MORE TIPS FROM WRITERS
G'day folks,
Here are some more wise quips from folks who have been around for a while. Hope they help you.
Jonathan Franzen
1 The reader is a friend, not an
adversary, not a spectator.
2 Fiction that isn't an author's
personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for
anything but money.
3 Never use the word
"then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose.
Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to
the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4 Write in the third person unless
a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5 When information becomes free
and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along
with it.
6 The most purely autobiographical
fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical
story than "The Metamorphosis".
7 You see more sitting still than
chasing after.
8 It's doubtful that anyone with
an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
9 Interesting verbs are seldom very
interesting.
10 You have to love before you can
be relentless.
Esther Freud
1 Cut out the metaphors and
similes. In my first book I promised myself I wouldn't use any and I slipped up
during a sunset in chapter 11. I still blush when I come across it.
2 A story needs rhythm. Read it
aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.
3 Editing is everything. Cut until
you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.
4 Find your best time of the day
for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't
matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.
5 Don't wait for inspiration.
Discipline is the key.
6 Trust your reader. Not everything
needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it,
they'll know it too.
7 Never forget, even your own
rules are there to be broken.
Neil Gaiman
1 Write.
2 Put one word after another. Find
the right word, put it down.
3 Finish what you're writing.
Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4 Put it aside. Read it pretending
you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and
who like the kind of thing that this is.
5 Remember: when people tell you
something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When
they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are
almost always wrong.
6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or
later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move
on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon.
Keep moving.
7 Laugh at your own jokes.
8 The main rule of writing is that
if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do
whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But
it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written.
Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are
any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Clancy's comment: There ya go. Worth reading, eh?
I'm ...
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