Unusual Writing Tips

The first rule of writing tips, is there ARE NO RULES

There is nothing more annoying for a writer than reading a list of rules that another writer has come up with and feeling if you don’t comply with them, that somehow you are failure. It is even more annoying when you try them and they just don’t work for you. What follows are just tips. You have my permission to dismiss every single one as nonsense but I hope you’ll find at least one thing helpful here.

Show don’t tell is all very well but…

Show don’t tell is supposed to be the absolute rule of writing. Thou must not ever, under any circumstances tell the reader something that can be implied through descriptions of behaviour, character interactions or conversation. It is a rule that I generally agree with. It is far more interesting for the reader to work out what is going on through implication than to be told directly ‘Jake hated Billy because he was cruel’ which leaves nothing to the imagination. 

But…You can’t write a whole story or novel this way. You’d end up with scene after scene of people walking in and out of rooms sighing, tutting, gasping, gazing out of windows, and nothing much happening. Understanding character is vital in story but so too is action and plot. Show don’t tell scenes need to be balanced with sections that move things forward. 

Additionally, ‘show don’t tell’ doesn’t work for every format. If the story is told in letters, as one part of Echo Hall is, or uses social media for commentary, as I do in The Wave, the writing has to be more direct, otherwise you betray the form.

Write what you understand not what you know

Write what you know is another well-known writing rule and it is true that experience can enhance a writer’s work. For example, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens’ painful childhoods are put to good use in several of their books. However, Dickens created A Tale of Two Cities, despite not having lived through the French Revolution, and while the early parts of Jane Eyre are drawn from real life, Jane’s adulthood is purely drawn from Bronte’s imagination.  And that’s the problem with ‘write what you know’, it’s too limiting. If writers stuck to it, fantasy and science fiction wouldn’t exist and most crime writers would be out of a job.

Instead of write what you know, I’d suggest write what you understand about people, the world we live in, your core beliefs.  If that happens to coincide with a context familiar to you as a writer, all well and good, but if not, just make sure you do your research and ensure the setting is believable to your audience.

Treat research like an iceberg

Even if we are writing from experience, at some point our knowledge of a subject will run out and we will need to undertake more detailed research. This gives authenticity to our work, but the trouble with research is is we often do more then we need. If we dump all that information in the middle of the text, we will kill the story and bore the reader rigid. A complete failure for any author.

As a result, it’s better to use your research sparingly.  The reader needs only to see the tip of the iceberg – the absolutely vital detail that provides an authentic narrative voice – in order to feel confident that you know what you are talking about. Anything else is just vanity and will lead to atrocious writing.

Walk the land you are writing

Setting is as important as research in making a fictional world feel real. While I’ve tended to create imaginary landscapes in my novels, they are based on actual places. I drew my descriptions for the surroundings of Echo Hall from walking in Shropshire, Flintshire, Pembrokeshire and the Black Mountains, and once, on a writing retreat, grabbed some fir tree leaves so I could more accurately describe the smell. While there is no Dowetha Cove in Cornwall where The Wave is set,  the roads, towns and villages, that surround it, do exist, and on holiday a few years ago, I made sure I drove around and took photos so I could create a place that felt believable.

Edit backwards

Editing is the hardest bit of writing. Once the words are out on the page they have to be revisited again and again to get them right. The shape of the novel has to be examined, character arcs pulled apart, the language has to be reviewed and of the text checked repeatedly for typos and factual inaccuracies. Our work is always improved by fine editing, but I’ve discovered that by the end of each edit, my attention is beginning to flag, and I take less care then I do at the beginning. So now I have a policy of doing at least one edit backwards, section by section. This deals with editing fatigue and also helps me see the story from a different angle which can improve it.

These are some things that have worked for me. I hope they work for you, but if they don’t, as I said at the beginning don’t worry. Because the first rule of writing remains, they ARE no rules.

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Virginia Moffatt

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips