The 10 worst pieces of advice on writing.

Shadow Dragon · Apr 15, 2014

Found a nice article on often used but potentially bad pieces of writing advice, starting with the ever famous, show don't tell. This quote is from number 5, omit adjectives and adverbs:

Elmore Leonard said using an adverb was almost always a “mortal sin.” Mark Twain declared open season on adjectives. Gordon Lish famously carved all such inessential fluff from Raymond Carver, and influenced countless others to do the same.

Omitting adjectives and adverbs is generally good advice. Because adverbs have a tendency to supply information in a half-assed way that really should be handled by the story (“he sleepily responded”). And adjectives have been known to stuff stories full of sweet, airy, unnecessary, redundant nothings (not unlike this sentence). This is why minimalism is popular: It doesn’t fuck around.

But consider this line from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses: “Below the knee, the hairiness came to a halt, and his legs narrowed into tough, bony, almost fleshless calves, terminating into shiny, cloven hooves, such as one might find on any billygoat.” There are six—count ’em, six adjectives in this sentence, including any, which is clearly unnecessary, and as such, clearly a point of style.

Or this one, from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: “...she stood, a few feet from me, and stared at herself contentedly, not unpleasantly surprised at her own appearance, filling with her own rosy sunshine the surprised and pleased closet-door mirror.” Two adverbs and two adjectives, two of which actually ascribe human emotions to an inanimate object.

Language is your Swiss army knife, and you can’t do shit like this with just the knife and the corkscrew.

http://litreactor.com/columns/the-t...-you-will-ever-hear-and-probably-already-have

Sage · Apr 15, 2014

That first "Show, don't tell" bit is exactly what happened to one of my novels. By the time I was done editing it, people had trouble relating to my MC's emotions, whereas early betas had no problem doing so, and it was exactly because I had just figured out what "show, don't tell" meant and overdid it.

Most of these, however, are vital pieces of advice while an author is learning the art of writing. First they have to learn the difference between showing and telling, and why showing is preferred. Only then can they learn the times to tell instead. Many newer authors litter their prose with adjectives and adverbs. Only after learning why they should be avoided can they learn when it's important to use them. Many novice writers start the book too early and can't figure out why it takes 10K before the plot starts. Maybe they don't need to start already into the action, but they probably need to start close to the plot. It is really hard to learn that sometimes brilliant lines or paragraphs or even scenes do nothing for the plot. Until they can look at their darlings with the possibility that they might have to kill them for the sake of the book, being reminded of that possibility is still a good thing. If they take it as having to cut every line they love, yeah, that's not going to help the book.

Anyway, my point is that these aren't bad pieces of advice. They're only bad when taken to the extreme.

ShaunHorton · Apr 15, 2014

I had a lady come into my writing group last week (mostly to promote her own latest work) and she was showering everyone with advice like

"To make a living as a writer, you have to do someone nobody else is doing."

and bs "facts" like

"90% of book sales now are via video ads."

It was really all I could do to keep my mouth shut just so the group could move on without turning the entire night into a bad debate.

Little Ming · Apr 15, 2014

*sigh*

Worst writing advice = any "advice" a writer blindly and uncritically applies to their own work without understanding why the advice exist in the first place or whether the advice actually makes their work better.

Lillith1991 · Apr 15, 2014

The advice listed isn't bad. It's that begining writers don't always ask what those things mean and take them at face value. Without context they're hazardous bits of info though.

alexaherself · Apr 15, 2014

Writers discussing such things in forums love to discuss how "show, don't tell" is allegedly such bad advice, and adduce endless counter-examples. Meanwhile, "telling rather than showing" is probably one of the commonest reasons for agents rejecting slush-pile manuscripts within the first page or two.

JustSarah · Apr 15, 2014

The worst one is in media res. That's probably one of the more destructive things an author can do to a work I'm reading. (I've lost my attention span on many a film, because the film started way to late.)

With show, not tell. Well that depends, showing some portions will make the plot completely lose it's direction. (Assuming your working with a plot to begin with, and not discovery writing.)

ShaunHorton · Apr 15, 2014

Show, don't tell is a good piece of advice, but you can't take it at face value, or apply it to everything. It's something that needs to be worked at and figured out. Sometimes, to get your point across, you can't show it more effectively than you can just tell it, and as has been said, sometimes showing instead of telling is just likely to lead you off in a distracting and unnecessary direction. (Though, sometimes you may surprise yourself about when something you thought was unnecessary suddenly has relevance.)

guttersquid · Apr 15, 2014

"Show, don't tell" could be good advice if everyone agreed on what it means.

Helix · Apr 15, 2014

ShaunHorton said:
"To make a living as a writer, you have to do someone nobody else is doing."

I guess that might work, depending on who the someone was...

I guess it's handy to understand how following/not following these 'rules' and pieces of advice would affect a narrative.

Do this. Why? What effect does it have on the story?

Don't do that. Why not? It it distracting? Does it lessen the impact?

And then pick and choose those that suit your work.

JustSarah · Apr 15, 2014

That's my issue, what exactly does show not tell mean? In one how to write book, it means showing everything that happens in a scene you see. In yet another situation, it meant using showing adjectives.

Hapax Legomenon · Apr 15, 2014

I mean it seems like with a lot of the "show don't tell" they want your story to be more... film-like, I guess, and in films, narration is something that is best done very sparingly.

The problem is that books are not movies. They're not comics, either. They're not paintings or audioplays or anything else, they're books. They're one of the few formats where telling is unobtrusive and can be taken in the same way as the showing. "Show, don't tell" just strikes me as making books try to be something else. I do think that if you read more books from before movies were made there is a lot more telling and they're laid out a lot less film-like, I think. I mean, I am a visual artist. If I wanted to make a story portrayed in such a visual way, I'd make a comic.

Helix · Apr 15, 2014

I've always taken 'show, don't tell' to mean trust your audience to make the connections. So instead of writing just how cold it is, slip it into the description (icicles, crisp snow, eyes tearing up) or action (turning up a collar, digging hands into pockets). Or instead of saying someone was very angry, they could be doing whatever it is that character is likely to do under those circumstances. As a reader, I find that sort of writing -- in which I'm contributing to the story in a way -- to be much more satisfying than writing in which I'm being told those things are happening.

But there are certainly situations when telling, not showing, is very useful. Judicious application, as always.

Note: I realise those examples of 'showing' are hackneyed.

Roxxsmom · Apr 15, 2014

Little Ming said:
*sigh*

Worst writing advice = any "advice" a writer blindly and uncritically applies to their own work without understanding why the advice exist in the first place or whether the advice actually makes their work better.

Yes, and also any general advice endlessly recycled and cut and pasted without context or understanding.

The voice thing is a biggie. Sometimes novice critiquers go through a phase where they ruthlessly line out anything that smacks of personality from someone else's work. It can be hard to differentiate quirky charm, or even character voice in the narrative, from bad writing tics, of course, even when you've been doing it for a while. But sometimes it's better to simply point something out and say, "I noticed this, and I'm not sure if it was the feel you were shooting for or not."

Little Ming · Apr 15, 2014

Hapax Legomenon said:
I mean it seems like with a lot of the "show don't tell" they want your story to be more... film-like, I guess, and in films, narration is something that is best done very sparingly.

The problem is that books are not movies. They're not comics, either. They're not paintings or audioplays or anything else, they're books. They're one of the few formats where telling is unobtrusive and can be taken in the same way as the showing. "Show, don't tell" just strikes me as making books try to be something else. I do think that if you read more books from before movies were made there is a lot more telling and they're laid out a lot less film-like, I think. I mean, I am a visual artist. If I wanted to make a story portrayed in such a visual way, I'd make a comic.

"Showing" doesn't always mean a physical or visual showing. A simple example:

Showing: I'm going to kill that cheating bitch, thought Bob.

Telling: Bob was upset because his wife had been unfaithful.

Helix said:
I've always taken 'show, don't tell' to mean trust your audience to make the connections.

In my general experience this is the heart of "show, don't tell": the lack of trust, whether it's in the readers or in the writer's own skill to get the point across.

Little Ming · Apr 15, 2014

Roxxsmom said:
Yes, and also any general advice endlessly recycled and cut and pasted without context or understanding.

As I said in the Killing Darlings thread, I really really think it behooves writers (or people in general) to critically think about the advice/rules they are being given before applying them. If you don't understand, ask. Or better yet, go read around AW. Context is everywhere.

Hapax Legomenon · Apr 15, 2014

Little Ming said:
"Showing" doesn't always mean a physical or visual showing. A simple example:

Showing: I'm going to kill that cheating bitch, thought Bob.

Telling: Bob was upset because his wife had been unfaithful.

I would like an example of "show don't tell" that does not rely on telling point blank simple feelings and presenting them in an uninteresting way. I'd really like an example of where showing is better than telling that's full of voice.

DancingMaenid · Apr 15, 2014

I think the problem with a lot of writing advice is that it's reduced to a single (sometimes ambiguous) phrase that can be difficult for people (especially newbies) to interpret. If someone is having trouble with telling too much, just being told to show instead is not necessarily going to teach them what they should be doing. I think a lot of learning to write relies on observation and experience. I think it's very easy for people to see writing "rules" as absolute and go to extremes to follow them. I don't think that's automatically a bad thing when starting out, because I think it can be hard to learn without experimentation. But unless you're reading and seeing examples of what works, or getting more detailed advice from people, it's going to be hard to really learn.

Little Ming · Apr 15, 2014

Hapax Legomenon said:
I would like an example of "show don't tell" that does not rely on telling point blank simple feelings and presenting them in an uninteresting way.

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Hapax Legomenon said:
I'd really like an example of where showing is better than telling that's full of voice.

I wonder if you're running too far in the opposite direction. The whole point of this thread is that "show, don't tell" and other rules are not absolute. Books are a mix of showing and telling. If you have a "telling that's full of voice" you think is better than showing, use it.

rwm4768 · Apr 15, 2014

I can agree with most of these. They're all good things to keep in mind, but I see too many people (sometimes in SYW) who rail against every instance of telling or every adverb. And then the beginning writer decides that those things must be terrible, so they get rid of them.

LeslieB · Apr 15, 2014

A good spin on show vs. tell that I heard a long while back was don't tell your reader that your character is a genius when you are showing them that the character is as dumb as a box of hammers.

Humor aside, I have to agree that there is a lot of confusion. Back when I was first posting stories on the internet, several people gave me very valuable advice. One kept lecturing me about show, not tell, but the problem was that his examples for showing were so full of purple prose that I couldn't take them seriously. And his advice was a bit weird at times. ("Could you write it so the reader can hear the kiss in their mind?" "Okay, smack, smack. How's that?") It wasn't until someone whose advice I trusted explained it that I understood what exactly show vs. tell meant.

blacbird · Apr 16, 2014

"If you keep at it long enough, you'll get things published." Or variants on that theme.

caw

JustKia · Apr 16, 2014

Hapax Legomenon said:
I would like an example of "show don't tell" that does not rely on telling point blank simple feelings and presenting them in an uninteresting way. I'd really like an example of where showing is better than telling that's full of voice.

I think most examples are just that because that is mostly where the problem is - telling the reader how the character is feeling and not trusting either the reader to understand or not trusting themselves to be able to write without explaining.

buz · Apr 16, 2014

Hapax Legomenon said:
I would like an example of "show don't tell" that does not rely on telling point blank simple feelings and presenting them in an uninteresting way. I'd really like an example of where showing is better than telling that's full of voice.

Carrie Underwood is pretty good at showing vs telling and she's got a great voice

and the preacher said he was a good man
And his brother said he was a good friend
But the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry
They took turns laying a rose down
Threw a handful of dirt into the deep ground
He's not the only one who had a secret to hide

Vs.

a man cheated on his wife and the two women found out about each other and decided to kill him.

Regarding the "presented in an uninteresting way" thing--that's kind of the point I think--that telling is often narrative presented in an uninteresting way, in addition to the fact that telling has less power generally ("actions speak louder than words"). If telling is strong or interesting or simply appropriate in the moment then of course there's no problem; in some cases telling is much better than showing. It's just that the potential effects are things to be aware of

Jamesaritchie · Apr 16, 2014

Shadow Dragon said:
Found a nice article on often used but potentially bad pieces of writing advice, starting with the ever famous, show don't tell. This quote is from number 5, omit adjectives and adverbs:

http://litreactor.com/columns/the-t...-you-will-ever-hear-and-probably-already-have

Leonard's advice is still excellent. I don't think anyone should say never, ever use adverbs or adjectives, but new writers do overuse them, and do use them poorly. That's the point.

Show, don't tell, is excellent advice. It's wonderful advice. It's advice that you simply cannot ignore, if you want to sell. It doesn't mean you never tell, but it does mean that most writers tell far, far too much, and telling too much bores any reader to death.

Write what you know is the best advice out there, but like so many, the writer of this column has no clue at all what it means. She's clearly writing what she doesn't know all the way through this column, but gets this piece of advice ignorantly wrong.

The only good advice she gives, and the only thing she gets right, the only thing she even understands, is number ten.

Pretty much anything can be taken to extreme, and all this advice is no exception. Anything taken to an extreme is probably bad. All this advice often is taken to an extreme, but most of it is still wonderful advice, and you ignore it at your own peril.

The 10 worst pieces of advice on writing.

Shadow Dragon

Sage

Supreme Guessinator

ShaunHorton

AW's resident Velociraptor

Little Ming

Lillith1991

The Hobbit-Vulcan hybrid

alexaherself

Wordsmith and shoechick

JustSarah

ShaunHorton

AW's resident Velociraptor

guttersquid

I agree with Roxxsmom.

Helix

socially distancing

JustSarah

Hapax Legomenon

Helix

socially distancing

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Little Ming

Little Ming

Hapax Legomenon

DancingMaenid

New kid...seven years ago!

Little Ming

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW

LeslieB

Geek Unique

blacbird

JustKia

My inner voice has terrible grammar

buz

edits all posts at least four times

Jamesaritchie