Advice for writers #5: hidden gems or crazy counsel? Good advice only when you’re discerning enough not to need it

Happy Christmas and the next in line in this series is:

“If something isn’t working, if you have a story that you’ve built and it’s blocked and you can’t figure it out, take your favourite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and cut it. It’s brutal, but sometimes inevitable” (Joss Whedon)

This is a variation on William Faulkner’s, ‘In writing, you must kill your darlings.’

Stephen King said it too, in his excellent book On Writing. His version is, ‘kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.’

Let’s be literal. You’ve written a book, an essay, a play, whatever... It isn’t quite right... What do you do? You cut out all the best bits. What are you left with? On the face of it, a pretty dire piece of prose.

But this was never meant to be taken literally in this way. Faulkner’s words, apparently, were said to someone who wrote ghastly pretentious prose and thought he was writing matchless literature – and hey, don’t we all start out that way? He was saying, take out the bits you think are the bee’s knees and it’ll be a better piece of work.

As you mature as a writer, learn the craft, pen many thousands of words and so on, you learn to be critical of your own work. It never hurts to have a fresh eye over it but if practice doesn’t make you far more discerning about what you’ve written then you’re probably in the wrong job. So, as advice to a seasoned writer this is literally saying, take out the good bits. That’s not great advice.

I’m sure all writers go off on tangents now and then, get caught up in a scene or a character and write beyond what is needed. I know I do. Sometimes it’s a great stretch of prose, but it just doesn’t belong where it was put. It might be at home in a later book or in a different type of writing. That’s the kind of ‘best bit’ that genuinely needs to be culled, but you have to recognise it for what it is.

The learning required is critical evaluation of your own writing – recognise the good from the bad, the self-indulgent from the necessary, the great piece of prose in the wrong place.

A generic piece of advice to ‘get rid of it if you think it’s any good’ might prove useful in a hit-or-miss way to a writer just setting out, but would become worse and worse advice as their writing skills developed. On the other hand, if their writing skills developed without the critical facility to recognise the drawbacks of this bit of advice, then there’s something seriously wrong.

So basically this is goodish advice, but only when you’ve learnt to be discerning enough not to need it.

Advice for writers #3 #4: hidden gems or crazy counsel? A book that is universally loved doesn’t exist

Continuing the advice for writers theme, here are two quotes that I believe come from the writers’ own experience more than any desire to generate clever soundbites. 

No one can challenge the success of either Harper Lee or JK Rowling, but is their advice generally applicable and useful beyond their own writing lives?

“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e. do not cave in to endless requests to have ‘essential’ and ‘long overdue’ meetings on those days” (J K Rowling)

Many people will relate to this one, not just writers. Anyone who works from home will recognise this issue. People ring for a chat, call round to see if you’ll go out shopping, bring children or dogs to your doorstep so you can, ‘Just keep an eye on them for half an hour.’ They wouldn’t do it if you worked from an office or in a factory, but that home context gets labelled as not *really* work, not *proper* work. 

Saying no isn’t the issue. The fact of the interruption can be hugely disruptive in itself. It might not be meetings, essential, overdue or otherwise, but yes, JK Rowling hits on a good point here. A writing day is not the same as a day off. Don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise.

“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide” (Harper Lee)

I see this one as more personal to Harper Lee and less applicable generally. Very few writers will be catapulted into stellar success and the public eye as quickly or as comprehensively as Harper Lee. Likewise the majority of writers will not have to put up with the levels of scepticism that she did with regard to whether or not she was the author of her own book.

The generalisation, in my view, is that those who take up a career in writing will find that they develop a thick hide. The more successful they become, the more people will read and comment on their work and not everyone will like it. Attitudes are subjective, the written word generates argument and debate - and so it should, it's a large part of how progress happens. That said, I wouldn’t advise anyone to work on the thickness of their hide before embarking on their career as a writer, but it’s as well to be aware that success will bring criticism. 

My own view: a book that is universally un-hated stirs so few emotions that it is more accurately described as universally unnoticed. A book that is universally loved doesn’t exist.

Advice for writers #1 #2: hidden gems or crazy counsel? I might be missing a philosophical gem

For the first in this series of looking at quotes from others I’ve picked two to unpack.

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly” and “The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written”

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly” (C J Cherryh)

Well, OK in a literal sense but what a waste of time. If you really take no trouble then that initial garbage might be as troublesome to ‘edit brilliantly’ as a blank piece of paper. There’s something here though. Stretching it the other way, the advice not to keep on polishing the current sentence until it’s perfect, but to plough on until the rough draft is complete, is not bad advice. 

Some writers would polish and polish and never get to paragraph two. JRR Tolkien almost didn’t let go of The Lord of the Rings because it wasn’t perfect. Some writers naturally polish as they draft and get the balance right. Valerie Wood rarely rewrites anything once she’s reached the end and she’s written enough books to be able to say it’s a successful technique for her.

Personally, I wouldn’t write garbage unless I was setting out to write garbage (for reasons of my own that are irrelevant here but might generate a new blog at some point). It might not be polished prose but I make sure that what I’ve written – scene, chapter, paragraph – is going in the right direction, before I go on. If I don’t do that, I know I might be led into a dead end from which I will have to do a lot of unwinding and rewriting. 

I probably hold the record for the most times that a 100k word novel has been rewritten from scratch (for reasons that would make yet another blog some other time) but I’d never walk into that trap by choice.

“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written” (Joyce Carol Oates)

Let’s be literal about this. Er ... yes it can. I’ve done it and I tend to plot my books before I write them, but I know plenty of successful authors who write by the seat of their pants and leap into a new venture solely on the basis of a good opening gambit and with no idea where it will lead.

Is there something in this? Does the act of finishing a book and later going back over the draft lead to a better opening? Does knowing the detail of the way it ends mean that a crisper opening sentence can be crafted? Maybe... sometimes... It’s always worth a look. But... the first sentence *can’t* be written until the final sentence is written? Nah, sorry. 

I might be missing a philosophical gem here but I’m sending that quote to the trash can.

Advice for writers: hidden gems or crazy counsel

A variety of people are asked to give advice on writing. Many are successful writers themselves, so we should listen to what they say in the almost certain knowledge that they’re right. Right?

Wrong! Don’t ever fall into the trap of assuming someone is going to be right. Especially not if you’re a writer. As a writer research and checking should be embedded in your psyche.

Many sayings and words of wisdom become entrenched in the accepted canon of wise words for writers. Some are gems that deserve their place. Some are utter bilge. And many, maybe most, comprise a mix of good sense and dodgy advice. Just look what happens when you unpack that old chestnut, “show don’t tell”. http://pennygrubb.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/what-is-it-with-show-and-tell.html

It all got me to wondering about this professional guidance. What is more likely to stick in the collective consciousness – great advice or soundbite without substance?

Consider that scary phrase ‘no smoke without fire’. People have lost friends, jobs, even their lives because of that one. Yet surely everyone, even if they’ve never struggled to start a fire with damp timber, knows that smoke can billow in huge dense clouds without the glimmer of a flame. How many times has a malicious accusation been made and an innocent party automatically labelled guilty without thought, evidence or due process because ‘there’s no smoke without fire’?

No smoke without fire is the refuge of the lazy thinker.  And writers shouldn’t be lazy thinkers. Why record the words at all if you can’t be bothered to think them through. I don’t want writers to be the sorts of people who gawp glazed-eyed, blank-brained and declare that ‘It must be true cos it said so on the telly’.

No smoke without fire does not come under the general banner of advice for writers. I’m using it to make a point, but I want to pick a few of the sayings that are doled out as good writing guidance and take a closer look as I unpack them, looking at what they really mean and whether they constitute good advice or not.

Will I find cleverly constructed phrases that roll beautifully off the tongue then crumble to inane idiom, or will I find genuine gems of insightful instruction?

Who knows? I don’t.

If I work for long enough I expect to unearth both those extremes and everything in between. But I won’t know until I have a heap of unpacked maxims exposed for what they really are.

Watch this space, and if you know of a saying that particularly chimes for you, for good or bad, then please let me know.

To plan or not to plan

[This short article first appeared as part of the online launch of The Writers' Toolkit which remains available on Facebook and contains articles, tips, mini-tutorials and editorial comments on work that authors submitted for critique prior to the launch]

To plan or not to plan

There’s no rule. Some writers plan in such detail they have an almost book-length plan before they start to write. Others just go by the seat of their pants. It really comes down to what works for you.

I once wrote a book on the basis of half an idea that I liked the feel of. I simply ran with it and wrote. The book became so tangled that by the time I finished it, I didn't even know who had been murdered, though someone had. And the intended murderer had a cast-iron alibi that I couldn't break. 

Years later a publisher accepted a later book in this same series and wanted me to rewrite that original tangle of words so that the start of the story could be published too. What a nightmare! I rewrote that book from scratch more times than I like to remember. I changed the viewpoint, the style, even the main character. I sorted out the plot and eventually I surfaced with a book that works.

I learnt my lesson from that. I don’t plot meticulously like Jeffrey Deaver or Agatha Christie, but I always know how the story will finally untangle. But I'm not saying that everyone should avoid that seat-of-the-pants style just because it got me in deep water. It’s what works for you that matters. 

The discussion continues in the comments thread following the original article.

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When is a manuscript ready to send out?

[This short article first appeared as part of the online launch of The Writers' Toolkit which remains available on Facebook and contains articles, tips, mini-tutorials and editorial comments on work that authors submitted for critique prior to the launch

The Danuta referred to below is Danuta Reah, co-author of The Writers' Toolkit.
Dyane is one of the authors who submitted work to the event]

When is a manuscript ready to send out?

Danuta is spot on in her answer to Dyane’s general writing question. There will always be things that could be changed. And there will always be readers who don't like the book. That's fiction. In the history of the world there is no universally liked work of fiction. You certainly shouldn't try to please everyone because you can't.

Agents tend to say 'Get it perfect' or (more realistically) 'as close to perfect as you can'. There's a lot in that. Some things you can do mechanically, like spelling, layout, proofreading for typos, quote marks in the right places etc. Building the story into a compelling read is what you do over a long apprenticeship. 

All ‘overnight success’ stories happened after a lot of hard work (the occasional ghost-written celebrity memoire excepted). 

You learn to find your writing voice. I had found several voices and was in discussion with a publisher, doing rewrites on one of my novels, when a completely different book suddenly took off – totally unexpectedly and from the back of a cupboard – and I was back into a different writing voice; one that I thought would never see the light of day. My first published novel was rewritten from scratch many times. I genuinely can’t remember how many. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have had an easier time of it.

I’ve tried to write down what helped me to publication. All those ideas, people, techniques that I used along the way are summarised on my website. The Writers’ Toolkit is a part of this – a more detailed explanation of the specific techniques that not only helped me to learn to write but that I also use now.

The discussion continues in the comments thread following the original article.

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Milking the action and emotion

[This short article first appeared as part of the online launch of The Writers' Toolkit which remains available on Facebook and contains articles, tips, mini-tutorials and editorial comments on work that authors submitted for critique prior to the launch]

Milking the action and emotion: never summarise the dramatic moments

Dramatic moments can make your book stick in a reader’s mind. It’s worth getting the most out of them. The thing with dramatic moments is that they happen quickly and can be described in few words e.g.

• Jo teetered at the cliff edge for a couple of seconds before regaining his balance.
• Maisie suddenly realised who it was and flung herself into his arms.
• The car pulled out in front of him without any warning and Horace drove into the side of it.

But when writing a dramatic moment into your fiction, remember that for Jo, Maisie or Horace these are not split second events. Time will slow. Seconds will crawl by. They will experience a whole range of emotions and feelings – terror, shock, amazement, disbelief, relief. They will even be analysing the situation as it happens and might be aware of the faces of other people nearby (frozen in shock perhaps). This is true also of those who witness moments of high drama such as sudden car crashes. They too run the gamut of emotion as the events unfold. This happens because the brain works at lightning speed, way faster than physical reactions. If you’ve ever been driving and had someone pull out in front of you, giving you maybe a third of a second before the impact, you will know the reality of ‘thinking distance’ – an absolute awareness of what is happening whilst your body simply cannot react.

And if you can get right inside the head of the character to whom the dramatic event is happening, you will write some compelling prose.

You can employ techniques of language and structure e.g. fragments, short sentences, to give realism. You must take care not to overdo the internal analysis. You don’t want the reader suddenly to think, wait a minute, this guy’s been teetering on this cliff edge for half an hour!

If you have a viewpoint character in a bit of a sticky situation that is going to lead up to a big dramatic moment, stay with that character’s actions, feelings and emotions every step of the way almost second by second. But when you get to the real drama – the event that in reality will be over in seconds – get in even tighter. Go millisecond by millisecond with your character and make the reader experience the event with the character.

You will be surprised at how a single sentence such as ‘The car pulled out in front of him without any warning and Horace drove into the side of it’, can turn into several paragraphs or even pages of compelling prose as you take the reader through the event as though they are experiencing it themselves.

The discussion continues in the comments thread following the original article.

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