When we’re first learning to write and we turn to others for feedback and guidance, we’re eager to get their help. After all, the people we turn to are knowledgeable and kind and so much better versed in the ways of publishing, right?
Right?
Well, when we’re first learning, yeah, the people we turn to will probably be more knowledgeable and their advice will help us improve our writing. And sometimes, even the good, kind things they say can be hard to hear.
But sometimes, they have no clue what they’re talking about.
Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.
—Carolyn Wells
I think we’ve all been there: we get some piece of advice—from a crit partner, from an editor, from a total stranger—that just doesn’t work for our story.
Maybe I’m not unique, but I’ve gotten quite a bit of off-the-wall, mean-spirited or flat-out wrongheaded advice in the last few years. My favorite . . . well, it’s hard to choose, but I do have a special place in my heart for the “tip” to kill off my murderer in the opening scene. Or the one piece of advice designed to “solve” a problem (when really, the real problem with this section was the exact opposite), that instead destroyed the tension of the entire story and introduced a major continuity and factual issue. And then there was the person who consistently demanded I add details—ones that were already there, just a few lines before their comments.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
—G.K. Chesterton
I hope I don’t have to tell you I didn’t follow that advice.
So this week, we’ll talk about how to deal with all kinds of bad advice—from the ill-intentioned to the “Are we reading the same thing?” kind—and how to move past it.
What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
Photo credit: Rachel Sian
The worst piece of advice I’ve received wasn’t necessary one single piece, but a conglomeration of everything I was told over the course of a couple of years and that is . . . to take everything that every published author and “experienced” author tells you is a “rule” of writing as just that: a “rule”—a structure, style, or technique that MUST be followed or you’ll NEVER get published.
Now that I’m finally published, after years and years and years of getting more frustrated at reading books by authors who didn’t follow the “rules” I’d been taught were the sure-fire path to getting published myself, I’ve finally realized exactly what that piece of advice is: absolute baloney!
To borrow a quote from Captain Barbosa in Pirates of the Caribbean: What we’re taught at conferences, hear in workshops or in writing groups, receive from critique partners/contest judges, or read on other writers’ blogs/websites are “more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.” Learn them, figure out how and why they work . . . and then learn FROM them how to make your own structure, voice, style, and technique for writing better.
Some really great people gave me advice, which I took. But the result was, that my story totally lost its voice. Attended a writers’ workshop that was specific to my genre and market and discovered that the advice my writer friends had given me was totally wrong for my market. I went back to my story and with great happiness and glee returned my story to a better version of how it was before.
What I learned was, that even though you might respect and admire another writer, what works for their genre/market may not work for your own. Each genre/market has its own standards, so do your homework before killing yoursel to change your story on the word of someone who might not, in fact, know what they’re talking about as it applies to your story.
I was once told I should work hard to create a specific voice. For a long time I struggled to be someone I wasn’t, and my writing was stilted. I discovered I did my best writing when I let my own thoughts pour uncontrolled onto the page. Being myself was far better than trying to be a copy of someone else.
Worst advice? Ever? Probably that I shouldn’t go into Computer Science because I’ll turn into a penniless burnout. That cost me two years of being in the wrong major in college.
Worst writing advice? I pretty much agree with Kaye about the “rules.” The rules don’t apply to me. Not because I’m a gooder writer, but because I see that most of the “rules” are more about controlling excess vs. creating prohibitions. If adverbs and adjectives are bad, then why did we invent them? It’s like vegetarianism. If Gd didn’t want us to eat animals, then why did He make them out of meat? I’m not saying we should eat all-meat diets. But all-veggie diets are lacking something too. Writing should be balanced as well. Sprinkle in some adjectives and adverbs here and there for flavor. Partial sentences. Long run-ons that seem to go on forever but they take the reader to an interesting place.
I say just go for it, and if it sucks, someone will tell you.
“Write what you know.” It should have been, “What what you’re willing to learn about” or “Write what interests you.”
The worst feedback I ever got (not really advice) was in a contest where the judge said I must have some endurance because I’d finished an entire manuscript. Um, thanks, dude–it wasn’t my first one. It was something like my SIXTH. If that was the best they could say about it . . .
@Kaye—especially after my bad advice experiences, I’m fairly well convinced that being published doesn’t magically endow authors with all the writing knowledge of the universe and make them experts on craft, structure, grammar, voice and everything else that goes into a book. Of course, some do take the time to really study and learn those topics, but sometimes as unpublished authors we look at published authors as if they walk on water.
@Ali—I just got some advice like that from people within the publishing industry. I still haven’t figured out if these people were right or just not familiar enough with the genre (my beta readers within the genre really liked this aspect of the book).
@Carol—Oh, that’s a good one! Trying to be something we’re not is a great way to kill not only our writing but our passion.
@Andrew—Your worst advice reminds me of the time I went into the guidance office at the College of Humanities to declare my second major (American Studies, in addition to Linguistics), and the guidance counselor asked me with a more-than-healthy dose of skepticism, “And what do you want to be?”
(Lady, you advise in the Humanities department. Very few of these majors lead directly to jobs.)
I told her I planned to be a writer. I may as well have told her I planned to scrape barnacles from zeppelins. She looked at me like I was the stupidest thing that had ever graced her office for two minutes between classes and handed me a pamphlet for a freshman career development course.
However, I feel compelled to wait until I have a contract to gloat 😉 .
I totally agree that the “rules” are designed to prevent excess and have been completely misapplied. (I joke that if we’re not allowed to use any adjectives, our characters will end up having “eyes, a nose and a mouth.” Vivid, I know.)
@Annette—I think the only time that we should write what we know is in writing people. A writer should understand human nature and behavior (and understand how that applies in fiction, too).