“Create real characters. Make your characters human—give them nervous tics, phobias, a funny way of messing up clichés. Some of the most memorable stories have three-dimensional characters that readers can feel strongly about in some way. For example: A heroine who has to overcome her deep-seated fears before she can get what she wants is much more appealing than one who just breezes through without struggle. The former’s conflict is relatable (who isn’t held back by their fears?), therefore her victory will be that much more satisfying.”
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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Know Your Genre
Know your genre. This goes hand in hand with knowing your audience. There are key elements that fans of certain genres will expect to find when they start reading your work. More often than not, genres can be divided further into subgenres that accommodate very specific motivations and plotlines. Keep it consistent. It is possible to write a successful cross-genre story, but you don’t want to mix it up too much. A supernatural romantic thriller, for example, could end up alienating fans of all three genres.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Importance of Having a Writing Habit
“Exercising is a good analogy for writing. If you’re not used to exercising you want to avoid it forever. If you’re used to it, it feels uncomfortable and strange not to. No matter where you are in your writing career, the same is true for writing. Even fifteen minutes a day will keep you in the habit.” ~ Jennifer Egan
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ What Writer’s Should be Reading
“Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do. If what you really love to read is y, it might be hard for you to write x.”
~ Jennifer Egan
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Losing One’s Self in Writing
“When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’m living in two different dimensions: this life I’m living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no one else knows about.”
~ Jennifer Egan
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Rule for Writing
“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” ~ Neil Gaiman
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Letting Go
“If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.” ~ John Steinbeck
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ When Should You Begin to Rewrite?
“Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.”
~ John Steinbeck
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Simple Rules for Writing
8 Simple Rules for Writing
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the worlds, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Don’t Listen to Naysayers
“”Don’t give up, and don’t lose your stubborn belief that you have a story worth telling. I’ve had so many people tell me over so many years that I didn’t have the qualities needed to be a writer. All of my writer friends and I have one thing in common: We didn’t listen to the naysayers. We kept writing. And eventually we have all been published.” ~ David S. Laskar
