My first advice is that you should fall in love with words, languages, and storytelling. Your language both limits and liberates you. Know how it works. Be a serious student of words, sentences, paragraphs, catchphrases, proverbs, tropes, neologisms, alliteration, rhyme, syllables, phonemes, definitions, propositions, arguments, fallacies, and speech-acts. Be a lover of the best of them; be the nemesis of the worst. If you do not care about your language \u2014 if you are not interested in what words can do and not do, and what they can be twisted into doing \u2014 then you should try a different field of art.<\/p>\n
Find the words in your language that can do what you need done. If those words do not exist, invent them.<\/p>\n
Write as if every word is inevitable.<\/p>\n
I have two languages in which I\u2019m fluent: spoken English and written English. These are two different languages. Learn the difference; play in the space between them.<\/p>\n
Read what other people in your field are writing. Know the climate and the weather of the intellectual environment in which you are working. It is also the environment in which you are thinking. And it is the environment where your audience lives.<\/p>\n
Do your homework. Even fantasy fiction, which doesn\u2019t take place in the \u201creal\u201d world, requires research.<\/p>\n
Do not waste time, procrastinate, or distract yourself. But do not force the creative powers, and do not rush. Do whatever you must do to put yourself in the mind to create, and then take your time. Treat the work as if it is a living thing, with its own requirements, and its own gifts.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t write about magic, or technology, or political ideology, or the like, even if you\u2019re writing fantasy, sci-fi, or a thriller, or whatever. Instead, write about people \u2014 people who happen to live in a magical, or high-tech, or power-shifting world, as the case may be. Let these things stay mostly in the background, where they can serve the story about the people.<\/p>\n
Decide early which characters are smarter than others, stronger than others, more dominant than others, and why. Decide who looks up to whom, and who looks down on whom, and why. Even a fairy tale is full of power relations.<\/p>\n
And some of those power relations will not be obvious to the characters themselves.<\/p>\n
And some of those power relations will change.<\/p>\n
Be a serious student of human nature, even if there is no such thing.
\nBuild a world that readers would want to explore. Make sure part of it is inviting enough that readers would want to live there. The world doesn\u2019t have to be completely safe. It just has to be interesting.<\/p>\n
Characters are interesting because of the way they change over time. Write about how and why those characters change.<\/p>\n
If you are depending on the character\u2019s appearance to make him or her interesting, then you are not really writing; you are costume-designing. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with costume designing; but don\u2019t let it do all the work of character designing.<\/p>\n
For that matter, make all your characters interesting. Even the villains. Especially the villains. Nothing is worse than a boring villain.<\/p>\n
Write interesting heroes, too. Heroes who are unambiguously good are not truly interesting. Heroes who are conflicted, morally compromised, weak or foolish or afraid, or even sometimes un-heroic, are at least interesting. But if you write heroes who are in some way un-heroic, then be sure that they change in a way that redeems them.<\/p>\n
Unless, of course, you are writing an anti-hero. But in that case, you still need something in the hero that the reader can see in herself. Heroes, even anti-heroes, must be identifiable; that is, the reader can identify with her. That, too, can make them interesting. Let the reader see herself in an amazing place, doing amazing things.<\/p>\n
Characters have reasons for why they change. They might be simple reasons, silly reasons, illogical reasons, even selfish reasons that make your readers mad at them. But they have their reasons, nonetheless.<\/p>\n
Those reasons have to make sense. Readers will accept a foolish reason or a complex reason, but they won\u2019t accept an unintelligible reason.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what a story is, after all. A story is a character who changes over time.<\/p>\n
Write about characters who have problems. Sometimes the problem is the villain; sometimes it\u2019s an event in the world; but sometimes the problem is something within the hero.<\/p>\n
Problems have to be rational, too. They have to be the kind of problem that a reader could recognize in the real world. Even if it\u2019s the kind of problem that could only exist in a science-fiction futuristic world, or a magical fantasy world. It doesn\u2019t have to be complicated. It just has to be not-stupid.
\nThat, too, is part of what a story is. A story is a character with a problem.
\nAll characters have voices. Even the secondary and tertiary characters have voices. Make sure those voices are heard. Make sure they, too, are interesting. At the very least, give them names.<\/p>\n
If there are political or moral statements to be made, let the characters make them, from their own perspectives. Don\u2019t put it in the narration. Don\u2019t turn the whole story into a polemic.<\/p>\n
But do decide early how much the narrator will know. The reader will see only what the narrator reveals. So decide whether the narrator is omniscient or not, and decide what will happen \u201coff stage\u201d. Whether you write in first person or third person, decide whose point of view will be featured, and whose thoughts the reader will hear.<\/p>\n
Every character wants something. And every character needs to deal with other characters to get it. The different ways characters deal with each other to get what they need \u2014 whether it\u2019s cooperation, or aggression, or trade, or threats, or seduction, or whatever \u2014 is part of what makes them interesting.<\/p>\n
Every chapter must end on one of the following notes: an advancement of the plot, an important revelation about a character\u2019s life, a moment of peace and beauty, a decent cliffhanger.<\/p>\n
Keep the expositions short; and when they are done, up the drama.<\/p>\n
Let your most important phrases, proverbs, and statements appear in a character\u2019s dialogue, and not in the narration.<\/p>\n
Do not, do not, and I repeat DO NOT end the story using deus ex machina.
\nLet nothing get in the way of your writing time. Not even your best friends. Turn off your phone and internet while you\u2019re writing. Let friends and loved ones know you will be unreachable for a certain length of time. Be willing to decline invitations to parties or dates in order to make time to write. Writing is an inherently lonely activity. (It\u2019s reading, not writing, which is social.) If possible, write in a place where you can be fully alone. For my part, I find it almost impossible to write with anybody nearby, even if they\u2019re in another room and behind a closed door.<\/p>\n
While writing, don\u2019t play music with lyrics. You need the part of your brain that processes language to write your book. If you must have background music, choose instrumental music, or music in a language you don\u2019t understand. I usually write with classical music in the background, or with silence.<\/p>\n
Know who you are writing for. And \u201cwriting for yourself\u201d isn\u2019t enough. Have some person or group of people in mind. Use the work as a way of telling that person you love her.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t assume they will read it. In fact, assume they won\u2019t read it. That way you won\u2019t worry about pissing them off. So, write as if you are speaking to a particular person or a particular audience that you want to reach but probably never will.<\/p>\n
If that last \u201crule\u201d seems absurd, that\u2019s okay. Trust me when I tell you, it works.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be afraid to make cuts. Not all your work will be genius. A lot of it will suck. Just accept that a lot of the time, your work will suck, and You will suck. Except when you don\u2019t suck. So mercilessly cut out the parts that suck. Save them elsewhere if you think you might be nostalgic about them. It might be the case that a piece of writing sucks only because it\u2019s in the wrong place. The right place for it may present itself later.<\/p>\n
Avoid encouragement-memes. Avoid \u201ctips for writing\u201d articles that offer no more than cheerleading and self-esteem-building. You should be strong willed enough to motivate yourself without it. And that kind of help often makes people feel worse, not better, about their work. That said, it\u2019s okay to seek help and advice from others. You should seek that kind of help often. But look for specific practical help, not amorphous pop-psychology.<\/p>\n
Trust the intelligence of your readers. Write as if they are at least as smart as you are, and probably smarter. If you use a cheap trope in your story, assume your readers will see through it and that they will be pissed off. Don\u2019t play to the lowest common demonator. No, I did not mean to say \u2018denominator\u2019.<\/p>\n
Write to address yourself to something happening in the real world that you want to change. All good writing is activist writing. It wants to think about things in new ways. It wants to show us something that we might have never seen before, or that we might not want to see. Good writing wants us to do something or try something we might not have done, or tried. Write something which speaks to a real debate, a real controversy, a real injustice, a real problem, in the real world. I often find I write my best stuff when I am angry about something. Or when I am feeling pain.<\/p>\n
Following these rules won\u2019t make your book awesome, not on their own. You may be an awesome writer, but you still need an editor. Get one you trust. Then, get another. Find the right editor for the kind of book you\u2019re writing, and trust them.<\/p>\n
Write as if what you\u2019re writing doesn\u2019t matter at all \u2014 but if you don\u2019t write it, you will die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My first advice is that you should fall in love with words, languages, and storytelling. Your language both limits and liberates you. Know how it works. Be a serious student of words, sentences, paragraphs, catchphrases, proverbs, tropes, neologisms, alliteration, rhyme, … Continue reading