Never use “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. A short tip today, but nicely tangible. We’ve got one cliche, and one word that’s just overused. You figure out which is which. “All hell broke loose” is not a phrase I ever use, just naturally. It’s not descriptive enough. “Suddenly”, I do. My first stories used …
Writing time: aim at writing at least one hour a day. What will you give up to get this? Sleep? Social time? TV? For 28 years, Gene Wolfe held down a day job, mechanical engineer, and still wrote. Writing must be done. When it comes down to it, there’s nothing that will get writing done …
Avoid prologues. Prologues are backstory and can be dropped in anywhere. Fairly sound. I can’t say whether I’ve had much opportunity to use this in real life. Short stories shouldn’t have a prologue, and most novels I read don’t have one. I don’t have a problem with prologues myself. I enjoy reading them, and like …
Description is best when it involves all five senses. Especially smell, if its appropriate. The trick is knowing how much to reveal. Skimp on physical descriptions of people. Use the mind’s eye to see the key details and write those down. Leave the rest to be filled in by the reader. I learned this one …
Read the type of material you mean to write, for a wide range of ages, levels of seriousness, audiences, classics. This is a bit hard to decipher. I guess if I was Neil Gaiman, I’d read lots of stuff about myths, folk tales, and legends. This is not hard to do at a wide range …
Writing is telepathy. It is trying to communicate a message or image (both, really) from your mind to another person’s mind. No person will see exactly what your mind sees. It is the job of the writer to communicate as much as what is necessary, while leaving enough left out for the reader to have …
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Stories like The Collector (which involves a man who kidnaps a woman and stores her in his basement to get her to love him), are strange because the main protagonist is a psychopath. I haven’t read this story, but the summary makes me …
Rejection is not personal. Writers take it as personal because they consider their work as their identity. Publishing has a 98% rejection rate, often with random, but reasonable, justification. This is an almagamated piece of advice from John Scalzi who is known for pulling no punches on his opinions, especially about whiny writers. The two …
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Sound advice, but certainly not essential. I think there are ways this can be abused. For instance, I’ve noticed that sometimes, Stephen King for example, the narration will suddenly switch perspectives, because he …
New link on the sidebar – check out my library thing catalog. Since I’ve started my new work, I’ll be putting in some more Writing Advice columns in here, mostly to remind myself of the things I’m supposed to be doing as I’m writing. Come to grips with the fact that you’re not going to …