I’ve grown dispirited lately over the volume of hack writing tips that proliferate on the internet. Blooming like so many candles during a blackout, these words of useless advice shine everywhere to mislead the impatient writer. I will not say ‘amateur’ writer – there is no such thing, other than in the original meaning of the word ‘amateur’, i.e. one who loves it, and probably does it for nothing. An amateur writes no matter what. There are only two types of writer: those writers who have only just got the bug, and those who have written for longer. Ten years’ practice, in this field, may be a thousand repeats of the same experiment that did not come off in the eyes of the writer. This doesn’t make them an amateur, much less a failure. It may mean he or she hasn’t yet achieved their goal. In that case, remember they credited Einstein with having said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Whoever said it, it’s a useful observation to remember if you frequently fail at your own ambitions. It may be worthwhile changing the objective, or your focus or sometimes your value position. But you didn’t squander your time over those years. You're still a writer! Here’s why.
Writing is one of those arts-with-craft that take at least ten years to develop, and mostly much longer. I mean ten years of hard, steady, regular toil – not the occasional toss of a page. Or frequent inner murmurings like “I wish I had the time.“ Good writing has little to do with following the stereotyped advice you can find anywhere on the net. I googled ‘advice for writers’ and got 273 million results. Writing is like dieting – there is no shortage of advice on how to succeed at it. The problem is: can it be up to much if so few people achieve success? Meanwhile the nation’s waists get larger and larger… The reason people fail at dieting is simple: they become fixated on following the rules of the diet which does not allow them any time or space to ask themselves what they would or would not like to eat. Or whether they want or need to eat at all. Nature has provided us with brilliant dieting tools which are called ‘appetite’ and ‘satiety’ - i.e. hunger and enough. Alas, we have become far too clever for that. The more complicated and prescriptive the advice, the better we like it! I wrote a short book once called, “Why make a list when you could consult your two million year old instincts?” I did a workshop on this theme - of better ways to self-development - and everyone claimed to enjoy it. The only problem was they said they couldn’t understand why I called it ‘Why make a list…’
List-making has become rampant in our society, was my point: nothing wise or useful can be achieved aside from following the detailed instructions of some guru.
What I’m calling ‘hack writing’ is not to insult – hack writing is an honourable trade. Some of our greatest authors, like Charles Dickens, did it for a living. It's when it becomes all there is that it's a problem. A term like hacking pins down the peculiar faith we place in writing by instruction: what others are telling us, rather than what we can tell ourselves, from our intuitions, our hearts and souls. Rule-based writing results in what Elmore Leonard sums up beautifully in the words ‘If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.’
The reason hack writing advice is so unhelpful may be that the hack writer has never been on their own journey. She wants a short-cut – not the Himalayas, for God’s sake! Those who may not have much success to show for their efforts resort to giving this kind of advice. I often haven’t heard of these prodigies of the pen. If you’re a successful writer, why on earth would you spend precious time telling other people how to write? Wouldn’t you be busy at work on your next novel? Or taking a day off from writing to go to the swimming pool? Could it be that the author saw this as another way of earning money as a hack writer? Tennis players and Formula One drivers don’t seem to explain to everyone how to be a good tennis player or a Formula One driver. If they do, it’s usually because they’re well past their best years in that field. This means their advice is often the rich result of many energetic years of doing things right in their field – and they have built a significant reputation for it. I would take Roger Federer’s advice on my forehand, wouldn’t you? Whereas advice that comes from someone who just about got a wild card into Wimbledon one year is likely to be more suspect.
But there are worse features of this hack writing. Anyone with any sense will realise there is no certain formula for success as a writer, any more than there is a sure-fire way to make a million out of the stock exchange. But you could deplete your life believing there is! Think of the time and energy you could have spent on improving your model aeroplanes, and feeling thrilled about that success! Or bringing up your children and feeling proud of them and the vital part you played in their young lives. Hack writing advice encourages us not to love our work for its own sake, but to do it for the sake of some other external goal not intrinsic to the work itself. ‘A publisher’s hack will love it, it’s what the TV companies demand these days, readers hate that sort of thing (which readers are never specified), you can make a fortune out of self-publishing sales…’ These are goal-oriented ideas, which some of us like to call ‘endgaming.’ The end game is a chess term which describes what happens when there are very few pieces left on the board. It means ‘this move, that move and the other, and checkmate!“ You don‘t have much left to do at the end except win! The endgame purports to get you there in as few moves as possible - saving you all the bother of negotiating the South Col of Everest, or the Whitewater rapids of Patagonia. If you write with the end constantly in view, you cannot at the same time be following the guidance of your imagination - the one part of you that actually knows what’s going to happen with this piece of writing! Your story will never take off in your mind, never willingly take over the whole damned project and make of it what your imagination wills, instead of your ego. Writing is the channel: not the harbour. This is the important truth about writing or any form of artistic or creative work. Thus, Neil Gaiman says pointedly in his advice, “Write.” He doesn‘t say ‘first read ‘15 ways to make your villain convincing’, or ‘How to make plotting easy.’ Just write. Just that.
It’s not wise to live a life built on disappointed expectations. But even this is not the evilest part of hack writing advice. The worst of it is that it actively prevents us from writing from our own sensibilities. It’s better to show your character being angry, we’re told, than telling it. Suggestions usually include, “John walked in and slammed the door.” This is held to be better writing than “John was furious” since John is on the move and not just thinking or being. The problem is, neither of them is very good. People in my experience rarely slam the door as a means of showing their anger. Often they try not to show it, suppress or deny it. Sometimes they use mockery or sardonic comment to express it. Or joke acerbically. They may go heavily silent, sigh or look pointedly out of the window. It’s all a matter for the writer’s judgement as to how s/he thinks her character will express anger, and sometimes straight telling is necessary. Whatever works for you as a writer, ignoring your sensibilities will not. Kurt Vonnegut remarked, “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
The one person you need to please most is yourself; through writing you are seeking your voice to say what you want to say more than anything else in the world. And finding that offers no guarantee someone will appreciate or even hear it, much less pay. But at least you will have heard it! You need not be ashamed of your work. The process you have engaged in can never be a waste of time if you’ve heard yourself speak at last. If what you have spoken was the truest thing you could say. Scott Fitzgerald talked about “tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.” The sheer violence of the metaphor indicates how far writing is from tossing off yet another page of hack words! And if you’re not prepared to pay that price, he suggested, better seek another career. Nobody is imposing this one on us, as Margaret Atwood reminds us. You chose it. So don’t whine!
I don't want to suggest that no advice can be useful. That would be suspect advice too. Yet if you must seek advice, let it be from those who are decent writers already, and not doing it so blatantly for the word count or next pay cheque. What do I mean by 'decent' writers is your next question, naturally? I don't mean the opposite of indecent! I offer the following definition, which will occasion plenty of argument.
By ‘good’ or 'decent' writers I mean those possessing any or all of these qualifications: 1. Having achieved modest admiration and reputation from readers, critics, and other decent writers. Not only from book sales or prizes; (James Patterson hated ‘War and Peace.’ So?) 2. Are not necessarily your favourite writers but you still wish you had read them, or more of them – you have a sneaky idea there’s something to learn there; 3. Have found their own ‘voice’, recognisable on the page; 4. Are not giving you advice about how to write like them.
I included Elmore Leonard in this category of decent writing, though I think he is entirely self-engrossed in his advice! He’s keen to avoid appearing as another voice on the page – the only voice he permits to appear is the character’s. This position is arguable, since his voice is anyway so distinctive as a writer he shines through every word his ‘characters’ utter. But his general advice is good.
I list below some advice given by some decent writers, with comments from me as we go, because nobody is challenge-free on this topic or ever ought to be.
Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald is generally held to be one of the outstanding American writers of his generation. I concur, but you need to read him for yourself, of course, to come to any conclusion on that point. He was about as tough a critic as you can find, but never merely destructive. When asked to produce ‘10 tips on writing,’ any decent writer will at once ask, ‘Why 10?’ He didn’t bother with the ten.
On reading a short story sent to him by a family friend, Fitzgerald said:
“I’ve read the story carefully and, Frances, I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.”
Being contrary, this made me think of the likes of Mozart and Jane Austen, both decent artists, who made exquisite art forms out of producing the most apparently simple everyday tunes you can whistle, or unforgettable witticisms about what somebody said at tea. But Fitzgerald is also right in that both started when they were about six and didn’t leave off until they had refined the art of making the ordinary seem extraordinary to a genius level! Fitz was a heart writer if ever there was one – and for some writers, this is and will be ever the only way.
Zadie Smith
Smith has garnered a ton of literary awards, but also genuine admiration for her writings. Her tongue is in cheek when she advises us to be children who read! As in, “Choose your parents carefully.” It’s a nice way of saying, “That’s how I did it. Are you doing that?” I don’t honestly think you can be a writer who doesn’t read. Not a good writer. You can be a hack. If that’s what you want.
1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation.’ You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle.’ All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt. (ES: You need to be able to recognise your weaknesses to follow this advice?)
5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it. (ES: A very good practical point. And do not read the hack advice first!)
6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. (Shucks! Writers’ groups beware!) The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is. (ES: Sadly this is true in my experience. Joining groups to enable you to become a writer is a dead waste of hope and time. But you can be a writer first and then afterwards look for a group of others who also write. And mostly meet for the sake of discussing writing!)
7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet. (ES: Or else have a disciplined mind. Some of us may still need to disconnect...)
8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9. Don’t confuse honours with achievement. (ES: Absolutely. Don’t confuse book contracts or book sales with achievement either. It’s sad how much value some writers will place on the word of an unknown publisher.)
10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. (ES: I like the way she subtly disses the type of advice which says ‘the first person is the only way’ or ‘the third person is the best way.’ Or ‘your point of view must be clear’ or ‘you must never intrude’ and so on. It all depends – as 95% of writing technical advice does. ‘Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied,’ (she adds, which seems true to me).
Gaiman is fiendishly unwilling to conform, and all the more likeable for it. His single word ‘write’ is so obvious and so true it’s hard to better. He also is having a go at hack advice, I suspect. No journey in it! Instead, he advises,
1. Write
2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. (ES: Wow! Really? Yes, really – but he knows you don’t get paid much for saying this!)
3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. (ES: Agreed. This has worked for me, a famous one-time unfinished project accumulator.)
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. (ES: My bolds. This is particularly good advice. What’s the point of giving your precious work to someone you know never reads this kind of stuff? Guess what? They won’t like it. Comes under the heading of self-sabotage.)
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. (ES: Brilliant point. When someone gives you this precise, tedious kind of advice, it’s because they wanted to write it themselves! And are probably annoyed they didn’t think of it first!)
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. (ES: Also brilliant appreciation of human motivation. Perfectionists never get beyond their first novel, sometimes their first chapter. Or symphony, or brick-built garage for that matter. It’s a vain hope!)
7. Laugh at your own jokes. (ES: Somebody needs to! If you are to remain sane and full of hope!)
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. (ES: Couldn’t have summed it up better myself! And I haven’t even won a prize yet! Well, not since I was a kid …)
Atwood is especially tongue-in-cheek on the subject of writing advice. Eventually you come to understand she is saying, “This whole idea of advice is a load of drivel! Can we just get on with our writing?”
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do. (ES: Now run away and stop bothering me!)
3. If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick. (ES: I think what these pearls of wisdom are about is another, more witty way of saying Gaiman’s ‘Write!’)
4. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. (ES: Good point. Writing is not the healthiest job.)
5. Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B. (ES: I love it! No advice of a generalist kind can possibly apply to everyone! But is seriously offered to us as what 7 billion people are ‘likely to like …’)
6. You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. (ES: As I said …)
7. You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up. (ES: And these friends should be ‘readers’, please note! You wouldn’t give your valued sculpture to a butcher to polish up, would you? This qualifies as self-sabotage …)
8. Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. (ES: Change your hairdo, but please don’t whine about all the work …! It’s only the hacks who are desperate to make it sound so easy.)
9. Prayer might work. Or reading ¬something else. Or a constant visualization of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
KURT VONNEGUT
Vonnegut is talking about short-story writing here, but much of it applies beyond this genre. Vonnegut published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel ‘Slaughterhouse Five.’
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. (ES: I very much agree – hate writing where there is no one I can admire or appreciate – like ‘Game of Thrones.’ Don’t care how popular it is. Who cares who gets the throne?)
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible. (ES: In the case of a novel you have a bit more scope. It’s still not bad advice. But it occurs to me that a lot of writing hacks are actually trying to turn your novel into a short story! Or worse, a screen play! Look – if you’re writing a novel, stick with that genre. It has many advantages. Have you not heard critics complain about the abysmally awful quality of much screen writing?)
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. (ES: This is excellent as a way of focusing your mind on a plot.)
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. (ES: The person who matters is you. If you don't love your work, that lack of love will shine through every trick in your book.)
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. (ES: Again more about short story writing than novels – but again not that bad advice. There is nothing so tedious as artificially created suspense for its own sake, which is as untrue to life as it gets! And the story that has no proper ending, a commonplace nowadays, is, I am convinced, the result of the writer’s belief that she cannot reveal any detail until the last page! I get pretty annoyed about this, I might add - I am not spending hours reading a gash novel or watching a play because of the last page!)
Jeannette Winterson
Winterson is a hard and serious woman, a writer to the bone, and she knows what it costs to make a writer. Her first novel, ‘Oranges are not the Only Fruit’ won the 1985 Whitbread Prize, and was adapted for television, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She says,
1. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.
2. Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.
3. Love what you do. (ES: You can only learn to love it by doing it. By risking the journey. Loving the idea of being a writer is going to get you nowhere.)
4. Be honest with yourself. If you are no good, accept it. If the work you are doing is no good, accept it. (ES: But deciding in your own head it’s no good is problematic - will result in a big argument between you and what Aunt Martha said about you in 1942... This is surely the time for the carefully chosen friend …?)
5. Don’t hold on to poor work. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be just as bad when it comes out. (Ditto.)
6. Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect. (ES: God bless her for her forthrightness!)
7. Take no notice of anyone with a gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind. (ES: It was the Romantics wot did it! A Curious Truth of Eng. Lit. – that men cannot be emotional or weak or any of that crap in daily life, but if they are an artist they can pour out their hearts superbly and of course beat the women hands down!)
8. Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward. (ES:Totally right – end-gaming is the death of any creative work.)
9. Trust your creativity. (ES: Yea!)
10. Enjoy this work! (ES: And if you can’t, at least stop whining!)
Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He was the doyen of thriller writers and specialized in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into films. Leonard, as I said earlier, thinks there is only one way to write and he has it! I question this. It works for him - but why bother to be another Elmore Leonard when there is already a perfectly good one around? The problem is you could follow every bit of his advice and still write a lemon. N.B. This is a good test of advice generally, by the way: like your diet, if you follow it to the letter, does it make you thin? Or merely insane? I include it because of the way he sums it all up perfectly at the end. All his other rules, I suspect, are intended to avoid the ‘this is a piece of writing’ feel.
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” …
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” (ES: clearly these are particular villains for Elmore. I could have added about a thousand other cliches. But just get a cliche checker - it is much easier.)
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. (ES: I value this – amazing how patronising we can become as writers about those of a different ilk. Try writing them like you would other human beings!)
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. (ES: except that for some writers the interaction between character and environment is the sole aim of their journey! Can we allow other writers to be different from us, for God's sake?)
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. (ES: This sounds a bit like he’s addressing a bunch of semi-retarded readers. Or possibly himself? Which are the words we all skip? If they exist, why did they still get published? Mostly people can cope with a lot more than I can possibly imagine. Believing otherwise is my problem, not theirs!)
Elmore’s most important rule is one that sums up the 10 and all the other 10s put together.
IF IT SOUNDS LIKE WRITING, I REWRITE IT.
(ES: This is brilliant advice. Following hack writing advice is almost certain to end up sounding like writing! Even if only a fraction of the 273 million read it too, they probably tried to follow it too. Don’t do it. Put your writer’s glasses on and see for yourself how something can be different! Or just the way you see it.)
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