Some writing proverbs of mine...

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Currently feeling a bit sick, hence the lack of me jumping onto the chats and such, but I should be getting better eventually (especially if I'm going to finish HTF's birthday video or DitR by the anniversary).

In the meantime, where are my most common writing proverbs. I repeat them a lot in tutoring sessions, but here they are for archival purposes...

  • The more complex/important the character is to your story, the more awesome their introduction should be. Show them doing something they would only do, and also show them reacting to something that requires a little extra effort from them in a way that shows how they use their extra effort in a unique way. If your character isn't that important, don't give them an awesome intro since we'll be wanting to see more of that character.
  • Don't copy the ideas of others: do the thing that others will want to copy. I call this "the anti-cliche rule." If you saw another story and thought, "I should totally do that," only give your unique spin on things. If you plan to just rehash what the other story did, delete the story idea from your very brain, because people will say, "Gee, this seems like a ripoff of that other story."
  • Every scene/act/story must show a shift in thematic value, i.e. something of importance must happen in the scene. Imagine a spectrum from positive to negative, with positive being all the things we want (love, happiness, health) and negative being all of the bad things (hatred, sadness, death). Naturally, whenever you move from the positive to the negative or negative to positive, it's going to generate emotions. For example, if you shift from hate to love when two characters reconcile, that's going to generate some positive feelings depending on the context. If a character moves from happiness to sadness, we're going to feel the impact of the devastating event that caused that. When characters talk backstory for the sole purpose of informing audiences, the value never moves, and if your scene sits at one end of the spectrum and never moves, there's no emotion. It is possible to divulge exposition if it affects the scene, but if it's only there to inform the audience, get rid of it: it's unnatural and kills the pace.
  • Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. While some audience members really are idiots, they're a vocal minority. Most of them will instantly pick up on facts about setting, characters, theme, and more. They might even point out things you never thought of and provide valuable information. Give them the benefit of the doubt and write your story as if they'll understand not only as much as you do, but more than you do.
  • Give every character at least one awesome moment. Don't let the main character hog the spotlight: ensure that every character gets a chance to be awesome. If you get the chance (because not every story will let you do it), make sure they also get a moment to be funny, do something heartwarming, get into a scary situation, or in a sad situation. Explore what Blake Snyder called "the emotional color wheel": don't let your character just be a one-note tune, but let them explore their whole emotional range.
  • If you must use a large cast, give each important character at least three scenes. Large casts are exceedingly difficult to write, but if you must write for a large cast, use each character three times. Use them once, and we wonder what happened to them. Use them twice, and while it seems like a nice bookend effect if they're different the second time around, we could still more of them. Three times lets us find patterns in behavior, especially if each time uses the character differently.
  • Stop planning your stories and start writing them. I believe in outlining and focusing on story structure, but these things can only get you so far: you must actually sit down to write your stories or else they remain intangible ideas. Pitching ideas to others may be a good way to gauge them, but unless you actually put them down on paper, they're worthless. Actually start writing, or else you'll start to annoy people with this idea you seem to refuse to transform into a story.
  • Use your bad reviews. God bless bad reviews. There is nothing that will help you grow as a writer or even grow your story than a bad review. They give free hints, tips, and strategies for how to bring your writing to the next level. They can tell you how to rewrite your stories or change the direction of a current one. God help the poor souls who use a bad review as an excuse to end their story, abandon it, and then say, "That story was horrible and I have no idea why I wasted so much time on it!" It's only horrible because you didn't use the bad review: if you did, you could make it a great story. 
  • Know where the story is going. In the end, all writing is done by the seat of our pants. When we're outlining, we're merely just outlining by the seat of out pants, and when we write, we're filling in the description by the seat of our pants. However, outlining is mainly to give us a direction to head in: no direction means the story will get lost and we write ourselves into a corner. If we're going by no outlines at all, we still need a direction: we must know what the point is, where it will end, and what emotions we want the audience to feel on the journey.
  • Find the ordinary in the extraordinary, and find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Advice from publisher Donald Maass, take a normal setting and look for the neat little details that make the world unique, and look for familiar things in strange and fantastic settings. This also follows my personal favorite teacher Robert McKee's advice: we hear stories to explore a new world and, at the same time, find ourselves within it. This is why the fantasy and sci-fi genres are fun: you get to explore a unique world that feels close to home while seeing ordinary people getting to experience amazing things.
  • If you're not having fun writing it, something is wrong. My improv mentor Asaf Ronen gave this advice for improv theater: "Don't give yourself the s#!%&y script. Give yourself the script you would want to play." He gave this advice in context to improvisers who were merely going through the motions to play the scene safely, but these "safe" scenes weren't funny nor interesting. When they gave themselves permission to act goofy, crazy, and have fun doing outrageous things they could justify and use in the story, not only did they have fun, but the scenes that came out were amazing. The same applies to writing: if you're not having fun writing your scene, make it fun: get input from others while writing, trying different writing styles or structures, make it more outrageous or see how much you can get away with using little as possible.

I'm probably forgetting a few things, so if I am, I'll add them as I remember them.

© 2013 - 2024 Spaztique
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oldewine's avatar
"Stop planning your stories and start writing them."

I'm kinda guilty of that but mostly because I lack the time to actually write them so I'm stuck to planning them until I have time to actually write them.