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 suddenly so much it became a like a word in a magic spell – meaningless. My problem was, how was I supposed to communicate that something happened unexpectedly and quickly? Writing doesn’t give you the luxury of timing. Right now, I just drop the suddenly, whenever I see it, without even looking at it. I’m…
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Writing Advice #11
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 besides sitting at keyboard or piece of paper and writing things down. The end. I think an hour a day is a bit scant, even for amateur writers. Most measure their progress by words. And if you can get 1,000 words a day, you’re doing good. Stephen King says that the more important thing here…
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Writing Advice #10: Prologues
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 writing them. I think the reason most people would put in a prologue is either to set the mood right away or if your story’s start isn’t zippy enough, you can put in an exciting prologue. Like in Jaws, we have the innocent swimmer going out, and then getting ripped apart by some unknown force.…
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Writing Advice #10
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 in 10th grade English, and employ it myself. When I have to write a description of something, I try to run down the list of five senses. The two most underused ones are smell and touch. Taste usually doesn’t apply, unless you want to have someone lick the mystery thingamajigger for some reason. Smell is…
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Writing Advice #9
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 of ages, seriousness, audiences, and classics. If I was Stephen King, it’s hard to find horror for a wide range of the above-mentioned criteria, unless you wanna read the Goosebumps books, but I don’t think he has debased himself to that. If you’re Audrey Niffenegger, what do you read? Dean Koontz and Louis L’Amour? Seems…
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Writing Advice #8
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 fun filling the gaps. The writer cannot be fully detailed, or the work becomes an instruction manual. This King’s first piece of advice in his book On Writing (after forty pages of biography). Therefore, we can presume that this is his most important message. I almagamated this from his three page introduction to ‘how to…
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Writing Advice #7
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 wonder how such a story could work, unless we have a Hannibal Lecter scenario. This writing advice seems complex and simple at the same time. Most often, it seems that your main character is the one you’re going to root for, because he’s the underdog, the one enduring all the hardships, the one who has…
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Writing Advice #6
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 most important ideas are “They consider their work as their identity”, and “98% rejection date”, and that percentage is implied to be “on a good day.” First, I think young/rookied writers often make a mistake of equating their work with them. I consider myself guilty of this, as I put a lot of myself into…
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Writing Advice #5
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 wants to bring out the drama, and use a stranger as an observer of something happening to the main character, usually when he’s dying or exploding or something. Problem is, the reader is suddenly confused by this switch of perspective. Who’s this guy? Why’s he important? Should I be paying attention to him? Anyone who…
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Writing Advice #4
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 be able to write at the same time & place all the time. Adjust and keep going. Writing on a train is great. Certainly true. I think this has to do with the Fear of Getting Started. I had this right before I started Black Hole Son, and before Blood 2. It’s that state where…