A Not So Good Writing Guide

[eastofthemoon]

Over at Equestria Daily they made a link over to this mini guide someone wrote on the basics of writing for My Little Pony Fanfic writers.


Twilight's Guide to Writing by ~Mister-Hand on deviantART

Now, there is some good advice in here such as to avoid writing cliches, check your punctuation, make the main characters someone to root for etc. However, maybe this is just a difference of opinion, but there is some really bad advice in here too.

Here's an example:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Um...No. Yes, it's important to give your reader information about what's going on, but you can't give it all at once or it will be too over whelming. Information needs to be revealed when the time is right and when it fits the plot. If there's vital information that is needed to know early on or otherwise it makes the plot point feel like it came out of the blue, then yes, fine. Reveal it early, otherwise you need to judge when it's a good point to give information.

And here's another one:

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I get what they're saying here, you can't write a story that everyone is going to like. However, the first person you should be writing for is yourself. It is always a good idea to have other people read it so they can tell you how you can improve your story, that is normal and a habit all writers need to get into to improve. However, if you yourself are no longer enjoying the story you are writing due to trying to please on specific person, this is not a good sign.

I'm curious as to what my fellow writers (both fanfic and professional) think of the advice here. As I said, not all of it is bad, but not all of it is good either. What do you think?

Comments

[beccastareyes]

I like the Steven Brust Guide to writing...

"All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool."

I also have the advice of 'write to please yourself; edit/revise to please other people': basically once you get the bits that make you squee like a squeeing thing down, you do have to think about the readers to make sure the story makes sense to people who are not you*.

* Well, okay. I have a friend who writes fanfiction in a journal and rarely shows them to me, let alone J Random Stranger. She does not need to edit/revise these, as the intended audience is one person.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that sums up better of what I was trying to say. You do need to think of the readers for editing/revising, but you should try writing it for yourself first.

[beccastareyes]

I've written gift-fic and exchange-fic before, but even then, there's the idea of 'write something we both will like'. Or even take something I don't normally like and try to write it in a way I'd enjoy it.

[darkspirited1.livejournal.com]

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I took that to mean write for yourself.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

That is Kurt Vonnegut's opinion, not the creator of the article herself. And, the last rule, which the author added is break all the rules but #1. I think there was a different type of writing back in the day. Literature is always changing. If you read some older stories, you will see that there is no suspense. Everything is literally laid out in front of you. In some books, they even flat out tell you the point or summarize the entire story afterward. It's just a different method.

I would alter that quote now to something like: Tell your readers what they need to know so they don't get confused and want to keep reading, even if cockroaches are swarming the page and threatening to eat it.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

I think the person of this article should have made the actual advice and joke part clearer because it's VERY easy to miss that one line. Plus, he or she just say "Ignore all these rules" but they don't give rebuttals on what you should try to do instead. If I was a newbie writer, I would be very confused on what I should actually try for the first half. I just know there are better writing guides than this.

[darkspirited1.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure where you think the joke comes in. That whole first section though is Vonnegut's words verbatim. It wasn't meant to be a joke.Rereading it, it actually says Vonnegut also said to break the rules, so the author wasn't saying that either. Many other guides give that same advice too, but a newbie could very easily go and look up how to break these rules if that is something they wanted to do. I don't think this was ever intended to be the be all end all of writing guides either. To me, it's impossible to create such a guide in this format because there's only so much room.

[darkspirited1.livejournal.com]

PS: That icon is adorable!

[pip25.livejournal.com]

I find such "writing guides" to be unhelpful in general. For instance, I would be more than happy to see fanfics which drown in "like" and "as" structures, because the awful truth is that most have a very plain narrative style. The last thing I want is those authors to feel discouraged from using them because of this.
Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut's opinion is fine, but not helpful to writers who have little self-confidence and might take his guidelines too much verbatim, even though as he admits it himself, they shouldn't be.
Every writer has their own strengths and weaknesses, and in my opinion the real way to give them advice is to read their works and discover what those strengths and weaknesses are. There is no "generic guide to awesome writing".

[putri-nih.livejournal.com]

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

As a fan of wonderfully paced movie and series, with incredible twists I'll say. NAW. Myself, I'm a believer in if it ain't broke don't fix it --if a story needs to be told in a straightforward manner, please do so. However, if you know EVERYTHING about Inception, Shutter Island, Memento, right off the bat, would it really be memorable? I don't think so.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I'll say, write for yourself, be open to suggestions and be ready to argue. Because truth be told, I previewed my comics to the folks at my studio and they all had different interpretations and how I can improve the story. But first and foremost, you have to remember WHY you wrote the story that way or WHAT YOU WANT out of it so that you can argue with idiots who will most certainly misinterpret your story*, weed out the suggestions that are said just so they can say something AND pick whatever's good.

*) I wrote a drama story in the veins of To Kill a Mockingbird somehow it gets misinterpreted to a fantasy/adventure/shounen fight genre. WHAT THE FU-- does not convey my reaction.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the odd advice. I disagree about the whole "write for one person" thing. When I write Namesake, I do it for several people. It's why I don't put in in-jokes, clichés that please me and add suspense. If I was writting it purely for myself, it would be fully different. You have to make sure writing it makes you happy, but you should always write for an audience, not int he mindset to please them at all costs per say, but in the mindset of having them follow and enjoy the story.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

Yes, you do have to keep the audience you write for in mind for the reasons you said. However, this article was targeting newbie fanfic writers, and I was just imagining a newbie fanfic writer trying to please every single review he/she got on fanfic.net. You know that would be trouble. XP

But, I do agree with you that for writing a story to be published while you need to be happy with the story, you do have to remember who is reading it and thus just can't put in whatever you feel like. It's a balance act between the two.

[brendala.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that the Vonnegut list was intended as a joke (Vonnegut was big on sarcasm, if I recall correctly). I wonder if the person who wrote the guide caught that. XD


I'm the type of person this thing is aimed at (someone who isn't a great writer and has little experience with fic), and I didn't find it all that helpful. The only good advice was the grammar stuff; and that goes without saying anyway.
And the guide didn't do a good job of explaining why character archetypes are bad but tropes are OK. The way I see it, the validity of archetypes and tropes depends entirely on how the author uses them.