Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

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Taleweaver
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Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#1 Post by Taleweaver »

As threads asking for writing advice pop up frequently here, here's a bit of advice from me no one asked for:

Don't listen to people giving writing advice, especially if these pieces of advice overgeneralize things that are better kept specific:

So here's my personal top 3 of bad writing advice:

1. Write what you know.
Ugh. If every writer in the world had listened to this piece of advice, there would be no fantasy literature and hardly any SF literature. Sure, Isaac Asimov was a scientist with a damn good grasp what was technologically feasible and what not, but he wrote detective mysteries too, and I'm quite certain he never worked as a crime scene investigator. And frankly, what most people know just isn't interesting enough to write stories about, so why limit yourself to topics you have no personal experience with? It's your imagination, and if in your world things work differently than in ours, so be it!

The opposite, by the way, holds much more truth: Know what you write. If you put a line to paper (or screen, or whatever), always know what you're doing with that line, and why. Understand what it's doing to your readers, and use that understanding. This is what separates the writers from the good writers.


2. Don't use adverbs.
Really? Don't use something that's an integral part of a language just because some other people used it in a wrong way (i.e. wrote terrible purple prose)? That's like saying "don't use knives, people kill with knives".

If something exists in your language, use it as long it's appropriate to the effect you're trying to accomplish.


3. Don't use "said" over and over again; use synonyms instead.
For the love of god, please don't follow that advice! I don't ever want to read "exclamated" again, or "narrated", or "mused", unless the person speaking is actually shouting, telling a story or half speaking to himself. If people are just talking, and nothing but that, use "said" as often as you like, and if you don't want to use "said", don't use anything - just put down the direct speech without indicators.

Trust me, in a normal conversation with two people talking, your readers WILL be able to follow the conversation and still remember who's who even if you don't remind them in every line.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#2 Post by Asceai »

Taleweaver wrote:3. Don't use "said" over and over again; use synonyms instead.
For the love of god, please don't follow that advice! I don't ever want to read "exclamated" again, or "narrated", or "mused", unless the person speaking is actually shouting, telling a story or half speaking to himself. If people are just talking, and nothing but that, use "said" as often as you like, and if you don't want to use "said", don't use anything - just put down the direct speech without indicators.

Trust me, in a normal conversation with two people talking, your readers WILL be able to follow the conversation and still remember who's who even if you don't remind them in every line.
Thankfully not something you have to worry about when writing VNs. VNs offer an extremely concise format that makes no use of an extraneous intervening word (said), ensures the name is always visible (one risk to the "just put down the direct speech without indicators" style is that if you start using it too much it becomes a chore for the reader to recall who is speaking on a particular line and they have to count lines to work it out!) and is ubiquitous for the medium.

Honestly, I'd be tempted to use the screenplay dialogue approach even for novel writing.

Now, my very favourite piece of bad writing advice is for all writers who are writing a protagonist-driven fantasy epic to follow 'the hero with a thousand faces' archetype. I've read Odyssey already, thank you, please don't write it any more. Honestly every single thing you do differently to what that book says will make your story more interesting.

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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#3 Post by Mad Harlequin »

Taleweaver wrote:2. Don't use adverbs.
Really? Don't use something that's an integral part of a language just because some other people used it in a wrong way (i.e. wrote terrible purple prose)? That's like saying "don't use knives, people kill with knives."

If something exists in your language, use it as long it's appropriate to the effect you're trying to accomplish.
Yes, people overgeneralize this. It's important to know that every part of language has a purpose. But the pendulum can swing the other way, too---being able to employ a certain part of language in a piece of writing doesn't do anything good if it means the end product will be overwrought. This can happen even when the language in question is used appropriately.
Trust me, in a normal conversation with two people talking, your readers WILL be able to follow the conversation and still remember who's who even if you don't remind them in every line.
This is one of my big issues too. Writers who rely overmuch on attributions are insulting their readers' intelligence and revealing themselves to be amateurs almost immediately.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#4 Post by ArachneJericho »

I agree with all that Taleweaver said. (Reminds me of one of my favorite writing books, Starve Better.)
Asceai wrote: Now, my very favourite piece of bad writing advice is for all writers who are writing a protagonist-driven fantasy epic to follow 'the hero with a thousand faces' archetype. I've read Odyssey already, thank you, please don't write it any more. Honestly every single thing you do differently to what that book says will make your story more interesting.
And this too. I also want to shoot down the idea that you have to weld your story to the three-act structure. SHOOT. IT. DOWN. Shakespeare wrote to five acts. Write what fits your story. Screw three-act structure. I am with Film Critic Hulk on this.

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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#5 Post by Taleweaver »

ArachneJericho wrote:I also want to shoot down the idea that you have to weld your story to the three-act structure. SHOOT. IT. DOWN. Shakespeare wrote to five acts. Write what fits your story. Screw three-act structure. I am with Film Critic Hulk on this.
The three-act drama is a bastardized version of the classic five-act Greek drama anyway, and you're probably neither writing a theatrical piece nor are you trying to use your story structure to the same effect the ancient Greeks did (whose dramas were mostly meant to educate the viewers into becoming better people).
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#6 Post by planktheory »

I think you're taking the idea of "Write what you know" a bit too literally.

Vonnegut and Heinlein might not have known what it's like to travel to different planets, but the people they wrote who went there seem real enough. But it's also protection against things that won't ring true when an audience gets there. Sure, most of us won't know the difference between if a person's been poisoned by arsenic vs cyanide--but that's a research thing.

NCIS showed two of their team members hacking another hacker... and in order to speed up the process, the girl pulled up a seat with a second keyboard to help. Or this:
http://youtu.be/FRhGPVYRsOY

I agree that you shouldn't let the lack of experience stifle your ability to write and explore through writing. Just, research is also an important thing. They used to make "Writer's Digests" for the purpose of helping writers know why EMPs won't work on Diesel Engines. Or why you shouldn't say exotic material isn't on the Periodic Table.

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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#7 Post by Taleweaver »

Well, "do your research" is a writing tip one SHOULD listen to. But the "write what you know" bit is usually meant as "write about stuff you meet during your everyday life. If you're a doctor, write about medical cases. If you're a bus driver, write about people yoiu meet on the bus". Etc.

I think that tip really, really stifles creativity.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#8 Post by Mad Harlequin »

Taleweaver wrote:I think that tip really, really stifles creativity.
It can, but I don't think it's meant to be interpreted as "Only write what you know." I've used the suggestion before to set up a foundation for a setting or a character. Adding the details then makes things "un-boring," so to speak.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#9 Post by OokamiKasumi »

Taleweaver wrote:...1. Write what you know.
Ugh. If every writer in the world had listened to this piece of advice, there would be no fantasy literature and hardly any SF literature.
Sigh... "Write what you Know" was never meant to be taken Literally; word for word. It was merely another way of saying:

"Do your damned Research.
-- If you don't KNOW it --backwards and forwards-- DON'T try to Write it because someone will always know more about it than you, and they Will call you on your Mistakes."


"It's Fantasy! I can just make it up as I go."
-- BULLSHIT.

Fantasy authors do indeed do their Historical and Physical research if they intend to get their work accepted by their publication editors. Even more so if they don't want to get ugly emails from their readers pointing out exactly where and how they got their facts wrong.

On Thud and Blunder by Poul Anderson
http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/
Poul Anderson wrote: ...every kind of writing is prone to special faults. For example, while no one expects heroic fantasy (hf) to be of ultimate psychological profundity, it is often simple to the point of being simplistic. This is not necessary, as such fine practitioners as de Camp, Leiber, and Tolkien have proven.

Worse, because it is still more obvious and still less excusable, is a frequent lack of elementary knowledge or plain common sense on the part of an author. A small minority of hf stories are set in real historical milieus, where the facts provide a degree of control — though howling errors remain all too easy to make. Most members of the genre, however, take place in an imaginary world. It may be a pre-glacial civilization like Howard’s, an altered time-line like Kurtz’s, another planet like Eddison’s, a remote future like Vance’s, a completely invented universe like Dunsany’s, or what have you; the point is, nobody pretends this is aught but a Never-Never Land, wherein the author is free to arrange geography, history, theology, and the laws of nature to suit himself. Given that freedom, far too many writers nowadays have supposed that anything whatsoever goes, that practical day-to-day details are of no importance and hence they, the writers, have no homework to do before they start spinning their yarns.

Not so! The consequence of making that assumption is, inevitably, a sleazy product. It may be bought by an editor hard up for material, but it will carry none of the conviction, the illusion of reality, which helps make the work of the people mentioned above, and other good writers, memorable. At best, it will drop into oblivion; at worst, it will stand as an awful example. If our field becomes swamped with this kind of garbage, readers are going to go elsewhere for entertainment and there will be no more hf.
Many well-know Fantasy authors gained their first taste of practical knowledge of the Middle Ages, the most common time period for Fantasy stories, as part of a living-history group known as the SCA, Society for Creative Anachronisms (sca.org). The SCA has been around since 1966, so a LOT of Fantasy authors were or are SCA. Diana Paxon and Marian Zimmer Bradley NYT best-selling Fantasy authors, were among the founding members. I'm a member too, by the way. Also; Poul Anderson, Robert Asprin, Katherine Kurtz, Christopher Stasheff, Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald, Patricia Kenneally, and Mercedes Lackey are known members. Peter S. Beagle, and Fantasy & Sci-Fi author C.J.Cherryh have contact with the Society but I don't think they're actual members.

No matter what you write about; robots, lasers, fairies, dragons, wizards, ghosts, vampires... What the author Does Not Know is painfully obvious to those of us who Have done our research.

So, Yes, Write what you KNOW -- do your damned Research FIRST!
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#10 Post by Rossfellow »

You do realize how valid both your points are, right? It's all subjective, the nature of it changes per every work it's applied to. There's no need to dismiss one point of view so violently.

You are as free to make up things as you are obliged to do your research. The pool is big enough to accommodate all flavors of fantasy- from the crazy ad libbed to the most meticulously studied science fiction. While its primary goal is to create a suspense of disbelief and deliver a compelling story, Fantasy is not necessarily meant to be educational.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#11 Post by planktheory »

I don't know if I read anything violent in that, this seems like a good conversational thread.

Stephanie Meyer never read or saw media that contained Vampires or Werewolves. Be it film, literature, television... and she went on to write the Twilight Series. This is why they sparkle. Yet, widely popular, as a lot of people identified with the Sophie's Choice model in the story, perhaps what rang true for them was in the characters themselves--I've personally never had a break up so bad that I had to lock myself in a room for 12 months, nor woke up screaming with night terrors... so I don't know how true this is of other people. Yet she wrote about a girl who fell in love with a 'monster', something she probably knows a thing or two about.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is another one that very little research had to be done. But again, the friendship and bond between the main characters. The magic system and fantastic things that happened are still but a backdrop to kids growing up to handle tasks they couldn't have imagined taking on. And growing up is one of those experience the author intrinsically has.

So no, you don't have the know every minutia of every detail in your world. This starts to get into the difference between Hard and Soft Science Fiction/High and Low Fantasy. Be the writer you want to be... I just don't want to be a lazy writer, particularly one who's been educated by other lazy writers (looking at you Hollywood).

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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#12 Post by Cith »

OokamiKasumi wrote: Fantasy authors do indeed do their Historical and Physical research if they intend to get their work accepted by their publication editors. Even more so if they don't want to get ugly emails from their readers pointing out exactly where and how they got their facts wrong.
I'd like to add to this. High fantasy writers are well known for not having a good understanding of what they write. Things like having no understanding of how economies work, to little knowledge of horses, foods, swords, armor, ships, fighting limitations and environmental knowledge. It's a well known criticism, and the genre cops a lot of flak for it. Which in turn inspires books and web pages like this one http://dawnrossauthor.wordpress.com/201 ... asy-novel/

I remember reading how John Scalzi almost put down Rothfuss's novel because five bowls of stew were served on page 4. Stew being the most cliche of all fantasy world meals. ("Not a 'hearty stew' fantasy!" Scalzi wrote).

So please do your research. You don't have to know everything, but if you write a story where swords 'cut through mail' and axes 'chop through plate armor', I'll have the urge to stop reading right there. It's not about limiting creativity, it's about building a world people can believe, and lose themselves in.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#13 Post by Mad Harlequin »

planktheory wrote:J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is another one that very little research had to be done.
I'm going to go ahead and object to this, actually. The Harry Potter books contain more than a few references to mythological creatures and objects and legendary persons. For example, Nicolas Flamel was a real person. His reputation as an alchemist was an invention that occurred after his death. To be able to utilize so much material properly takes quite a lot of research, I think.
Cith wrote:I'd like to add to this. High fantasy writers are well known for not having a good understanding of what they write. Things like having no understanding of how economies work, to little knowledge of horses, foods, swords, armor, ships, fighting limitations and environmental knowledge. It's a well known criticism, and the genre cops a lot of flak for it.
We must read different authors then! I don't think it's fair to say that high fantasy writers are "well known" for lacking understanding---certainly no more than authors writing in any other genre. Perhaps there are examples of weak writing from fantasy that are particularly memorable to you. But I don't necessarily think they're more common or prominent.
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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#14 Post by Applegate »

Cith wrote:I remember reading how John Scalzi almost put down Rothfuss's novel because five bowls of stew were served on page 4. Stew being the most cliche of all fantasy world meals. ("Not a 'hearty stew' fantasy!" Scalzi wrote).
I'd think that a little too petty. Telling authors to invent different foods just because stew is a staple food is nonconformist behaviour for the sake of it.

I do think everyone should write what they know, or at the very least know what they're writing about. It adds credibility and believability. An author who writes about something mundane as a car accident is easily distinguishable from someone who writes about that same car accident but has neither research nor experience to back him up. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter has a fantasy setting mixed in with a real world setting, and she's gone through some trouble to come up with a variety of explanations. I'd imagine she did some research on owls, banking and how to run a school to come up with various elements.

While Stephanie Meyer couldn't have experienced real life vampires, and the ones from fiction don't quite agree with her versions, she could've done research into teen culture, for example.
Isaac Asimov was a scientist with a damn good grasp what was technologically feasible and what not, but he wrote detective mysteries too, and I'm quite certain he never worked as a crime scene investigator.
And in this case, writing a good crime novel requires you to at least research whether the method by which the crime is perpetrated is believable and possible. Nothing is more frustrating than an impossible crime in the most literal sense of it, and then the author expects you (and his detective) to solve it regardless.

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Re: Three writing tips you shoudn't listen to

#15 Post by Mad Harlequin »

Applegate wrote:I do think everyone should write what they know, or at the very least know what they're writing about. It adds credibility and believability. An author who writes about something mundane as a car accident is easily distinguishable from someone who writes about that same car accident but has neither research nor experience to back him up.
Exactly right. This is why, in trying to write my own work (an ongoing pursuit), I've made every effort to learn how particular events in history are interpreted by different people.
While Stephanie Meyer couldn't have experienced real life vampires, and the ones from fiction don't quite agree with her versions, she could've done research into teen culture, for example.
I'm not sure she intended this, but . . . well, bat guano sparkles because of the bats' insect-rich diet. The indigestible chitin exoskeletons make their excrement sparkle. :lol: (I realize this doesn't add to the thread. I just wanted to share a fun fact.)
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