Youtube “Writing Advice” Channels Are Morons!

Before I start this controversial post let me say this. I am not saying all “Writing Channels” or “Writing Advice” channels are crap. But 99% of them are. I’m sure there are plenty out there that have good advice for you.

However, during the beginning of writing Second Sight: The Decay I ran into a lot of bad advice. I am going to debunk some of that here. I won’t name anyone. I don’t want the drama. This is a cautionary tale about when I wrote this book.

Let’s get started…

I have been writing stories for over 20 years now. I am an avid reader. I love horror, mystery, and anything dark. I have been a horror movie freak for the longest time. Maybe one day I’ll make a blog about horror movies, but this isn’t it.

When I started writing Second Sight: The Decay as an actual commercial product I went to YouTube for advice. I wanted to hear from published authors what the best practices were. I figured if they were published—even if it’s self-published—they would have some insight.

A lot of these channels had THOUSANDS of subs. Far beyond the sub count that I had when I did youtube for ten years. A big reason for that is most of them were young, attractive women. Call it sexist all you want; they were the mass majority of “Advice Channels.” They had a nice personality, and some tried to be “funny” so that could account for some of it. I’m just giving you the demographics of who showed up first in the Youtube search results.

I’m going to toss out a theory about these channels. It’s not about them personally. I’m sure they are wonderful people. I feel like they give advice an English teacher would. English teachers and professors give you the “proper way to write” to pass their class. I’m not saying poor grammar is a good thing. I’m saying that being strict like you are in English class papers DOES NOT translate well into novels.

For example, I heard a lot of people have lists of words you MUST DELETE from your novel. This was the most common piece of advice. Words like JUST, FEEL, REALIZE. Now, what’s the problem here?

We don’t all speak like English teachers. We don’t all write like them either. We shouldn’t if you ask me. To me, if you do that you sound robotic and clunky. By setting up rules like that where you are prohibited from using certain words it kills your writing voice.

I remember going through an early draft—one before the first draft was even completed—and changing it to follow those rules. Low and behold it turned out to look and read like garbage. It was godawful, and I wondered “What am I doing wrong? It sounded fine before.”

Then I had “that moment” when I was at a thrift shop. It’s a thrift store that sells books for a nickel. It’s a nonprofit, and it’s sad to see books being sold for a shiny new nickel but still. I walked in and grabbed a bunch of novels from my genre and took them home as a guide. Not to teach me how to write, but to give me that idea of how super successful authors wrote.

I picked up a few Tom Clancy books, along with Silence of the Lambs. As soon as I opened to page one from one of the Jack Ryan books by Tom Clancy. He broke EVERY SINGLE RULE the “Advice Channels” gave. Every. Single. Rule. Was repeatedly broken in many different ways! It was as if Tom Clancy listened to some “genius” in his past saying you can’t use those words, so he said: “oh yeah watch me!”

Tom Clancy used the word “JUST” in the second paragraph! He also didn’t always say “SAID” or “ASKED” he had all sorts of dialogue tags. TOM CLANCY BROKE THOSE RULES. Then it dawned on me. It’s not about following rules that makes you successful. It’s about telling a story people enjoy, remember, and think about after it’s over. At least that’s how I see it.

To me a book could be perfectly written and following Hemmingway’s style to a T. Hemmingway is the way English teachers make you write 9 times out of 10. Well not everyone wants to read Hemmingway. He was great, sure. Was he the only way? No.

To me, nobody talks about Hemmingway’s language or how many commas he used outside of fart huffing academics who try to be sophisticated. They remembered him for his STORIES. HIS STORY WAS THE #1 THING PEOPLE TALK ABOUT.

To me, I don’t care if Michael Chrichton screwed up a comma in Jurassic Park! I remember the amazing scenes and story he wrote in the book. Same with Thomas Harris with the Hannibal Lecter novels. I don’t care about format, punctuation, or if he used an adverb. I’m not an English professor, and most likely 99.9% of your readers aren’t either.

When have you seen a negative Amazon review that said “Too many adverbs” or “HE SAID THE WORD JUST! 1 STAR!”

If you have… comment below and give me a link so I can laugh at it in a later post!

Yes, you should use proper grammar. Yes, you need to know the basics, so you don’t look like it was translated by a Nigerian you hired on Fiverr to ghostwrite the book. But to me, it’s more about how well does it flow when you read it out loud. How does the plot move you forward? Does it make you think? Does it make you feel a strong connection? Do you wonder about possibilities that aren’t explicitly explained? Do you remember the story? Did you ever put it down because you were bored? That is what I am concerned with far more than being, for lack of a phrase, academically correct.

Also.. one small note. When one of these “Youtube Novelists” dictates to you how to write your story. Do two things. Look up their Amazon Reviews or if they even have a published book at all! One, in particular, had 25 novels written. None of them published and she gave “advice” to thousands. Bad advice at that. Point and laugh at them. Don’t listen to any of that. Write the story that you want to read. Write one that YOU become lost in that makes you escape the real world. That’s why people read or watch movies!

A funny thing I noticed with “advice channels” is even their fans think their work is awful! Why? Because they wrote it like an English term paper not like an entertainment medium.

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