OUTSIDE OF
EXCESS NARCISSISM, BAD ADVICE IS A WRITER'S WORST ENEMY.
If you ever
run or attend writer events, you will never cease to hear utterances of bad
writing advice, the popular kind that circulates like a ruinous viral meme
through the nervous systems of America's aborning fiction and novel writers. And
each time you are exposed, you either chuckle or swear, depending on your mood
and the circumstance. You might make a daring attempt to kill the meme in its
tracks before it can infect someone else, or you might just stare at the writer
with a dumbfounded look on your face and ask him, or her, "Where the hell did
you hear that?"
Yes, the first question often asked: WHERE THE HELL
DID YOU HEAR THAT?
Inevitably, many will point to their writer's group. Ahhhh, of course, you think. Why
just recently in an Algonkian event, one of my faculty (a former senior editor at
Random House) and I were faced with an individual who adamantly asserted to us
both (and at the same time) that using only one point of view to write a novel
was mandatory.
No
exceptions!
I'm not kidding or exaggerating. I asked, "Where
the hell did you hear that?"
She'd learned it from her writer's group. It must therefore be true. No doubt because
they had told her this for seven years, and her workshop leader affirmed
it, and as further proof the preposterous assertion was correct, a member of
her group held an MA from Johns Hopkins! So in the face of this onslaught we
displayed the typical dumbfounded reaction, and to our further astonishment, the
writer just dug in and continued to resist our many proofs to the absolute
contrary. As a matter of fact, one of the novels the writer was supposed to have
read before the retreat was HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG. Of course, she didn't read
it, but she did at least admit it contained more than one point of view. Uh oh!
Moments later though, to bolster the writer group firewall of defensive
ignorance, she said, "Well even F. Scott Fitzgerald screwed up once in Gatsby
and shifted to a different point of view... So it just goes to show, anyone can
screw up like that and use more than one point of view."
Stunned yet again following this mind-blowing
comment, the two of us finally recovered to note several more novels that
contained multiple POV, from WUTHERING HEIGHTS to THE POISONWOOD BIBLE to THE
MARTIAN CHRONICLES to various thrillers and even to Rowling's later Harry Potter
books. We figured that somewhere between Emily and J.K. this extremely stubborn
person might actually stop and realize that perhaps her writer group had been steering her wrong. Sadly though, I
don't believe she ever learned. Perhaps the bond with the group was too strong
and the consensus delusion regarding single POV helped maintain their social
cohesion. Perhaps her own narcissism disallowed her? Both? Who knows? I just
know that the writer never once admitted she was wrong. No sign of epiphany was
ever forthcoming. Instead, she lapsed into borderline hysteria, though recovered
the final two days and went to work on another novel. I sent her at least 20
examples of multiple POV following the retreat and received only a very terse
note in return. All in all, it was the most singular and remarkable act of
writer ignorance I've ever witnessed, but one cannot blame the writer out of
hand. Bad advice was one of her worst enemies, if not her worst. If you
go to a writer's group respecting the leader and your peers and they tell you
XYZ nonsense year after year, how can you not believe it? Nevertheless, we
workshop leaders and teachers tire of being the target of theatrical
repercussions at such time the narcissist writer discovers the world is not flat
and the sun doesn't revolve around them.
On
the plus side, the exasperating event above prompted me to finally work towards
creating a master list of bad writer advice--something I've wanted to do for
years. I searched on Google not only to help with my own recollections but to
investigate anything I might have missed, and the first article I came across
was in Lit Reactor: "The Ten Worst Pieces of Writing Advice You Will Ever
Hear."
Lit Reactor seems to be a decent place for newbie
writers seeking community and inspiration, but I have to take a few exceptions
with the article above. I firmly agree with a lot of it, for example, WRITE WHAT
YOU KNOW is really bad advice. How could speculative or historical fiction
writers ever pen a page if this were true? But the author goes on to choose
other literary adages we've all grown old with and claims that they too are
actually very bad advice. One of them is SHOW DON'T TELL. So that's one of
the worst pieces of writer advice? Huh? Now, let's pull in the reins for a
second. As a writer I've never seen SHOW DON'T TELL as a hard and fast rule that
covers all conditions and circumstances. Obviously, one may need to "tell" at
such time a certain type of exposition needs to be artfully delivered and
dialogue isn't sufficient. Like most writers I've known, I see SHOW DON'T TELL
as a helpful guideline, especially for newbies who tend to lump pages of
exposition in their opening chapter, or otherwise drone on and on about an
important event in the story when they should be depicting in a live-action
scene.
As
in other instances in the Lit Reactor article above, the author isn't
necessarily wrong when she counterpoints the age-old literary adage, as I did
above, but the difference between us is that she posits SHOW DON'T TELL as an
unbreakable rule, and when exceptions are offered up they stand as proof that
the adage is actually bad advice. Logic dictates, however, that one can find
several conditions to counterpoint the negative examples and then we're even.
My point is that the unfortunate act of singling out the SHOW DON'T TELL
guideline as bad advice is, in itself, bad advice--my apologies to the
author of the article, and she is welcome to debate this here, but seriously,
how the heck would you apply the anti-SDT logic to screenplay writers or
playwrights when so much more is SHOW DON'T TELL?
Let's recap. We now
have three slings of really bad writing advice to list. We'll build the list as
we go:
Only one point of view per novel
Write what you know
"Show don't tell" is bad advice
Next. At every Algonkian event, I
hear a writer state this to me sooner or later: "Writer's shouldn't use
flashbacks in their novels." Yes. Another, Where the hell did you hear
that? Of course flashbacks are acceptable, if used artfully. They are just
one technique in the fiction writing toolkit, and the types of flashbacks vary
from a brief memory to a full chapter, or more. Novels that use a framing device
of looking back into the past after having first established a contemporary
setting (e.g., A Separate Peace or I Claudius) are themselves one
immense act of flashback. But like the first example in the beginning of this
post, the writer's group can sometimes be at fault for spreading this
unproductive advice, but in all fairness, is the writer group the true source?
When questioned about origin, the writer spreading the viral meme regarding
flashbacks more often than not says, "I heard it at a writer conference." And
then I ask, from whom? And they answer, "Uhh, someone, an agent, um... on a
panel."
Trauma
time! The soul-searing memories return to haunt me. Years ago, I sat on a panel
with five other agents at the San Francisco Writer's Conference listening to a
new and incredibly ignorant agent drone on and on about the craft of writing
(though she wasn't a writer and had never been an editor--in fact, like so many
young agents, her only past experience involved reading query letters and wading
the slush-pile), and every other utterance from this person's mouth about
fiction writing was just plain wrong. I sat biting my tongue as long as I
could, and then attempted to qualify and gently negate her assertions, and
succeeded to some degree, but despite this calamity, I learned something. Here
before me sat over 200 people, writers in their early stages, looking for good
advice. And were they getting it? No, a hundred times NO. Past memories began to
gel and I realized that the single biggest source of bad advice for writers
might well be the typical American writer conference--and of course, these
writers return to their hometown groups to repeat what they've heard, e.g.,
no flashbacks, show don't tell sucks, don't worry about your
title...
Don't worry about your title? Back
to a writer conference. I attended a panel at another large writer conference on
the west coast in 2014. It was a panel of writers who had recently been
published. There were about 75 people in the room. A poor neophyte stood and
asked the assembled writers if he had to worry about his title before he was
published, and the consensus answer from the panel? No. You
don't... I sat there dumbfounded. So basically, these people told this
guy that pitching his novel or nonfiction with a crappy, foolish, or hackneyed
title was perfectly fine. Not to worry! Call it whatever you want. Must I spend
any more space telling you why this was not only not perfectly fine, but
perfectly stupid and self-defeating? A bad title is like a warning siren going
out ahead of your pitch, whether it be an oral pitch or query letter. It makes a
horrible whining sound of warning, and it seems to be saying to those who read
or listen: This is a terrible writer, stop listening, stop reading, run
screaming!
Now, time to add three more to the list:
Avoid flashbacks in your fiction
Don't worry about your title
Any writer conference is helpful
Pitching the
MFA
Though I don't hear it as much as I used to, I
nevertheless hear it from young writers who have been conditioned to falsely
believe that they will never write well or be taken seriously as writers unless
and until they possess an MFA. My response to this: nothing could be a bigger
lie. I'm sorry, I can't mince words or dance around the reality for the sake
of anyone. This isn't to say that the right student can't benefit from the right
MFA program (e.g., at Florida State)--they can, of course. I'm addressing the
members of the Literary Academic Complex (LAC), also known as the Literary
Industrial Complex (LIC), who relentlessly promote the marketing myth that the
odds are you'll never amount to much as a writer without an MFA. Yes, no
fooling. Just click to the article at WE regarding the MFA, and when you arrive, click on
the link to an MFA writer poll and you will see Gary Shteyngart quacking forth
on this very subject ("You have to get an MFA"). No conflict of interest here?
Gary has an MFA, and how could this smiling goofy guy be steering us wrong?
Thanks, Gary, for doing your part to convince America's youth to incur millions
in debt to obtain MFA degrees of highly dubious worth. However, if we could
overhear Gary talking in whispers at one of his terribly boring academic
cocktail parties, you would get the real skinny, and it would sound something
like this:
"Look,
we all know there are only a handful of MFA programs in the country that are
worth a shit, but you know, when you're interviewed you have to dumb it down so
you won't piss anyone off."
One of the fatal flaws of MFA programs consists of
using a writer group of fellow students (who know as little or less than you) to
critique your work for the purpose of improving it, which brings me around to
another bit of really bad advice: JOIN A WRITER GROUP. I wrote an article here at WE that pretty much sums up why being in a
writer group for critique and guidance can be a train wreck in any number of
ways. Again, like the MFA, you're supposing that people who know as little or
less than you (otherwise why would they be there?) are capable of providing
constructive advice, but since you aren't knowledgeable enough to know one way
or another whether or not the advice is good, you should never take it without
follow-up investigation--and if you're going to be constantly reality-checking
what you hear, why stay in the group at all?... Yes, it's a social fest, it can
be fun, or it can be oppressive and even ugly.
Did you know, THE ELEMENTS
OF WRITING GOOD FICTION CANNOT BE TAUGHT? I didn't know it either until Isabella
Allende told me so. She believes, as I do, that great authors are self-made, not
baked from a workshop recipe, but she goes on further to say that students of
novel writing are only capable of learning a limited subset of craft. Why? I'm
not sure. She's not as extreme as the Iowa mantra that states "Writing Cannot be Taught, only talent developed," but she's
closing in on it. From the video below (final 30%):
"I have twenty students
working on a novel, but only one might create a good novel... I can teach
them a few things about the writing, but I cannot teach suspense, tension,
tone... how to play with the imagination of the reader, what is the highlight of
the story..."
Hmmm, why not? We teach it effectively in
Algonkian workshops and in online programs--quite effectively I might add.
Tension and suspense derive from a number of sources, and all these are
knowable, and examples can be displayed. We can't fold on our teaching methods
because Isabella Allende believes otherwise. To each his own. Btw, I love her
writing.
Finally, we
come around to our number ten on the list: Don't plan or outline your novel,
let the character write the novel, or even more simply, "Just start
writing." How many times have I heard that? And guess where? At a writer
conference, of course. A certain type of author is asked whether or not they
plot or outline ahead of time. They smile and say something like, "I've been
asked this question before, and I have to say no, I don't outline. It just all
comes to me, the character inhabits me..." or some such drivel.
But let's
be logical.
If you understand the primary foundations for writing a novel
you know your plot line must develop certain points as it moves forward, and you
know also that you must write separate scenes in the novel to perform certain
tasks relevant to the plot line, as well as to the character arcs, etc. It's a
complex undertaking, and one that demands a certain amount of planning. If you
are some kind of genius and can keep it all in your head, more power to you, but
if you are like me, you need to organize and place ideas on paper (or on the
computer). Also, logic dictates that if your novel plot lines are a series of
circumstances, reversals, and events that tie together, it only makes sense that
you better know how point A gets to point M before you will know how point M
gets to point Z.
Consider, do screenplay writers or playwrights just
start writing without any planning? Of course not. So why should the novel be
different? And we're not talking about Beckett or Joycean flights of fancy,
we're talking about the vast bulk of commercial novels, whether they be upmarket
or genre.
Btw, here we have a bunch of freelance editors confirming this awful
advice. Interesting, yes, but if you look closely you'll see they are trying
to sell you their editorial services. Perhaps the less you plan your novel, the
more work they'll have to do?
Now for the summary.
The
Writer's Edge top ten worst pieces of writing advice:
Only one point of
view per novel
Write what you
know
"Show don't tell" is
bad advice (OMG!)
Avoid flashbacks in
your fiction
Don't worry about
your title (someone else will)
Any writer conference
is helpful (beware--all events are not created equal)
You need to get an
MFA (or you wont' be taken seriously)
Join a writer group
(to improve your writing and get good feedback)
The art of fiction
can't be taught (and "writing can't be taught")
Don't outline or plan
your novel (let it happen)
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