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headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4670: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4671: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4672: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) Horror World • View topic - The Most Popular Standard Writing Advice Can Be Bad
Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2014 7:34 am Posts: 4 Location: Joplin, MO
This article reminds me of something a managing editor once told me about writing in the vampire genre. "Go read everything there is, as much as you can get your hands on at least, to read about vampires. Then, forget it all and start writing." That was pretty much Ron's plan for writing anything, in any genre. Go absorb all the rules, tenets, and aspects that you possibly can, then let it all melt away and write the story.
_________________ "Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open." --Stephen King
It can be a bit daunting, when faced with all those lists - "Do this!" "Don't do that!" And I'm very happy I learned how to write in a more organic fashion by reading, writing, writing and reading some more. For me it's more like poetry and music; rhythm and flow. And then I look at those lists of advice later and I realize I've already incorporated some of it.
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:19 am Posts: 63 Location: Nottingham, UK
Yeah, I agree with a lot of that article. It's bloody writing, it's not assembling flat-pack furniture.
And I loved this, in relation to the Lolita0 quote: "Language is your Swiss army knife, and you can’t do shit like this with just the knife and the corkscrew."
I was especially grabbed by Point #3: "When in doubt, cut" --the article's author was SO dead-on about the following: "That’s because beginning writers tend to be verbose. We can’t tell the difference between an essential detail and an inessential one. We’re like golden retrievers romping through Storyland, and pretty much every damn thing we see is a squirrel.
But push this advice too far, and again, you’ll get stuck writing mediocre fiction. Because sometimes the things that don’t work are actually important. They don’t work not because they’re the wrong things, but because they’re the hard, ambitious, at-the-very-edge-of-what-you-even-know-how-to-say-things, and the only way to land them is to dig deeper, work harder, and sometimes even (god help you) add rather than cut."
So true. Sometimes you have to risk saying too much or risk saying it in too grand a manner -- if it is important to the development of the character(s) involved or in really driving home the impact of the event described to narrative, you really shouldn't scrimp, be authentic and all that, yes, but don't short-sell your characters or your story. If a reader can safely skim through your words and not miss anything important to the story, then you've truly screwed up. If less is more, then by all means reamin succinct, be terse, but sometimes, especially for dramatic impact, only MORE is more!
Don't (willingly) create disposable work.
_________________ "We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
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