The Fellowship Of Ink

What causes writer’s block?

In every writer there are two people. The creator and the critiquer.

Both are vital.

The creator has the free-spirited abandon of a five-year-old who’s just discovered mixing colours and has been given gallons of paint. When the creator is in control it feels amazing, the words are flowing and you’re tip tap tapping away happily.

If you’ve ever been drunk or high when creating, you’ll know exactly how this feels. As you type away you’re feeling the feelings of your characters, and you’re sure this is some of the best stuff you’re ever written.

Then you fall asleep.

Sitting there next morning, re-reading your work, in comes the critiquer. Often you’ll hear him referred to as your inner critic, but names are important. Critic has strong negative connotations, you think of someone there poking holes, intentionally trying to bring you down, and that’s a misnomer. That’s not the critiquer’s job. They’re not your enemy: they’re there to elevate you, to cut the fat and hone your work to a fine point. To simplify and perfect rather than to destroy.

They’ll look at the sentences you gleefully typed last night and tell you what’s wrong with them and why without a moment’s doubt.

Then, after they’ve spoken, you worry. Worry that you’re a shit writer, and that nothing you write will be ever be worth reading.

The irony is that without the critique helping you hone your craft and tearing down your mistakes… that could be true.

So, you make the edits then next time you come to sit in front of the blank page out comes…

Nothing.

But fortunately, you’re reading this article. So you know your job is to have these two working in tandem with each other, pulling out each when they’re needed and not before.

The problem comes in when one goes rampant, I’m going to demonstrate the extremes of each:

Creator rampant:

This person writes for hours and hours. It’s crazy impressive, it just seems to pour out of them completely unimpeded. When they tell you how much they write you’re half impressed and half jealous… then you read it.

They might have been writing for months or years, but they’re inevitably stuck at the same level at which they started. If they give you notes they’ll be pretty shallow, if you give them notes they won’t really take them on board. Initially, they’ll think they’re a great writer, after a lot of rejection they’ll still feel like they’re at the right level, but there’s some invisible wall they keep hitting up against that keeps them from getting published.

The reality is that they can’t tear down and hone their craft cause they’re not using or training their critique, so instead of progressing as a writer they just end up stuck making the same mistakes again and again whilst being blind to them.

The creator rampant clearly has the focus and energy to produce great volumes. If they focus their creativity with discipline of the craft, they can create great work.

Critiquer Rampant:

They just can’t write. They’ll cut and cut their work, readjusting it again and again with almost no perceptible change. They are terrified of the blank page, or even of submitting something. They’ll almost never be positive about their writing or be able to objectively analyse their quality. Sometimes these people are really solid writers, but they just seem to have almost no output because it takes so much effort to overcome the overwhelming critiquer in their head.

That’s great and all, but I read this to see what causes Writer’s block?

Well, the critiquer does. What’s happening is you’re trying to create but as soon as the creator blooms an idea, the critiquer comes in and shuts it down.

I remember as a kid in drama class we’d play a game called “Yes, and…” where someone would say something and you’d have to agree with it, inevitably the idea would spiral upwards, escalating into something ridiculous:

“Hey what about a man who loves doughnuts, but if he eats one he’ll explode?”

“Yes, and… he’s chased around by a pastry chef who wants to make him explode.”

“Yes, and… the pastry chef is his ex-wife who wants to prove doughnuts are evil with his death.”

“Yes, and… so he must be someone important to prove it…”

“Like the president!”

That is what creating with the creator is like. It’s free and it spirals upwards. After that exchange you feel free, almost excited, to chuck out the next idea and see where it goes. Let’s see how the same idea goes when trying to create with the critiquer. A classic case of writer’s block:

“Hey what about a man who loves doughnuts, but if he eats one he’ll explode?”

“That’s insanely dumb. Next idea?”

“Err, a frog who can morph into a Prince?”

“Jesus, the bar was already low! Next!”

“Can’t think of anything…”

Except that’s a lie: you just thought of 2 ideas and dismissed them out of hand!

That’s why writer’s rooms often brainstorm ideas with a rule of “anything goes”, The Office US’s writers room brainstormed like this, one pitch was that Michael Scott accidentally killed Meredith. They thought this idea was hilarious, so eventually this became the episode where he ran her over. Of course, if there wasn’t that “anything goes” rule, then this idea would’ve been dismissed out of hand as ridiculous.

So, when you have writer’s block, that’s what you need to do, put an “anything goes” rule in place. The tips you’ll often see espouse as cures see work because they put this principle into practice:

Write in comic sans
Write what won’t happen next
Write a threadbare version of the scene
Write the scene in the worst way you can

All of them have that same underlying rule “the critiquer is not allowed in this space”. He will nip creations in the bud, his role comes afterwards, when the writing is done and you sit down to review.

In essence the creator pumps out the marble, and the critiquer helps him sculpt it into something worth seeing. But the critiquer will block the pump if he comes in too early, and if he’s never there all you have is a huge wedge of misshapen marble.

So, what’re you saying?

If you can’t write, put your critiquer away and let anything go. Whatever tip helps you with that, the principle is the same, any idea is okay. Then just start typing or thinking of things and writing them down without criticising them at all, and they’ll spiral upwards. Instead of getting into a funk where every idea seems bad you’ll have a bunch of ideas, some bad and some good, then you can bring the critique to the party to help you sort the good from the bad.

Writer’s block is critiquer’s block, ask him to leave the room, just for a little.

Soft Sci-Fi is Just Fantasy – and That’s a Good Thing

In sci-fi circles, one of the big arguments you’ll find is between hard and soft sci fi fans. Hard describing sci-fi deeply rooted in traditional sciences, attempting to be semi-realistic. Soft describing sci-fi that doesn’t often resemble a realistic, or even plausible, future.

One will often find a tone of superiority to those who favour hard sci-fi. They often claim soft sci-fi isn’t really science-fiction, it’s just fiction. That without the use of plausible science, there’s nothing scientific about it.

They’re right.

Soft science fiction is nothing more than Frodo travelling across the Mordor system to throw the one antimatter ring into the Star of Doom. It’s fantasy, set in spaceships or skyscraper filled landscapes.

And, done well, that can be incredible.

Dune is soft sci-fi, and an absolute classic of the genre. While I’m incredibly nervous about the upcoming film (God, please don’t let them GoT it), I’m still going to see it. But I won’t be going with my fingers crossed for some lengthy, detailed spice explanation scenes. The pot that the space wizards use to fly spaceships doesn’t interest me.

What interests me are the characters. The betrayal. The romance. The struggle between right and wrong, and the fight for vengeance. I don’t care if they travel through space with drugs, or by saying Muad-dib three times while spinning in a circle.

On the other hand, there’s nothing about hard sci-fi that prevents it from telling an equally compelling story. The Expanse book series has a pretty high bar for it’s vision of the future. No artificial gravity, the complicated use of acceleration to travel from Mars to Earth.

But the characters are still compelling. The small family that’s born of fire aboard the Rocinante are full of their charms and quirks, but also complicated relationships, and compelling character motivations. Naomi may come up with bizarre thrust based plans using rail gun physics that honestly illude me, but her relationship with Jim is sweet and realistically complicated.

There’s nothing superior about hard sci-fi. It’s a different sub-genre. Nothing more or less. If you want to read a book filled with intricate details about how a ringworld might be constructed around an alien star, terrific. That’s brilliant. But in the same way some find military sci-fi a tad boring (My goodness. The lieutenant is incompetant and the sergeant is going to have to save the day? Shocker) many people don’t want to read through specific details of how the ship’s engine works.

People read for different things. Character. Story. Twists. Ideas. Writing around any of these things is as viable as any of the others.

Soft sci fi has strengths. Room to focus on character and plot over satellite positioning. It also has weaknesses. A tendency to stray from a credible suspension of disbelief, and one too many saucy alien lady friends.

But both have their audiences. So be prepared to give either a go, and don’t dismiss soft sci-fi off hand because “It’s not sciency enough”.

*It’s worth noting that these terms have better definitions, but on amateur platforms such as Reddit, this is what they’re often used for

Shaun of the Dead – Mastery of Metaphors.

I can hear you yelling at the screen now “Shaun of the dead is a film, you muppet!”

And I have to give it to you, you’re not wrong. Yet it has some amazing metaphors in it. Not in dialogue, or description, but in story. Let’s have a look shall we?

*Spoilers for Shaun of the Dead here, but it came out 16 years ago: it’s really on you at this point*

Our hero Shaun is a lazy man-child in a dead-end job who spends his days playing video games. He’s afraid of growing up, and his girlfriend breaks up with him for it.

This sets up his need: Grow up and leave the comforts of man-childhood behind.

He has a clear desire: Get his girlfriend back

So throughout the film he’s going to struggle with the thematic question: is it worth letting go of man-childhood, for love?

Sounding all a bit familiar now isn’t it, could easily be a non-zombie rom-com movies. In fact it’s the exact same thematic question as Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past…

But of course our character’s internal struggle with this question has to be externalised, and how better to externalise it, than with zombies. Wait, what?

We need a metaphor for man-childhood, a safe place. A place that he really should have left by now, but just can’t bring himself to do it, even when it’s closing…

Oh, right. A pub.

In fact even when the world is collapsing, all Shaun can think about is going to the pub.

So eventually, inevitably they do. He even manages to bring his girlfriend with him into his metaphorical safe space to be a man-child.

You reckon they can hole it out there?

Of course not, his man-child fort must be destroyed in order to him to meet his inner need: grow up.

So the pub’s invaded and he has to chose to abandon his safe haven, his man-child pub. But that’s not enough.

There has to be a man-child relationship that dies so that his relationship with his girl can start anew. He has to sever ties with his best friend, the symbol of his childish-ness.

His best friend is bitten, infected. He’ll drag Shaun down and kill him too if he stays with him in the Wincester.

Isn’t that a great metaphor for childishness? How bad friends drag you down to their level and keep you from what you want?

So Shaun has to decide to leave him to die, and of course as he leaves the pub, the army come. With his final decision to accept his need, to give up childishness and embrace responsibility, Shaun is literally saved.

Brilliant.

That’s dope, but how does that help me?

When you want to represent an internal struggle, use things in the world as a metaphor for them. This is especially true in screenwriting, where I can’t just say “He wasn’t sure to go with Bella or Rachael”, instead I have to have a metaphor for each choice that he deliberates between, maybe a red ribbon for Rachael and a bluebell for Bella.

This really takes your writing to a whole other level of depth. Especially if you can think of ways to externalise your characters internal struggles and internal demons.

Seeing an alcoholic staring at a bottle and contemplating his marriage for a while is boring. Seeing an alcoholic fight a brewery kingpin for the love of his ex-wife is riveting. That’s the power of metaphor.

Character and Theme: A look at Gideon the Ninth

I don’t consider talking about themes a useful avenue to pursue when writing. While it’s nice to have a idea of themes you’re including, I find that thinking too hard about abstract ideas like ‘identity’ or ‘loss’ often distracts me from focusing on the most important elements of a story: character and plot.

But that doesn’t mean that I can simply ignore it. Themes often act as the connection between characters and the central plot. Whether the themes come as a byproduct of a well written story, or the glue holding one together is up to the writer.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a closer look at how the motivations of the characters in Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth align with the themes of order present throughout the book. Spoilers ahead.

The story, in short, revolves a group of seventeen people isolated within a tower. They’ve been selected from eight different houses: political entities within the world. At first, the seventeen maintain a sense of structure. A social hierarchy forms within the tower, and the eight houses get along amicably enough.

And then two are murdered.

The two murdered are the leading figures in the small community. They come from a hugely influential house, and have been maintaining civility between the seventeen even under the circumstances.

After this, the entire group falls apart in distrust. Violence ensues.

Often when stories of this nature descend into anarchy, there’s a disconnect with the audience. I’ll often find myself thinking “Well people wouldn’t really act like that.” In the Walking Dead, the remnants of society fall to cannibalism and murder within months, with little reason behind it.

But the reasoning behind the collapse of this little society is clearly formed from each of the character’s motivations. These motivations are established early on, and form the basis of why the remainders are incapable of banding together after the attack.

“I told you before that the Second House would take responsibility if no one else had the stomach for it. That begins now.”

The important fact here is that the groups inability to band together in the wake of the attack comes from the character’s individual relationships with ideas of order and authority.

All the Houses have come with their own ideas of how society is best ordered, and so in after the death of the leading figures, are set against one another to establish their own ideas of order.

For example, the Second House are seen by the others throughout the story as ignorant, resorting to violence as soon as order begins to break down. One character even declares it was the Second Houses’ violent attempt to take control that caused the group to abandon their rules, and embrace anarchy. Many readers are left confused by the character’s actions, and resentful of them for their ignorance.

But their actions are logical, both in the context of their backgrounds and motivation, and in within the wider context of the theme of order.

They are soldiers, who have spent their lives fighting for the Cohort to bring order to uncivilised worlds. Shed blood beforehand, and are the only house unshaken by the murders.

In their experience, if anyone but the rulers can enact violence, chaos will ensue. In the wake of the murder of the group’s leaders, they are proven right.

Their violent actions within the story aren’t to empower themselves, they’re an attempt to scare other houses into order. To prevent violence erupting among the others, they are willing to use violence.

It’s seen as hypocritical by many, including readers, but it fits with the ideas of order that the story is based around, and with their own motivations.

There are many example of this throughout the book. Each of the Houses attempt to reintroduce order in some way, whether through piety, secrecy or knowledge. All ultimately fail.

They fail, as they are set against one another. The differences between them are ultimately directly connected to the theme of order beating in the heart of the story.

This is a great example of how character and theme can work really well when closely aligned. Making the characters relationships with the theme of the story so central to the plot brings each character within the book into close focus. It makes it more real to the reader, as opposed to the grand posturing we often associate with the idea of themes.

This is hardly unique to Gideon the Ninth. The vast majority of great stories take intricate care of the relationship their characters have with the theme. But for me, the care taken was vividly clear in this story, and I wanted to leave this as a reminder, not only for anyone who reads this, but for myself.

Last of Us 2 – Worst twist ever?

Has a game ever made you feel so anxious you had to turn your console off?

At one point playing The Last of Us 2 did that. Which is amazing, as on a moment-by-moment level it is truly a great game. Scenes are well written, and the atmosphere is overflowing with dread.

But that’s not why we’re here.

It has an early twist that’s pretty much turned fans rampant, I’m here to go into why it didn’t work, and how they could’ve made it work.

*Spoilers are coming*

You’ve had your warning.

So Joel’s death has fans outraged, but why?

In no particular order, these are the reasons I could see.

No set up/foreshadowing

Not so much as a prophetic dream! Twists are essentially a huge payoff to a set up we didn’t realise was there. So when you’re delivering a twist to your audience, what makes them okay with it is it’s inevitability is that they can say “Oh shit, no wait, actually that makes sense.”

If we’d heard that Joel was in a particularly dangerous place, or that he nearly died last year, or anything at all to help set this up, then when he died we’d have gone “Damn, that checks out.”

They tried to do this with our intro to Abbey. It’s not explicitly stated, but it’s very obvious she’s going after Joel. But this doesn’t work because Joel’s killed everyone else who’s tried to take him out. There’s no clear sign post to the audience that this time would be any different.

So when he died it never felt inevitable, just disappointing.

Joel doesn’t make a decision that leads to his death.

For an audience, a character needs to die for a reason. They have to make a “bad” decision that causes their death. It could be as heinous as regicide, as in Macbeth, or not marrying an inbred chick, as in Game of Thrones. His death should feel like a surprising, yet inevitable outcome of his decisions. Alas, past the prologue Joel makes one onscreen decision before his death, that’s to go to the mansion rather than stay and die.

Not much of a decision.

Even if we just played as Joel before that final Abby bit, and saw him make the decision to save her, despite Tommy warning of the dangers, that’d be enough. Yet we don’t get that, we never get a casual choice for his death, which is a big part of why it feels so unsatisfying.

There’s an argument to be made that his death is the outcome of his huge decision at the end of the first game. That’s bullshit, it’s a different game and it was 4 years before his death. It’s fine to have that as the killer’s motivation, but it’s not satisfying for the audience to say that made his death inevitable as it is currently written. You could rewrite it so it kinda works, but it’d be pretty lame to have the start of 2 be a huge shadow from 1, especially when getting rid of Joel is largely about stepping away from 1 anywho.

Cheap twist over drawn out tension

You know who’s forgotten more about story than I’ll ever know? Hitchcock. let’s quote him:

In the first case [an unexpected explosion] we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second [an expected explosion] we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.

Let’s apply this here, what if we started with a shot of Ellie at Joel’s grave? Then flashed back. It wouldn’t be perfect, for a myriad of reasons, but it’d mean that the scene with Abbey would be stomach turning, having to play it whilst knowing she’d kill him. That’d be worth more than the twist alone. Seeing that same prologue scene knowing he’d die would make it so much more bittersweet, which the later flashback scenes are great at.

I really think if they wanted to kill him at this point which, as I’ll explain in a second, is an awful choice anyway, then this was the best way to do it. Set it up at the start so we’re emotionally ready, force us to participate in his death, which we would hate, but if it’s well written enough we’d do it. Let us see that it’s the inevitable outcome of a decision he makes in this game.

*GoT, Jaws and Stars Wars spoilers below*

Structurally awful place.

Eddard Stark, the victims of the Red Wedding and Quint from Jaws. What do they all have in common? They all died near the end.

Why? Because that’s the darkest moment in the plot, that’s when things go truly wrong and you’re allowed to kill off main characters. If Joel had died then, with appropriate foreshadowing, we’d have understood. We’d still be upset, but we’d have understood. It’d feel like a hefty price, but combined with the corrections I posted above it’d make the whole thing more enjoyable; we’d embrace every second with him.

You know who dies as the catalyst for the story? Luke’s parents. Not Obi Wan. These are the nice characters who you don’t really care about, but the protag does. Their death is motivation for the protagonist. Obviously, the writers of the game tried to engage us with the story by having someone we genuinely care for die. Which is a brave choice, perhaps it’d have worked better if they’d set it up and established that tension, but I doubt it.

That’d be like Infinity War starting out with Captain America’s death. Maybe I’m wrong here though, Can anyone give me an example in the comments of a beloved character dying at the start of something and fans embracing it, I’d love to see some.

Prologue promises relationship between Joel/Ellie

I think this is probably the 2^nd biggest reason it fell so hard on it’s face. Our first scene with the game tells us what the story is all about. In Last of Us we live through the death of someone treasured and grief it with Joel, we know it’s a story about a broken man trying to heal in a heartless world.

In 2, we get a scene of Joel talking to Ellie, their relationship is a bit stretched. He sings a song about not wanting to lose her. It’s sweet. What does this tell us? That the story is about their relationship, that’s going to be the forefront. In a way it’s about her loss of Joel, but really, it’s a story about revenge. The genre of the from Ellie’s perspective story is clearly “revenge thriller”.

This completely wrong foots us in terms of our expectations going forwards. I know as a player I spent most of the initial act wondering when I’d see Joel and why he’s not with Ellie yet.

No doubt, this is the biggest reason. It’s a slap in the face to fans. I waited 7 years to spent 5 mins of game time as Joel. Maybe 15 minutes with him, before he dies. If he’d died before the game started off screen and was just there in flashbacks, I’d be alright with it. It’s a dangerous world, we knew Ellie was going to be the lead.

But instead we just get blueballed, then someone we actually cared about was snatched away from us. We literally committed an atrocity with his hands, and forgave him for it. That’s how well they wrote the 1^st game, how much they made us care. Then taking him away so early in the 2^nd is punishing us for that same caring.

You never want to punish your fans for caring.

If his death was set up well, and happened late in the game, it could’ve worked. But so early, you essentially made us feel towards the writers the same way that Ellie felt towards Abby. People are returning the game en masse because of it, and review bombing the game, it’s not even like the fanbase is a little split as it was with Last Jedi either. Almost everyone hates it.

Conclusion

How do you avoid doing a Last of Us 2?

Foreshadow deaths, use tension instead of twists, create decision points that lead to character deaths, ensure beloved characters die at the end and pay attention to the promises of your prologue.

And most importantly of all. Don’t ever punish your audience for caring; they’ll never trust you again.

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.

How should I write?

There are as many different ways to tell a story as there are stories to tell.

Many writers worry about how they write: whether they’re writing too fast or too slow, whether their outline is too detailed or too sparse, or whether their story is even any good.

When I started taking writing seriously, I’d worry about these things all the time. Every other writer I talked to seemed to do things in a completely different way to me. And so I’d find myself thinking that, in some way, my writing must be wrong.

The truth is, the impact these things have on your writing is considerable. There are advantages and disadvantages to the ways each of us writes. I myself am a rather slow writer, who relies quite heavily on detailed plans and outlines for each chapter I write.

It means that it takes a long time for me to see tangible evidence that my work is bringing results. I can get disheartened when I see the pace others can write at, and makes me feel as though my project will never be finished, and that my efforts are being wasted.

But there’s another truth, a harder truth. And that is that there’s nothing that you can do about that.

I write the way I do, because it’s how I write. I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing any other way. My methods are my own, because I know how I work best.

Despite the hundreds of books, classes and blogs teaching writing out there, when it comes down to it, the only person who can give you an honest assessment of how you can write best is yourself.

This can be seen across the writing world. Some writers can write page after page at incredible rates – Brandon Sanderson – while others can take weeks or months just to finish a chapter – infamously, George R. R. Martin.

If there was one, foolproof method of writing, a formulae through which we could all become award winning novelists, all the best writers would use it. But they don’t. Because it doesn’t exist.

If you want to improve how you write, by all means learn how others write and try out new things. But just keep in mind that no ones method is better than your own. Don’t throw out everything you know about outlining and get frustrated when writing without a plan doesn’t work for you. Or start outlining for the first time, and get angry when writing doesn’t immediately get a thousand times easier.

Your method of writing is going to be as unique to you as your own fingerprints, and hopefully more creative than that analogy. We can all learn, we can all improve as writers. But we also have to accept that we’re each on our own paths. The lessons we learn aren’t going to suit us exactly, and every new skill we try is an experiment, not a rule.

So if you want to improve how you write:

Experiment with new ideas in your writing. Try doing a full plan first. Or try improving it incrementally draft by draft. Or writing huge chunks in one go, 10,000 words before a second draft of a chapter. We can only find what works best for us through trial and error.
Don’t let adversity get you down. No matter what you do, writing is always going to be hard sometimes. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong; it just means you’re human. Keep on going, we all struggle at times, even the greats.
Write. There no better teacher than experience. If you want to improve how you write, first you need to be writing.

Tier 1 – Spelling

As an amateur writer who runs a writer’s group and constantly seeks out critique, I’ve read innumerable amatuer manuscripts.

I remember reading one amateur script where each page had at least 5 spelling errors. It felt like being a job interviewer, and the interviewee turns up only in stained underwear, and spoke to me between mouthfuls of slowly slurped spaghetti. It didn’t matter how good they, or their story, were beneath the surface: all my goodwill towards them was wasted on the awful first impression.

With that framing device in place, the least useful level of critique, is… spelling. But why?

Because correcting spelling is a task so easy a computer can literally do it for you.

All the effort you put in to get real human eyes, attached to a real human heart, to read your work. You’re giving it to them to see if they get caught up in the swells and twists, if they laugh and cry reading like you did when you were writing it. That’s all wasted if they’re giving you notes like “torrent has two r’s”.

So you read this and say, alright, I’ll just ask people not to note any spelling mistakes, problem solved. That way people will still be engaged. Lemme shaw yu y that dun’t werk well. How annoyed ar yu write nao? Dough you feel appy with ow I’m X-pressing meself? Ow about afta reading 10 pages of dis?

If you submit something to someone to get their critique, or even first impressions of it, and it’s riddled with errors, it’s a waste of both your time and theirs. Yes, I’ll point out some spelling mistakes, but whilst I’m doing that I’m not engaged in the story, and that’s the point of critique, to have a reader’s thoughts and feelings on the page.

So, in short, leaving obvious spelling mistakes in whilst getting critique is a complete waste of time for both you and your reader.

Worse, it’s rude. The subtext being “I value your time so little, I couldn’t be bothered to run this through spell check before sending it out.”

With that impression, how do you think they’ll feel towards your characters, towards your work after that? How much effort do you think they’ll put into their feedback towards you? How receptive will they be when you need someone to read another piece of work, or a later draft?

Even worse, returning to our earlier metaphor, submitting something to an agent with a lot of spelling mistakes is like going to a job interview in a bath robe. Sure, maybe you can get dressed by yourself, maybe you can clean up great. The fact that you didn’t already, tells your interviewer all they need to know about you.

P.s

All that being said I’m not saying it has to be perfect though. After all, the 1^st edition of Harry Potter had a shopping list that was “1 wand” too long, one “wicked” edition of the bible was printed saying thou “Shalt” commit adultery, and even Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid has a bunch of spelling mistakes, and that sold for a million dollars in 1968 (an eye-watering 7.5 million adjusted for inflation).

So, they get through, particularly the tricky ones that you need a sharp pair of eyes to catch, like homonyms, or the odd ‘your’ for ‘you’re’ that, once typed, becomes completely invisible to the eye of the writer. Credit to our group for having editing eyes that’d put a hawk to shame.

So if you have an extra could in a sentence, or a name isn’t capitalised once in a blue moon, that’s fine. So long as you’ve gone above and beyond to find and eliminate those mistakes.

When can you break the rules?

When can you break the rules. It’s a good question. It shows that you know that the rules can and should be broken. But, it’s the wrong question.

The real question is, why do we have the rules to begin with?

Well, they’re essentially training wheels. I wish I could show you guys some of the awful and bizarre things I’ve read in amateur scripts. Paragraphs that fill up a whole page, 3-page outlines just describing a mansion and page after page of nothing but dialogue.

Thankfully for you guys, I’ve read scripts like that so you don’t have to. And yet…

What’s the lesson here then?

Well, a smarter man than I summarised it best:

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” – G. K Chesterton

He was one hell of a literary critic, so let’s dissect this.

He’s saying: Don’t break a rule until you know why it’s a rule.

Let’s look at a more basic example, the idea that a scene should be around 3-4 minutes long is a pretty commonly touted one. Why’s that?

Most scenes are almost always better when they’re shorter. If we can get the same impact in three pages that we could get in eight, do it in three!

So then what happens when we break that? When we make a scene 14 pages long?

This:

Would that scene be better at 3 minutes long? No, of course not.

A fence has been removed, with great success! But why did it work?

It’s like the suspense is a rubber band, and I’m just stretching it and stretching it and stretching it to see how far it can stretch.”

How much tension can you build in 3 minutes? Nowhere near as much as you can in 14.

That being said, 95% of the time you do want scenes to be around 3 pages long. If we were stretching out an exposition dump to 14 minutes then your audience is going to be asleep by the time the scene ends.

Now I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that some scenes can be longer than 3 minutes, so let’s attack something more sacred, more fundamental. Full stops.

If you read the 2018 blacklist, you’ll see scripts like Cobweb at no. 7 and, well…

It has no full stops on any action lines.

And it’s amazing. I don’t normally like horror, and it’s not an enthralling script in many other ways, but the lack of full stops keep me scrolling thoroughly down throughout. I never felt any sense of conclusion at any point, because there were no natural breaks in reading the script. It worked fantastically well to rachet up the tension throughout.

In a much slower script though, like a romcom, this device would’ve felt out of place. It’s used to rachet up tension, not for a meet-cute. And it’d have ruined the cadence of a film with a more nebulous set of goals. For Cobweb though, it was perfect.

So, if we return to our original thought, why do we have rules?

So we know when to break them.

P.S. There are a couple of other considerations here. The more the reader doesn’t feel they’re in safe hands with your script, the more likely any rule-breaking will be seen as an error.

Also, when you give it out to be read by other amateur writers, or for coverage, which can mean amateur writers too, unfortunately. Then sometimes they will come down on you for rule breaking like this; I’ll put my hand up and admit I’ve done so in the past too. But if a script like Cobweb can be one of the most successful in Hollywood, then I wouldn’t worry about one or two sour eggs too much. If you keep getting negative feedback about it though, then I’d reevaluate taking down that fence…

Critique – Why bother?

Over the past year, in exchange for being critiqued back, I’ve read and critiqued over a third of a million words worth of amateur work. Why?

Why is it so important to give and receive critique as a writer?

You know that phrase a picture is worth a thousand words, well sometimes an allegory is worth twice that.

There were two twin writers: Adam and Ben. Both realised they loved writing as teens, and they were estranged, thrown across the nation to write on their own. Fortunately for our example, they had the exact same work ethic and the exact same talent.

After months of slowly building up the routine, they both got into a place where they were writing a thousand words a day. Even when it was hard, even when they were exhausted, even when they were falling asleep at the keyboard. They’d write.

After 3 months of non-stop writing, they’d finished their first drafts. As is common with new writers, they both had heavy exposition dumps throughout and their characters arcs were lacking. Adam went to get critique for his work, whereas Ben sat down to work on rewrites by himself.

For every hour Adam critiqued someone else, Ben spent that time reworking and tweaking his story. For every minute Adam spent talking through another writer’s work, Ben would spend that time rewording his sentences.

Yet Ben’s story got better at the micro-level. He’d cut unnecessary words or snazz up a simile, but the arcs were still lacking and the dumps were still heavy.

Whereas Adam went through having his work ripped apart and remade, having to cut out those exposition dumps, rework arcs and remove whole subplots. But he didn’t have the time to tweak as much as Ben did, with all that time spent critiquing.

After 6 months of this, Ben is sure he has a masterpiece. He’s spent so many months on it that he’s certain others will love it, just like he’s grown to.

Adam has his manuscript in its final form, as refined as he and his critiquers could possibly make it. He doubts it a bit though, it’s hard not too; he knows how much he still has left to learn.

By miraculous coincidence, they both submit their pieces to the same agent, on the same day. Which piece do you think the agent picked up?

Adam.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

If you don’t get critique, you’ll just keep making the same mistakes over, and over, and over again. I’ve seen the most ludicrously industrious writers fall into this trap. Even worse, the longer you go without critique, the more lost you feel. You’ll think you’ve leapt forward, only to get slapped back by the harsh reality of your limitations.

Some writers will write four or five books, and won’t grow at all. It’s like a kid who thinks one plus one is three. If they’re marking their own work then they’re going to mark that as right again and again and again. So all that effort put into getting better at maths is just burying that error deeper and deeper inside. Until they come to quadratic equations after years of study, and a maths teacher looks at it and has no idea what the original flaw ever was anymore.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Often audiences, or critiquers, are the only ones that can point towards the truth that you need to hear to take your writing to the next level.

Sure, you can read books on writing, but unless someone’s there to tell you something isn’t working then 95% of the time you read something and think “Yup, I do that.”

What do I do about it?

Join a writer’s group, any group. Hell, some free websites facilitate it too, like Zoetrope.com. Or post up in /r/destructive readers on Reddit. If you can’t find a writer’s group then do what I did: start one. Testing yourself against the iron wall of critique is the only way to get better as a writer.