Tag Archives: good writing advice

Over the next few months, authors embarking on their first NaNoWriMo will hear many rules about the craft of writing. Some will be good, and some will lead to later problems. I suggest you write the story as it falls out of your head during NaNoWriMo. Don’t worry too much about the rules until you get to the revision stage.

Getting those ideas out of your head now is what is important. The bloopers and grammar hiccups can all be ironed out in the second draft.

The common axioms of writing exist because writing a story that others can enjoy involves learning grammar rules, developing a broader vocabulary, developing characters, building worlds, etc.

However—some commonly repeated mantras of writing advice have the potential to backfire. An author with too rigid a view of these sayings will write lifeless prose, narratives an algorithm could produce.

The worst rules, in my opinion, are these three:

• Remove all adverbs and adjectives. This advice is complete crap. Use common sense, and don’t use unnecessary modifiers.
• Don’t use speech tags. What? Who said that, and why are there no speech tags in this nonsense?
• Show, Don’t Tell. Don’t Ever Don’t do it! Oh, dear. What an amazing gymnastic routine your face is experiencing.

Nothing is more disgusting than a scene where a person’s facial expressions are described in minute detail.

Yes, we do need to show moods, and some physical description is necessary. Lips stretch into smiles, and eyebrows draw together. Still, they are not autonomous and don’t operate independently of the character’s emotional state. The musculature of the face is only part of the signals that reveal the character’s interior emotions.

Another extreme is when the author leans too heavily on the internal, describing the stomach-churning, gut-wrenching shock and wide-eyed trembling of hands in such detail the reader feels queasy and puts the book in the trash.

Which reminds me—don’t forget the weak-kneed nausea.

For me, the most challenging part of revising a manuscript is balancing the visual indicators of emotion with the more profound internal clues. This is something that really only takes shape to my satisfaction through multiple drafts.

• Write what you know, and don’t dare to write something you don’t. In other words, what they’re saying is don’t use your imagination.

True, you should be careful when writing a real-world ethnicity you don’t have a personal experience of. If your heart is set on that story and only that story, you might want to consult someone from that culture. 5 Tips for Avoiding Cultural Appropriation in Fiction | Proofed’s Writing Tips

But in fantasy, while our life experiences shape our writing, our imagination is the story’s fuel and source. J.R.R. Tolkien understood senseless conflicts and total warfare—because he had experienced it. His books detail his view of the utter devastation of war but are set in a fantasy environment and feature elves and orcs. (Those are two races that don’t abound in England, at least not that I’ve heard.)

Another unreservedly silly mantra is this one:

• If you’re bored with your story, your reader will be too.

That’s NOT true. You have spent months immersed in that story, years even. You know it inside and out, but your reader doesn’t. Set it aside and come back to it a month or more later. You’ll fall in love with it again.

Commonly discussed writing proverbs go on and on.

• Kill your darlings.

Indeed, we shouldn’t be married to our favorite prose or characters. Sometimes, we must cut a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, or even a character we love because it no longer fits the story. But have a care – people read for pleasure and because they love good prose. If it works, keep it.

• Cut all exposition.

The timing of when we insert the exposition into the narrative is crucial. A story must be about the characters, the conflict, and the resolution. The reader wants to know what the characters know. But they only need that knowledge when it becomes necessary for the plot to move forward. They don’t want information dumped on them.

Bad advice is good advice taken to an extreme. But all writing advice has roots in truth. So, when it comes to making revisions, consider these suggestions:

• Overuse of adverbs fluffs up the prose and ruins the taste of an author’s work. Don’t get too artful.
• Too many speech tags, especially odd and bizarre ones, can stop the eye. When the characters snort, hiss, and exclaim their dialogue, I will put the book down and never pick it up again. My favorite authors seem to stick to common tags like said and replied. Those tags blend into the background.
• Too much telling takes the adventure out of the reading experience. Too much showing is tedious and can be disgusting. It takes effort to find that happy medium, but writing is work.
• Know what you are writing about. Research your subject and, if necessary, interview people in that profession. Readers often know more than you do about certain things.

Education doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve been studying the craft for over twenty years and always learn something new. Unless an author is fortunate enough to have a formal education in the subject, we must rely on the internet and handy self-help guides to learn the many nuances of the writing craft.

I buy books about the craft of writing modern, 21^st-century genre fiction and rely on the advice offered by the literary giants of the past. I seek a rounded view of crafting prose and look for other tools that I can use to improve my writing. I think this makes me a better, more informed reader. (My ego speaking.)

I recommend investing in a grammar book, depending on whether you use American or UK English. These books will answer your questions, and you won’t be in doubt about how to use the standard punctuation readers expect to see.

The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation (if you use American English)

OR

The Oxford A – Z of Grammar and Punctuation (if you use UK English)

Both American and UK writers should invest in:

The Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms (UK and American English). This will increase your vocabulary and help you avoid repetition and leaning on crutch words.

There are many other books on the craft of writing, but a grammar guide and a dictionary of synonyms will take you a long way.

I recommend checking out the NaNoWriMo Store, which offers several books to help you get started. The books available there have good advice for beginners, whether you participate in November’s writing rumble or want to write at your own pace.

Other books on craft that I own and recommend:

1. Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig
2. Dialogue, by Robert McKee
3. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin
4. Story, by Robert McKee
5. The Emotion Thesaurusby Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, and I also have all the companion books in that series.
6. The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler
7. VERBALIZE by Damon Suede and its companion book, Activate.

I study the craft of writing because I love it, and I apply the proverbs and rules of advice gently. Whether my work is good or bad—I don’t know. But I write the stories I want to read, so I am writing for a niche audience of one: me.

Be brave. Write your novel during NaNoWriMo and worry about fine-tuning it later. That’s what revisions are all about.