# Debunking Bad Advice



## luckyscars (Jun 27, 2020)

I wanted to start a thread on commonly found writing advice that I have found to be either misunderstood, counterproductive, or just plain garbage.

My contribution: _*"Find your voice!"*

_You hear this a lot, on this forum and others, and it seems fundamentally incorrect. You can't _find your_ writing voice anymore than you can your speaking voice. Your voice already exists. 

If you can write, you have a voice. All you have to do it use it.

If a voice can be 'found' it can only be by dispensing with 'other voices'. That seems to be where the issue starts to come up: Somebody who reads nothing but Tolkien may start to emulate Tolkien. The result is, usually, not very good because readers can detect the lack of authenticity. At which point 'finding your voice' will usually entail dispensing with these acquired 'voices' and just writing in the 'voice' that you wrote your first letter to your grandmother or school paper. The natural voice, which can be refined but never changed.

I feel like the problem is we are not often told at the start that to write in the manner that is most comfortable to us is, actually, perfectly fine and will generally lead to the best results. The idea of 'finding your voice' is, in my opinion, to blame for a lot of that confusion.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 27, 2020)

I somewhat agree, but not entirely, because I think experimenting with different voices (emulating Tolkien, for example), improves and variegates our own voice. I've at least experienced this with poetry--my 'natural' voice is perhaps rhyming couplets (not really sure), but writing like e. e. cummings for a bit, Yeats for a bit, etc. has on the whole made my poetry better. But yeah..."Find your voice"...what does that even mean? Did I lose it? lol

I'm always wary of extremes or absolute "don'ts" in writing advice, e.g. adverbs are bad, description is bad and should be as minimal as possible, etc. A good author shouldn't forgo a tool just because other authors use it poorly. The "be as minimal as possible in description" thing, especially, has created so many under-described stories where, at best, I feel like I'm swimming in a blank space of plot and dialogue, and at worst have no idea what's going on.


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## Theglasshouse (Jun 27, 2020)

Write what you know applied to fiction. It feels limiting since I have never experienced what I write in stories. It's all the imagination.  Trying to write what you know will limit the writer. It will make them think since nothing bad happened to them that they have few ideas. The only thing I admit this advice is good at is to bring emotional verisimilitude. Because if you write about something that you know very well, it can help with depicting emotions in writing. Of course, I could be wrong, but I am open to people discussing if I misunderstood this advice that is constantly handed down.


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## Terry D (Jun 27, 2020)

I think a better term would be to, "Trust your voice." A writer's voice is the sum of many influences; what you read, where you grew up, your level of education, ethnicity, and gender plus probably many more. That voice can change over time as other influences come to bear; age, life experience, more reading, etc. It's common to emulate, either consciously or unconsciously, the authors you enjoy reading and that's okay. Most writers grow out of that.


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## hugodrax (Jun 27, 2020)

As a new writer - at least in fiction prose - I'd like to know how to differentiate. Is it even possible? It's especially confusing when everything I read online immediately contradicts every book I open. Is turn-of-the-century writing stylistically dated? Should I only ape current trends? Sometimes, the old rule I was taught seems to stand: nobody knows anything.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 27, 2020)

To me the thing about stuff like 'Find your voice', and 'Write what you know' is that they are indefinite enough that when you challenge them the person pontificating can always say, 'No, I didn't mean in that sense', or 'Don't be so literal' and carry on spouting rubbish. What they are interested in is not so much your writing, or writing in general, as in establishing their own (perceived) social position. No point getting wound up about it all, you will never stop people like that, mostly I ignore them.


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## luckyscars (Jun 27, 2020)

hugodrax said:


> As a new writer - at least in fiction prose - I'd like to know how to differentiate. Is it even possible? It's especially confusing when everything I read online immediately contradicts every book I open. Is turn-of-the-century writing stylistically dated? Should I only ape current trends? Sometimes, the old rule I was taught seems to stand: nobody knows anything.



Writing discussion is generally one big circle jerk. 

Outside of highly specific, targeted questions, any advice on 'how to write' is about as relevant as advice on 'how to live happily ever after' or 'how to be comfortably married'. 

These are entirely circular questions on which entire industries are developed but that are hollow to their core because there are an infinite number of correct answers and only a few incorrect ones. 

(Which is why I started this thread.)




ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> I somewhat agree, but not entirely, because I think experimenting with different voices (emulating Tolkien, for example), improves and variegates our own voice. I've at least experienced this with poetry--my 'natural' voice is perhaps rhyming couplets (not really sure), but writing like e. e. cummings for a bit, Yeats for a bit, etc. has on the whole made my poetry better. But yeah..."Find your voice"...what does that even mean? Did I lose it? lol
> 
> I'm always wary of extremes or absolute "don'ts" in writing advice, e.g. adverbs are bad, description is bad and should be as minimal as possible, etc. A good author shouldn't forgo a tool just because other authors use it poorly. The "be as minimal as possible in description" thing, especially, has created so many under-described stories where, at best, I feel like I'm swimming in a blank space of plot and dialogue, and at worst have no idea what's going on.





Terry D said:


> I think a better term would be to, "Trust your voice." A writer's voice is the sum of many influences; what you read, where you grew up, your level of education, ethnicity, and gender plus probably many more. That voice can change over time as other influences come to bear; age, life experience, more reading, etc. It's common to emulate, either consciously or unconsciously, the authors you enjoy reading and that's okay. Most writers grow out of that.



Experimenting with different voices, like experimenting with psychedelics, is of course fine and can be part of a process, for sure. Totally agree.

I don't really see that as necessarily the same thing as 'finding a voice', though. I mean, I am still experimenting hugely, flipping between genres and styles consciously just to see what happens. I don't feel like I am doing that to find a voice so much as to tell different stories. I mean, I don't feel that it really changes the fundamentals of my writing. I look as it no differently than trying on a different outfit for the day.

Advice for beginners is one area where I think semantics are actually almost as important as substance. The very nature of 'looking' for a voice indicates the writer either believes they lack a voice or is dissatisfied with the one they have and neither one of those mentalities seems helpful. That semantic difference can (and, judging by hugodrax's comment, does) lead to terrible and unnecessary confusion. 

Experimentation in different styles for the purposes of trying different things sounds like an augmentation of what is already there. Totally support that. Emulation of different styles for the purposes of _finding a voice _sounds like a lack of confidence, though. And that's definitely bad. Not all confident writers are good writers, but all insecure writers are bad writers.


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## LCLee (Jun 28, 2020)

*I never understood the absolutes that some will emanate. In finding your voice it would seem like it would be represented in the narrative, but I apply it to my character. And then write what you know is totally wrong, as anyone who has written fantasy knows.*

*My first full novel was about a place I’ve never been. Written in first person from a woman's point of view in a religion I know nothing about. In the end it turned out to be a well written compelling story that has had some top reviews. 

There are rules I feel should be followed or at least understood before the’re broken. As we all know there is adjective and subjective and when someone gives a critique, you can weigh the difference and make your decision on what you feel works best for you.*

*I will let the subjective criticism go, but adjective points I will challenge the critique, like the review that said I misspelled insane when my character thought something she was doing was very inane.*


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## luckyscars (Jun 28, 2020)

Theglasshouse said:


> Write what you know applied to fiction. It feels limiting since I have never experienced what I write in stories. It's all the imagination.  Trying to write what you know will limit the writer. It will make them think since nothing bad happened to them that they have few ideas. The only thing I admit this advice is good at is to bring emotional verisimilitude. Because if you write about something that you know very well, it can help with depicting emotions in writing. Of course, I could be wrong, but I am open to people discussing if I misunderstood this advice that is constantly handed down.



"Write what you know" is another example of somewhat valid advice that is undermined completely by semantic problems. 

What does it mean to 'know' something? 'Knowledge' is not a binary you-either-have-it-or-you-don't. I know a little bit about a huge amount of things, quite a lot about a handful of things, and a great deal on _maybe _a couple of things, and even that is highly relative and open to dispute. To my young son, I know everything about math. To Albert Einstein, I know nothing about math. Everybody else I am either really smart, kind of smart, kind of stupid, or very stupid depending on what they know or, at least, what they _think _they know. 

Qualifications help: I can say I know a lot about the law because I went to law school and used to practice it, but I never knew _all _of the law (basically nobody does...) and with over a hundred new ones being created each year in the US alone, I can't reliably say "I know the law" despite having spent countless hours studying it. I can't even say that despite going to law school that I know more about the law than somebody who simply read a lot on their own time. So, qualifications do not necessarily entail knowledge. They merely provide you and others with the credentials with which to enforce confidence in what you leanred. Same goes for everything, from French queens to quarks. Nobody "knows" these things in any complete sense: They simply know more about them than somebody who knows less, or nothing. Or, at least, believes they know less/nothing.

So, 'write what you know' isn't really about knowledge and it certainly isn't about experience. I interpret it as being more about comfort level. This is fiction, after all. It is perfectly possible to write a really good science fiction novel with only the most basic knowledge of science. Douglas Adams had no scientific training whatsoever and he was still able to offer some unique insights on scientific ideas through his work. Possibly, his relative ignorance was a even the reason for those insights, who really knows. 

People don't really read storybooks to acquire knowledge, that's what non-fiction is for. They read it to acquire perspective. So long as you have a perspective on a subject and can articulate it with confidence, you really don't need to 'know' very much about it to incorporate it effectively into a story. You just need to be able to persuade your reader. It is in the scope of achieving that persuasion that 'write what you know' starts to matter.


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## TL Murphy (Jun 28, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I wanted to start a thread on commonly found writing advice that I have found to be either misunderstood, counterproductive, or just plain garbage.
> 
> My contribution: _*"Find your voice!"*
> 
> ...



"Sometimes it takes a long time to play like yourself." ‐‐_Miles Davis_


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## Annoying kid (Jun 28, 2020)

That if you read enough textbooks you can skip the noob stage, and go straight into writing sellable work.  My brother has that one. 

Also the idea that if you can't do something quickly, its not worth doing.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 28, 2020)

Annoying kid said:


> Also the idea that if you can't do something quickly, its not worth doing.



There is also the opposite, 'Anything that doesn't take a huge effort of research and editing is not worth doing'

One I find valid in most of its manifestations is 'Less is more'.


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## Taylor (Jun 28, 2020)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> I somewhat agree, but not entirely, because I think experimenting with different voices (emulating Tolkien, for example), improves and variegates our own voice. I've at least experienced this with poetry--my 'natural' voice is perhaps rhyming couplets (not really sure), but writing like e. e. cummings for a bit, Yeats for a bit, etc. has on the whole made my poetry better. But yeah..."Find your voice"...what does that even mean? Did I lose it? lol



I agree totally that emulating others can be a great to develop your own voice.  To me, when I hear "find your voice."  it means, at some point just write from the heart.  I would attribute this to an analogy of a classical musician.  As a student, imitating others is almost necessary.  And if a violinist for example, could imitate Perlman they would be highly praised.  But if they want to go on to greatness, there needs to be something more that comes from within.  



luckyscars said:


> "Write what you know" is another example of somewhat valid advice that is undermined completely by semantic problems.



Yes, totally agree!  But, can still be good advice. For example, someone writing a novel may find the amount of learning that is required just to figure out how to write a novel is daunting.  So it would be good advice to a first time novelist, to write about something you already know about.  This way, the words will flow a little easier.  As a lawyer, you may not know about every aspect of law, but if you set your novel in a law office, you would not struggle much with the dialogue that happens in the office.  I think of books that I have read, and movies I have seen where someone tries to write about my profession, and I just have to chuckle at how they think people talk in my world.  So it takes a skilled writer, who perhaps does significant research to write about things they haven't experienced in real life. 



luckyscars said:


> People don't really read storybooks to acquire knowledge, that's what non-fiction is for. They read it to acquire perspective. So long as you have a perspective on a subject and can articulate it with confidence, you really don't need to 'know' very much about it to incorporate it effectively into a story. You just need to be able to persuade your reader. It is in the scope of achieving that persuasion that 'write what you know' starts to matter.



Personally, I read fiction for both, knowledge and perspective.  That's why I was always impressed with Mitchener who entertains and educates on a certain culture/region.  Recently, I have noticed a new genre of TV and movies that do this well.  They are almost like documentaries they are so realistic.  For example Halt and Catch Fire.  It is about the Dot-com bubble.  I'm always looking for good books that teach me something about a religion, culture, industry etc.  Recommendations welcome!



LCLee said:


> *My first full novel was about a place I’ve never been. Written in first person from a woman's point of view in a religion I know nothing about. In the end it turned out to be a well written compelling story that has had some top reviews. *



Bravo!  That is amazing.  How did you research it?


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## Terry D (Jun 28, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Not all confident writers are good writers, but all insecure writers are bad writers.



I'm sorry, but this just isn't true at all. Many, if not most, good writers are very insecure about their writing. That feeling of, 'I'm not good enough," or "Can I really do this?" never goes away for most writers. Impostor Syndrome is a very real thing among even the the most successful writers. Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kafka, and Oates all wrote extensively about their self-doubts. In many cases it's that insecurity which fuels the writing of an author always trying to prove they belong.


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## luckyscars (Jun 28, 2020)

Terry D said:


> I'm sorry, but this just isn't true at all. Many, if not most, good writers are very insecure about their writing. That feeling of, 'I'm not good enough," or "Can I really do this?" never goes away for most writers. Impostor Syndrome is a very real thing among even the the most successful writers. Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kafka, and Oates all wrote extensively about their self-doubts. In many cases it's that insecurity which fuels the writing of an author always trying to prove they belong.



But I’m talking about lack of confidence among beginners who have yet to write anything, that’s clearly the context in which the statement was made.

Imposter syndrome, by definition, requires evident success to have already been achieved. It is a denial of that success, or the validity on which it is based, not ones ability to write at all. I believe in most cases, one would have to be sufficiently secure you can write to finish a chapter, never mind a whole book. It’s not like it just gets written by accident.

You can name famous exceptions all you want, we can see insecurity kneecap people among us left, right and center. For example, insecurity would be working on a screenplay for multiple years and still asking whether parts of the plot make sense.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 28, 2020)

So, do you reckon all those famous writers started off confident but lost their confidence when they got famous  

Taylor's comment about knowledge rings true, my fan (I do have one) has told me that one of the things she really likes about my stories is that she learns new things. Not something I was thinking of when I wrote them.


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## luckyscars (Jun 28, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> So, do you reckon all those famous writers started off confident but lost their confidence when they got famous



Actually, I do. I mean I think it’s obviously complicated but I think it really comes down to a writer starts off writing to write and is confident to that extent. But then if/when the writer gets incredibly successful and starts being spoken of in terms of being “one of the greatest” they begin to feel fraudulent simply because they have grown up in a world of great books and the idea that something they may have written for quite humble reasons has that kind of weight simply is difficult to comprehend or accept. 

in other words the insecurity is born not of writing but of the psychological impact of fame itself. 



> Taylor's comment about knowledge rings true, my fan (I do have one) has told me that one of the things she really likes about my stories is that she learns new things. Not something I was thinking of when I wrote them.



Of course you can learn things from reading stories, but I don’t think many people are picking up “Old Man And The Sea” to learn about either old men or the sea, or anything else particularly. They’re reading it for a story.


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## Taylor (Jun 28, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> Taylor's comment about knowledge rings true, my fan (I do have one) has told me that one of the things she really likes about my stories is that she learns new things. Not something I was thinking of when I wrote them.



Olly, your stories would be right up my alley!  Are there any posted here that I can read?


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## PiP (Jun 28, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Actually, I do. I mean I think it’s obviously complicated but I think it really comes down to a writer starts off writing to write and is confident to that extent. But then if/when the writer gets incredibly successful and starts being spoken of in terms of being “one of the greatest” they begin to feel fraudulent simply because they have grown up in a world of great books and the idea that something they may have written for quite humble reasons has that kind of weight simply is difficult to comprehend or accept.
> 
> in other words the insecurity is born not of writing but of the psychological impact of fame itself.



Really. Is this always the case? What evidence do you have to support this?


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## LCLee (Jun 28, 2020)

Taylor said:


> Bravo!  That is amazing.  How did you research it?



It took three years with eight female beta readers telling me things like, “that’s impossible.” Two male Alpha readers and one female development reader. 
After I released it I had complaints about the editing so I pulled it back and did a professional edit. It was all a bit of a learning curve at the time that has humbled me to work smarter and get over my cocky self.
The research I had done in years past from going to the library (no internet). I wanted to show how the Taino Indians were mistreated by Christopher Columbus when he thought they had gold. Also, I wanted to point out that Haiti used to be their home before the French and Spanish took it over. But in the end my character took over the book, and it was all about her. The preaching about the wrongdoing was sidelined.


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## Taylor (Jun 28, 2020)

LCLee said:


> It took three years with eight female beta readers telling me things like, “that’s impossible.” Two male Alpha readers and one female development reader.
> After I released it I had complaints about the editing so I pulled it back and did a professional edit. It all was a bit of a learning curve at the time that has humbled me to work smarter and get over my cocky self.



But the process worked! Maybe being cocky is a good thing.  Others may not even have attempted it.  I would be curious to know what you would do differently.


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## LCLee (Jun 28, 2020)

Taylor said:


> But the process worked! Maybe being cocky is a good thing.  Others may not even have attempted it.  I would be curious to know what you would do differently.



With four books under my belt and a lot of time learning my craft, I’m not sure I could answer that. I was in a different place and a different person back then. I’ve always gone in over my head it is a trait of mine that came from survival. 

I once went on an interview for an engineering job that involved lasers and optics, of which I had no experience. I quickly read a booklet called the theory of vision that talked about the human eye. I got the job and designed a thin film monitor for IC wafers and the only thing I missed was I needed to collimate the light source before I split it into. Yada yada yada.
My WIP now is called The Raven Warriors, which is a historical fiction of an elite group from the hussars from the 17th century.

When I see the success of others, I realize I’m still the grasshopper willing to learn


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## luckyscars (Jun 29, 2020)

PiP said:


> Really. Is this always the case? What evidence do you have to support this?



I don't want to derail the thread on this subject. There are a lot of good books written and studies done on this area. One I personally have read and would recommend is 'The Empress Has No Clothes' by Joyce Roche. It's more of a memoir, and a good one for multiple reasons, but talks a great deal regarding her mental health struggles as a black executive in corporate America. Despite the fact she was undoubtedly exceptional in every measurable way, she was from humble origins and basically it wasn't part of her DNA to think of herself that way. She mentions that more than two thirds of high achieving women admit to feeling like impostors during their careers.

The salient point here, I think, is the term 'high achieving'. While impostor syndrome is real, I feel like it's kind of a stretch to attribute it as something that is of relevance to beginner writers, which is obviously what we are talking about since 'advice' tends to be beginner targeted. In everything I have read regarding the phenomena, it is almost always used to describe issues faced by people who have achieved substantial success _already _and is usually caused not by their relationship with the work they are doing but the labels, expectations, and pressures that are placed on them by other parties -- 'you're the smartest', 'you're a genius', 'you're the greatest X of all time', etc. So, that is why I don't think it's actually an issue relating to a person and their craft. I think it's a mental health problem caused by other people. 

At the risk of triggering another detour, it must be said that for a lot of writers who Terry mentioned as suffering from some sort of crippling anxiety regarding their writing, it's hardly an established fact. Many of them were mentally ill in all spheres of their life. Hemingway was a depressive who shot himself. Kafka was almost certainly autistic. Fitzgerald was the walking definition of a fuck up. I can't find any first hand sources on Orwell or Oates. 

The only point there being that, whether or not any of them did suffer from constant acute anxieties regarding their writing, it's most likely the case all of these people were undoubtedly erratic and prone to some rather bruising off days (which is not the same as lacking confidence overall). So what? All it takes is one interview quote or journal entry from one of them from one of those off-days saying "you know, I'm actually a terrible writer" and suddenly the world of armchair psychologists fifty or so years later want to strap on a label. I mean, Hemingway used to go around talking about how big his penis was compared to Fitzgerald, he even wrote about it. The man had issues and more than a few male-chauvinist hangups, he probably even had a few things he was insecure about and he absolutely talked a lot of bizarre shit...but that still doesn't mean he wasn't a _confident _person when it came to ass-on-chair-write-the-fucker. Which is all I am talking about.

So, yeah, I think it's kind of silly, but people can decide for themselves.


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## Terry D (Jun 29, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> But I’m talking about lack of confidence among beginners who have yet to write anything, that’s clearly the context in which the statement was made.
> 
> Imposter syndrome, by definition, requires evident success to have already been achieved. It is a denial of that success, or the validity on which it is based, not ones ability to write at all. I believe in most cases, one would have to be sufficiently secure you can write to finish a chapter, never mind a whole book. It’s not like it just gets written by accident.
> 
> You can name famous exceptions all you want, we can see insecurity kneecap people among us left, right and center. For example, insecurity would be working on a screenplay for multiple years and still asking whether parts of the plot make sense.



Whatever, Lucky. If that was your intent then you should have said that instead of, "All insecure writers are bad writers." All confident beginners are bad writers too (no one starts out 'good' no matter their confidence level), so your statement smacks of little more than a sound-bite.


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## Kyle R (Jun 29, 2020)

TL Murphy said:


> "Sometimes it takes a long time to play like yourself." ‐‐_Miles Davis_



That's an awesome quote.

—

Regarding the thread, I've always had a bone to pick with Stephen King's "kill your darlings" advice. (I believe he wasn't the first to say it, though I do think he's the one who most famously did so.)

On the one hand, I agree that if a passage is pure self-indulgence, and does little to improve the story, it should be looked at with an extremely critical eye. Probably best to remove it, even.

But to kill my _darlings_? Usually passages become darlings because they're . . . subjectively good.

Like, "Wow, this part really moved me," or "I couldn't stop reading here," good.

To me, the "kill your darlings" advice sounds a lot like "kill the best parts of your writing"—which I know isn't the intention of the maxim. But it still sounds like it is (to me), so I always cringe when I hear it.

And then you'll have the occasional beginner writer who asks something like: "I really like this part of my story. Does that mean it's a darling and should be killed?" And it just compounds my annoyance with the phrase.

(I'm aware that this is probably just a personal issue of mine, though, so there's that too. )


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## Theglasshouse (Jun 29, 2020)

What are the opinions on rewriting short stories and novels?

There are some quotes on the topic: *“I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.”*

― James Mitchner


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## Taylor (Jun 29, 2020)

Theglasshouse said:


> What are the opinions on rewriting short stories and novels?
> 
> There are some quotes on the topic: *“I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.”*
> 
> ― James Mitchner



I had not heard that quote, but I love it!  It's the beauty of writing.  That you can always work towards perfection.  

Most artforms don't afford this luxury without an added cost.  For example, a sculpter working in stone.  I remember seeing in the basement of the Louve museum, a number of Michelangelo sculptures that were unfinished.  Part of the stone was complete and polished, and other parts were just roughed in.  I always wondered why he had left so many unfinished.  Was there a part he had over-carved, so realizing he had ruined it, abandoned it?  Would he have finished them if he knew he could go back and improve upon them later?

I had an similar experience with a sweater I was knitting.  I couldn't go back and re-knit the parts that had holes, so I abandoned it. 

Think about a Chef...

So, my opinion, re-write away!


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## Theglasshouse (Jun 29, 2020)

I agree with you Taylor.  I tend to rewrite a lot. Some writers are gifted with the language and maybe can come up with the first few drafts much faster that I can and dont rewrite.  When this was brought up by me at one point. I guess it depends on ability in part of the writer. I tend to rewrite. I'd like to think the writing tends to become better. You also get more ideas. It's your creativity that gives you more ideas. Of course not everyone has the time to rewrite. Nor does everyone have the same opinion. Not to name people and to respect them they think when heavily rewritten it gets worse. They have good opinions. I just wanted to ask in general what people tend to do. Since there are different opinions out there, I think it is worth discussing. But yes, but there are other writers who will disagree with rewriting. Since the first few drafts represent their best effort.


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## Terry D (Jun 29, 2020)

Kyle R said:


> That's an awesome quote.
> 
> —
> 
> ...



Such is the problem with giving advice in short, easily misunderstood bits and pieces. Taken in context all writing cliches make perfect sense, but no one ever quotes them in context, do they?

"Kill your darlings," simply means to not get 'married' to a particular construction, because sometimes it's better for the whole piece to remove it. 

"Write what you know," doesn't mean we can't write fantasy, or about someplace we've never been, or about a time we never lived in, it means writing about authentic emotions (we've all known fear, wonder, loneliness, joy, etc.) and, if we do choose to write about Lilliput, or the Shire, we need to immerse ourselves in those worlds and know them in our minds. Real places and times can be researched. Read some Dan Simmons and you can experience climbing Everest, carving Mt. Rushmore, walking the streets of Victorian London with Dickens, and dwelling with Greek gods on Mars. Although I'm quite sure Simmons never did any of those things.

"Find your voice," just means write, write and write some more until your own unique voice begins to emerge like a Phoenix from the ashes of the pages you've read and written.

For every cliche about writing that you've read there are a multitude of good reasons why it became a cliche. The problem occurs when the beginning writer doesn't look deeper than the cliche, and when advice givers either don't understand the cliche any better than the newb, or believe they know better than those (usually very skilled writers) who dispense the context for the advice. Unfortunately, when such advice is given it is typically in the context of an interview with an author, or an article about writing commissioned from the writer, or in the form of a book the author has been asked to write. In all of those cases the author is required to make their advice interesting to catch and hold the interest of readers/listeners. Quick, catchy phrases are better for that than is a long dissertation filled with qualifiers ('Be ready to kill your darlings', 'When it's not possible to actually see, feel, experience a location, event, or time you should find out as much about it as you can and... snore', 'Remove all 'ly' adverbs unless it really is the best word for what you want to say'). 

I like it when beginning writers ask questions about these cliches. That gives us an opportunity to give them more context about the intent of the advice, to talk about how 'ly' adverbs are usually a symptom of lazy word choice, and how much work a writer really needs to put in to start recognizing and trusting their own voice. Too often the knee jerk reaction to their questions, however, is a diatribe about how bad the advice is. It has become so common to read someone condemning, "Write what you know," that the condemnation has itself become a worthless cliche.


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## PiP (Jun 29, 2020)

Terry D said:


> "Find your voice," just means write, write and write some more until your own unique voice begins to emerge like a Phoenix from the ashes of the pages you've read and written.
> 
> .



Good advice. I've now completed two NaNoWriMos and several NaPoWriMos. The discipline of writing every day really helped. I realise some people do not agree with these, but for me, it was all about discipline and 'freeing' the mind to just write rather than finding one hundred excuses not to.


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## Taylor (Jun 29, 2020)

PiP said:


> Good advice. I've now completed two NaNoWriMos and several NaPoWriMos. The discipline of writing every day really helped. I realise some people do not agree with these, but for me, it was all about discipline and 'freeing' the mind to just write rather than finding one hundred excuses not to.



Wow, that is impressive!  What was your greatest challange with the NaNoWriMos?


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## PiP (Jun 29, 2020)

Taylor said:


> Wow, that is impressive!  What was your greatest challenge with the NaNoWriMos?



For the first Nano it was the *discipline* of making myself write every day, especially as in the second week I traveled to France to look after the grandkids and the became ill with pneumonia shortly after I arrived. I used the first person stream of consiousness technique. While I had a general idea of the plot I went way over word count and its still not finished. 

The second NaNo was again discipline. I am easily distracted and my mind wanders on to FB, WF or my blog etc. I am dyslexic so for me to churn out 1666 words a day every day for a month is quite a challenge. That said, NaNoWriPo was far harder because it was not just telling a story. I found with poetry that so many other creative factors were thrown into the mix that some days I'd stare at a blank page for hours.


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## Taylor (Jun 29, 2020)

PiP said:


> For the first Nano it was the *discipline* of making myself write every day, especially as in the second week I traveled to France to look after the grandkids and the became ill with pneumonia shortly after I arrived. I used the first person stream of consiousness technique. While I had a general idea of the plot I went way over word count and its still not finished.
> 
> The second NaNo was again discipline. I am easily distracted and my mind wanders on to FB, WF or my blog etc. I am dyslexic so for me to churn out 1666 words a day every day for a month is quite a challenge. That said, NaNoWriPo was far harder because it was not just telling a story. I found with poetry that so many other creative factors were thrown into the mix that some days I'd stare at a blank page for hours.



You do have a lot of discipline! I find that if I can do 1500 a day, I'm patting myself on the back...lol!!  

I don't even know how to write poetry.  I might give it a shot.  Do you find that writing poetry helps your prose writing?


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 29, 2020)

Taylor said:


> I might give it a shot.  Do you find that writing poetry helps your prose writing?



Helps ? Affects, certainly.


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## Taylor (Jun 29, 2020)

Olly Buckle said:


> Helps ? Affects, certainly.



Oh?  Can we have more details please?


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## PiP (Jun 29, 2020)

Taylor said:


> You do have a lot of discipline! I find that if I can do 1500 a day, I'm patting myself on the back...lol!!



It's only for a month. Why not try it next year? Not only will it help with discipline but writing more will help you find your voice and rhythm as a writer.



> I don't even know how to write poetry.  I might give it a shot.  Do you find that writing poetry helps your prose writing?



Yes, it does help. I think poets have their own voice/style as well. Writing poetry helped me understand meter, flow, alliteration, assonance etc. which you can also (I think) apply when you write prose. It makes you think differently. So the voice I had as a writer, say four years ago, is different from the one I have now.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 29, 2020)

All of what PiP says about assonance consonance, alliteration etc., but there are parts in my present work where I am describing a general action with single lines of dialogue from various individuals arranged as pure poetry. I really don't know how it is going to work in the middle of a story, but I have a situation where I have a group of people on a relatively mundane day out that has to happen for the story. In the past I might have dismissed it in a few words, that could be the better option, no idea.


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## RHPeat (Jun 29, 2020)

PiP said:


> Good advice. I've now completed two NaNoWriMos and several NaPoWriMos. The discipline of writing every day really helped. I realise some people do not agree with these, but for me, it was all about discipline and 'freeing' the mind to just write rather than finding one hundred excuses not to.



Carole 

Not enough can be said about exercising you mind daily by writing. A writer definitely needs to do this to be good at it. It's just like practicing the piano. You just keep improving. People that are successful write every day. And when they write they are always the writer. This second concept is more complicated. It means to be creative even if its the grocery shopping list. Who knows, it could become a poem with the right imagination behind it. That is the point. Imagination along with the writing needs to be stretched out for deeper feelings. The more you do to the incidental writing the better you get and making the incidental in your writing come alive with details. And have fun doing it, even it is a struggle at times to find that right word for the perfect phrase. Go to it girl. You know how to ride the horse now. You'll be taking the larks in a single bond in no time. Whats a lark. See what I mean you have to keep growing. It's hurdle. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jun 29, 2020)

Taylor said:


> Do you find that writing poetry helps your prose writing?



Yes! It helps with concision (packing a lot of meaning into a few words), sentence rhythm, and, on a larger scale, knitting images and metaphors together. For every story (and some characters) I usually have a set of images (some literal, some symbolic).


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## Kyle R (Jun 29, 2020)

Terry D said:
			
		

> For every cliche about writing that you've read there are a multitude of good reasons why it became a cliche. The problem occurs when the beginning writer doesn't look deeper than the cliche, and when advice givers either don't understand the cliche any better than the newb, or believe they know better than those (usually very skilled writers) who dispense the context for the advice.



Oh snap! I think my head was just lopped off. But it was done so eloquently that I enjoyed it. :highly_amused:

*Any WF Member*: "Ugh! Stephen King! _*Mumble Complain*_"

*Terry D*: "So, you have chosen ... death."


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## Frederick Brown (Jun 29, 2020)

LCLee said:


> It took three years with eight female beta readers telling me things like, “that’s impossible.” Two male Alpha readers and one female development reader.
> After I released it I had complaints about the editing so I pulled it back and did a professional edit. It was all a bit of a learning curve at the time that has humbled me to work smarter and get over my cocky self.
> The research I had done in years past from going to the library (no internet). I wanted to show how the Taino Indians were mistreated by Christopher Columbus when he thought they had gold. Also, I wanted to point out that Haiti used to be their home before the French and Spanish took it over. But in the end my character took over the book, and it was all about her. The preaching about the wrongdoing was sidelined.



That's a process I respect.  What's the name of the book?  After reading _Avengers of the New World_ it sounds like something I would be interested in.


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## Frederick Brown (Jun 29, 2020)

On, "kill your darlings".  Maybe I forgot the context of King's advice, but Robert McKee in _Story _(talking about screenwriting) says that anytime a line jumps out as "Oh what a clever little line I am" it should be cut.  The key in this advice is that it should only be cut if it jumps out at you, and this is made clear when he suggests that these lines break the story teller's illusion by speaking too directly to the audience.


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## luckyscars (Jun 30, 2020)

Frederick Brown said:


> On, "kill your darlings".  Maybe I forgot the context of King's advice, but Robert McKee in _Story _(talking about screenwriting) says that anytime a line jumps out as "Oh what a clever little line I am" it should be cut.  The key in this advice is that it should only be cut if it jumps out at you, and this is made clear when he suggests that these lines break the story teller's illusion by speaking too directly to the audience.



I'm not sure that's a correct interpretation of McKee. Do you have a link to a source? I would be interested in seeing the quote in full context to better understand it as it doesn't seem to make sense. I have read The Perennial Seller which quotes from him quite a bit so I'm kind of familiar but not extensively so.

From what I read, it seems McKee's advice on that front can basically be summed up as 'don't set out to try to write a masterpiece, just set out to write the best that you can'. 

I think that's sound advice. I read the difference between 'setting out to write a masterpiece' and 'setting out to write the best that you can' as coming down to the former trying to anticipate, in some sense, the mass effect it would have on readers, the grandiose commercial appeal of the work, and the latter simply about writing faithfully to a vision: Lots of good writing isn't masterpiece level and you can't necessarily control that. But you _can _control whether a vision is executed properly.

I believe that's essentially what 'kill your darlings' is about, too. I think when people talk about killing darlings they are most definitely NOT saying 'if it's really good then you should cut it'. 

 I think what they _are _saying is "don't become so in love with something that you keep it at all costs". What it's saying is, 'don't be afraid to make tough decisions...even ones that result initially in a sense of loss'.

I think most people have had this conundrum pretty regularly. Quite often I find I come up with something -- a character, a scene, maybe just a line -- in the first draft or whatnot that I really like only to find later that doesn't really fit with how things panned out. It's hard to let go of those things, because they're valuable.  

But a book isn't about cramming all kinds of pieces that are beautiful in isolation. A close inspection of even the most vibrant mosaic contains some rather plain, rather ordinary, pieces that, if replaced with diamonds or emeralds, would totally ruin the completed image. Even the most complex aircraft needs plain axle grease to function. Even the most beautiful city needs a sewer system and plain-but-functional roadways. Not everything in every story needs to be incredible or complex or individually significant. Some parts are going to simply function as axle grease that help the thing get off the ground.


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## bdcharles (Jun 30, 2020)

I try not to get myself into the trap of thinking in terms of advice (good or bad), or rules, or do's and dont's, because they all suggest a degree of "this alone is what works." My takeaway is: they can all work, they are all tools in the box to be used at appropriate times. Yes, try writing what you know. Yes, try and find your voice. No, don't try to imitate Ray Bradbury today but maybe do try it on another day. Many of the rules are kind of whimsical and jokey anyway (looking at you, W. Somerset Maugham) so they're clearly not meant to be taken all that seriously. This is the joy of the Literary Maneuvers comp - it challenges us to write according to different bits of advice.


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## RHPeat (Jun 30, 2020)

hugodrax said:


> As a new writer - at least in fiction prose - I'd like to know how to differentiate. Is it even possible? It's especially confusing when everything I read online immediately contradicts every book I open. Is turn-of-the-century writing stylistically dated? Should I only ape current trends? Sometimes, the old rule I was taught seems to stand: nobody knows anything.



Hugo

three thoughts. Traditional. Anti-Traditional  and Un-Traditional. 

1. Traditional means the established fact as a course of action. This are the establish traditions in all cultures. some of them might be very new to and outsider. 
3. Anti-Traditional means breaking all the rules as a course of action. This is like funk art, the fur lined toaster. The surrealists. This comes form break the established.
3. Un-Traditional means everything above and more is possible and should be made to fit what you are creating right back to the cave painting and everything else throughout history, and in all nations and cultures. It means the limits are boundless. This is the reaching of true creative thought. It is unrestrained in any way. It will try anything that works for the benefit of the creative process. It means there are rules and no rules, nor any rules to break, but you should break any rule you want to break. You are only guided by yourself. What is successful if more to the point; which means — what do you wish to create in relationship to the reader, listener, viewer, eater, whatever the art form calls for as the means to capture the "*Evoked One*." Who is also part of the process of all of the humanities. This means part of you job as the writer is to evoke something into someone else. You want them to feel what you write. So you never write for yourself. You write for the world which mean yourself because as an identity you are the center of the universe. The "Higgs" particle proved that. Are laughing It's important to maintain humor when writing because life is full of ironies. Ironies that you will write about. 

This thought comes from Sir Herbert Read, who was an art critic back around the 1960's. I think his book was called "The Creative Process," or something like that. I'm not sure about the title. It's been so long ago that I read his book. I was in my twenties, I'm now 78 — that's about 58 years ago. I know that it changed my life as a creative person, I'm an artist that works in a lot of different media, primarily in Ceramics as a potter, Oils and acrylics as a painter, and traditional forms and free verse as a poet. I've tried it all and then some mixing it all together. Wherever my interest guides me; I follow the path where it leads me with my personal interest. Which has been my idea of perceptualism. A word I created for myself back in 1970 which means more than one perception exists in all things or all view points, and that the art form should try to present different levels of concerns in any given art object: be it ceramics, painting poetry, music, etc — all of the humanities. Mr Read's book made me see the difference between creating a product, or creating an art form, object; even a unique artistic thought process, all my own. 

My advice is not to worry about it too much. Know that there are certain concepts that hold true that go all the way back to primitive arts in all the different culture that are concerned with what we call the humanities. Like rhythm for instance, Like the chant in poetry that has a beat to it, like a vehicle for paint in painting so that brushes were invented to do the job. So you get the bigger picture? There are devices already discovered that you can ad-lib on to help you write better, just don't be constrained by any one process and become a copyist; absorb them all and take what is the best for you from all cultures and traditions. This will make you be like no one else. There isn't a lot that is truly new, there are just different ways to observe it and present it to the perceptive eye. Originality is something digested by you as a creator as art, writing is an art form. So you are concerned with an actual craft with a task to capture another's attention as a reader. It doesn't mean you need to write for them at all, that's stupid. Instead in means you have write good enough to capture their attention, now that's talent. That's your craft as a writer. Hopefully they, the reader, will come out the other side with a different awareness that you have created within your presentation of your art to capture their imagination — you will have evoked them. Not an easy job to do at all. You're going to have to work hard at it and continually improve upon it for a lifetime. You need to make it your life style and a means of living that is personally yours. You might even have to do other things to support it. Think twice before you have a family. If you do have one now, hope like hell, your significant other offers you the time and space to be creative. Don't let it slip through your fingers. And always demand a place to create — within any home you move into. This is not something that is arbitrary. It's the difference of being the writer or not being the writer. You have to have a space set aside to write,  that has a creative process that takes time to think to create a presentation of some kind. Don't let the big fish slip through your hands or leap out of your net. 

Your Big Fish,

For if you hook the big one;
The one that got away;
you can tell the fish story. 
You know that one, don't you. 
You hold out one arm 
as far as you can reach, 
stretching your arm 
as far as you can,

and then you say: 
The one that got away 
was that big. 
Did I catch you? 

drinks are on me 
if we ever meet. 
Thanks for reading. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## hugodrax (Jun 30, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Even the most complex aircraft needs plain axle grease to function. Even the most beautiful city needs a sewer system and plain-but-functional roadways. Not everything in every story needs to be incredible or complex or individually significant. Some parts are going to simply function as axle grease that help the thing get off the ground.



That's an interesting point - I often look at books across the last century, and the paper/mag sub editor in me says 'strike, strike, strike' or 'don't use eight words, when three will do.' I see so much indulgence, and I see even more dead wood. But, then, your analogies remind me there has to be some semblance of the ordinary, otherwise the sparkly bits wouldn't sparkle. I think the next short I tackle, I'm going to give myself a bit more space. But I can hear my old editors clicking their red pens, and I wince...




RHPeat said:


> Hugo





RHPeat said:


> three thoughts. Traditional. Anti-Traditional and Un-Traditional.
> 
> 1. Traditional means the established fact as a course of action. This are the establish traditions in all cultures. some of them might be very new to and outsider.
> 3. Anti-Traditional means breaking all the rules as a course of action. This is like funk art, the fur lined toaster. The surrealists. This comes form break the established.
> ...




Thanks for the insight. I'm new to fiction but have written for mags and papers, as well as been a lyricist for decades. I've been many other creative things for as long, too, so I recognise many of your points. Fortunately, the other half is very familiar with my creative requirements, and I've got a recording studio at home to retreat to.

_Un-Traditional_ is a new term to me, but it sounds a lot like _Post Modernism_, which is how I 'd describe much of my music. Writing, I need a much more contained direction, as I'm learning as I go. I'll def check out Read's book.

Thanks again - and thanks for the poem


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## Frederick Brown (Jun 30, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I'm not sure that's a correct interpretation of McKee. Do you have a link to a source? I would be interested in seeing the quote in full context to better understand it as it doesn't seem to make sense. I have read The Perennial Seller which quotes from him quite a bit so I'm kind of familiar but not extensively so.



McKee's exact quote from _Story_ pg. 388, "Never write anything that calls attention to itself as dialogue, anything that jumps off the page and shouts: 'Oh, what a clever line I am.' The moment you think you've written something that's particularly fine and literary--cut it."


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## hugodrax (Jun 30, 2020)

Frederick Brown said:


> McKee's exact quote from _Story_ pg. 388, "Never write anything that calls attention to itself as dialogue, anything that jumps off the page and shouts: "Oh, what a clever line I am."  The moment you think you've written something that's particularly fine and literary--cut it.



I've got Story (along with stuff by Field, Vogler, etc) and I absolutely subscribe to that process. Then I open _Wind in the Willows_, and it's absolutely chock-full of purples passages. And I'll bet all my favourite books do, too. You can imagine what _that _feels like to this n00b.


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## Taylor (Jun 30, 2020)

Frederick Brown said:


> McKee's exact quote from _Story_ pg. 388, "Never write anything that calls attention to itself as dialogue, anything that jumps off the page and shouts: "Oh, what a clever line I am."  The moment you think you've written something that's particularly fine and literary--cut it.



I really don't understand the logic of this advice.  Can anyone explain to me why writing something you think is clever dialogue is a problem?


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## Frederick Brown (Jun 30, 2020)

Taylor said:


> I really don't understand the logic of this advice.  Can anyone explain to me why writing something you think is clever dialogue is a problem?



It's not that clever dialogue itself is the problem--it's when it stands out for being so.  McKee doesn't want dialogue to draw attention to itself as something that is written by an author because it destroys the story teller's illusion.


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## Taylor (Jun 30, 2020)

Frederick Brown said:


> It's not that clever dialogue itself is the problem--it's when it stands out for being so.  McKee doesn't want dialogue to draw attention to itself as something that is written by an author because it destroys the story teller's illusion.



Thanks for the explanation Frederick.  That makes perfect sense!  I probably don't have to worry about it too much in my own writing because I wouldn't know how to write something literary anyway. O


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## epimetheus (Jun 30, 2020)

Taylor said:


> I really don't understand the logic of this advice.  Can anyone explain to me why writing something you think is clever dialogue is a problem?



It's only a problem if it takes the reader out of the story. However, it is subjective. I think Hemingway is an awful writer because every line drips with self-satisfaction. Instead of the story, i imagine him delighting at the smell of his own farts. But then many people regard him as one of the greatest authors of all time, so he would did well to ignore advice from people like me.

The utility of advice is not as dependent on the dispenser as it is upon the receiver. Even bad advice has utility if you can see it for what it is.


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## Outsider (Jun 30, 2020)

If you "write what you know" wouldn't that make it non-fiction by definition?


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## Terry D (Jun 30, 2020)

Kyle R said:


> Oh snap! I think my head was just lopped off. But it was done so eloquently that I enjoyed it. :highly_amused:
> 
> *Any WF Member*: "Ugh! Stephen King! _*Mumble Complain*_"
> 
> *Terry D*: "So, you have chosen ... death."



Not my intention at all. You dispense excellent advice, Kyle and always have. I just think in our enthusiasm to help new writers learn that the only rules they should follow absolutely are those which work for them we sometimes forget to explain why those 'rules' exist in the first place. It's not to limit their ability to express themselves, but, rather, to refine it. I've been writing since Carter was in office and I still keep in mind all those old saws even though I frequently break them. 

I'm really not a King apologist as some would think. I have serious issues with many of his novels, and don't consider him a paragon of literature (hell, the man himself has said he's fiction's version of McDonald's). But I would just as quickly defend other writers whose work I am familiar with when I think the criticism is off-base. It just happens with King more than others, and that's okay because he's a writer with whom many are familiar and provides a common frame of reference.


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## LCLee (Jun 30, 2020)

Frederick Brown said:


> That's a process I respect.  What's the name of the book?  After reading _Avengers of the New World_ it sounds like something I would be interested in.



I hope it's all right. The book is, _Deceitful Survival_


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## Frederick Brown (Jun 30, 2020)

Terry D said:


> hell, the man himself has said he's fiction's version of McDonald's


I can give him at least that much credit.  _Dark Tower_ was McD at its best IMHO.


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## luckyscars (Jun 30, 2020)

epimetheus said:


> It's only a problem if it takes the reader out of the story. However, it is subjective. I think Hemingway is an awful writer because every line drips with self-satisfaction. Instead of the story, i imagine him delighting at the smell of his own farts. But then many people regard him as one of the greatest authors of all time, so he would did well to ignore advice from people like me.



I think the secret there is reader buy-in. I quite like Hemingway but that is only because I can suspend disbelief sufficiently to invest in his world and the people in it, which is usually immersive without necessarily being realistic.

While I do find several of his lines a little cringeworthy, the context in which they are presented is a world in which that's how characters talk. I'm not really reading Hemingway to read about human beings, I'm reading Hemingway to read about Hemingway's version of human beings. So there's no real risk of being thrown out of the story, If that makes sense? I'm already 'in' the story, I accepted the absurdity the first time Hemingway started rambling about lions on the beach or brave matadors or old men befriending boys, so the self-satisfying cringe that comes with the dialogue is just how these characters interact with each other all of the time.

There are quite a few writers who I feel write certain pieces of preposterous dialogue but works in the context of their books because they don't set out to capture people particularly accurately to begin with. Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, are three that come to mind. I think that's different than having a character talk mostly pretty 'normally' for several scenes then suddenly blurt something poetic or profound for no apparent reason.


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## luckyscars (Jun 30, 2020)

Outsider said:


> If you "write what you know" wouldn't that make it non-fiction by definition?



Non-fiction and fiction isn't just about degrees of knowledge but also about technique. 

With pretty much anything involving writing it's hard to restrict stuff to a binary either/or. It gets blurry, especially when you take into account something like a roman-a-clef which is most definitely an author 'writing what they know' but with a fictional facade.

 Some technically fictional books are based on a lot of truth (some historical fiction has a lot of real history, some science fiction has a lot of real science) and some technically non-fictional books are based on rather little (political memoirs come to mind).


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## Sir-KP (Jul 1, 2020)

epimetheus said:


> I think Hemingway is an awful writer because every line drips with self-satisfaction.
> Instead of the story, i imagine him delighting at the smell of his own farts.



lol. This intrigues me the most. I would appreciate if you (or anyone) could give a small example of this problem.


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## luckyscars (Jul 2, 2020)

Sir-KP said:


> lol. This intrigues me the most. I would appreciate if you (or anyone) could give a small example of this problem.



_He had come with the woman to Kilimanjaro to gather ideas for a cycle of haikus he was writing. The woman had suggested, in the aristocratic manner of the rich, that living on a diet of dried bark and dirt would toughen something inside him that had gone soft and prevented him from creating. Instead it softened him further, and now he was dying of severe dysentery complicated by writer’s block.

Now he would never write the things he had saved to write until he learned to spell them. For instance, accommodation. One C, two Ms, or the other way around? He wasn’t sure. Or chrysanthemum? On rugged Kilimanjaro, there was not even a dictionary.

“How do they know I’m dying?” he asked the woman, indicating the crowd of undertakers, florists and wake caterers who were gathering at the edge of the campsite. “Is it the odor?”

“Of your poop?” she asked. “Or your poetry?”

She knew how to hurt him this woman, this female being, this creature of the non-male persuasion. And he would have hurt her back, at least challenged her to a thumb wrestle, if he hadn’t felt it just then. The cold stale breath. Death. He could taste Death in the wind. He could hear it tiptoe around the campsite. He could see it climbing a tree, hiding in a garbage can, tripping over a root. Clumsy Death. Once he thought Death tapped him on the shoulder, but it must have ducked when he turned around to see who it was.

 “The night can play strange tricks on a man,” the woman had said. 

Sure enough, when he awoke, the next morning, there was a “Kick Me” sign pinned to his back.

Sensing Death nearby, he wished he had never left his comfortable job at Harry’s Bar, where he had made good money as a cocktail waitress during a confused period of his adolescence. Yes, that was another poem he would never write, mainly because he couldn’t even pronounce scampi grigliati, let alone spell it. For him, there was but one haiku left:

I came for ideas
But instead I’m going to die
You rotten mountain

He scratched the words into a pile of uneaten dirt and waited for Death to stumble his way_


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## Outsider (Jul 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Non-fiction and fiction isn't just about degrees of knowledge but also about technique.



I guess humor needs technique too....


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## Outsider (Jul 2, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> _He had come with the woman to Kilimanjaro to gather ideas for a cycle of haikus he was writing. The woman had suggested, in the aristocratic manner of the rich, that living on a diet of dried bark and dirt would toughen something inside him that had gone soft and prevented him from creating. Instead it softened him further, and now he was dying of severe dysentery complicated by writer’s block.
> 
> Now he would never write the things he had saved to write until he learned to spell them. For instance, accommodation. One C, two Ms, or the other way around? He wasn’t sure. Or chrysanthemum? On rugged Kilimanjaro, there was not even a dictionary.
> 
> ...



What's the problem with this quote?  I think it's hilarious.


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## luckyscars (Jul 2, 2020)

Outsider said:


> What's the problem with this quote?  I think it's hilarious.



Probably that it isn't actually Hemingway but one of many parodies of him. That's how absurd his style of writing is considered in a lot of circles.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156118610/?tag=writingforu06-20


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## Dibbler88 (Jul 5, 2020)

Maybe ‘Find your Voice’ is essentially ‘Find Yourself’, as you say, write in your own authentic voice but to be honest do we even have our own. We suck in media, people, events, we are influenced by whether we turned left or turned right down a street and what we came across.

We will be a different person in 5 years time. 

I always like to think it’s ‘Find your childlike imagination’ 

I don’t like find your voice either


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## qwertyman (Jul 5, 2020)

Visit an agents’ website and a top requirement is a strong, or dark, or unique, irresistible ‘Voice’. That’s what they’re looking for and therefore it’s what the reader wants.

A ‘Voice’ is not for life, (unless you’re Agatha Christie). It's the writer's card to play and expressed through the medium of the Narrator. It’s the guts of your work.  If you want to spill blood over something spill it over this.

Writing in first person automatically dictates the ‘Voice’ of the narration. Ergo, different first person, different ‘Voice’.
Get the ‘voice’ right and you’re in a good place.

The comedian’s mantra: ‘It’s not the jokes.  It’s the way you tell ‘em’. 
‘Voice’ is the way you tell it.

Wait, I haven’t finished. Write what you know.

What do I know? So, shoot me.

qwerty


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## luckyscars (Jul 6, 2020)

qwertyman said:


> Visit an agents’ website and a top requirement is a strong, or dark, or unique, irresistible ‘Voice’. That’s what they’re looking for and therefore it’s what the reader wants.



Yep and it pisses me off. It pisses me off because it's lazy.

When an editor or agent talks about 'wanting an irresistible voice' I see it as mainly a cop-out: They aren't really stating a requirement  so much as they are saying "I'm looking for something I'll like and I dunno exactly how to explain what I'll like...except that I will like it oh and by the way I'm also being sufficiently ambiguous that I can and will reject you based on something completely undefinable"

Which, you know, fair enough! But it's not useful information, most of the time, so I would ignore it for the purposes of submission. Unless somebody wants to explain a common definition of what can make a voice 'irresistible' or not, it's just another way to say 'je ne sais quoi".


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## Terry D (Jul 6, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> Yep and it pisses me off. It pisses me off because it's lazy.
> 
> When an editor or agent talks about 'wanting an irresistible voice' I see it as mainly a cop-out: They aren't really stating a requirement  so much as they are saying "I'm looking for something I'll like and I dunno exactly how to explain what I'll like...except that I will like it oh and by the way I'm also being sufficiently ambiguous that I can and will reject you based on something completely undefinable"
> 
> Which, you know, fair enough! But it's not useful information, most of the time, so I would ignore it for the purposes of submission. Unless somebody wants to explain a common definition of what can make a voice 'irresistible' or not, it's just another way to say 'je ne sais quoi".



Editors also suggest writers read back issues of the publication so they can see for themselves what voice the editors are looking for. That's far more effective than trying to define a characteristic which is, by its very nature, undefinable.


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## Chris Stevenson (Jul 6, 2020)

I mimic my favorite writers, about four of them. With all their styles combined, I've undoubtedly come up with my own unique voice.

Write what you know. In general terms, that's BS. I've never, ever written a novel or non-fiction book where I didn't have to do SOME research and investigation. That's even if I knew the subject inside and out.


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## indianroads (Jul 6, 2020)

Chris Stevenson said:


> I mimic my favorite writers, about four of them. With all their styles combined, I've undoubtedly come up with my own unique voice.
> 
> Write what you know. In general terms, that's BS. I've never, ever written a novel or non-fiction book where I didn't have to do SOME research and investigation. That's even if I knew the subject inside and out.



There was a time when I read a TON of Vonnegut - so much so that his writing voice strongly influenced me. Now though, I've found my own way and write as myself.


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## qwertyman (Jul 7, 2020)

If you grabbed an agent or a commissioning editor, put a knife to his/her throat and said, “This is your last chance.  You have one sentence… tell me, WTF do you want from me., (sob!)” *

What do you think would be the answer?

qwerty
*Blimey, good first lines.


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## luckyscars (Jul 7, 2020)

qwertyman said:


> If you grabbed an agent or a commissioning editor, put a knife to his/her throat and said, “This is your last chance.  You have one sentence… tell me, WTF do you want from me., (sob!)” *
> 
> What do you think would be the answer?
> 
> ...



I'm of the opinion that agents, editors, etc. are pretty much the same as readers when it comes to saying what they want: That is, they don't exactly know. Not beyond really broad sweeps, anyway. Something will either work for them or it won't and it's kind of pointless trying to figure it out on the front end. I mean, I'm sure the agent who took on Harry Potter didn't know ahead of time that what he wanted was a book about a boy who is a wizard, and I'm sure the publishers didn't know either. This is why sending out work seems to work best as more of a 'send it to everybody and see what happens' routine than a 'I'm going to read up on every agent and make my own shortlist'. Screw the short list and humming-and-harring. Do the minimal research and send the shit. See what happens.

Which segues nicely into another piece of what I think is bad advice which is "write according to current interests and trends". There's some wisdom in it because certain types of stories _are_ demonstrably harder to get read -- a 35,000 word western novella, for instance, is going to be tough. So is a story which includes a lot of male-audience focused sexual objectification of women. But all the things that are proposed as being 'in demand' tend to get saturated almost immediately. For awhile, it was really popular to write about vampires and suddenly stories with vampires were everywhere, but that meant that by the time a writer realized it was The Trend, came up with an idea and actually wrote it the trend was already yesterday's news. Nobody particularly cares about vampires anymore.

Some things are more enduring than others (and a good writer would probably be able to identify what is a long term theme versus just a fleeting interest item) but most stuff comes and goes fairly quickly, I think. This is a good reason why I feel like the worst move right now is to write a story about a pandemic or some kind of related post-apocalyptic thing, because (1) There is, or shortly will be, an absolute glut of them (2) Just because people are highly cognizant of that stuff doesn't mean they are interested in it and (3) It's going to be really hard to write it in a new, unexpected way.


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## Kyle R (Jul 7, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> I'm of the opinion that agents, editors, etc. are pretty much the same as readers when it comes to saying what they want: That is, they don't exactly know. Not beyond really broad sweeps, anyway. Something will either work for them or it won't and it's kind of pointless trying to figure it out on the front end.



I'd say it depends on the editor/agent.

As Terry pointed out, you can often tell a lot about an editor's (or agent's) tastes by taking a look at the kind of stories that they've gravitated toward in the past (either by familiarizing yourself with the stories they've represented/published, or by following their blog/vlog, if they have one).

And, often, said editors or agents will include a list of things they look for, as well as a list of "hard sells". These lists can be vague and generalized, as you've mentioned—or they can be specific and quite comprehensive (again, depends on the person). :encouragement:

Jessica Faust (literary agent from BookEnds Literary) talked on her YouTube channel recently about pandemic fiction, and recommended that authors who're working on such stories consider putting them aside for now, as they're likely going to be hard sells. She offered her reasons why, and even offered compromises (stories where the characters find love during a pandemic, for example, likely have a higher chance of finding representation than pandemic survival stories, as optimistic/hopeful stories are currently selling better than downers, and so on ...).



			
				luckyscars said:
			
		

> Which segues nicely into another piece of what I think is bad advice which is "write according to current interests and trends".


I usually see the opposite advice, actually ("_Don't_ write according to current trends!"). Because, like you said, if you've already noticed a trend, then it's likely already too late to write it.

I do, though, often see the advice to "Write to market", which I view as being less time-sensitive and more generalized.


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## luckyscars (Jul 8, 2020)

Kyle R said:


> I'd say it depends on the editor/agent.
> 
> As Terry pointed out, you can often tell a lot about an editor's (or agent's) tastes by taking a look at the kind of stories that they've gravitated toward in the past (either by familiarizing yourself with the stories they've represented/published, or by following their blog/vlog, if they have one).
> 
> And, often, said editors or agents will include a list of things they look for, as well as a list of "hard sells". These lists can be vague and generalized, as you've mentioned—or they can be specific and quite comprehensive (again, depends on the person). :encouragement:



One potential problem is that it can get expensive to access previously published work, especially if 'familiarizing' involves buying multiple issues of a high end literary magazine, or multiple books in an agent or publisher portfolio. This may not be feasible for everybody, depending obviously on the writers' disposable income (which could be low, especially right now) and the price point and how much 'familiarity' they feel they need and whether there are any cheaper or free work-arounds available. Some places have free samples, or a blog as you mention, and that could be sufficient. Other places you have to pay retail just to look at the work and the writer may feel they don't have a good idea unless they do that. 

If there aren't free or cheap ways to access the material, it could end up costing hundreds of dollars in subscriptions and book purchases (based on the rule-of-thumb of 80 submissions and an 'average' retail price per book of $5) with potentially nothing in return, and that's not including the time it would take just to skim-read those books. That's on the extreme end of the scale (and doesn't consider that reading lots of books isn't 'nothing in return' because reading is good!) but it's theoretically a potential outcome of the 'read their previous material' advice that I think bears mentioning. If I insisted on purchasing material of everybody I had ever submitted to, my wife would have shut that down real quick.

It's a trade off, though, for sure. I wouldn't necessarily buy a magazine just to 'get a feel' for whether or not I thought it would be a good place to send a short story or a piece of flash fiction that didn't pay well. But I have bought an issue of a review to see, especially if I think I would enjoy reading it anyway. Novels? I think that depends. With agents, their back catalog may not necessarily indicate what they would pick up now. Other times it definitely would. For example, I believe the agent who picked up Harry Potter was better known for military thrillers -- Rowling apparently submitted to him just because she liked his name and apparently he was more flexible than 'research' would have suggested -- researching him may even have led her to not submit to him for fear it would be pointless. Other agents tend to stick to a certain formula and won't even consider something that wavers. That's likely a determination that can be made through a simple quick check of their website and reading the submission guidelines closely. To that extent, I agree on the 'familiarization' issue.

I'm not suggesting that research doesn't ever help, but that the idea that potential publishing destinations should be closely examined for clues as to whether they would like something seems like it could go either way. Best case scenario, it avoids wasting time on a dead end. Worst case scenario, it takes up time the time you would have spent pursuing the dead end on doing a bunch of 'research', and potentially leads to writers second-guessing themselves out of trying: "Uh-oh, having researched it looks like my book isn't like anything they have done before so I don't think they would consider me!" or something similar. 

The way I see it, if your approach is to submit to as many places as possible and not be turning down offers before they have even been made (which I generally find to be the best way, YMMV) there doesn't seem much point in consuming a lot of time examining previous work in case you are wrong. I think it's generally better to get a certain answer by actually submitting than an uncertain one by not. I definitely do not think it's necessary or even best practice to make a habit of always knowing an agent/editor/publisher's work well before submitting to them. I would take issue with that advice. That's how you end up with people submitting to, like, three places and then getting hurt by those rejections. It can become way too personal. We can become way too invested.

I agree that blogs are helpful. I like the Manuscript Wish Lists, following the Twitter accounts, blogs, etc. as they tend to lead to more current, more intimate information based more on the agent/publisher/editor's feelings in the moment. So there are usually ways to 'research' even if it's only briefly or passively.

I think a good way to overcome the issue of not being familiar with the agent/editor/publisher is to read a lot in general. That way, when you start submitting you already have a pool of agents and publishers whose work you are familiar with -- the agents and publishers who handle the books you have read and love and been inspired by. I usually find most places I submit to these days I recognize at least one author on their list and the kind of stuff they write. Then you can start looking into those folks, and 'work outward'.



> Jessica Faust (literary agent from BookEnds Literary) talked on her YouTube channel recently about pandemic fiction, and recommended that authors who're working on such stories consider putting them aside for now, as they're likely going to be hard sells. She offered her reasons why, and even offered compromises (stories where the characters find love during a pandemic, for example, likely have a higher chance of finding representation than pandemic survival stories, as optimistic/hopeful stories are currently selling better than downers, and so on ...).



Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to consider the psychology of this stuff. 

There are kind of two schools of thought, it seems. One of them is "people like stories that reflect the reality in which they find themselves" and at a glance that makes some sense. The other is the one Faust articulated.

We see a lot of science fiction from the late thirties to late forties. A lot of stuff that didn't really reflect the current zeitgeist in an obvious way and was more about escapism and hopefulness. But there was _also _a lot of invasion fiction, which can obviously be tied to World War Two and the Cold War worries...so hell if I know! The fifties was famous for horror movies but wasn't necessarily a dark period, at least not in the United States. Perhaps the prevalence of horror in the fifties could be tenuously explained by the more distanced examination during that period of the real life horrors that came out of WWII? Or maybe not. The seventies was another American 'dark period' with severe economic downturns and a lot of Cold War tension, social unrest, etc. and there was a bit of a horror boom during that period as well, which seems to be a product of that malaise in some way, but it's really hard to find correlations on which to build any sort of theory. 

Really, I think people are more complicated than these wisdoms tend to suggest. I also think people _tend_ to be more open to writing about world calamities _after _the calamity has passed. It depends, of course. _The Grapes Of Wrath _would be an example of a book that was written about the Great Depression and published while the Depression was still current and that did OK. It did come out in 1939 so toward the tail end, however. Possibly benefited from a little bit of retrospective distancing.

Either way, I definitely agree that the existence of the current pandemic does not mean pandemic fiction sells. That seems almost self-evident by the mere fact that almost everybody seems extremely bored of anything related to Coronavirus and definitely wants it over with. I don't think people tend to want to read about stuff in fiction that already pisses them off in reality. I don't think people want to read about their reality so much as to understand their reality, which is possibly where Faust's proposal regarding incorporation of Covid without dwelling on survival comes in. I'm not sure.

OTOH, certain other major current world upheavals may not create such feelings of boredom and antipathy during 'their time'. Like, I don't think people living through World War Two (or really any war) found it boring to read about in the same way a pandemic now feels boring to read about, despite both being 'bad times'. War tends to be easier to romanticize, tends to facilitate a lot of heroism, reinforces ideas of patriotism and 'the enemy', so it's a more fertile situation for fiction, I guess. Even something like a financial crisis is probably more interesting for story-writing than a pandemic because it's a human conflict with human causes and a built in sense of tangible 'conflict'. Coronavirus is just kind of a whimper, kind of dry, kind of...lame.


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## Kyle R (Jul 8, 2020)

luckyscars said:
			
		

> One potential problem is that it can get expensive to access previously published work, especially if 'familiarizing' involves buying multiple issues of a high end literary magazine, or multiple books in an agent or publisher portfolio. This may not be feasible for everybody, depending obviously on the writers' disposable income (which could be low, especially right now) and the price point and how much 'familiarity' they feel they need and whether there are any cheaper or free work-arounds available.



Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend going into debt just to research a potential agent or editor. I meant familiarizing oneself in a generalized way, such as: "I see that agent So-And-So publishes a lot of Literary Women's Fiction, and not much else. Hmm. Perhaps my Cyberpunk Thriller isn't a good fit."

And sure, there are going to be cases where a story comes out of left field and knocks the agent's (or editor's) socks off—something that they would never have expected to like. But those are likely as rare as they sound, and probably not good enough justification to dismiss the (often tedious, but pretty much necessary) process of trying to find a good fit.



			
				luckyscars said:
			
		

> Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to consider the psychology of this stuff.


It certainly is interesting, and you've mentioned a lot of fascinating cases.

Regarding the current pandemic, I think you put it best when you said that most readers are probably just tired of the coronavirus, and don't want to be reminded of it anymore than they already are.

Though, when this pandemic finally ends (whenever the hell that will be! lol), we might see a renewed interest in the "era of Covid", or whatever future us will call it, since readers will no longer be living through it anymore. Who knows? :encouragement:


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## luckyscars (Jul 8, 2020)

Kyle R said:


> Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend going into debt just to research a potential agent or editor. I meant familiarizing oneself in a generalized way, such as: "I see that agent So-And-So publishes a lot of Literary Women's Fiction, and not much else. Hmm. Perhaps my Cyberpunk Thriller isn't a good fit."
> 
> And sure, there are going to be cases where a story comes out of left field and knocks the agent's (or editor's) socks off—something that they would never have expected to like. But those are likely as rare as they sound, and probably not good enough justification to dismiss the (often tedious, but pretty much necessary) process of trying to find a good fit.



Yeah, I agree, but we were originally referring to the 'what do [agents] mean by a strong/unique voice?' thing -- if I remember correctly.

 I _think_ it's probably true that in many cases you can only really get a sense of what they consider good voice by being quite familiar with the actual books they like -- not just the genre and other stuff that is pretty easy to determine just by looking at a website. A blog may do it, if they bother going into detail on the stuff they like and why they like it. But a lot of them don't really bother doing that, or if they do they only discuss it kind of nebulously. I love agents like Faust who bother helping us learn.

Which is why I kind of just went with 'screw it and submit' as being the most _practical_ way to overcome that particular hurdle. Not because it's 'good practice' to not do the research, but because it's 'better practice' than trying to guess. The best way to overcome the issue is to actually work on honing 'voice' skills generally, which comes from lots of reading and writing practice.



> Regarding the current pandemic, I think you put it best when you said that most readers are probably just tired of the coronavirus, and don't want to be reminded of it anymore than they already are.
> 
> Though, when this pandemic finally ends (whenever the hell that will be! lol), we might see a renewed interest in the "era of Covid", or whatever future us will call it, since readers will no longer be living through it anymore. Who knows? :encouragement:



I think it will largely depend on what Covid entails, either in terms of events or aesthetics, and how interesting those are and -- perhaps most importantly -- how much time passes and what transpires in that time: In enough time, just about everything becomes interesting at least historically. We see quite a bit of interest in the Black Death, which I bet was pretty grim and boring for anybody who lived through it and probably _remained _grim and boring until enough years passed that Medieval stuff generally became interesting. 

It's like that with everything, isn't it? Castles were probably pretty boring to the average 14th century person, who probably thought they were ugly and dull compared to, I don't know, the Acropolis or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or Great Pyramid of Giza. Brutalist skyscrapers, multistory parking lots, and Olympic Stadiums are the castles of 2500 AD.


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