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Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
“Don’t staple manuscripts,” the postscript read. “Loose pages plus paperclip equal correct way to submit copy.”
One thing I’ve noticed is that when you’ve had a little success, magazines are a lot less apt to use that phrase, “Not for us.”
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.
What am I going to say, “on the table is a cage three feet, six inches in length, two feet in width, and fourteen inches high”? That’s not prose, that’s an instruction manual.
But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.
Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary.
Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it.
Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.
You should avoid the passive tense. I’m not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in The Elements of Style.
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.
I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions… and not even then, if you can avoid it.
Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.
remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.
Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.
When composing it’s best not to think too much about where paragraphs begin and end; the trick is to let nature take its course. If you don’t like it later on, fix it then.
It is possible to overuse the well-turned fragment (and Kellerman sometimes does), but frags can also work beautifully to streamline narration, create clear images, and create tension as well as to vary the prose-line.
If the moment of quickening is to come, it comes at the level of the paragraph. It is a marvellous and flexible instrument that can be a single word long or run on for pages
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.
The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.
The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.
I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves.
Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.
Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.
Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Overdescription buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium.
In the end, the important question has nothing to do with whether the talk in your story is sacred or profane; the only question is how it rings on the page and in the ear.
And if you do your job, your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own.
I think that, when you read your manuscript over (and when you talk it over), you’ll see if symbolism, or the potential for it, exists. If it doesn’t, leave well enough alone. If it does, however—if it’s clearly a part of the fossil you’re working to unearth—go for it.
But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions.
How long you let your book rest—sort of like bread dough between kneadings—is entirely up to you, but I think it should be a minimum of six weeks.
The truth is that most writers are needy. Especially between the first draft and the second, when the study door swings open and the light of the world shines in.
What the Formula taught me is that every story and novel is collapsible to some degree. If you can’t get out ten per cent of it while retaining the basic story and flavor, you’re not trying very hard.
You need to listen very carefully to the things I.R. didn’t understand, and then ask yourself if you understand them.
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
When you step away from the “write what you know” rule, research becomes inevitable, and it can add a lot to your story. Just don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog; remember that you are writing a novel, not a research paper.
Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.
I have cut with Strunk in mind—“Omit needless words”—and also to satisfy the formula stated earlier: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.
if the main character’s lucky Hawaiian shirt plays a part at the end of a story, it must be introduced early.
