There is no end to the little rules and hints that can help writers out.

I have a number of them in my head, but since you guys are different people and many of you far more experienced, I believe you have lots to contribute. It would be great if we could make a list of big things, little things and hints out of the posts of this thread later as a simple guidebook.

Please share your valuable experience!
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I'll start by listing a few things I (think I) know and some I learned while on this forum:

- avoid wandering POV
- introduce places, objects and abilities as you use them rather than using them without explanation; do not postpone explaining things too much
- avoid the present tense, except in poems, short stories or if you are absolutely certain you should use it - when in doubt use past tense
- avoid repetitions
- replace "said" with other words wherever possible

Learn the rules.
Understand the rules.
Embrace the rules.
Write by the rules.
And then, if that doesn't work, break the rules. At least you will know what you are doing.

An excellent topic...good for reviewing what we think. (And what we think is forever changing) My Top Ten in no particular order...

1. That is bad. Kill it. Had is bad. Kill it. As is dangerous, use with care.

2. Adverbs are to be avoided, 9 times out of 10. Adjectives should be questioned before being allowed to stay.

3. Said is your friend. People don’t laugh, hiss, or giggle or chuckle sentences. They do say, say, say and say sentences.

4. Start with a hook to get your reader reading, and leave a golden coin on every page.

5. Use normal words.

6. If you don’t enjoy what you’re writing, the reader won’t enjoy what they’re reading.

7. Your writing will improve quicker if you critique other people’s writing, than it will by having them critique yours.

8. It doesn’t matter how many times you check for typos, you won’t catch them all. Don’t trust your spellchecker to do it for you.

9. What you read will affect what you write, and the more you read, the more you’ll write.

10. Your writing is never as good as you think it is, and never sucks as much as you think it does.


-----Bizzy-----

I'll start by listing a few things I (think I) know and some I learned while on this forum:

- avoid wandering POV

Right - only one person is allowed to speak.

- introduce places, objects and abilities as you use them rather than using them without explanation; do not postpone explaining things too much

So if somebody's got a gun on the mantelpiece, it's not to be mentioned till you fire it?

- avoid the present tense, except in poems, short stories or if you are absolutely certain you should use it - when in doubt use past tense

OK - everything I have, I'll change to had ... rather than I'm about to fire off the gun on the mantelpiece, it will be 'I fired off the gun that WAS on the mantelpiece. It's now down at the local cop shop, tagged as evidence.

- avoid repetitions

Yes ... avoid repetitions.

- replace "said" with other words wherever possible

"SHIT!" he barked, as he ordered the farter into the men's room.

My rules:

If it feels good, do it.

If it feels good, do it.

If it feels good, do it.

:-)

Oh, how I wish we had a 'Like' button :)

Never start a story with dialogue.

Never make your hero/heroine famous, an artist/singer/model/actor

If you have a typo in your manuscript you'll be rejected

Never start a sentence with "And" or "But"

Always avoid....

Basically anything that starts with "Always" and "Never" are rules that blow. There is no absolute. There's a "usually it's a good idea to..." but Always? Never? Pfft. Never. ;) Are there "guidelines" and suggestions to help strengthen your writing? Absolutely. But I think it's just experience and time that help you sort out the helpful from the junk.

JT

Hmm, I am wondering about "said" now after Bizzy's comment:

People do "reply", "ask", "respond", "interject", "shout",... Why do we need "said" all that much? Or is it a matter of using it once every now and then but never twice?

As for the advice of doing what feels right - if one doesn't have any instinct for that they shouldn't be writing in the first place (my opinion). But are there any craft (down to Earth) aspects that can help recognizing the right and the wrong?

And I correct my "Always avoid" and make it "Usually it's a good idea to" like Jewels suggested :)

Anything more to throw in the hotpot? It would rock if we could really come up with a little annotated guidebook (where even the controversy has a place in the form of potentially opposing quotes).

This could pretty much be the first or the last paragraph of such a guidebook - good one :D

Just going by what I've heard editors and agents say when it comes to "said" -- it's an 'invisible word' that readers will read without really seeing. It's non-invasive and sort of the "default" dialogue tag. They basically say that, sure, you can switch it up with an asked, replied, told, explained, etc., but the idea that you should "never use said" is bull. Their advice mostly consisted of: take a look and see if you need a speech tag at all. If you do, don't be afraid to use the word said.

JT

Hmm so should we omit the thing about "said" altogether then and turn it into "use speech tags only where necessary"?

Found a funny little article about this btw:

http://writingfornewbies.blogspot.com/2009...peech-tags.html

By time I round readin' that, ech, I plain lost interest, 'til we get to the last part, anyway. Who wants to write insida Bizzy's plexiglass box? :wacko:

Yeah, probably, or at least personally, they only serve to break my fun in suspension otherwise.

The final section of that page made my bowels uneasy. They say it’s all right to say:

"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'm sorry," she shouted.
"I'm sorry," she admitted.
"I'm sorry," she whimpered.

And yeah, maybe they’re right, but personally, I feel though I wouldn’t baulk at ‘whispered’ or ‘shouted’ (in the right context), ‘admitted’ is just replacing a ‘said’ for the sake of it (if someone says they’re sorry, they’re already admitting it)…but ‘whimpered’? OMGG, no.

When I first started writing seriously, I thought using words like ‘whimpered’ added to the drama and helped the reader visualise the scene in my head. These days, when I read that sort of thing, it throws me out the story and comes over as melodramatic rather than dramatic. Whimpering is rather sad and pathetic and holes. Show me them being sad and pathetic and hopeless instead of making me chuckle…unless of course you’re trying to make me chuckle.


-----Bizzy-----

Every time someone lists such writing, um, suggestions, I feel challenged to break them all.

Roving POV -- If I haven't already done this, I sure feel an itch and twinkle to do so. Imagine, for example, being at a funeral, and catching the fleeting thoughts of all the people at the gravesite, one of whom -- did it! *rubbing mental hands together in anticipation* -- this could be fun!

Did I study the rules? Of course I did, with professors and without professors, with and without editors, and through 40 years of drivel scribbling. One of my "mentors" was a friend of Tolkien, and mentored Larry McMurtry. Hey, I've got, what, five books in rather more "appropriate" styles. But no real enthusiasm to market them.

Who last read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? (Tom Robbins) How about Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible (Gods what writing!!!)

Do so, then do a new list.

Whatever you write and however you write -- do it spectacularly.

Annie

hm, takin that in, above from Bizzy, agreed, and this, Annie, in regards to rules is spOt on for me, though I can imagine a roving pov being subject to the debate of application, in your forinstance here, it's one outta the park in an illustration, brilliant.:)

I guess it has to be what others in this thread already described as "know exactly what you are doing". Like... you know the basic rules and choose to break them in a controlled and calculated way. The question is - can we apply constraints for such exceptions?

I think you need to learn the fundamental building blocks of solid writing. You do need to understand what constitutes a perspective shift and why hopping from head to head to head (I've seen people do it in the same sentence) is a confusing thing, what Show vs. Tell is all about, etc, etc, etc. Getting published is hard enough without handicapping yourself by *not* learning those fundamentals. Are there exceptions? Of course there are. There always will be. But saying you don't have to know these fundamentals (not saying that anyone here is saying that, I'm using "you" universally here) or that you can write however you want and expect not to get rejection letters isn't helping the pursuit of publication either.

I guess it's just try to let common sense be your guide.

JT

Then this thread should be a list of those fundamental rules/building block I'd say :)

Anything else that has been left out so far before doing a summary?

Exposition--SHOW don't tell

Characterisation--the main character should undergo a change, even if just a small one.

Titles--They're your first chance to hook the reader. Make the most of them.

All three very good points, Bizzy. Thanks ^^

Can you say it better than Sam?
(Mark Twain, that is)

If I still had my old Apple, I could retrieve the list we had of Mark Twain's advice posted on the BBS in, oh, about 1997 or so. Here's a quick review -- but there are still a lot more of his "choice" bits of advice out there... Oh, one I remember but can't find goes something like this: write a million words and throw them out, THEN start to write. (Someone help find the proper quote for me!)
Annie
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The TWAIN Rules

1. Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very.” Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
2. Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
3. The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.
4. Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
5. It was by accident that I found out that a book is pretty sure to get tired along about the middle and refuse to go on with its work until its powers and its interest should have been refreshed by a rest and its depleted stock of raw materials reinforced by lapse of time.
6. Great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammar.
7. As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
8. I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
9. Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her in and let her scream.
10. I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
11. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
12. The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.
13. You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

As Regards Fiction:
1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. The episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
3. The people 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.
4. The people in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
5. When the people of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. When the author describes the character of a person in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. When a person talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a [slave] minstrel in the end of it.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. People of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. Characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.
12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.

You know, I've come across those several times over the years and they crack me up every time. I hope those who knew the man, appreciated the genius in their midst.

-----Bizzy-----

Lol, that's an incredible leave, Annie, coming back to that. :D

I'm sure some, 'course, absolutely. :)

What are some that first come to mind?

I'm a big fan of doing this, though I do admit doing it to much is very obviously too much. I use 'and' more than 'but', but still, I like both. I even started a short story with 'And', and then started quite the debate on the old old WBBS about whether that was kosher or not. It was for a class, and I went with it, and I can't remember how the teacher guy felt about it. Man, school was a long time ago (not really, but it seems that way...)

What do you mean "we", white man?

Honestly -- the way to learn to write is to write. I don't believe there are any shortcuts. Yes, there's advice; yes, there are lessons to be learnt on route. Some things work, some don't. I don't think learning via "constraints" (how on earth does one constrain an enthusiastic young writer, and why on earth would anyone want to?) are as effective as learning from one's own mistakes.

Instead of constraints or rules or "how to write for dummies" (which is what I'm beginning to sound like, I apologize for this), instead urge --

Patience.
Practice, practice, practice.
Self-forgiveness.
READ, for heaven's sake, read challenging works of writing and fiction and learn to read critically.

Don't simply ban starting sentences with conjunctions (for example) -- read and figure out why this construction does or doesn't work.

If you're really into research, read some of the cognitive scientists on how the brain interprets language (eg. Stephan Pinker has some great "public friendly" books on this).

Don't look for short cuts; take the scenic route.

Any flash fiction coming around this week? Love it, but I suck there.

Annie

So much lore popping up my head is spinning. That's a good thing though. With time this could get really comprehensive. Worst case there won't be any guidebook at all but I believe people who take the time to just read this thread should already profit greatly from all the pearls you left in it ^^