This popular writing advice is wrong.

What is it? You ask, drum roll please…

…

they’re rolling…

still rolling…

“If you want to be a better writer, just write.”

If you’ve ever written anything, you’ve probably heard this before.

The heartbreaking truth is that thousands of writers out there have spent years writing multiple books, yet with fairly little improvement since their first. Why? How?

People often write without a honestly critical eye towards what they’ve written. It’s like sitting in your bedroom playing guitar songs without listening back to them. No matter how many songs you play, you won’t get better at playing them unless you listen back note by note and polish out those problems.

Beyond that, there’s a further problem in that unlike guitar, where it’s easy to say “hey, that note sounds shit, press down harder”, it’s a lot harder to say “Hey, that character isn’t believable.” Especially if you’re reading back your own work.

After all, they’re just words, right? Much the same as other words. It’s not immediately obvious why the intro to Mr. Robot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLb6h_7NAW0) works so well, yet your voice over intro in a coffee shop falls flat on its face. There are so many hidden mechanics in writing that the reality is as a new writer you’re messing up things that you don’t even realise exist yet.

Writing more of those mistakes, without realising they’re there, often leads to writers polishing up a manuscript that will get binned by the first agent who gets their eyes on it, as it’s massively flawed. And that agent hasn’t got time to give you feedback.

So you’re left dejected and lost, wondering around a writing forum telling people agents will reject their manuscript because they have too many exclamation marks, or they start with a voiceover intro. I’ll write an article on why that’s normally misguided another time.

So, how do you not be that person in ten years? You need other people’s fresh eyes and ears to work on getting better as a writer. Beyond that, you almost certainly need other writers too.

I remember giving a 30-page script to a very good friend of mine, really creative, awesome guy. He’s made an album in the past that I loved, and his feedback was “Other than this one word choice here, it’s good.” Most people haven’t looked into writing, or written enough, to be able to give you the level of critique that you need to drive you forward.

Maybe you’ve got an awesome twist and yet it just seems to be falling flat, someone who hasn’t looked into writing much might just say “I didn’t buy it”, so you spent time elaborating on the twist and making the villains big speech revealing it more realistic only to get the same reaction. Stuck in the same place.

Someone who’s spent a lot of time working at being a better writer might say “I didn’t buy it, I think it’s cause you needed to set it up better emotionally in act one.” and suddenly you have a solution it might’ve taken you months of struggle to get to, if you would’ve got there at all.

That’s the difference between working in isolation and together with others to become better writers as a group. So if we return to the initial mantra let rejig it as this:

“If you want to be a better writer. Have other people tell you how your writing sucks.”

Not sure that one’ll catch on… brownie points to anyone who leaves a better worded one in the comments.