Don't worry about whether or not anyone else is going to approve of what you're writing. They don't matter. What matters is how you feel about the piece. ALTERNATELY! Don't judge your story by the first draft. Your best is rarely going to be your first. No one gets it exactly right the first time around, and you should never let a "bad" first draft prevent you from continuing what you love to do.
if i could have told myself one thing it would have been 'Dont try to write all that namby pamby fairy s**t, get straight to the point, and only give the necessary details' i waffled a lot in my earlier works....
Find someone who doesn't know me personally who's prepared to read my work before I publish it, and give me honest constructive criticism. I didn't do that with my first novels and they suffered for it. This forum is at the moment about the best source of such independent critique for me (though I've as yet to submit anything for critique or even do a couple of critiques!) Not a thing I wish I knew, but additionally I need to get my life's act together and re-discover the spark that made me want to write my first two novels in the first place. Without the desire to tell the story I know can't do the job properly.
My characters have always been passive, even if they're not by nature, I'd put them into situations where there was nothing they could do to change things. Found out this January, that this is the result of something that set me on 'freeze' (as in fight or flight) in my childhood. If I'd known about this effect twenty or thirty years ago, my characters would have been able to fight anything. After reading Cogito's response, I realize that if I'd known this sooner, I probably wouldn't be on disability and wouldn't have what I've always wanted - all this time to work on my action heroes So I guess the only thing I'd tell my earlier self is to keep writing, no matter how much life tries to get in the way.
The one thing I wish I knew earlier was to not try and "improve" a story to death. I wrote something that everyone said was darn good, but got caught up in a lot of "what if ...?" The end result was that I changed a lot in the hope of making it better, but the more I tried to improve it the more dissatisfied I became, so I ended up shelving the whole thing instead. On the other hand, I had to go through a lot of personal development to get to where I am now, and I'm not sure my younger self would have been willing to accept that what he did was good enough.
Don't compare your first draft to the published greats Oh, and when I was fourteen I thought coming up with a dreamy description solved who my characters were - who is Alice? well she's got long, beautiful blonde hair, blue eyes, a perfect figure, a gorgeous waredrobe. Blah-blah-blah.
I am absolutely still in that beginner phase! But, that said, I would just tell myself to begin writing earlier.
I have learnt through painful experience and rejection slips that for writing of any genre, even including mystery and detective, the mechanisms of the plot become very tedious and unengaging if the plot is not driven 90% by the actions and motivations of the characters. I now spend less time on intricate story lines and allow my characters more space to battle matters out among themselves. I also learnt that a bit of variety in the setting helps. I once had my characters trapped in one house, and mostly in one room, for about 40,000 words, and it was hard work keeping the interaction with the environment interesting since I really, really hate nothing but dialogue. It was doable, but tough. All these problems have kept my output down to only 2 novels (well, 1 and one just finishing) in the space of 4 years (with some short stories so I can still feel the sense of acheivement from time to time). Still, live and learn. It's impossible to "know" some things, you have to work through them.
Looking at my first book published, I realize that I should have read much more about writing before I wrote anything.
That in fact a lot of the rules you're taught in school ('don't start a sentence with 'and,'' 'don't use words such as 'nice' when you can think of a better one,' 'don't use 'ly' adverbs,' 'never say said') are there as a way to force you to expand your talents, rather than as iron principles you cannot break.
This. Honestly, I often think those rules are silly; they only exist because some hack got a contract to write a "how-to" book on writing, so he dumped in a bucketload of rules that can be stated in five words or less. He then found the most egregious examples in literature of what happens when those childish rules aren't followed in order to justify them. ("'Take me to your leader!' the alien howled extraterrestrially." See? Never use ly adverbs in dialogue tags!) The same hack would probably tell composers not to use diminished chords or the Phrygian mode because no good will ever come of that, right? Right? Open any good novel and you will find most, if not all, of these rules broken. Open another good novel and you will find the rest of them broken. Want to know how to confuse a novice writer? Tell him that he should read the great writers, like Nabokov or Pynchon or McCarthy, and strive to be as good as they are. Then, when he submits a story to you for criticism, tell him it's no good because he used an ly adverb. He will say, "But Nabokov used ly adverbs!" Tell him Nabokov can get away with it because he's Nabokov, but the novice can't. He will say, "You tell me to write like Nabokov, and then when I do, you tell me not to write like Nabokov! You're just an idiot." He will be right.
I agree. I think schools in general just need updated material--instead of blindly spouting the same information year after year. It serves no purpose.
Those darn rules again. Minstrel, you are a rebel. A writer can get away with writing any way that they want as long as they either a)don't care what anyone else thinks and write only for themselves, or b)other people believe they are geniuses and will put up with their idiosyncrasies. The three authors you mentioned fall into that latter category (although I would debate McCarthy's inclusion, but that's another issue). The thing is, most of us aren't geniuses. Or at least I'm not. I want people to read what I write so I tend to follow the guidelines. I use few if any -ly adverbs. I try to use active verbs and show and not tell. I use standard conventions of punctuation. I have a clear, simple style (some would say no style). My point is, that if you are just starting out as a writer and want to be published commercially, you should probably follow most of the guidelines taught in schools and in books. If you break any of them, know exactly why you are doing it and have a justification for doing so. Most writers want to share their stories which is why they write. A writer ignoring these standard guidelines risks being misunderstood and rejected by readers and publishers. I always think of Picasso, one of the great rebels of art. He started out doing standard, representational art and when he broke the rules (guidelines), he broke rules he understood and had previously worked under.
You don't send a three year old out into the city or the wilderness. You lay down a bunch of rules that will at times seem senseless and arbitrary to the child. As the child matures, he or she gradually understands why the rules were imposed, and the conditions under which they can be ignored. The child will also break rules out of defiance, and sometimes learn the hard way. New writers don't like to be thought of as children, any more than children do. But like it or not, a set of rules does help them reach their goals, until they have matured enough as writers to no longer need the rules.
If I could go back in time and give myself writing tips, I would tell myself to join a writing community sooner. People with more experience have taught me so much that I never would have learned on my own. Then, of course, I would say not to get discouraged, but to read widely, write daily, and practice drafting.
Rigid rules in any art are there so the artist can learn the craft that underpins the art. You cannot push the envelope until you understand the envelope.
I wish I'd figured out when to stop thinking about a story and just sit down and write the damned thing. I can't count how many times I thought and thought and thought about a story until I just got over it and didn't feel like writing it out anymore.
