DH: A list recently published in The New York Times by a noted restaurateur gave 100 rules for what service staff should not do. I thought a list of 50 things that writers shouldn’t do would give us all a chance to vent. I’m contributing 10 items. Some of these pet peeves have pissed me off for years:
- Don’t use italics for more than one line.
- Don’t tell me what someone looks like if it doesn’t matter.
- Don’t make me draw a diagram to figure out who’s speaking.
- Don’t write in a manner that’s different from your everyday speech. You should write like your best talk when you’re having a very good day.
- Don’t start your story with a character alone in a room unless you’re Kafka and your character is going to turn into a bug.
- I should be able to turn to any passage in your story and enjoy the craft of it. Don’t write a coy opening to draw me in. I’ll throw the book away instead.
- You have five minutes to interest me, not with gimmicks but with craft.
- Topicality is another word for bullshit.
- If you use one awkward word in 500 pages, I’ll notice it. It counts against you.
- You’re the artist. Ignore my rules.
And here’s 30 more Don’ts from the Three Guys! But we want your help with the last ten! So read over our list and add your suggestions so we can make up 50 Don’ts!
JE:
- Don’t write. Tell me a story.
- Don’t include scenes just because they’re good scenes.
- Don’t tell the story with your head, tell it with your body, even when it’s cerebral.
- Don’t let overarching symbolism marginalize your characters.
- Don’t show off, it doesn’t serve the story.
- Don’t try to be culturally significant, just report the human condition
- Don’t hide behind sarcasm.
- Avoid obtuse narrative devices and ambiguous POV transitions.
- Don’t be too explicit, the reader has a brain.
- Don’t burden me with peripheral information, unless your intent is to distract.
JR:
- Don’t tell me what you want from my writing. I’ll give it to you. Take it or leave it.
- Don’t write in cliche.
- Don’t write in stereotype unless you’re poking fun at that stereotype, and it’s obvious, like Wes Anderson in the Royal Tannebaums.
- Don’t give me a love interest just to make the character “likeable/relatable” or “well rounded”, people fall in love, if your characters don’t, then that’s it, love doesn’t find everyone.
- Don’t use pop culture as a crutch when you have no characters or story to tell. I don’t give a fuck about Whitney Houston, ever, and she has no business in a novel.
- Don’t glue your story to a cause or a distrupted group or country and call it a novel. I call that bad reporting.
- Don’t go 250 pages without something happening in the story. You’re not John Irving. Even John Irving isn’t John Irving.
- If you want to give me information, technical or otherwise, don’t turn it into a sleep aid. Make me want to read it. See: The Corrections.
- Don’t let someone write in your galley, “the first great novel of…” because I know it’s not. Why? Because someone told me it was.
- If I send you books to be signed, as I’m a collector of first editions, and you said you’d do it, then you better do it. And respond to my email where I ask if you got the books. You’re just a writer after all. No one is on the operating table.
JC:
- Don’t write something where nothing happens. This ain’t Godot. Make something happen. If you find you don’t have enough material, try microblogging instead.
- Don’t let your publicity materials be less compelling than the book. You’ve got to convince someone to read it. That counts for query letters, too.
- Don’t rely on brands to describe your character to me. Define you character by more than his possessions
- Don’t get so bogged down in description that I don’t care about the story. Tell me what I need to know and get on with it.
- Don’t be technical. If you must, be concise and clear. See Richard Powers for a positive example.
- Don’t write fiction with an agenda. It reaps tedium.
- Don’t let your characters act at odds to their established patterns.
- Don’t ask for advice or criticism if what you want is a pat on the back.
- Don’t hold the reader’s hand. It’s ok to make them think. Hold something important back. Spill it at the opportune moment. Make sure it’s worth waiting for.
- Don’t write about trends or fads. In 10 years you’ll either be ridiculous, or no one will know what the hell you’re talking about. See any Twitter novel.
There you have it: 40 rules, some of which no doubt contradict each other. So tell us, readers, what would you have a writer never do?
. . . feel free to ignore them . . .
Please ignore them.
“Don’t write. Tell me a story.” is great. And very true. All the great literary techniques, all the craft, all the tricks which have gained writers so much attention were actually found so the writer could tell the story they most wanted to tell in the way they most wanted to tell it.
Don’t try to be funny. You either are or you aren’t. If you try to be funny, you will fail.
[...] had so much fun with the 50 Things Writers Shouldn't Do post (currently up to roughly a gazillion things writer's shouldn't do), that we decided to turn [...]
1. If your character has to use clichés, make sure you don’t screw them up. There is no such thing as “chomping” at the bit. It’s “champing”. Tom Robbins should know better. At least, Robbins’ editor should know better.
2. When nothing happens on the first five pages except for back-story, I will rarely be able to get to page six before I offer the novel to someone I do not like. Vonnegut could get away with it, but not John Grisham, not me, and probably not you either.
3. “Don’t get cute with your dialogue tags!” he yelled. Yeah, well, the exclamation point already gave me the general idea that someone was yelling, thanks.
4. If you haven’t mastered when to not split infinitives, you should be studying English instead of writing. If you didn’t find that sentence funny, then back away from your keyboard and enroll in an English course at once.
5. I don’t want to hate everyone in your novel unless you are Charles Bukowski. I don’t want to love everyone in your novel unless you are Mark Twain. Presuming that you are nether author, you’re going to have to make me love at least one character and hate at least one character.
Dont write a story to – or for – a particular person. You have an axe to grind, write a letter instead. Readers can see through your agenda, if you do.
Interesting list and comments.
I think nearly anything can be done well. Execution is one of the more common causes of bad books. So my advice:
1. This is not a race. Take as long as you need and as many drafts and half-drafts and months with your novel in a drawer while you angst – as long as it takes to make it the very best novel you can write. Then, don’t leave it in the drawer.
2. Trust yourself, but more importantly, trust what you have to say. If it’s anything worth writing, it’ll come.
3. I wrote six novels following strict outlining rules, strict word count goals, strict everything. One garnered agent interest, the rest I haven’t bothered revising because they’re already dead.
Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird (about Perfectionism): “Tidiness suggests something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.”
My first six novels were written tidily. The one short story I wrote – and sold – was written on the fly. I’m not saying outlining and word count goals are bad, only that a writer should be careful not to wall himself or herself up with “craft” and “technique” and kill the story by accident.
4. You can’t fix a blank page. (So oft-quoted I don’t know the original source.)
If one of your characters got both hands sawed off by a hacksaw, do NOT write: “He wiped off the red streaks with the back of his hand.” like I stupidly did and posted on my website serial novel last week.
Love this! Especially the part that tells us to ignore all your rules.
I linked to on my site.
[...] This post was Twitted by Writepop [...]
I read this and enjoyed it a lot, and kept thinking “I know some things writers should Never Do, but dang, what are they?”
I finally remembered this morning that I have had for years Two Rules Writers Can NEVER Break. You can break all the others, but not these two–and one of them is iffy.
The Iffy one: #2: Do Not Confuse Your Reader.
Sometimes this doesn’t hurt, as long as you don’t do it for too long. But if your reader can’t figure out what’s going on, enough to get totally lost, you’ve lost them.
The #1 Rule that you really, truly cannot break:
DO NOT BORE YOUR READER.
That’s it. If you bore them, they’re gone. So you can’t break this rule, or you won’t have readers any more. You can do a lot of stuff without boring them–some groups of readers have a higher “bored” threshold than others, but really–you just cannot bore them.
All those other rules relate back to these two, IMO. You can break them, any ones you want, but you honestly, really and truly, cannot break these.
And there’s my two cents’ worth.
Is it wrong that I immediately wondered if I could fit all 40 of those things into a short story?
. . . if you can do it in 500 words, we’ll run it!
I agree with that! Good luck, Tara!
Thank you very much for the refresher! I’ll take note about all of these reminders. I enjoyed reading this post.
One way or another, all writers are guilty with a some of the few points mentioned. I’ll share this to others. Thanks!
[...] 9, 2009 by Wendy I infrequently post on writing rules and how too strict an adherence or too literal an interpretation can result in writing that is [...]
Oh man, well I never turn down a challenge! You ready for the worst piece of writing on God’s green Earth? In 500 words.
Tara, bring it.
[...] nota, qui fica um alista das 50 coisas que os escritores não devem fazer, e as 50 coisas que os editores não devem fazer. [...]
don’t tell everyone you’re writing a novel…your relatives and non-writers friends won’t understand how long it takes from blank page to sitting on a shelf in a bookstore.
i learned from experience.
1. Don’t write several passages with characters speaking in a foreign language without any clues to context unless you’re Cormac McCarthy. Even if you are Cormac McCarthy, don’t do this.
2. Don’t tell your reader that that “it’s not my problem that you can’t understand my work” because it very much is your problem.
3. Avoid semi-colons.
4. Don’t write the word “ample” to describe any part of a woman’s body.
5. Make sure your metaphors are factually correct. i.e. “the deer cut across the field, grass crashing against them like waves against a figurehead” not “the deer cut across the field, grass crashing against them like waves against a masthead” Because them are some mighty big waves.
I’m not making that one up. And it was from a major writer.
1. Don’t write fantasy or historical fiction in a manner that mimics your everyday speech. Write like what’s spoken in the period written about — otherwise you sound like an American.
2. Don’t avoid semi-colons; learn how to use them — otherwise you sound like an American.
3. Don’t write in a 3rd person limited point of view and then keep the reader inside the protagonist’s head most of the book. This has nothing to do with sounding American.
4. Don’t publish fiction with POD printing. The costs are too high to sell books.
Laugh, yes, but take it to heart.
Terry, I did break two of your rules. Hope you can forgive me for it. I regret breaking rule number four, but needs to break rule number two because there are some of the things that the protagonist doesn’t want to admit to herself in first person’s narration so I was really stuck with breaking rule number 3. I guess I should add an admendment to the rules:
1. Only break the rules if you HAVE TO. Not because you are in a feisty mood.
Don’t publish two pages of conjoined ellipses, Jonathan Safran Foer.
Wow, that came out rather specific, huh?
If your main character is an English professor who constantly complains about all his students’ spelling mistakes, maybe make sure your own writing is impeccable. I’m looking at you, P.F. Kluge (Gone Tomorrow).
But, for my biggest pet peeve: DON’T use dreams as a way to further the plot. If you can’t reach Plot Point B from Plot Point A on your own, then that’s your failure. Don’t make your character dream the answer, then wake up and magically know that so-and-so is the killer or know what the next step in her life’s journey should be. Lame!
I want to answer Cory and April. I use ellipses…too much. Someday I’m going to get punched out over this. I just wrote interview questions that has them crawling all over the page like ants. I am guilty…
As for April’s comments about dreams and storytelling, this is a fasinating question. Maybe stories began when some cave dweller wanted to tell the tribe about their dreams. The best dreamer got to be the tribe’s writer and must have won the first Pulitzer, which was probably an interestingly shaped rock.
I greatly admire a good dream sequence in a story. But April is right. This practice is often abused. The most orthodox realists, I think, would never put a dream in a story…even just to relate one…because dreams aren’t “real”…yes…I am trying to use as many ellipses as possible. It’s an obsession.
I know I misspelled a word…sorry.
1) I think it was Mark Twain who said “If you see an adverb, kill it.” Or maybe it was if you see an adjective kill it. And maybe it was John Wayne who said it. I forget. Whatever, it’s good advice.
2) Never take advice. Ever.
3) I like semi-colons, but I also like saffron. I use each sparingly. They are expensive.
4) I hate the way so much modern fiction feels the need to remind the reader of something that happened three pages ago. Why do I need a reminder of something that JUST HAPPENED? Am I stupid? Did you think I wasn’t paying attention? Or why do I need a reminder of something that happened twenty-five pages, or three hundred pages ago? Wasn’t that part of your cunning writerly plan, to foreshadow the event I am now reading about? Or are you just so overwhelmed with your own cleverness you have to tell me about how clever you are? Or are you insecure about whether I will notice your cleverness? Or…
5)… is it simply a matter of so much modern fiction being written by committee now? Which, incidentally, per “Never Take Advice” above, you should never do? Is that punctuation correct? Did I spell committee correctly?
6) Don’t second guess yourself in the middle of writing. Plunge ahead. Or is it lunge ahead? Argh. Just do it, fix it later.
7) If you have a cause you can champion in a novel, go for it. Just don’t seem like you’re championing a cause in a novel, or if you can’t help but tip your hand, make the cause somehow relevant to the novel itself. But why restrict yourself? If something is important to you write about it. There’s usually a story to go with what you are trying to say. Some of the best books (and movies) have a cause.
9) If you write about a historical era other than the one you live in, trying to replicate the dialect of the time is absurd. Don’t do it.
10) If you want the best education in slang and actual speech patterns from any era, read the pornography of the era. Porn was not paid for by the word as a rule, porn was not edited to death (still isn’t), and good porn attempts to convey things with the LEAST amount of delicacy. My personal favorite Victorian era piece of porn? “The Autobiography of a Flea”. It’s as educational as “Oliver Twist”. I swear.
11) Oh, yeah, and if an infinitive needs to be split? Do it like Raymond Chandler did, and split the damn thing so it STAYS split. I like my infinitives split, and with a dollop of butter and honey. But then, I’m an American.
Thanks, VL.
I say if you must “write what you know”, you’d better lie about it.
Love this. My favorite: Don’t include scenes just because they’re good scenes. I’d add: Don’t linger in a scene just because you, the writer, are having fun writing it. I think sometimes we love our words too much. We must learn to kill our darlings–our most breathtakingly beautiful sentences, our poetic descriptions, our brilliant quips and musings–when they’re not advancing the plot.
I’m with you on the agenda-fiction, too. Even if I agree with all my heart about whatever kind of message the writer is trying to send, I bristle when I know the writer is trying to teach me something.
. . . here, here, susan! . . . i love steinbeck, but man, when i read something like “the moon is down” i cringe at the political propaganda . . .and then there are those who would argue that every novel has an imperative to be political . . .to my way of thinking, the only real imperative for a novel is to report on the human condition . . .
Thanks for this piece of advice. Regards from Argentina.
Stop talking about writing. Just get on the mat … and write! (although I honestly admit that I loved number five in everyone’s critique. But my favorite … (drum roll here) … You’re the artist. Ignore my rules.