collected /tg/ writing tips

 

ON WRITING IN GENERAL:

 

Ever wonder why a lot of writers on 4chan are hard on themselves/beta as fuck? It's because they can't reconcile their finished product with their vision. Drafting is the process of coming to terms with the fact that nothing you write will sound as good on paper as it does in your head.

 

The drafting process is the process of writing and rewriting until you have a "final" draft acceptable to you and your editors. There are a lot of ways to do it, but I like the extreme ones.

 

1. Do a first draft.

2. Leave it for 24 hours.

3. Come back and read it through out loud.

This step can be really difficult, and I can barely manage it myself, but it very effectively makes you see what you did wrong.

4. Let sit for another 24 hours.

5. Rewrite from scratch, without referring to previous draft.

6. Let sit, then compare the drafts. What did you like about each?

7. Write a third draft, but this time you can use the previous two. This is the first "public" draft, so go ahead and solicit opinions and get proofreading. Further drafts should be written taking feedback into account, but only at your discretion. You don't have to bend over for your editors, just make sure that you listen to the reasons for their changes.

 

The 24 hour thing is mostly arbitrary, it can be more or less depending on you and your schedule. What's important is that you put your work out of your head and do something else to clear it. Play a game, go to a movie, get dinner with friends, exercise, go to work, whatever.

 

The reason you write it twice is to see if it comes out differently. You'll be surprised at how different the scene can come out even when you follow the exact same chain of events while focusing on the same details.

 

There's no best way to do pre-writing, it varies from person to person, and from story to story. Try a couple different methods to see what works for you.

 

--Write a very detailed and specific outline. Add significant lines and quotes, then expand the outline into the story. (Keep a copy of the unaltered outline for comparison)

--Write up a beginning and an ending. You finding out how the latter happened results in the rest of the narrative.

--Come up with characters and a setting. Decide where each character starts, then drop them into the setting. Start writing, see what happens.

--Fuck preparation, stream of consciousness.

 

There are lots of other methods. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to follow one of these.

 

 

 

ON WRITING DIALOGUE:

 

-One of the greatest challenges of writing dialogue is also the greatest advantage: it’s memorable. If you use a line that hasn’t been used before, for better or for worse, people will remember it, and no matter how eloquently you describe the Sword of Ultimate Destruction, if the sidekick refers to it as the “doomy thing that’s sharp”, that’s what people will recall.

-Here’s an important byte about writing dialogue: no sentence or paragraph or interaction matters as much as the first one. The first one in the book, the first one a particular character says, the first one in a new scene. You’ve heard that you don’t get a second first impression; make a good first impression with your dialogue. If you can only think of one good line for a conversation, put it as close to the beginning as reasonably possible. Fill in the rest of the conversation as normal. A few really outstanding lines, placed strategically, come across better than any amount of utilitarian, good-not-great conversation.

-Your best source of dialogue is yourself. Think about the way you talk and apply that to your characters. You’re also your best source of witty one-liners. Douglas Adams once said “I am not a wit, I am a writer. A wit says something funny immediately. A writer says something very funny two minutes later. Or in my case, two weeks later.” Have you ever had it happen where you think of the perfect quip or comeback to an argument you had three days earlier? Remember those. Write them down. You may be slow on the trigger, but your characters can still benefit. If an argument comes up, see if you can’t fit it in. Get a string of them and presto!, you’ve got banter.

 

-Cliches are a part of writing you’ll never be able to expunge. But if you see a line that anyone could see coming, just cross it out and keep moving.

 

“We can’t just nuke these aliens. We need time to study them first.”

 

“We don’t have that kind of time. We mobilize in two hours.”

 

Becomes:

 

“We can’t just nuke these aliens. We need time to study them first.”

 

“...we mobilize in two hours.”

The implication is that your character realizes it doesn’t need to be said, because it doesn’t. If each awkward, tropey line of dialogue is a penny on the track threatening to derail the audience’s suspension of disbelief, leave one penny fewer.

 

-Real conversation is a stubborn old jalopy. It’ll sputter, it won’t run right, and it’ll have its own little quirks. The absence of “ums”, “likes”, and self-interruption is more a statement of character than their presence--that is, the only people in your book who should never forget what they’re saying halfway through and fake their way through the rest of the sentence are business sharks and seedy politicians. Don’t go overboard, though. Every line spoken should still move the conversation forward, so don’t have people say “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?” or repeat yourself (unless it’s a comedic scene and you’ve got a witty response).

-The topics that make characters choke up more or less are a way to reveal character detail subtly. Grandpa’s sentences start trailing off when he rants about politics, but when he talks about baseball, it’s like he’s got his own staff of professional speechwriters. Like making a good impression, adding a few judiciously-placed stumbles while leaving the rest of your dialogue untouched will remind your readers that the speaker is human; doing it too much will make them seem dense.

-At least for me, the best thing about writing dialogue is that it’s got inertia. When I get into the groove, I find myself writing three or four pages of the stuff without realizing it. When this happens, you have to make the heartrending decision of what you will and won’t cut out--in the best-case scenarios, moving it somewhere else. Unless you’re writing a dedicated character piece where banter is the central focus or you’ve reached a climactic verbal confrontation, try to limit individual conversations to 200-600 words--that’s about 1-3 minutes of reading for the average person--between action. If you’re going well over 1,000, have someone else join the conversation, or a man bursts into the room with a gun. This is a rule of thumb, but not hard and fast by any means.

Meanwhile, avoid “yeah,” “uh-huh,” “gotcha,” and “go on”. If a character doesn’t have anything to say, then they shouldn’t say anything. Those phrases can help a conversation seem more realistic, but don’t use more than one, don’t use it more than once, and don’t put them where they interrupt anything dramatic. (This rule is looser in film, where it’s easier for dialogue to overlap without being distracting).

“Johnson!”

“Yeah?”*

“Get me the official dossier on those aliens, plus anything unofficial you can pull from the general’s private files. Browning, I need you in the comm tower.”

“Gotcha, chief.”*

“Reynolds, I’m going to need you to get the biggest gun you have and point it at that door, there,” he said, pointing to the airlock. “Anything comes through, you pull that trigger and don’t let go until it stops coming through.”

“Sure thing.”*

“And for God’s sake, could someone get us some coffee? We’re on what, a sextuple shift? Lanzer, make a latte run.”

“Oh! There’s this gourmet coffee place I’ve been wanting to try. I figure, if we’re going to die anyway--”

“Do I look like I’m made of money, Lanzer? You will bring us the same swill we always have and you will drink your fancy French nonsense on your own time, do you hear me!?”

*Now cross those out and see how much better it flows.

-If only two people are talking, don’t bother with dialogue tags. Once you’ve put “John said” and “Lisa replied”, readers understand that they’re alternating talking. If you interrupt the speech with some action--”He spat out his drink at the revelation”--then follow up only with whoever speaks next. When it comes to dialogue tags, boring is better. The only time you should use something besides “said”, “asked”, “shouted”, “replied”, or, perhaps, “continued” is when what’s being said has many possible, equally-valid meanings that you need to narrow down, and do so as vaguely as you can. Your hero has just been curbstomped; “I’m not through,” he squeaked has a very different connotation than “I’m not through,” he announced. When his teammate stabs the villain in the back, it tells you whether or not the hero saw him coming.

-Something you may have been taught is that you shouldn’t repeat the same word too many times. You should look for synonyms or, if you’re describing something, move on to a new detail (if you’ve described what it looks like, now describe how it smells, etc.). This is good advice that gets thrown out the window by dialogue. People repeat what they hear and what other people say, since it makes things clearer and in real life we can’t flip back a page to see what everyone’s talking about. The big red door might be the imposing scarlet entrance to the narrator, but to Jim Henderson the small-town lawyer it will always be the big red door. I realize I’m not the first person to say this, but if you have to refer to a thesaurus for a word, it’s the wrong word.

-Characters can be sarcastic without being sarcastic characters. Just a single snide line will do. This is good when you’re afraid a scene is too over-the-top. If you hear a choir chanting ominous Latin when Frank tells Judy he thinks they should see other people, you can quickly ground it with a simple, “Sure, Frank. We can be friends. We’ll skip-to-my-loo down to Candyland and live among the gumdrops.” If your character is a noble paladin striding forth to slay the great demons of the land, shouting things like “Hark!” and “Behold!”, you can still make even him believable through a frustrating run-in with a dense store clerk.

 

 

ON GIVING CRITIQUE:

 

>Basically say what you liked and didn't like - and this is the important bit - why.

 

 

>if you have trouble, break up the posts you're reading. Examine things piecemeal.

>whip through it the first time, then jot down notes. Then reread, much slower, and don't skip anything. Compare your notes to what you learned on the second run-through and see what went unaddressed with a more in-depth examination.

>try to detect references. If they're too intrusive, point them out. Some people are overeager.

 

 

>Can you briefly explain the basics?

Not that guy, but the best way for writers and editors both to notice mistakes is to read the work out loud. If something sounds wrong when you hear it, chances are good it is wrong.

 

You'll want to take notes as you're reading. Copy whatever it is you're working on into a text document, use the highlight function as you go through.it. For bonus points, print it out and physically highlight it.

 

It's as important to point out what the writer did right as what they did wrong. If you really liked a scene or a turn of phrase, say so. Constructive criticism should build up as much as it tears down.

 

I hate to say this, but writers and editors should know writing terminology. Knowing the difference between a simile and a metaphor is just the start, you should be able to tell the difference between flat and round characters, foils, rising action, climax and falling action, and be able to name specific grammatical errors. The jargon can be frustrating, but if editors and writers both are familiar with it, the editing process gets much easier.

 

Last but not least, after you've edited something, leave it alone for 24 hours then come back to it. Just like the drafting process in writing, multiple editing drafts are useful. During the off-time your subconscious might find things you missed or solve problems you couldn't at first glance.