Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Best Advice

This is topic Best Advice in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by JeremyMc (Member # 1400) on :

We've all learned our craft bit by bit. Some through practice, some through reading books or articles about writing.

What is the best advice you've ever heard, read, written?

For those who've read books on writing, which , in your opinion, is the best?

Posted by GZ (Member # 1374) on :

Of the book I have read on writing (which by no means has sampled everything out there), these are my favorites.

Character and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card
Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight (I still love the part about Fred).

You might want to check parts of the topic A motherlode of resources? in relation to your query.

Posted by Thought (Member # 111) on :

The best description/advice I have ever heard about being a writer was actually from a movie ("Throw Momma From the Train" I think) and that is...

"A writer writes, always."

It is a very simple concept but it took me several years when I first started writing to realize how true this was (in my own defense, I was only about 11 or 12 when I first started writing seriously) and since I have attempted to start a writing club on my college campus I have learned that many would be writers don't realize this either.

Just a written

Thought

[This message has been edited by Thought (edited April 28, 2002).]

Posted by chad_parish (Member # 1155) on :

The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells, Ben Bova.

He says something to this effect:

"If you cannot sum up your characters as 'emotion vs emotion,' you haven't thought hard enough. For example, MacBeth was 'loyalty vs ambition.' Conflict is not external, but within your characters' souls."

and

"Slam-bang action is not conflict. The slush piles of all SF magazines are clogged with stories containing nothing but violence, no conflict within a character's mind."

Posted by uberslacker2 (Member # 1397) on :

The best advice on writing that I have gotten has actually come from introductions and afterwords. Two such things come to my mind when I think of advice. First, OSC's introduction to the revision of Ender's Game (I know he says you don't have to read it but I did anyway) and Stephen King's Afterword to "the Gunslinger." These two combined summed up several basic things about writing that I adhere to. Stephen King says, "It doesn't matter if the words keep marching across the page, if you don't carry then the story will be worse than week [maybe year] old horseshit. And we all know what that's like." OSC's advice isn't direct but it pertains to something I have to deal with almost daily as a fairly amateur writer. To paraphrase he says, "If you've got an idea but don't know how to make it work in a story save it. Sooner or later you'll have the skills you need to write it." These little words of encouragement just mean that I will get better and I will eventually be able to write the story I wanted to when I first touched the keyboard. (I never use pen and paper anymore).

Uberslacker

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Of all the written advice I've found, I've been affected me most profoundly by a combination of Orson Scott Card and Stephen King.

OSC reminds me that the reader pays good money to be invested in people and situations that I create. The Stephen King instructs me to "eliminate unnecessary words."

Together, they tell me that including unnecessary words is just like forcing my reader to buy something he/she doesn't want.

Posted by Brinestone (Member # 747) on :

My best advice came from talking to OSC after a signing once. He said two things that have stuck with me.

1. Writing is a series of asking "why?" Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Why did he want to get to the other side? Because there was some chicken feed there. Why was there chicken feed there? And why would the chicken risk its life crossing a road for some stupid chicken feed? Etc.

2. He explained the difference between shorts and novels, which probably all of you know, but I'll share it anyway because it's pretty cool. He said that when a writer wants to write a short story, his ultimate goal is getting there. He is in a boat crossing a river, and he paddles like crazy. In a novel, he's out for a fishing trip, dropping anchor to fish sometimes, floating downriver if that looks more interesting. Not perfect, but that's kind of how my thoughts go when I'm planning for a novel.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Marion Zimmer Bradley told me one time that the best way to know how someone else is going to read your story is to have someone read it out loud to you.

This can be an extremely painful experience, however, but it is one way to find out, loud and clear, where the problems are.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

I think my favorite advice, though, came from Winston Churchill and was given to a group of young men at his old prep school (if I remember correctly).

"Never, never, never, never, never give up."

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Kathleen:

http://www.soundsofhistory.com/

That recording is there.

I love it too.

Posted by rjzeller (Member # 1906) on :

I think Kathleen's last post is probably the best suggestion I've heard--and most frightening!

I find that putting a piece to rest for a while then going back to it can be amazing. Suddenly I find error and problems and tone or voice I had never intended. I cringe.

I hate to think of how horrible it'd be for me if I had somebody else reading that dreg to me out loud!!

My 2 pennies

Posted by teddyrux (Member # 1595) on :

I think that Robert Heinlein's first two rules of writing are the best advice that I've ever heard.

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.

We'll not discuss rule number 3 because it's a topic on it's own.

As for books, Dovid Morrell's "Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing" has some really good advice in it. He approaches his worldbuilding in a different way.

Another good web site to check out is www.hollylisle.com

Rux
:}

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

All the best advise I ever heard has come from Stephen King:

(1) Write a lot.
(2) Read a lot.
(3) Write with your door closed.
(4) Rewrite with your door open.

The best books I've read on the subject -- at least the ones I keep coming back to -- are:

(1) Stephen King, On Writing
(2) John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist
(3) John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on the Craft for Young Writers (read "young" as "beginning")
(4) John Gardner, On Moral Fiction (study of literary criticism)

Books that I don't refer to anymore, but that I found very helpful.

(1) Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction
(2) Orson Scott Card, Characters and Viewpoints
(3) Nancy Kress, Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
(4) Orson Scott Card, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
(5) Janet Burroughs, Writing Fiction
(6) Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Life and Writing
(7) Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer
(8) Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing

And last, the next book I'm going to read on the craft is Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

Best two pieces of writing advice I ever came across:
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --W. Somerset Maugham
"There is nothing to writing; all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." --Red Smith

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

My favorite piece of advice was a particularly eye-opening thing that Card says in both How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy and Characters & Viewpoint. He said that you need to finish the story that you start. A story begins by creating a need in the reader and ends by fulfilling it. A great many stories fail, he says, because the writer didn't end the story he started.

For me, this suddenly revealed why some stories are so powerful and leave you satisfied and why others leave you unsettled and restless.

Posted by Scott R (Member # 1353) on :

Best advice?

Don't treat the people you love like crap.

OSC.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

"Ask the next question", which is attributed to Theodore Sturgeon, while particularly important to SF writers is probably also a good motto for any writer.

Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :

Balthasar, could you elaborate?

Write with your door closed.
Rewrite with your door open.

What exactly was Herr King talking about here?

Posted by AeroB1033 (Member # 1956) on :

quote:
Balthasar, could you elaborate?
Write with your door closed.
Rewrite with your door open.
What exactly was Herr King talking about here?

I'm not Balthasar, but I know what King was referring to. He believes that a writer should write his first draft all alone, in his own solitary space, without tainting his story with the input of others.

King says that a writer should then put away his story and pull it out again months later, when it's fresh. And then rewrite it, taking into full consideration all criticism.

Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.

I'm not sure I agree with King, but if memory serves, that's what he said. *grin*

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

What King means by this and how I've interpreted it is a little different.

For King, you write with the door closed. While you're working, you don't show your work to anyone, no matter how tempting that might be. You keep going, writing with the world on the outside, doing your job of getting your story down as you see it.

For King, you rewrite with your door open. You realize that it's time to make the story presentable. You take out the parts that don't work--no matter how much you love them.

Let me quote King:

quote:

Gould said something else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right -- as right as your can, anyway -- it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.

I subscribe to all of this, but I add something.

When you write with your door closed, you have to put your fears on the outside. You can't be afraid of what your spouse, or family, or friends, or parents, or siblings, or pastor, or anyone will say or think of you. You have to be free to write what you want to write. You have to be free to tell the truth how you see it.

Then, once it's one paper, and once you've let it sit for a week or two (or a month or two, if it's a novel), then you have to decide if you want to open the door for that story. Most of the time you can--so long as what you've written is fiction. Even if it's semi-autobiographical fiction. But every so often, you know that this particular piece should stay behind closed doors for a while. Not because it's bad, but because it might be misunderstood.

But I write a lot of main-stream fiction, and most of it is rooted somehow in my childhood. As Flannery O'Connor said, if you've lived past 20, you have enough writing material to last you the rest of your life. For a long time I resisted telling these stories, even though they were fiction rooted in life. And then I realized that so long as I wrote with my door closed, it didn't matter. I wouldn't have to show anyone these pieces. What I found, however, is that these stories aren't so much a fictionalized version of fact, but pure fiction that has merely a glimmer of autobiography about them.

I've also found that all of this doesn't apply as much when I'm writing speculative fiction (it still applies because I write character-driven speculative fiction).

[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited April 03, 2004).]

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

King's On Writing

Writer's Digest Febuary 2001 issue Writing your second draft

Shawn

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

I think the most useful piece of advice about writing I've received -- and I can't remember where I heard it -- is this: Have the character say the opposite of what you originally intended him/her/it to say.

Now, this piece of advice is not to be used all the time, of course. But it's useful when you think a scene is boring, or when you find yourself "blocked."

An examples of how I've used this advice:

In my novel-in-progress, I had a scene where one character, due to a misunderstanding, thinks the protagonist has insulted his honor. My protagonist is a nice guy, so when he understands why the other character felt insulted, he says he's sorry for the misunderstanding, and the breach between the characters is healed. And the chapter basically has nowhere left to go, even though it's short. BOREDOM!

So I have my protagonist say he's not sorry. This escalates the problem, and the other character eventually is forced by his notions of honor to challenge the protagonist to a duel the protagonist can easily win but which could mean the challenger's death. HIGH STAKES AND TENSION!

Of course, both versions of the chapter end up with breach between the characters being healed. But the second version was a lot more interesting to read.

The important thing about using this advice is that when you have the character say the opposite of what he was going to say, you have to come up with all the reasons why the character would say that. That forces you to make the character more complex, and may also force you to make the plot more complex. (In the example above, it even made the setting more complex, since I had to come up with a plausible reason why the laws of the country allowed commoners to challenge lords to a duel and the traditions associated with dueling.)

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

Continuing with what Snoopy has gleaned from other writers. This from Elmore Leonard: "The most important advice I would suggest to beginning writers: Try to leave out the parts that readers skip."

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

I was influenced quite a bit by King's On Writing, Also I suscribe to Tracy Hickman's newsletter and sometimes he talks about writing. (I love the story of his first story.)
Also something that one of my teachers who writes once said.
"If you piss someone off, at least they're thinking." His goal in life was to make everybody think, if you get my drift.
But I think the best advice I have heard was Given by Ray Bradbury,
"Write everyday," It goes on I'm rummaging through my files to find the full. But that is enough I think. It was said earlier writing is what writers do, and if they don't what are they?