Terrible Writing Advice I See Almost Daily

These endlessly repeated “rules” of writing are nonsense at best

There is never a day I don’t come across a dozen “how to be a better writer” articles. Worse than that, there is never a day I don’t come across an amateur writer repeating that same advice in forums to other writers.

Now that the internet is everywhere, canny authors and wanna-be authors have realised one of the first things they must do to make money, right after writing, is to offer their “expert” advice to all and sundry. Everyone has a “masterclass” these days. Of course, their advice, tired as it may be, comes at a price.

Writers everywhere are turning themselves inside out to avoid breaking these rules and all it does is make their writing feel painfully studied and unnatural. The writing no longer flows and it begins to read like an essay from a creative-writing class.

So what are the supposed egregious crimes of writing that a writerly writer must never commit?

Throw out your adjectives

This is one rule amateur writers love to repeat. “Show, don’t tell,” they cry as they take their red pens and cross out every beautiful and interesting word, creating a flat, lifeless sentence. Have a look at this quote.

‘We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about relentlessly.

Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motor-boat that bumped the tide offshore.

“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”’

How many adjectives are there? So many. How bad a piece of writing is it? It’s an excerpt from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, in my humble opinion, wrote the most beautiful prose in existence.

I opened the book at a random page to find this quote. It could have been any page. The entire book is like this.

Fitzgerald’s descriptions are deeply evocative. You can almost smell those roses and the salty sea air. You get an instant sense of the characters, their relationship, their movements, all in a short sequence. He creates a whole world with the stroke of a pen because he described it using describing words. They serve a purpose.

All writers, please stop being scared of adjectives and start making your writing bounce and flow and sound beautiful. Words are your friends. Adjectives are your friends.

To said or not to said

This comes up a lot: “use an action beat instead of dialogue tags”. Sorry, no, this is terrible advice. This is going to make your writing painfully messy.

When you’re telling a story, you want your reader to feel like they are in a different world — as though they have stepped away from your book in this reality and they now magically exist elsewhere. You don’t want your writing to be so dense it snaps them back out of your novel. This is the same reason the shock of a typo will get you a one-star review on Amazon. Writing needs to flow seamlessly.

Here’s an example:

“I don’t want to go up to Florence Leaming’s!” he said. “What would I want to go up to Florence Leaming’s for? She gives me a pain.”

“Oh really,” she said. “She didn’t seem to be giving you so much of a pain at Elsie’s party last night, I notice. I notice you couldn’t even talk to anybody else, that’s how much of a pain she gave you.”

“Yeah, and you know why I was talking to her?” he said.

“Why I suppose you think she’s attractive,” she said. “I suppose some people do. It’s perfectly natural. Some people think she’s quite pretty.”

“I don’t know whether she’s pretty or not,” he said…

This writing sizzles and pops. This writing is revealing a lot of information in a short space. This writing is smart — it’s not trying to be clever. The “he said” and “she said” simply disappear into the background. We aren’t distracted by them. They are small and innocuous surrounded by the weight of the narrative.

The above is an excerpt from The Sexes by Dorothy Parker. It goes on much the same way for several pages. Imagine if Parker had decided to fill several pages with action beats instead:

John chucked his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t want to go up to Florence Leaming’s! What would I want to go up to Florence Leaming’s for? She gives me a pain.” He whacked himself in the head, perhaps a little too hard.

“Oh really!” She threw herself down on the lounge, dramatically, pouring herself another glass of wine. “She didn’t seem to be giving you so much of a pain at Elsie’s party last night, I notice.” She sipped that wine. “I notice you couldn’t even talk to anybody else, that’s how much of a pain she gave you.” She put the glass down.

“Yeah, and you know why I was talking to her?” He walked over to the window and lit a cigarette, watching her through the smoky haze of a golden sunset.

She tossed her head back, disdainfully, shiny curls glinting intriguingly. “Why I suppose you think she’s attractive. I suppose some people do. It’s perfectly natural. Some people think she’s quite pretty.”

“I don’t know whether she’s pretty or not.” He strutted about the room with his belly on fire regretting having had that whiskey on an empty stomach.*

*Please note: all action beats are for illustrative purposes only and I write better than this in real life, I promise.

If we take away “said”, all the crackling, fast-paced immediacy of the conversation is lost.

The reader would be traced back over the lines trying to keep track of the conversation between all the movements.

What’s important here? The conversation? Or the way they react to it? Do we need to know exactly where the characters are standing? How they’re seated? What their mannerisms are? No. Not amongst this heavy dialogue. We want the dialogue to shine by itself and therefore we don’t distract from it by being writerly.

Don’t get me wrong. Action beats absolutely have their place. It should be a smart sprinkling throughout a book to keep things interesting. A reader will notice them when they should and those action beats will reveal important information just as they should. What the reader won’t notice is an unobtrusive “said” and that keeps the action alive.

Less is More

Ever since Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg theory, writers have been trying to cut their sentences shorter and shorter — make subtle implications — leave things unsaid — let the reader infer.

Hemingway is famous for his lack of adjectives in his mission to pare back his writing and amateur writers the world overcast aside as many perfectly good words as possible in their attempt to emulate his style.

You know what though? Hemingway did what he did when writing was ready for him to do it and he found success with it at that time. Writers tend to forget of course, his style is only part of what made Hemingway’s success. Life experience can account for most of his success, and then having friends in the right places got him the rest of the way over the line.

The take away here: No one is Hemingway except Hemingway. Copying his style won’t get new writers anywhere, not only because it has been done over and over, but because they (probably) don’t have those other factors of success to draw on.

Did Hemingway really hate adjectives and long sentences though? Absolutely not. As he said of his frenemy and rival, F. Scott Fitzgerald, “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.” He said The Great Gatsby was one of the best books he ever read and we all know he was desperately jealous of Fitzgerald, but of course, that’s an article for another time. The point is, even a master of “less is more” doesn’t always agree that “less is more”, unless it specifically involves personally developing a brand new, world-shattering (he thought) writing style.

Jane Austen would also like a word. Take this quote from Persuasion:

“Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century — and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed — this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL

“‘Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, Nov. 5, 1789; Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791.’”

As one of the most famous and well-loved writers in history, we can conclude Austen knew a thing or two about writing. In essence: sometimes more is more.

I could rewrite the paragraph to get straight the most basic point:

“Sir Walter Elliot was a man who liked to read about himself in the Baronetage.”

While that may leave open to our interpretation a lot more than Austen ever wanted to convey, or a lot less depending on the reader, it is a far less enjoyable reading experience.

As far as our iceberg is concerned, we must remember that while we may only need to see the tip to know the rest of it is there if we dive into the water and behold the entire iceberg in all its glory, it may just turn out to be more beautiful than the tip alone.

What’s the solution?

All the advice above comes from a good place. Or it used to. No one wants their writing to be so over-the-top and flowery that it becomes “purple prose”. Watching your adjectives will help avoid that. No one wants their writing to become dull. Action beats introduce information about characters while keeping the prose interesting. Certainly, you may not want to spoon-feed your readership (depending on your genre) so maybe don’t go all out with descriptions of your main characters’ every thought and emotion.

Writers need to be able to judge when to use these tools and techniques and when not to. That’s what being a writer is all about. No masterclass can do that for you. That is what makes writing art and sets writing apart from the production line at the cardboard box factory.

The best thing to do? It may be the most commonly repeated advice of all, but it’s also the truest: Read. Read long and wide and read good-quality books. See what true masters of their art did and learn directly from them.

Never try to emulate.

Find your own voice.

The fact is, there are no “seven steps to make you George Orwell” in existence. Anyone who is selling that advice is lying. They do stand to make a lot of money doing it though.