As someone who tries to write very consciously and deliberately, I like to pay attention to writing tips from agents, publishers, and other authors. I also got a fair few back in English classes when I was a young’un in high school. I’ve seen some pretty awful writing tips in my day, and I wanted to point out how absurd some of those are. Here’s a quick summary of the five worst pieces of advice I’ve ever received, and why I think they’re so dumb.
5. Outline your stories before you write.
Okay, I get that it works for some people, maybe, but it sure doesn’t work for me. When I try to outline I end up boxing myself into corners without giving my characters room to live, breathe, and make their own choices. My characters come to life on the page, sometimes almost without my consent, and do things that take me completely by surprise. They do things that I would never do. If I outlined my stories, I would never be able to give my characters the freedom they deserve.
4. Set a writing schedule and stick to it.
When I try to force myself to write, nothing comes out. I have to be enthusiastic about it, and if I’m tired or not in the mood, my writing sucks. Granted, I’m about the opposite of a ‘creature of habit’, so I don’t even really know what a schedule is. I just work when I feel like it, when I can, in the car, on a train, in coffee shops, at home, upside down, on my iPhone, whatever it takes. Whenever, wherever, whatever.
3. “Show, don’t tell”.
Seriously, what does this even mean? We’re not painters, we’re writers. Our medium of artistic expression is language. There is no sense in which we are not ‘telling’ a story. Okay, I mean, on the one hand, I get it. Don’t say, “Dan was sad when she told him she was breaking up with him,” say “Dan felt as though shards of glass were ripping him to shreds with every word that spilled out of her mouth.” But on the other hand, getting lost in visual or sensual description will rip your story to shreds. It will turn into incomprehensible gibberish that sounds like you wrote it while stoned, or maybe like you hired Jack Kerouac to be your writing consultant. (Nothing against Kerouac. He took ‘getting lost in description’ to a high art. But I don’t want to write like him. I want my stories to be comprehensible.)
2. If you’re not depressed, alcoholic, or somewhat clinically insane, you can’t create a good story.
The absurdity of this statement is astounding.*
1. Write about what you know.
This is widely cited as the worst advice ever given to aspiring writers, and I wholeheartedly agree. How would science fiction or fantasy stories ever get written if authors restricted themselves to writing only about what they know? How would new worlds be invented? How would writers get inside the heads of characters who have been in situations they themselves can only imagine? Not only is it nonsensical, it degrades the inquisitiveness and curiosity of the human mind. Writing about other than what you know forces you to learn new things, to empathize with people who do great and horrible things, to draw up fantastical situations that inspire dreams. How dull would it be to constantly read books about going to work, raising kids, and passing terribly ordinary lives? Yes, those stories can be amazing, but I don’t want to read them over and over. Write about what you want to know, not what you already know. Write about who and where you want to be. Never stop dreaming; never stop creating.
What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever received? How did you get around it, and what did you do instead?
*I just want everyone to know how much effort it took not to use the word ‘literally’ in this sentence.
Update: THANKS TO NO ONE for pointing out that I misspelled the word “received” in the title earlier. I just now caught it and fixed it. Gonna hide under the covers out of shame.
The Z-Axis 
Great post.
This is brilliant. A few thoughts on specific points you make:
5. Outline Your Story Before You Write: I thought you perfectly described the reason not to do this. Your characters can’t live and breathe if they have some high and mighty overseer charting the path of their lives before they’re even born. When I completed my first novel last year, I took the approach of identifying key plot points early on, but I wrote the rest of the book chapter by chapter. Every day I’d write a chapter and map out some things that would happen in the following chapter. Not only did this let the characters dictate the story instead of me, but it made me excited to write every day because I wanted to find out what would happen next.
3. Show, Don’t Tell: Again, really well said. I think there are forms of effective and entertaining “telling,” like in Ready Player One. There are also ineffective ways. Over the past year, I’ve been helping a friend learn how to write short stories. In the first drafts of almost all of his stories, most of the content involves references to things that happened before the story. For example, a character will be driving through a city remembering all the good times he had with his ex-girlfriend at the various locations in the city. This, to me, is a really bad way to “tell” a story, because the reader is being told all these things that already happened, while really we want the story to move forward–we want to know what happens next. So I concluded from his stories that as long as telling helps the story move forward, it can be quite effective.
1. Write What You Know: This is a huge one. I like this in particular: “Writing about other than what you know forces you to learn new things, to empathize with people who do great and horrible things, to draw up fantastical situations that inspire dreams.” Perfect. I’d also add that people are inherently boring, but good storytellers are inherently interesting. Thus it’s how you tell a story that really matters, not the fact that it’s about you or that it’s true. I explored this in a blog entry on Blank Slate Press a while back (http://blankslatepress.com/2012/01/authors-ego-and-true-stories/). The two key point from that entry were (a) personal experience does not necessarily make for a fascinating tale. Just because something–even something interesting–happened to you doesn’t make it interesting to everyone else. And (b) just because something is true doesn’t mean it is interesting. An expert scholar may know everything there is about a certain event in history that few people know about, but if he doesn’t tell the story in an interesting way (and, in fiction, if he doesn’t take fictional liberties to make sure the plot is interesting even if it diverges from history), it will be boring. So, write what you know? I say, write what you don’t know, and tap into your personal history and knowledge to make fiction seem as real as fact.
Thanks for the great entry!
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, Jamey! The only thing I would disagree about is the ‘People are inherently boring’. I think actually that most people are inherently interesting, if you dig deep enough into their psyche and draw out their fears and motivations. And of course, putting that character together to form a cohesive narrative definitely requires a storyteller, whether it be the individual himself or an outsider such as an author or biographer. Humans are so strange and bizarre that we are almost by definition interesting, even if it’s not in a particularly unique way.
Amira–I’m trying to think of a way to rephrase that line, because I agree with you. I actually think the most “normal” of people are fascinating. I used to comb the library for autobiographies by non-celebrities.
Perhaps a better way of saying it is the line I posted after that, the one that says, “Just because something happened to you doesn’t make it interesting to other people.” I’ve seen too many people fall into that trap, especially authors who use that as their pitch: “It’s a true story!” Who cares if it’s a true story? I want to read an interesting, entertaining story.
Ugh, soooooo true. People might be innately interesting but that doesn’t make them innately good at telling their own stories. And, as my mom loves to say, “We all need a good editor”.
I think the ‘write what you know’ one is pretty dumb. Write what you feel confident writing about, is better. Even if you’re inexperienced in writing it, you have to start eventually, to build up talent. The important thing is to venture into new territory with an idea and motivation, so you don’t get half a story down and then realize you’ve no idea what to do with the rest. I also agree with the other points. #2 made me laugh.
Glad you enjoyed it! I definitely like your phrase ‘Write what you feel confident writing about.’ We should start phrasing it that way instead of the traditional sentence!
The one that slays me is writers have to be alcoholic or mentally ill or damaged goods, if they’re not, they can’t write. Actually had a rather big name publisher insist this was true. Amazing.
Thanks for commenting. That’s so bizarre. I won’t ask which one it was that said that, but I’m glad there are writers out there capable of proving them wrong!
Reblogged this on Robin Writes.
Reblogged this on mishaburnett and commented:
All I can say is, “me, too!”
Write what you know is just silly. If that were the case, all my stories would be along the lines of “X gets up in the morning, takes a shower, eats some scrambled eggs, goes for a walk etc. etc. etc.” Boring!
That’s what I’m saying! Of course, eggs can have a lot of subtlety 🙂 but I don’t wan to read about them in every book I read!
‘Write what you know’ is just another way of saying ‘don’t write outside your comfort zone – oh, and be a clone whilst you’re at it.’ Shesh.
Great post, Amira. If you don’t mind, I’ve copied the text in point 5 onto my page http://andrewtoynbee.wordpress.com/characters-that-write-their-own-story as it reinforces a discussion (with myself, mainly) that well-developed characters CAN influence the storyline.
If you’re not happy with my doing that, I can take it off again.
Andrew, of course I don’t mind! Thanks so much for citing me, and for sharing your thoughts as well. I wholeheartedly agree that well-developed characters can drive the plot themselves. That’s how the real world works; why wouldn’t it work in fiction?
Reblogged this on Hey Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite!.
I think that some of the tips, like outlining and setting a writing schedule, really depend on the author. Some people are paralyzed if they don’t have a sense of direction. Others, like me at the moment, get distracted during time that they could potentially be writing, and waste their available writing time doing meaningless things. When I was in high school, I hated both these pieces of advice. Now, I still don’t like to outline a story, but I’m starting to see the benefits to setting aside time in which I am not supposed to worry about work, email or social activity, and just write.
Totally agree with the ‘write what you know’ business. And ‘show, don’t tell’ has been my pet peeve for years. Awesome post!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing! I agree that scheduling can be author-specific, but for me I’ve found that it horribly limits creativity. As for the others, definitely unhelpful!
I would rephrase “Write What You Know” as “Don’t Write What You Don’t Know”–a subtle yet significant difference. I’ve worked in the security industry most of my adult life, and I can’t count the number of books where the author loses me just when things are supposed to be getting exciting, because of a bad (or no) research.
If you have a character breaking into a secure military facility, for example, don’t just make things up, and don’t rely on spy movies for the details. You can make the action plausible without getting on a terrorist watch list. There is enough information on-line to give you what you need for the plot.
I’ve read books that were set in towns I know well that were written by authors who hadn’t bothered to even look at a map. I’ve read books where doctors sprinkle medical terms in their speech out of context and for no apparent reason than to prove that they are doctors.
I know, everybody hates research–I certainly do–but don’t just shrug and figure nobody’s going to know the difference, because people will.
I totally agree. Doing research is a pain in the butt and it’s incredibly time consuming when you’re trying to get a story working, but it’s so important. Without it, the invented world falls apart. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
The is THE worst post. People actually think this is good advice? Jamey calls is brilliant, I call it a lot of crap.
5. Outline … while there’s no need to outline the whole story, you have to know where your plot is going.
4. Writing schedule … writers are notorious for procrastinating. With many people having a schedule helps.
3. Show don’t tell … far too many writers “tell” their story and subsequently it gets boring. It’s an art to be able to “show”.
1. Write about what you know … absolutely. I recently read part of a self-published novel that was set in Africa. Having lived in Africa for 15 years, I contacted the writer and asked in which part of Africa she had lived. She admitted that she’d never set foot outside Minnesota.
If this is the worst advice you’ve ever received, I wonder what the good advice was ….
Well, lucky you, because I’ll be doing a companion post to this one in a few days, writing about the BEST writing tips I’ve ever heard! And, even if you didn’t like the post, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
Conny–Amira gave some great reasons backing up her examples, but you’re just restating the the bad advice here (other than #4–you gave a good reason for that). Why don’t you delve deeper into #5, #3, and #1, perhaps giving examples from your experience as–I’m assuming–a successful, published author.
I didn’t comment on #4 Jamey, because that actually makes sense. Yes, I am a published author. I self-published two novels and one children’s book. My second children’s book will be released on March 30 by a mainstream publisher. As for elaborating on points 1 through 5 … good idea, I’ll write my own blogpost about those points and send you the link.
Amira, I actually look forward to reading the good advice you received. I don’t see a “Follow” button, so getting a notification of follow up post might be a problem. If you want, you can send me a link to conny.manero@gmail.com
Thanks Conny! I look forward to reading your more detailed post.
I believe the “follow” button is in the top-left corner of the blog if you’re a wordpress user but if you’re not, I’d be happy to send you a link to the post.
Cheers!
Amira and Janey, you wanted my take on writing tips … here they are.
http://underthetorontosun.blogspot.ca/2013/03/writing-tips.html
Interesting! I think the problem with a lot of writing tips is that they can’t possibly work for everyone, but they’re quoted as absolute truth. Even for one writer (let’s say me, just for the sake of, well, writing what I know), a lot of these are sort-of true, but not enough that I’d pass the advice on to someone else.
EDIT: I just about wrote you a novel-length response, here. Well, a post-length one, anyway. Mind if I post it in a few weeks and link back? I generally agree with you on all of this, but I have thoughts… too many thoughts. 😉
I’d love for you to do that! It would be great to get a discussion going. Thanks for commenting, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts … All of them!
Thanks! There will be a few pingbacks for you when it goes up. Loved your “Best Writing Tips,” too!
You’re so sweet! Can’t wait to read your response. Cheers & have a great Saturday!
You, too!
“Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.” – Pynchon.
Great quote. I always think I know everything, which is why I love writing and reading – it reveals to me very fully the extent to which I don’t really know anything.
I tend to write better without outlining. Instead I write and write what I can off the top of my head then go back to research to add more to it.
That’s how I write, too! I’ve never had much success with outlining. It feels so confining and restrictive.
Well, lucky you, because I’ll be doing a companion post to this one in a few days, writing about the BEST writing tips I’ve ever heard! And, even if you didn’t like the post, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
Awesome! I’ll look forward to seeing it on your page in a few days. Cheers!