is a whole-ass diatribe of swears. I don't even write lots of swearing, but I have adult characters who curse sometimes, and that's how their dialogue can go.
"Don't worry about spelling, advice or advise, it's all the same."
That’s 16th century English thinking.
Wilson Rawls did pretty well for himself.
When I was early in, somebody told me I needed to reign in my absurd character ideas. Not only did I not, I made them more absurd, and my writing became more popular as a result.
That's fun! Could we have an example of something absurd that you made even more absurd?
Alright! I got a recent example. So, I am working on a project that is a bit of an anime-inspired scifi fantasy rpg set on a terraformed moon. There is no oceans, just craters converted into lakes. The general tone of the story is intentionally a bit zany, with a hybrid of magic users, people using salvaged ancient power armors, and all kinds of fantastical creatures and stuff.
One of the first major fights was intended to be against a pirate captain and his crew, who attempt to raid the passenger ship they are on, but the main character boards the pirate ship, defeats the crew, and crashes the ship onto the shore. As I sat on this, asking myself some questions, I started realizing the potential of this.
Why would there be a pirate vessel on a lake? Moon pirates? Would that even be a thing? Then it hit me. The main character wants to be 'The World's Greatest Adventurer.' There is a running theme in the game about people trying to be 'The Greatest' at whatever it is they love doing. So...
What started as a generic one-off pirate captain turned into 'The World's Greatest Pirate.' He had grew up reading stories about famous pirates from Earth, and fantasized about owning his own ship, despite it being kind of a dumb idea. Finally, at the age of 45, he finally manages to get together a crew and spent his life savings in a ship... only to have it destroyed by the main character on his first attempt at piracy.
This causes him to swear vengeance on the main character, so him and his crew begin following the party across the world, still fully dressed in pirate attire and talking like pirates. This creates some absolutely hillarious moments. Imagine walking through a dessert and getting attacked by a crew of pirates riding on camels. Complete with eye patches, peg legs, and such. The captain even has a heat stroke due to his giant black pirate hat absorbing too much heat, so the healer of the main character's party tends to him.
This pirate crew even, at one point, gets jobs in one of the big towns, pool their money together, and buy a Megazord-esque mech to attack the party with. The main character points out that they could have just bought another pirate ship.
He honestly became a favorite of the people working on the project because he is a comedic mess of a character in what is often a much more serious story.
Not bad advice, but I asked someone to beta read my story once, specifically saying I wanted feedback on the content/themes/story structure and nothing else. They gave it back to me all marked up with sentence structure and grammatical corrections, a handful of which weren't even correct "corrections", and didn't provide any feedback on the actual content. I never spoke to them again lol.
Someone did this to me, too lol. I asked for their input on characters and plot, and they sent me back a copy edit of my document. Didn't even answer the questions I had listed at the end.
I've worked with people like this. Assign them a simple task of building a pivot table in Excel and they spend a week making a bar graph because that's what they're comfortable doing.
Accurate. And super frustrating!
I always make a point when I beta to make sure I'm doing what the writer asked. Do you want grammar checks? Character voice advice? Ideas on the flow and vibe? Do you want me to point out potential plot holes? Speculate about worldbuilding with you?
I also try to ask how the author I'm helping wants me to interact with THEM. Do they want me to just go wild on the editing? Do they want me to ask them questions/point things out and let them fix it themselves? Do they want some hybrid of the two where I ask questions and then try my hand at a 'correction', before getting their approval?
I also make a point to let them know the kind of stuff I can't/won't work on. (smut, rape, gore, and whump all make me super uncomfortable to edit, and certain major tropes/genres send me down a mental rabbit hole that makes progress impossible until I have all of the worldbuilding details hammered out precisely)
If you can't do what you're asked to do, why are you offering to do it?
Stop writing flowery prose, you're not Tolkien, no one is going to buy it, if you write like that.
Meanwhile, my beta readers can't stop asking me for the next chapter...
I was told, when I was at Second City, that my humor was “too cerebral,” and that most people wouldn’t get it. I followed that sketch with one that was nothing but weed, dick, and fart jokes, and that was met with similar disdain.
And then my grandma died and nothing was funny anymore, so I dropped out. It took a long time to find humor again, and now I have an audience where I don’t have to care what they think, because there’s no money in it. It’s very freeing.
No offense, but I have never met a bunch of stuck up their own ass elitists as blatant as Second City.
I think comedy, like horror, is too much a matter of personal preference for audiences to give useful feedback. "I didn't like it, so you should change it" does have a place, but a lot of times it's more about reaching the right audience than appeasing the wrong one.
(I've been writing in the niche genre "weird fiction" since high school, and everyone from my teacher then to my family now have kept telling me not to leave so many questions unanswered in my plots. But this is a staple of the genre, and my target audience hasn't complained.)
Not actually bad advice but badly phrased advice that is often misapplied
*Show dont tell
In a novel, everything is told. Your story is written words, everything is told through those words. It should really be "Imply, dont directly state" but even then its balancing act, not everything should be implied, every successful novel does both.
Some great novels are shown (the cinematic ones). Other great novels are told (unreliable narrators, for example). It just depends on what you want to do.
This is a pet peeve of mine. Show, don't tell was coined by a playwright. The guy even went on to say that while novels have a full spectrum of descriptive language, scripts have only what is on stage.
The only important thing is to always try to write with intention. What experience are we trying to create for the reader? Write what does that.
For novels its a balancing act between tell, imply, and demonstrate. You need to do all 3 and no one is better than the other.
For me showing and telling is more about what you're showing vs what you're telling. If you show me a guy being extremely abusive and generally the worst human in existence toward his wife, and then say in the narration that he loved her, I'm not believing it. I don't care how you try to justify it.
show dont tell is for screenplays
novels should do both showing and telling appropriately
mostly "show dont tell" applies to author's whos prose is something like:
He felt the cold wind on his arms and it made him very unhappy
thats telling
A hundred icy needles pricked his skin as he trudged to the docks. "Another day in paradise!" he said, wiping hoarfrost off his beard.
showing is more like this
Only write what you know.
Umm i don't know anyone that has a first hand account of what dragons are like but fuck if I'm going to read that shit until I die.
The application for that advice isn't always literal though. It certainly applies when it comes to things that are going to be intuitive to most readers though, like common human emotions. If you've never been heartbroken, or suffered grief, etc. no one is gonna stop you from writing that but your readers who have experienced it will pick up on it and you will lose credibility.
No one has ever experienced a dragon so it actually makes it okay to write about it.
by the way, everyone has experienced heartbreak or grief in a way. so realistically, even if you have a decent life compared to others, you can still be a writer. i say this because i dont want anyone to misinterpret this advice as, "if you never suffered, then you shouldn't be a writer." everyone feels pain. everyone has felt pain. so even if you don't exactly experience what your characters go through, you can still channel your pain into theirs and write about it.
the one criterion i think all writers should strive to be is empathetic. the best writers know how to put themselves in the shoes of another.
I would actually say "write what you know" when talking to students about writing. I don't think I ever said "only", though.
Been ages since I gave a presentation like that, but I think I talked more about themes and genres their familiar with as starting points for writing.
"Don't start with a prologue, they're shit." Um sir, just because you don't like it and it's not "on trend", doesn't mean I can't use it. It's been part of a literary tradition since like, Shakespeare. People will use prologues long after I'm dead.
Secondly, this dude completely missed the point of said prologue. Prologue basis was "X is the usual presentation of this story, but this story is not like that." I.e. setting up a theme of subverting expectations, which was the whole damn point of the novel.
Kind of lame, maybe (it was my first novel), and definitely needed reworked. BUT if someone just goes "IT'S SHIT", in a total out-of-control emotional reaction... um.... I think I can ignore that person.
Interesting, I was given the same advice just in general because "publishers won't even get to page 1 of chapter 1" unless you're an established author.
A lot of things I've noticed published authors do that wont get you published. It's confusing as hell.
It's so sad. I've never really fitted the 'normal' criteria for anything, so yeah, to have publishing demands like that is seriously annoying.
You've just got to keep pushing and try not to compromise. For example, if they won't let you publish your big book, don't not write the big book - just publish something smaller first.
The whole thing is stupid. We're on a spinning rock FFS. It's a miracle we're even here, breathing and thinking, in the first place. Why are we restricting random things and decreeing rules which clearly aren't followed? Not that I think they should be followed - fuck the rules, this is art, baby!
3rd paragraph is so goddratt true. Human beings, in this contemporary era more than ever, have confined themselves in illusory have-tos while there are so many could-bes uncharted.
My current WIP opens with a prologue. But I didn't label it. It's a short scene beginning the first chapter. I don't even explicitly set it in the past. The following scene starts with, "10 years later," and focuses on the same character as an adult. The readers finish the flashback prologue before they know it was one.
Love this idea. Get 'em before they know it's hit 'em :'D
Every time I see someone explain how they think "Show, Don't Tell" means you're supposed to emote more.
The person who advised me to use the word “advise” as a noun, instead of the correct word, “advice”.
I had a writing professor whose only feedback was that I had no character development (never expanded on this or gave examples). I spent a lot of time working on characters to keep getting the same feedback before I realized she wasn’t actually reading my work 🙃 The last assignment I actually put effort into for her, she finally gave an additional comment, which would have been answered if she had read the paragraph she commented on. One of the worst professors I’ve had.
My all-time favorite is “never use any form of the verb ‘to be’.” Apparently, it’s “passive.”
Don’t get me wrong: writing an entire story, let alone a novel, without any use of ‘to be’ would be an interesting challenge, but Jesus, what a pain in the ass that would … be.
"Evil for evil's sake is boring"
I understand where it is coming from but I think a good writer can make any idea work
"Evil for evils sake" can be absolutely terrifying and I love good stories with that trope.
This always reminds me how cyclical and reactive art can be.
We started with the straight up evil villains, like a sorceress who's mad she's not the prettiest, or an evil stepmother. After lots of those villains, the sympathetic nuanced villain became a fresh take and contrasted against a monolithic categorization of the antagonist.
Now we have so many sympathetic villains it's overwhelming; we expect the face turn from the start and it loses it's weight. Now the really evil villains are the novelty that zags when the industry zigs.
Soon, we'll be tired of evil for evil's sake villains and see the sympathetic villains again as a reaction to that.
I also get what they mean, but a huge amount of the best villains in fiction are evil for evil’s sake. Anton Chigurh, Sauron, Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsey Bolton, etc.
"International audiences won't understand your Australianisms". It's set in Australia, you gronk.
I was just talking about this tonight. I had a teacher once - she was the daughter of a famous writer and a writer herself. I took a class with her. I was a new writer. But she ended her critique of my novela with 'you're better than this.' It's that old, 'level with me but don't level me.' It really crushed me and I stayed away from fiction for years. I understand it's a hard wire to walk for a teacher. But I now see one has to be sensitive when giving feedback - if the writer is young. At the time it was the best I could do. What I really needed was a little encouragement and some notes to look at.
Never mention or include death in your stories, it’s overused and melodramatic.
Not necessarily advice, but one time a teacher edited my paper from “I breathe.” to “I breath.”
That I'm not a "real writer" if I don't write 3000-4000 words per chapter.
College creative writing class. The teacher, who was actually a photographer with an English degree, wanted us to write these terrible adjective heavy assignments. He actually wanted you to spend pages describing things, but with little or no actual action.
I played along to pass the class, but I don't write that way.
“There needs to be a moral!”
“You need romance!”
oh gosh, the day romance novels lose their spotlight is the day i will rejoice. i am not the biggest romantic novel fan, and i believe that MANY books can do without the mc getting into a relationship. it's just there for decoration and to incentivise the reason for adding the genre 'romance' to it for attention
It’s vampire horror too. Where would the romance go? Between the body horror or the psychological horror?
Make it an anti-romance pro-friendship novel and watch everyone scream >:D
My friend's advice that was communicated through his actions not his words.
If I ask you for a critique of my work, it can only be positive, because I will argue tooth and nail over anything negative.
His writing has not improved in the 3 years he's been doing it.
I see this a lot in every direction. Some people only want praise , not criticism. Some aren't wiling to discuss critique to learn from it, even if they do follow it they may blindly follow it
Some critics think their critique is law or absolute. Some can't handle their critique being critique or hold a discussion about their critique
"When do your characters go to the bathroom??"
Not only did this beta reader feel it was necessary that I describe my characters using the bathroom, she insisted that because I was writing a fantasy story and "back then" everyone just peed in the streets, this is how I should write it, and also I should describe all the streets as constantly smelling like urine.
Something was wrong with her I think
“Avoid using adverbs, there are better ways to describe something”. Sometimes, I just want to say “She wrote aggressively on a red slip of paper” and move on. Not everything in a story needs to be beautifully and expertly described!
"Show don't tell" but being able to explain that. That little nugget has been put to bed for awhile, but lazy people in workshops still use it. Summary is an important part of writing.
Yeah but it’s not summary is it? I mean ppl misinterpret this stuff but I just edited a friends screenplay: “then she looked at him, their love is so fierce, it’s animalistic. They are so madly in love and it’s insane!” And I was like yeah… okay about this
I wrote Mary Karr asking if she might be willing to give her opinion on whether it would make sense not to identify my behaviours as autism in the depiction of my earlier life since I was diagnosed at 45; you know, let the mystery unfold as it did IRL. She wrote back “I cannot please lose my email” (lack of punctuation hers, not mine).
She knocked the stars outta my eyes, but maybe that’s a good thing. If we want to honour our true voices, maybe we should ask less for advice and focus more on enjoying the beauty that comes out of us. ♥️
Don’t get me wrong: There’s plenty to be said for seeking to learn from others, so I’m not saying don’t ask for advice, full stop. I just think we need to ask ourselves whether the advice we might be seeking is simply because we assume our writing is bad. I’ll bet the crabbiest famous writers struggle with an excessive penchant for self-criticism. My advice: don’t let the writing bring out your inner asshole. You can’t splat it on yourself without getting it all over others.
Dare to be different. ♥️🧠🌈
But. Your. Character. Doesnt. Win.At.The.End. Or: why your character didnt change? He needs to learn something at the end!!!
I always write about flawed assholes, I never inted to make them become better people or make them learn a lesson. Is up to the reader to decide what "lesson" they can get from my characters.
Ugh yes. I have a story where a character experiences some severe trauma early on the story, and the rest of the book deals with him processing and overcoming said trauma.
The majority of my betas loved this book, but the one reader who is trad pubbed said the story was broken because the main character "needed to learn a lesson." I was like, uhhh, he doesn't need to be taught any morals, he just needs to process the event he experienced. The reader disagreed. She said he needed to learn something from this, and that it HAD to tie to his backstory from before the story started. I was like, no thanks, I'm not trying to write a story that says going through something horrible makes you a better person. Sometimes things just suck and you have to pick up the pieces.
The reader disagreed with me vehemently. It was baffling, because everyone else loved it as-is. I think that one reader was just so caught up in the trad pub character arc formula that she couldn't see anything else.
The reader in question must have been confused. I believe the rule is that the main character needs to change (not necessarily in a positive direction) And just about any rule can be broken, especially if the rule breaking was calculated and intentional.
"do not end your sentences with a preposition."
This is a hold-over from dumbass Victorian aristocrats who wanted to LARP as Romans. In Latin, it is impossible to end a sentence with a preposition simply because it would break the syntax, and the text would make no sense.
"Your paragraphs can't be shorter than a few sentences."
Moron.
Really, writing is an art form. You can write a story where the text forms a penis on every page, and do it in bad grammar too.
Turn your book into a romantasy (a genre in which I don't want to write) book because those are trendy right now.
The most important part of making a main character is that they are relatable
Never use parentheses because "if it's important enough to be said it shouldn't be in parentheses".
Never use long words, it makes people feel intimidated.
Not complex words, just long words in general (horrible , intimidated, and general would be braking the rules).
The more gut-wrenching the better. Was a high school English teacher who thought you couldn’t write good happy stories — they all had to be painful.
Me when I’m 14
I am an edgy teen and only two of my novels have gore.
Never proofread.
"Don't do it because you are wasting your time and talent writing fiction."
No one will publish your work if you use any adverbs.
Or if they do, they will publish reluctantly.
“Don’t use any periods, commas, exclamation points, or anything like that, just write down everything in one big blurb!”
Don't be brief and succinct, make your sentences as long and busy as possible. It shows how good a writer you are.
Longer=Better/deeper
Spelling “advice” as “advise”
You know I’m seeing this one as a common theme among the answers I’m reading lol.
"yOu nEEd tO hAve a tHeEeEeeEeEEeeme. a MEssAgE yOu wAnT to sHoUt fRoM thE r00F t0ps!"
... No. No I don't I'm just trying to have a good time and entertain some people. I'm not trying to give life lessons. Nor am I trying to explore some deep, existential theme. I don't have something to shout from the rooftops. For the most part anyway. The few things I do, you wouldn't want to hear.
not an explicit phrase, but I wrote this story for a mandatory assignment that really WAS horrible. like I did not try at all on the story I just did it to get a participation grade. but my english teachers insisted that it was great and interesting and [insert other praising words] and from then on I didn't trust anything they said about my stories that I actually tried hard on.
Anything and everything Lily Orchard has said.
Throw away your first draft and start over. Nothing from the first draft should make it into the second draft.
When characters speak only ever use “said”. When character speak, never ever use “said”.
I had a big stretch where I didn’t write, so I messaged my creative writing teacher asking how I could get out of a writing rut. He basically said, “don’t sweat it, live your life, and hey maybe you’re just not a writer, and that’s okay too.” I was absolutely horrified by that idea, and promptly discarded his advice.
Your main character should match your gender and you should never use gender neutral names because people will always assume the character is your gender…. Unless you have a gender neutral name, in that case you may be able to get away with it.
“Don’t read books by other writers from your genre or you’ll write like them instead of yourself.” Fortunately I’m old enough to know better.
Never use “said” and never use italics.