Some Sage Advice

Sixty-One Things That I Wish I Had Been Told, So I’m Telling You:

Different audiences want different things.
Gimmicks cannot compensate for bad writing.
Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I see far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.” The current crop of aspiring authors see a long way because of what has gone before. Don’t stand on the shoulders of giants and look around. Stand on the shoulders of giants, pick something that is out of reach, and then jump for it. Pick something that is weird, extraordinary, and from this vantage point that we have today, take a leap and take a risk.
Take a long hard look at your originality, and make sure it’s really original, usually you can still manage to take it a few steps further.
When it comes to killing (cutting) your darlings, you should keep a file of said cut/killed darlings (darlings being anything that doesn’t fit currently), so you’re not killing so much. Save them for the right place and time, later.
There was once a famous sculptor teacher and he would have his students line up their final pottery projects at the end of the year. He would then go down the line grading them and then smashing each piece with a hammer. His students were shocked and appalled. His explanation was that you are a creator, your master work is ahead. Cut it, you will create something better after you leave here. This applies perfectly to killing our darlings. If it doesn’t fit, cut it, you will create something better down the line.
The Hero, the main character and the protagonist CAN be three different characters. The hero moves the story forward, the main character is the perspective or point of view from which the story is told, and the protagonist goes on a trip and gets a character arc. The main character is the eyes through which we are seeing the story, but may not do any “heroing”. The protagonist does not have to be heroic; the hero is heroic, someone that we want to emulate, displaying the highest attributes.
Flaws are internal, where handicaps are external. The character can control his anxiety flaw, he can’t control the limp he’s had since high school when he fucked up his knee playing football.
The best villain is an interesting villain. For instance, Sauron is a force of nature, Gollum is interesting. Sure, the struggle against an all-powerful evil is a part of us, but it’s not interesting.
Don’t tell your side characters that they’re side characters. The hero and the villain are the heroes in their stories. You can treat your side characters the same way.
Stories are about promises and fulfilling those promises, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Violence is one of the ultimate shaping forces of human culture and to not write about it is entirely dishonest.
Well stolen is half composed. Authors steal all the time. We steal in the right way. We learn from someone or we learn a plot archetype and we make it our own. What is the difference there between just plagiarizing them or just mimicking them and doing it your way? Plagiarizing is where you take somebody’s metaphor… let’s use Douglas Adams’ “they hovered in the air much in the way that bricks don’t.” If you use that metaphor in your own book, that’s plagiarism. Now, if you look at that metaphor and say, “Wow, this is a metaphor that works well because it conjures up an impossible image. I want to conjure an impossible image, what can I do to describe this? How about, the lava flowed downhill like concrete over pancakes…” You’re looking at what the author did, exploring the technique, and trying to apply it to your own work. That’s not plagiarism, that’s learning from somebody else.
There is always someone out there who just hates everything. You should never defend your work, that applies to pretty much any criticism you get when it comes to what you write. You cannot take it defensively. Someone who is giving you criticism, they are telling you their reaction to your work. You can take that or leave it. You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to accept it or change what you are doing. They cannot be wrong in their reaction. Meaning their emotions are their own and belong to them. You can disagree with their reaction, but they have a right to their reaction. Their reaction does not demand or require that you change your work to please them. This is a very good mindset to get into early on.
Trimming takes fat out so that you say what you need to say in the best possible way. Trimming improves the pace, makes writing snappy, and helps with clarity. Killing your darlings is not the same thing as trimming. You trim repetition. You trim false starts. You trim weak adjectives and those pesky adverbs. One strategy is section by section trimming. By that, I mean, if you can successfully cut 10% off each page or chapter, then you’re what I would consider a good word stylist. After all, no one wants their manuscript sent back from their editor, hemorrhaging. So, go through those pages and remove words, shorten sentences, and tighten up paragraphs. Your editor will thank you.
Studying and writing poetry really teaches you how to use words better.
Don’t make your subplots more interesting than your main plot. A subplot doesn’t resolve with triumph. A subplot resolves with a measure of satisfaction or disappointment. On a side note, subplots in the double digits are great for re-readability.
Balance continuity and similarities with new content. Watch for reuse on small details and for reuse of themes and storylines. Try different takes, outcomes, characters, directions. Hang a lantern on reuse, let the reader know that you know you are doing it. Try recombination of disharmonious elements and random jumbles to make yourself stretch.
Antiheroes come in many flavors, including Frodo, Punisher, and the Talented Mister Ripley. Frodos are heroes, except they fail. Punishers do evil for good purposes. Talented Mister Ripley’s are unsympathetic, unheroic, horrible. Sympathetic villains are not antiheroes, nor are heroes with a steep character arc. Heroes are like Christmas Day, and you wish it could last all year. Classical antiheroes are like olde Halloween, you never ever want to be like that, but it’s still fascinating. Punisher antiheroes are more like modern Halloween, with cool costumes and candy from the neighbors. If you plan to write an antihero story, think about which kind you are writing and what will keep people turning pages.
Beware maid and butler dialogue, where characters talk about things to educate the reader, rather than because they would ordinarily talk about those things.
Learning “writing triage” takes a lot of practice. You can’t fix everything in one draft. Instead, you should focus on fixing certain things with each revision.
Place a bomb under the table. If it goes off, that’s action. If it doesn’t go off, that’s suspense. Meanwhile, you can’t see that the bomb is under the table, that’s mystery. Action, suspense and mystery create tension and tension is great for storytelling.
Melodrama grows out of one-sidedness. It makes for lazy writing. So, make your characters real people, avoid cliches, set up your emotional scenes and make your characters likable. Remember, variation and contrast adds spice to storytelling.
Good romance scenes have a build up and an emotional payoff. The reader needs to like the romantic interest as much as the character does. The reader needs to understand the reason that the character is falling in love. Fulfilling relationships need characters that meet a need in each other. They need to complete each other.
Story Bibles are where you info-dump for yourself, to inform your writing, that way you can keep the info-dumps out of your books.
Don’t just make character do stupid things because the plot requires it. That can cause readers to disengage from the character. Let the audience have information that the character doesn’t, but don’t let the reader get it too far ahead of the character. Stupid choices should make sense as far as the character knows, even if the reader wants to let them know that there is something else they need to know. Stupid choices may be personality based, a character flaw, or driven by emotion. Pay attention to the consequences. Really stupid choices should have really strong consequences. Avoid plotting that requires a character be stupid. Stupid choices often are stupid because you didn’t lay the groundwork. In short, give your characters good reasons for their choices.
Let your passion for a place feed the story. Look for special places, and put your characters and events in real places. Make the location feel lived in. Where are the bad parts? How do people get around? Especially if you are using a real place, get it right. Even nonexistent settings do better in a real neighborhood. Accuracy adds flavor, and so does passion.
Character deaths can raise the stakes and increase tension. Don’t waste character deaths, make the deaths meaningful by letting the readers know the character. Death reminds us that there is a cost.
Choosing to leave out the backstory, also known as Hemingway’s “The Iceberg Principle, is not the same thing as cliffhangers and teasing the next book.
Making nonhuman character relatable is a classic problem in Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. We want to explore new beings and viewpoints, but the weirder they are, the harder it is to get readers interested at an emotional level. First, consider common desires or needs, and use those as points of congruity. Go back and think about why you are using a non-human character and what do you want to highlight about them? Give them features that allow humans to relate to them. Sometimes non-human or Artificial Intelligence characters are more human than the humans around them. Contrast the relatable part to the non-human part. Use a human character as a gateway or an interpreter for the non-human.
There are Three Laws of Writing. Three Laws of Writing. Number one is that a word count at rest tends to remain at rest, while a word count in motion tends to remain in motion. To keep writing, write some more. To start writing, start slow, then bump your goal. Build your writing inertia by writing every day. Number two is that the word count equals motivation times focus. Motivate yourself by thinking about what comes next. Focus and clear distractions. Consider the word count per hour. Try a timer, or perhaps meditation might be your ticket to a clearer mind. Number three is for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you write words, the words write you. In that, I mean that you also are affected. Writing is more often than not, its own reward. Every word you write builds your writing skill. The goal of writing stories is to become a better writer. The equal and opposite reaction to writing is that you become a better writer.
Do you have certain characters that are just way too important to die? Have you’ve given these characters a sort of plot armor to protect them. Might I suggest you give them ablative plot armor instead? What is ablative plot armor, you ask? Well, let’s be honest here, there is so many things that are worse than death. So if you find yourself in this situation, you’re not going to kill a particular character, but you’re should hurt them. You’re should make them live through something, or experience something, or maybe even they get off scot-free and all their friends are dead. There needs to be consequences at the end of the scene. No one gets off scot-free. That’s what ablative plot armor is.
Your First Draft is simply you telling yourself, your story.
Most people don’t really know disabled people. The world is not accessible. How do you write about this? Use your imagination, feel the embodied sensations and consider different kinds of disability and mobility aids. Show an abled character realizing that disability isn’t the problem, it’s the world around us that’s the problem. Think about the disability as it affects the character moving through the world, not as a plot point. Show the character working through pain, through marginalization, through it all. Use empathy and put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
The “golden rule” of writing… that is “Show, Don’t Tell”… is a LIE (most of the time). The simple fact is, it does a lot of things, badly. It wants you to write as though your narrator is looking though the eye of a camera, and it wants the reader to do the same. As a direct result, both the writer and the reader end up missing a lot of the finer peripheral details. It removes a lot of flavor, for lack of a better term, within the writing. It also puts distance between the reader and the writer. Before, the reader was mingling within the action, with Show, Don’t Tell, the reader is looking at the action through that camera eye that I mentioned earlier. Which does neither the writer or the reader any justice, mainly because it removes vital context and you need context inside the writing. Frankly, sometimes, telling the reader is NECESSARY. Not doing so, removes pace and a lot of the time it ends up adding UNNECESSARY dialogue and UNNECESSARY scenes, it also removes the author’s voice. One of the things I dislike the most about “the golden rule” is that it alienates readers and authors, alike. A perfect example of this being that neurodivergent readers often need this absent context, concerning the character’s actions. That missing context can be especially important to those readers who are coming from an entirely different culture than that of the author. Show, Don’t Tell only works as a major “golden rule” you’re writing for an audience who shares the same beliefs and assumptions that you do, so that any of that missing detail and context are already a part of the collective consciousness, therefore, they don’t require it. That may have worked one-hundred years ago, but today’s authors are writing for the world, they’re not writing for their little insular community. All this being said, if you want to use SDT now and then, by all means, do so, it’s your book. I just want you to realize that this “golden rule” is NOT a “golden rule”.
Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.
Never take advice from anyone about your writing, your books or your methods of publishing, who have no investment in the outcome of either.
Greater than scene… is a situation. Greater than a situation is an implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire character, who will never be confined in any frame.
The paradox of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is that you cannot know where you fall on it. It’s a lot easier to spot in other people than yourself.
Be the cockroach. Plan for the rug being yanked out from under you. Take your Scarlett O’Hara moment and write because that’s what you want to do. Never give up and never surrender. Do what you love. You’ve written about the hero going back to their strengths and winning, now live it.
Treat the characters who are not your protagonist(s) like they are the protagonist. In other words, your secondary characters deserve the same amount of love you’ve bestowed upon your main character.
There is most definitely something known as adverb and adjective abuse. It is known as Purple Prose. This is when a writer leaves no verb or noun unadorned with a colorful, oh-so-helpful modifier. Some newer writers think they are providing readers with concrete details that help them visualize the scene, but what’s really happening is that you’re cramming reader’s perfectly capable imaginations with useless details that don’t contribute to the story. If the color of the couch doesn’t matter to anything or anyone, you can and probably should leave it out. Instead, find a balance between providing a very few, carefully selected descriptive modifiers, but for everything else, leave it plain. Readers will fill in their own details.
Un-helping verbs do in fact exist. Do you remember back in grammar school when they taught you about helping verbs. The verbs that help you create some of English’s more baroque verb tenses? Stuff like “will have been eating” and so forth? Sure, a prefix like “will have been” does in a certain pedantic sense help to give nuance to whatever the core verb is (eat), but listen, I’m going to tell you this for free: It doesn’t help your story. Rarely is it the case that a novel requires all of the fine gradations of verb tenses that English provides. You should avoid these, as all they do is clutter up the narrative with words that don’t carry their weight. Instead, find ways to re-write down to the “big three” verb tenses of past, present, and future. This allows readers focus on more interesting verbs.
Keeping with verbiage for a moment, let’s talk about weak verbs. Another rookie verb mistake is to reach for the most generic verb that covers the action they have in mind, rather than the most specific. This is an area where writers of English, having access to the largest vocabulary of any language on the planet, have an edge. English has stolen so much vocabulary from other languages that we often have hundreds of verbs that relate to the action we’re trying to convey. These verbs form family trees, as it were, with the overarching, non-specific members at the root and the more specific members at the branches. Take verbs of motion: run, walk, fly, fall, sprint, saunter, skedaddle, drive, and many more. These all fall under the parent-verb GO. The rookie mistake is to reach for the parent verb first, rather than reaching for one of the more highly-evolved and useful child verbs. Then, finding that parent verb is weak and lacks narrative joy, the rookie writer doctors it up with some adverb abuse in an attempt to fix the problem. This is a poor strategy. Instead, find a more specific verb to begin with. Don’t just tell us someone WENT somewhere (past tense of go). This is yawn worthy. Instead, pick a verb that, in a single word, conveys the overall sense of going, plus the manner in which the going takes place. Give us SPRINTED instead, which is like go plus run plus really fast, all in one word.
There is such a thing as pronoun ambiguity. We’ve all experienced this, both in reading and in our own writing. This is when a sentence becomes muddled in a confusion of pronouns, such that it is hard to tell which character a particular she, his or whatever actually refers to. The rookie writer doesn’t even notice this problem, because in their own mind, the writer knows perfectly well what she means and expects everyone else to as well. Sorry, we’re not mind readers. Use a name here and there, re-structure the sentence to avoid using so many pronouns. Split up the sentence into multiple, simpler sentences. There are many ways to tackle this problem, but don’t make us guess who’s who in the story.
Write characters people want to hang out with for an hour or so once a week for years to come. Even if they’re bad people, make them interesting, engaging bad people.
Perfect people are absolutely boring.
Characters should complement/conflict with each other. No two characters should serve the same purpose/have the same backstory/have the same voice.
You can start by figuring out the Beginning, the Middle, or the End, but you don’t have an story until you have all three.
Every scene should be a consequence of the previous scene or a refutation of it. Every scene is a negotiation/confrontation between two or more characters who want different things or have different ideas on how to solve the same problem.
A scene also needs a Beginning, Middle, and End. The end should propel the characters and/or audience into the next scene.
Make an extra effort to surround yourself with other writers who are vastly different from yourself. Listen to their perspectives, especially on experiences that are alien to you.
Every character you write is an expression of some understanding of yourself, or desire for something better, or a million other things. It all comes from you. The question is which parts of yourself you insert, and how you view that part of yourself thru the lens of the other characters.
There are eight “musts” that go into the making of a good character. The character must have a strong and defined dramatic need. A dramatic need is what your main character wants to achieve during the course of the story. They must have an individual point of view. A point of view, refers to your character’s belief system. This encompasses their thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories. They must personify an attitude. An attitude is how the character expresses their point of view. It’s their way of acting or feeling that reveals their opinion. They must go through some sort of change, or transformation. This change/transformation is their arc. Without an arc, we don’t have a story that will remain consistent throughout all forms of character creation. The character must have a defining psychological characteristic. The defining psychological characteristic is the one thing that molds the character. It’s essentially the ‘concept’ of the character. They must have a paradox. A paradox allows us to add a bit of depth to this character. It is the way that defining characteristic will fold back on itself. They must have exhibit some form of humanity. Humanity is what connects the reader to the character. The reason we empathize with them, what makes us maybe not always like them, but understand them. Lastly, they must be flawed. Providing flaws are often the best way to show how the initial defining characteristic could destroy them.
Scenes fall under one of three main functions. Scenes that move the plot forward, scenes that develop the story’s characters and scenes that reveal something unknown about the world’s past, present or future.
You only get one chance to introduce a character. As such, it’s very important to make it the most effective you can. This first impression of a character is going to shape how the reader views them for the rest of the story, so you want to make it informative and memorable.
Your plot will always have some holes. The good news is, readers know this, and most of the time, they don’t care. We can talk endlessly about why a character did or didn’t do something, how the antagonist figured something out when you wouldn’t have, or any other little problem your plot has, or we can suspend our disbelief and simply enjoy the story. Often that’s what I find myself doing for others’ stories, and what I hope others will do for mine. Simply put, plots are big, tangled, complicated things with a lot of moving parts. The chances that everything will come together perfectly is pretty low. So long as the story isn’t completely falling apart though, most of the time, you can get away with a few holes in your narrative. Just focus on writing a good story, one that you enjoy, one that your readers will enjoy and I promise, it’ll be enough.
Don’t let your details take away from your story. Your readers are reading your book because they want to be enchanted, so enchant them. There’s nothing less enchanting than a textbook.
If you simply write five-hundred and forty-seven words per day for three-hundred and sixty-five days, and then on the three-hundred and sixty-sixth day, you write three-hundred and forty-five words, you will have written two-hundred-thousand words.
Novels that purport to reflect real life must include profanity if the life they reflect includes use of profanity. This is difficult to accept for many people of a certain age, dismayed by the ubiquity of swearwords in modern literature, who have had the distinct disadvantage of having grown up during an era when books and movies were censored. However, let’s get real for a moment here. In the Old West, cantankerous, intoxicated cowboys did not refer to each other as “You no-good so-and-so,” and in combat, to paraphrase a well-known expression, there are no decorous speakers in foxholes. Admittedly, popular entertainment often goes overboard in drenching dialogue in profanity, but that is merely an exaggeration, not a fabrication, of reality. If you’re going to write novels or short stories, it seems that to be honest with yourself and your readers, if a story takes place in a milieu in which profanity is uttered, at least some of your characters are going to be swearing. If, however, the setting does not lend itself to cursing, it’s not an issue.