"Tragedy and trauma makes your character more interesting."

I have literally had a player say this to my face as reasoning for the character's comically tragic (not to mention nonsensical) backstory xD

Personally I prefer characters with a more average/uneventful backstory nowadays. I find a lot of our tragic friends end up changing not-so-much throughout the course of the story, with all their development is stuck in their past. In my opinion, it's better to put only as much as you need to support their personality in their backstory, and leave the most interesting bits for the actual IC. Putting all the conflict and suffering in the past leaves so little to be played out in the future! (Basically, leave your tragedy, your trauma, your hardcore development for the IC, IMO. It's more fun that way)

Alright, I feel like I'm going to slay a sacred cow here.

" Show, don't tell." should be changed to " Show and tell."

SDT was always suppose to be a pair of training wheels that you ditched when you learned how to write proper.

"Don't ever use 'said' when a character is speaking."

Sometimes characters just say things. Said is fine. Use it.

There are more interesting alternatives TBH.

There are more interesting alternatives TBH.

The problem with thesaurus-shorthands like these is that they often feel very unnatural in most people's writing and takes away from the inherent simplicity that makes it pleasing to read in the first place. A vast majority of them go unused because despite appearing elegant on the surface, they're actually clumsy as hell to pour into sentences.

(I don't actually have anything to add to the conceit of this thread because I can't remember any genuinely and blatantly bad writing advice I've gotten.)

@Ammokkx I actually like to skip said and just describe an action, which works for the most part.

Bill pointed at the stain on the floor. "Who did this?"

Bob looked around with a worried expression on his face. "Uh, the cat!" He stammered.

"The cat?" Bill placed his hands on his hips. "Bob, we don't own a cat!"

"It was a stray cat!" He folded his hands under his chin. "It got inside yesterday!"

"Bob!" Bill stomped hard enough to shake the cabin. "We're in a submarine!"

There are lots of options.

Anyway, writing is a very subjective thing and almost every rule you can think of has a time and place where it works and doesn't work. Just like "show, don't tell," Just like "write what you know," Just like "don't use said."

There are more interesting alternatives TBH.

"This is the worst writing advice I've ever seen," the user expostulated, "and it came from within the thread itself!"

Overusing descriptive speech tags is worse than just using said every time. While there are decent alternatives in the list, some of these are pretty ridiculous, like 'crabbed' and 'vociferated' and 'whickered'.

'Said' is fine. 'Said' blends in with the background, like salt on a meal. The brain glosses over it so easily because it's just assumed to be there.

@Ammokkx I actually like to skip said and just describe an action, which works for the most part.

<Snipped quote>

There are lots of options.

Anyway, writing is a very subjective thing and almost every rule you can think of has a time and place where it works and doesn't work. Just like "show, don't tell," Just like "write what you know," Just like "don't use said."

I also have one golden rule that trumps all.

KISS.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Anyway, I had this entire thing written up but instead I'll just point out that the very image you linked has a small section where it, itself, acknowledges "Said" is a fine word to effectively convey dialogue. The alternatives, by its own admission, should only be used sparingly, and preferably in the rough contexts under which they are categorized.

Overusing descriptive speech tags is worse than just using said every time. While there are decent alternatives in the list, some of these are pretty ridiculous, like 'crabbed' and 'vociferated' and 'whickered'.

Yea, some of the options are pretty retarded. I was more vouching for "You can totally write something without saying said" than "You should get on your hands and knees and worship infographs."

...acknowledges "Said" is a fine word to effectively convey dialogue...

Anyway, writing is a very subjective thing and almost every rule you can think of has a time and place where it works and doesn't work... Just like "don't use said."

??????

...acknowledges "Said" is a fine word to effectively convey dialogue...

Anyway, writing is a very subjective thing and almost every rule you can think of has a time and place where it works and doesn't work... Just like "don't use said."

??????

Oh, fine. If you want the rant, you'll get the rant.

"Don't use said," phrased in that way, is inherently bad advise. "Said" is not only a fine word, but needlessly forcing yourself not to use it is not only an exercise in frustration and futility, but also incredibly obnoxious.

Ask yourself this: Why are you writing? If the answer is "To make art" then, yes, you should absolutely avoid 'said,' but you'd also need to do much more than that. You'd not only need an extensive grip of the language you are writing in with all its peculiarities and commons, but also fundamentally understand that which you will be writing will not be appreciated by an audience at large. You are actively trying to elevate the medium beyond the realm of normal consumption and would, thus, use extremely thought-out and uncommon words and sentence structures. That, or you go the complete other direction and boil it down to sound poems. Either way, you're going deliberately out of your way to avoid the mundane with purpose.

If it is literally anything else, don't purposefully try to avoid "Said."

While a big audience can definitely swallow some big words, the most appealing literature to the masses is also written in simple language. It is not about expanding the words you use, but about using the words you already know well. It's fine to strive to expand your vocabulary, but it need not be a goal. A lot of successful books have been written in very basic language that a lot of people can understand, and this is by design.

By telling a person they should avoid a word wholesale without explaining why, you're entirely missing the point. Even then, you shouldn't be telling them to avoid the word to begin with. The thing you should say isn't "Don't use said". What you should say is "Use said in these contexts" as that is not only far more useful advice, but also makes the fledgling writer think about the why and how of their writing.

And, to tie it into KISS, don't think too hard about your writing. "Don't think about it at all" is not what I'm saying here, though. I'm saying you should definitely give issues like these some though, but never get caught up in them. If you really struggle to effectively write without relying on some words, then just use those words. There aren't only a lot of options in how to phrase a sentence, but there's also a lot of ways to manipulate your own mannerisms into something readable and workable.

Source: I don't follow any of my own advice and my writing is fucking garbage because of it.

@Ammokkx Well said my dude.

When I said "every rule you can think of has a time and place where it works and doesn't work." I was saying that you can use "Said."You can also tell instead of show. You can even write what you don't know. If you know what you're doing. That advice was designed for new writers who commonly make those mistakes.

The problem with writing advice is that writing is a complex thing, and important advice is stripped down to a single phrase that can be easily misinterpreted without the rest of the lesson.

Even the bible's lesson to "do unto others as you would like done onto you" isn't entirely accurate. Should I hand my life's savings over to a stranger because I'd like someone to do that to me? NO! You don't do that! Instead you treat everyone around yourself with respect and the good will that you've cultivated will come back to you.

Still not sure what any of this has to do with Bill and Bob's submarine though.

"Don't use said," phrased in that way, is inherently bad advise. "Said" is not only a fine word, but needlessly forcing yourself not to use it is not only an exercise in frustration and futility, but also incredibly obnoxious.

Ask yourself this: Why are you writing? If the answer is "To make art" then, yes, you should absolutely avoid 'said'

These two statements, they kinda contradict each other.

I'm also going to say that if someone is writing "to make art" they're doing it for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't write to make art, you should write to express something that has meaning to you, regardless of how "artsy" that is. I've never met someone who reads books for the prose, its about the story and the message, regardless of how that's presented. I don't think it's about mass appeal or trying to be popular, because if using simple prose made things more popular then Ayn Rand wouldn't have so many fans. Some of the best fiction doesn't do anything extraordinary with its prose. 1984 has very basic prose when you look at it but that doesn't make it any less emotionally draining a read.

It comes down to individual style in these situations, unless someone is using "said" after every single statement to the point that its noticeable it really doesn't matter how much they use it, unless someone completely refuses to imply and puts everything out in words show don't tell is an individual style thing.

Honestly in my opinion the worst writing advice is... all of it. Writing isn't like architecture where there are specific rules and specifications that you have to set out for your product to be accepted. I think about it this way, Picasso's paintings are horrible anatomically, none of his human figures are drawn realistically, but criticizing Picasso for not drawing good people is useless because drawing anatomically correct people isn't his art style.

Writing is creativity, it's an artistic exercise, people have styles and those styles may not appeal to you. That's not the fault of the writer and you shouldn't expect them to change to fit your wants. There is no objectivity, there is only popular opinion, and a lot of times popular opinion stinks.

But that's just my opinion.

Honestly, most of the writing advice here people post here are either people misconstruing what are meant to be guidelines towards writing and instead, taking them to heart in a draconian manner. None of the rules mentioned here are necessarily wrong, per se, barring a few minor wishy-washy platitudes. When mishandled improperly or misinterpreted, that's when the problems begin.

If anyone ever makes the following flavors of arguments...

1. Plot holes don't really matter.

2. Your writing is too well crafted for what I deem to be appropriate.

Please stop. It's not good advice. And effort is never a bad thing.

If you hate plot holes, there's an in depth article that justifies that hatred.

I'm also going to say that if someone is writing "to make art" they're doing it for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't write to make art, you should write to express something that has meaning to you, regardless of how "artsy" that is. I've never met someone who reads books for the prose, its about the story and the message, regardless of how that's presented. I don't think it's about mass appeal or trying to be popular, because if using simple prose made things more popular then Ayn Rand wouldn't have so many fans. Some of the best fiction doesn't do anything extraordinary with its prose. 1984 has very basic prose when you look at it but that doesn't make it any less emotionally draining a read.

The statement "Writing to make art" was me saying in a tongue-and-cheek-way that the people who'd avoid "Said" at every cost wouldn't be on a roleplaying forum because they're too busy revolutionising the medium of text.

People who write as an artform don't exactly make books like 1984, at any rate. They're using and abusing literature in different ways, and the most common form to show this with is poetry.

Writing can absolutely be an artform, but the kind of people who'd do that, and thus avoid the mundane usage of words as we do it, woudln't be here on a fucking RP forum. Therefor, just use Said.

I realise it's a bit disconnected from the whole "bad advice" context of the thread, but that's also why it's a rant and I didn't write it out at first until Broken very clearly didn't know what I was on about for a moment.

Also, rants like that are written at the dead of night for me when I'm low on brain juice. Certain details slip my mind in those moments.

EDITS: To clarify a bit further; the statement "If it is literally any other reason" is meant to indicate that, outside of that very specific context, it's fine to rely on 'Said' as a word. And I doubt even a single person on this site unironically considers himself to be writing art, thus, they should be comfortable using the word "Said". Get the idea, now?

Honestly, most of the writing advice here people post here are either people misconstruing what are meant to be guidelines towards writing and instead, taking them to heart in a draconian manner. None of the rules mentioned here are necessarily wrong, per se, barring a few minor wishy-washy platitudes. When mishandled improperly or misinterpreted, that's when the problems begin.

That's the thing, though. They are often misinterpreted and used in a draconian manner.

I agree that the spirit of the message isn't wrong, but I also can't deny that the way I've seen these sentiments echoed and used have been in exactly the way described right here in this thread. Quite simply put, these rules get told in their short and easy to grasp on a surface level forms. The problem, then, is that people who don't understand the deeper meaning to them take them too far. Those people, then, tell this advice further without knowing how to apply it themselves.

Personally, because of stuff like this, I'd be extremely careful with these "guidelines" because people properly fail to explain them. You should always take the TED talk route with stuff like this, where these rules are just a title to a much longer explanation. They often aren't, though, and that's what makes it bad advice.

My own top contender for the worst writing advice is actually more about critique on the web:

Any advice in which a critic takes a piece of writing and rewrites it in their own style just to feed their own ego – prescribing how it "should" be done. Sadly, I've seen this multiple times here. No. Just no.

Technical mistakes, yes – you can demonstrate the correct techniques (if and only if you're sure they're mistakes) in terms of comma splices or typos or basic grammatical errors. However, if you're rewriting because in your mind it would make a piece flow better, or the word choice would be better off simpler/more complex, or because you don't like/understand semi-colons, you're bad at giving advice.

A lot of self-described writing experts on the internet think good writing begins and ends with a mastery of basic grammar, and that any piece can be improved with a line-by-line nitpick of possible typos and vague pseudo-errors like sentence fragments. Alternatively, perhaps they believe that show don't tell trumps all other elements of writing. Knowing what the rules are is a big part of the craft, yes. Knowing that it's okay to bend and even break them is what you learn whenever you take any class analyzing literature outside of high school.

@bluetommy has it right when he says writing is rules-lite and it's all about style.

Some writers never play with the rules, because their voice doesn't require it. Some writers do it all the damn time, and that's their voice. Examples: Joseph Heller's run-on sentences in Catch-22; Vonnegut's conversational, fragmented style; Cormac McCarthy's, like, everything... That's not to say any random hobbyist on the internet is in the same ballpark, but there's no reason why their "mistakes" (often quirks, not errors) should be treated any differently just because they don't have the weight of a lifetime of publication behind them.

Nobody's taking bits of these authors' writing and rewriting them in a different personal style, proclaiming with foolish confidence that it would be better their way.

To tie this in with my original complaint of rewriting masquerading as advice, there's no reason why anyone should say or imply that 'this would be better if you did it my way' when doling out specific advice on the internet. Never stifle an author's voice. It's just unbearably rude, and 90% of the time the suggested rework is shit anyway, coming from internet randoms blinded by Dunning-Kruger.

<Snipped quote by Bluetommy>
People who write as an artform don't exactly make books like 1984, at any rate. They're using and abusing literature in different ways, and the most common form to show this with is poetry.

Any writing is art. Literature and poetry are both equally art, and writing in prose is writing as an art form.

Well, ain't this a pretty tangent we've derailed on.

My own top contender for the worst writing advice is actually more about critique on the web: Any advice in which a critic takes a piece of writing and rewrites it in their own style just to feed their own ego.

This sounds like you're playing the role of a mind reader.

There's no reason why anyone should say or imply that 'this would be better if you did it my way' when doling out specific advice on the internet.

You know, except when people either personally ask for that advice specifically. Enter a creative writing contest, or anything that invokes competition and begs to be critiqued for such a thing specifically. Or, perhaps how literally every single writing/literary agent works, when it comes to endless revisions required to getting one's writing published. Then, it benefits the writer significantly. But sure, all other times, no reason to rewrite things whatsoever. ^-^'

(Or when you're writing a fan fiction, because hey guess what, that's rewriting/changing someone's established 'voice/cannon' and making it your own. And that's okay too.)

Never stifle an author's voice. It's just unbearably rude.

This sentiment could easily boil down to "the author can never be wrong/all writing quality is subjective."

But all suggestions can either be taken with sheer hostility and ignored. Or they can be evaluated and worked upon. (And I can tell you the latter makes you more successful in every avenue and medium.)

Because, just perhaps, not everyone that critiques or offers personal advice is thinking "how can I feed my ego today". But does it, in order to help someone get better. (Or at the very least, get them to understand a different perspective.)

And, tell me this...

How can you critique anyone's writing choices whatsoever, when you aren't allow to seek or offer changes?

Because all critique and advice does this. With literally every example you can think of. You are looking, or expecting someone to update something.

So for example, why is "your sentences are complicated and vague" more helpful and acceptable to say, than "Your sentences complicated and vague, so if you don't mind, let me provide you potential solutions as to precisely what I'm talking about."

In both cases, the person giving said advice, is asking the author to change their original work. Likely to make the author's sentences more clear and concise. So assuming both people are doing that in good faith. Where one often gives no examples and provides no solutions. And the other does so. Is the first better because...they put less work into their giving their advice? Is it nicer to leave an author clueless on what the former even wanted? Simply because it there's the chance it will hurt one's feelings a little less, from the sheer lack of context for them to dwell on?

I'm all ears.

worst advice i can give is: Listen to @Inkarnate.