The Worst Writing Advice

[Roach]

@Ammokkx
The circus will keep me going for days I tell you.

[fledermaus]

i fucking love this thread

[LegendBegins]

Alright, let's all chill out. Come back in an hour.

[mickilennial]

Anyway, one of the worse writing advice that I ever saw was:

"Keep politics out of your writing."

I guess that person hates 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. lol

@Mao Mao

Sociology, politics, and ideological struggles are often components of great storytelling but there is some truth that you should approach such things carefully and with nuance. If things feel unnatural, ergo contrite then it becomes a disservice to the actual story told through the text because it becomes so toothless and basic. To tell a great statement you need to know how to effectively balance nuance and subtlety, and how to not have it read like overt propaganda as opposed to well-meaning (ie: good) commentary or satire.

[Bork Lazer]

Wow, this thread blew up really fast! I hope I didn't offend anyone with my comments on -

[BrokenPromise]

Now what's the next writing advice to discuss? People who say semi-colons are bad but don't know how to use them?

@Roach

I'm just always afraid I'll use a semi-colon at the wrong time, so I end up never using them.

Kind of like an em dash. It's a versatile tool—Some would say too versatile—which is why I seldom use them. Mostly it doesn't serve any real unique purpose that other forms of punctuation can't handle. There's no button for it either, so you have to go Alt + NUM 0151 which I can't remember and then I spend all this time googling stuff and at the end I'm just like why botherrrrrrrr.

[Roach]

<Snipped quote by Roach>

I'm just always afraid I'll use a semi-colon at the wrong time, so I end up never using them.

Kind of like an em dash. It's a versatile tool—Some would say too versatile—which is why I seldom use them. Mostly it doesn't serve any real unique purpose that other forms of punctuation can't handle. There's no button for it either, so you have to go Alt + NUM 0151 which I can't remember and then I spend all this time googling stuff and at the end I'm just like why botherrrrrrrr.

@BrokenPromise

Em-dashes are too powerful and must be stopped. I have to delete one set every paragraph when I'm editing my own posts/writings –– gotta give other punctuation marks a fighting chance. They're just too good for a pseudo-conversational style, or for building in authentic and interesting speech patterns in dialogue, I think.

Gotta admit that I don't know how the proper rules on using semi-colons myself – I know when they're used wrong, but not enough to verbally explain it, if that makes sense. It's one of those native English speaker rules you kinda pick up along the way by osmosis and you're too afraid to ask if you're doing it right.

^{Nobody saw that post from a ghost account babes. Nope.}

[Fiber]

I’m going to say that my least favorite writing advice is anything that falls into the category of an absolute rule that is given without an explanation. The worst of this usually comes from people trying to give advice for business or academic writing, whether it’s the omnipresent “NEVER USE PASSIVE VOICE” or the comical, crackpot theories of the E-Prime crowd. I will defend the value of rules in writing, but in writing rules are things to notice, ways a writer can train themselves to be more aware. They aren’t any good on their own without an intention behind them; writing can serve so many different functions no rule could apply to every single piece of prose. What is universally valuable to a writer is a well-honed intuition, to think deeply about writing and care about the even the smallest aspects of it; through that the writer gains more tools for whatever goal they choose.

To illustrate a frequent rule and try to give it context, I’ll talk about using said to tag dialog. The use of said is an example of a deliberate choice which is not flashy but is respected even among the most highbrow literary circles today. If someone went to Iowa Writer’s Workshop, the closest thing American Literature has to a factory for acclaimed authors, and submitted a story that was otherwise conventional but avoided using said, I guarantee that the instructor and fellow writers would look at them like they had three heads. Said is a word that is so common even in literary fiction because its ubiquity makes it invisible, it lets readers focus on the words around it. The more you move away from said the more you break the flow, and while some avant-garde writers like Donald Barthelme make stories that are intentionally difficult to parse, the audience for that kind of fiction is limited, even in MFA programs. More importantly, it makes it difficult to focus on other aspects of the prose. Like everything, this used to be different; in earlier times avoiding said became something that writers took to comical lengths, with JI Rodale even publishing “The Said Book”, listing words that worked as alternative ways of tagging dialog. There’s a reason “The Said Book” is now only mentioned as a punchline.

A second line of thought that I dislike is the idea that taking writing quality seriously is something only reserved for some ivory tower elite. It’s even worse when people hold up examples of great writers with simple styles as proof of this rule, reasoning that because George Orwell wrote sentences that were clear and readable he must’ve chosen a path far removed from dense writers like Tolstoy or experimenters like Samuel Beckett. Orwell was a man who took his craft seriously. He wrote an essay about why he wrote, the first sentence of which reads “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. “ He talked at length about the conscious choices he made when writing, most famously in Politics and the English Language, but the concern he has over language and its impact on the reader’s minds in constant, you can see it in 1984 when that work talks about Newspeak and its role in enforcing tyranny. Orwell would write for three hours every night even when he held a full-time job, revised drafts to obsessive degree, and kept everything close to his chest until he had gone over it many, many times. Even when he was starting out and writing unremarkable poetry, he had the same seriousness to his process. I’m not advising everyone copy him (I wouldn’t want anyone else dying at the age of 46), but to suggest he wasn’t someone who looked at writing as a serious art form is absolutely false. Hemingway, the only writer of the 20th century more famous for a sparse style of prose than Orwell, had a famous quote about why he wrote the way he did, said in response to William Faulkner’s claim that he lacked courage because he had “never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary.” Hemingway said

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. “

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the role of editors and their influence on the writing process. Editors aren’t schoolteachers or parole officers, assigned to writers to correct bad habits and fashion them into a more respectable person. They are intermediaries, chosen for their discernment and to act as a gatekeeper before a wider release. Editors are chosen either by the writer or by the publisher, and in each case their employer has placed an immense amount of trust in them, often chosen them specifically because they know that editor can see exactly what the publisher or the writer is aiming to achieve. Most often serious, irreconcilable disagreements between the writer and the editor are a case of bad match; either between the editor and the writer or the writer and the rest of the publisher’s output. The solution to that isn’t to declare one party right or wrong, it’s to try and see if both can find better matches elsewhere. Rewrites and corrections can be a powerful thing when people actively seek them out; Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver’s editor, famously edited his stories so heavily that Carver’s signature style owes almost as much to him as it does to Carver. If a writer’s intentions aren’t aligned with an editor's, the whole process becomes awkward. If JD Salinger came back from the dead and rewrote something I'd written I would be impressed, and the end result would doubtlessly be better than my original, but ultimately I would be left feeling unsatisfied, because I don't want to write like JD Salinger (Borges is welcome any time though).

The subject of feedback has deep links with the practice of editing. Feedback is not the same thing as soliciting suggested changes. At its core, it is giving them more data, more context, and more insight from a source other than their own perspective. Think of it like a pilot in airplane high above the clouds on a dark night. They can’t get much from their eyes, but thanks to instruments like the altimeter, the airspeed gauge, and navigational aids, they can get where they are going safely. Just like the pilot, the writer decides what to adjust, checks in again, and through that process maintains their course. Modern planes have autopilot systems, that will not only gather feedback but actually complete some of the work for them, but engaging or disengaging them is a conscious decision of the pilot. When we offer feedback we must always respect the role of giving information, and be aware of when the writer wants to solve a problem themselves and when they want to see the specific solutions others have in mind. As Ursula LeGuin said:

“Even if you’re sure you see just how it ought to be changed, this story belongs to its author, not to you”

Some of the most important feedback an author can get is about the broad strokes of a work. We can obsess over individual sentences or paragraphs, but it’s always in pursuit of a greater goal, of triggering some emotion or conveying some theme. That is the kind of thing that benefits a lot from hearing other voices. Not to get into epistemology, but we’re all flawed human beings, one thing we're very good at it is providing subjective experiences and one thing we're pretty bad at providing an objective point of view. Even when we try, we'll get far more of the first than of the second.

[POOHEAD189]

i fucking love this thread

@fledermaus

[spicykvnt]

Wow I tried reading this and honest to God zoned out. Absorbed nothing.

I can't actually recall a time I've been given terrible writing advice, but I surround myself with positive people who are all wanting to grow together.

One thing I will say is, regarding critique - I don't think critique can be bad if your intent is from a sincerely good place. Are you critiquing someone to help them improve? Or are you critiquing someone to knock them down a peg? There's a difference. Also are both parties in on it? Sometimes critique isn't asked for and it's okay for someone to say "nah, I don't want your feedback, thank you!"

I actually do a lot of feedback in my roleplays. I've gone through character sheets quite a lot because I can be honest in a productive way that benefits the person who asked for my help, and ultimately helps them a bit in finding what it is they want to say about a character, or in a post. I tend not to focus on grammar and spelling - all of those things are easy fixes, but helping someone to dig a bit deeper to continue a thread or theme is where it's at man. Just round table that in a safe setting and everyone benefits. I would never tell someone "do this, don't do that" only make suggestions, ask them if they've possibly considered a,b,c. Lead the horse to water, but don't force it to drink.

[Mole]

Don't.

[role model]

The worst advice is that, concerning roleplaying is that people look for excellent grammar like it's gold. When I was coming up we were high school kids fresh out of second period English class and we were an imaginative bunch. We had to focus our internet fuzzed minds on expertly using grammar to tell our roleplaying stories. Now, here in 2020 I know that grammar is a basic thing. It's two apples growing on a tree, and one falls down and then the tree picks it up, then the other one falls down and the tree has to pick the second one up. Basically, no matter how many times the apple falls, the tree will pick it up. Your grammar expertise will do the same. You're close to the big tree no matter what about the apple. Grammar Nazis suck! (And I might too because of this thread)

[Unparakeet]

Use more words but don't say anything that doesn't need to be said.

[stone]

The worst advice anyone ever gave for ME PERSONALLY was "hey stone you should worldbuild a bit more"

I ended up sinking wayyyyy too much time into worldbuilding and not enough into literally everything else. i'm not a person who enjoys worldbuilding very much, but i thought it'd make my writing better (which it didn't because i kept trying to force it and ended up wasting too much time on the details)

I don't have a crusade against worldbuilding (in fact, if you do it for fun, all the more power to you). Worldbuild when it suits you/when it suits your writing.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm just saying to spend your time wisely. I put much more time into worldbuilding than I should have, and as a result the rest of my writing suffered.

[mickilennial]

It depends on what your RP requires if we're talking about RP conceptualization, but I guess this applies to a original novel's setting as well. Not everyone is George R.R. Martin and needs everything laid out and following each branch to make sure everything is blooming. Sometimes all you need is a solid foundation and let things organically grow from there.

There's no perfect one-size-fits all approach for everyone.

[Shadow Dragon]

Smash your face into the keyboard until it makes words.

[DELETED jdl3932]

I wish I could say I had been given poor advice, but fortunately I've managed to avoid it.

Amazing how apathy works isn't it?

[SleepingSilence]

Related to receiving bad advice, that's actually a good rule of thumb.

As any kind of creative, especially someone that actually tries, you will receive bad faith or shallow critique eventually in your lifetime.

So my personal tip is, "Ask your critics to elaborate." Then, if it's not a legitimate place of criticism. You can watch them crumble like dust, make it about you versus the work itself, or pivot topics on a dime. You know, the 'cuz I said so' types, who can't actually answer the counterpoints you raised.

Because it's only truly the worst advice, when it comes from malice and envy.