Here’s some great writing tips for new and established writers …
1. A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people - Thomas Mann
Why should it be more difficult? We write for a critical audience, for people who have paid to read what we have written. So we don’t just bash out any old thing. We have to learn the craft. In other words we have to …
2. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. - Kurt Vonnegut
And this is why it’s difficult. As writers we sometimes get so obsessed with how our writing makes us feel that we forget that it isn’t about us. No writer is an atheist. We know that the reader is God.
3. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the ACTION - Kurt Vonnegut again
I hardly dare contradict Kurt Vonnegut but I’d even put it another way: action and revealing the character are the same thing.
4. Avoid prologues. Which can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. A prologue in a novel is back-story, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. - Elmore Leonard
Put my hand up for guilty on this one. In the early days I used to love prologues, I thought they were literary. They’re not. Most of the time they’re an excuse for your reader to put your book down and read something else that actually starts at the beginning.
5. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. - Mark Twain
This seems obvious. But it really isn’t. If the manuscript isn’t working, perhaps we should think about what that thar southern gentleman just said.
6. Self-discipline is enormously important . You can’t rely on inspiration or a novel would take ten years. - JG Ballard
And we would all have been poorer without Empire of the Sun. When I first started writing in TV, a successful sitcom writer gave me this advice: ‘Sit down at your desk every morning at 9pm and wait for inspiration. If it’s not there by ten past, start without it.’
7. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. - Margaret Attwood
It’s true, isn’t it? We all often complain about publishers, editors, agents, critics etc. But we chose this over accountancy, crab fishing in Alaska, prostitution and vagrancy etc. It was our call, after all.
8. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
- Henry David Thoreau
This is the advice I love best. Ultimately our body of work will define who we are and what we stand for, and we don’t become that by just dreaming about it.
8½. Never ever quit. Never. You don’t know how far away you are from where you wanna be. That’s from me. It’s only half a great writing tip because I don’t qualify as a great writer - so that doesn’t quality as a great writing tip. But in my experience perspiration is every bit as important as inspiration.
9½. Try never get drunk outside your own house - Jack Kerouac
He really offered this as writing advice. And I’m really still working on it …
I’ve just finished a brand new presentation for my book: ANASTASIA on a new medium called Slideshare.
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Boy, howdy, am I ever Number 6. I’ve been working on the first paragraph of my supposed “novel” for NaNoWriMo since 11/01/2012. I’m sticking to rhetoric and ranting. Nice post, Colin.
Can I make a suggestion? If you think you’re a pantser, maybe you’re really not - try spending more time on the planning. Or else skip the first paragraph altogether and start somewhere else, a place where you’re inspired. (Your first paragraph may not be the real beginning after all.) Anything to get you up and running. And never mind about NaNoWriMo, maybe it’s a pressure you didn’t need. I hope you don’t mind me butting in and feel free to ignore - but they are both pieces of advice people gave me once that were really helpful to me …
Love these quotes and yours too! They are all so true.
Your slide show is fantastic, but I have a question. Could you email me at [email protected]?
Thanks for coming by the party today or in your case, tomorrow!
Thanks Susie. Never sure with the dateline if I was at the party yesterday or tomorrow. But that’s always the sign of a good party.
Hahaha! It surely is!
Thank goodness for Susie and her cool parties! I bumped into you there and have been dawdling here for a while on your blog. Just went to Amazon and “liked” your fatherhood book. Amazing how the internet seems to have made everything fair game … never mind … we shall overcome!
Thank you Patricia! I appreciate it. The internet has been a gamechanger, mostly for good, but every now and then …
OMG Patricia - the photo on your blog! Used to sit there on the wall at Antibes for hours with my friend Eli and drink a bottle of wine and watch the sunset when I was living there. It’s one of the best views in the world!
Ok so I was doing pretty well until 9 1/2. Fuck. Guess I’d better go back to prostitution.
So hi, I’m Melanie. Found you on Susie’s blog party. Love this post and joined your site. Check out mine as well and perhaps you’ll feel inspired to return the favor and follow my blog as well.
Happy blogging!
http://www.journeytowildness.blogspot.com
I’d like to go back to prostitution but even when I’m not selling a single book I still make more writing. Doesn’t Suesie throw great parties? It’s hard just to fight your way to the bar …
Well, golly gee, I’m not really a writer. I mean, I write…..but we can’t all be best sellers. HA. I think number 9.5 puts me out and makes me crave a margarita. Whoop! Whoop! Swinging by from Susie’s place, and having a blast.
You did well, Angelia. I only got to number one and craved alcohol. And don’t you love Susie’s place?
Saw you at Susie’s and was pleasantly surprise to find you there great tips can’t wait to read more from you so I followed ya.. I am new to this blogging world but I am loving it.
Thank you for following! And if you’re new to this, you’ll enjoy the blogging world - you get to meet some great people, like Susie.
All great advice…but I agree 100% that you can’t write if you’re not living. So many experiences - that you can only have if you live your life - help to make stories better. And so many can spark ideas for scenes. I just told someone last night that a funny scene in a book was loosely based on my youngest sneaking into a bottle of garlic gel caps when she was two…and eating 63 of them (yes, sixty-three…it was a new bottle and I counted - and she chewed every one of them - the house smelled like a jar of pickles!). It scared the heck out of me and I wound up calling poison control…and getting laughed at. I’d gotten the bottle because she’d started to come down with a cold. Amazingly enough, every symptom disappeared after that. So yeah, life experiences can really help make our stories better.
And I guess you didn’t have any problems with vampires either, Kristy! I’ve worked true stories into my books from time to time - and they’re the ones people tell me are too far-fetched!
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Talking of vampires, how can number 5 work with vampires and the like. It doesn’t really matter. I think this is a great list. I particularly like number 4. I hate dumps of info at the beginning of stories.
You have a butterfly mind, Kerry. I don’t know that the vampire genre was invented when Twain was around. Or Zombies. I’m glad you liked the list, I myself am over prologues now. Had a good talk to myself in the mirror: If you can’t start at chapter one then it’s not the beginning!
You are not the first person to notice I have the mind of a butterfly. Many have expressed it less kindly. I no longer need a mirror to talk to myself, in fact it’s better if I don’t have one.