Putting a Spin on Bad Writing Advice

You’ve seen it. You’ve heard it. Ad nauseam. Seasoned writers as well as not so seasoned ones have touted it for years. Bad writing advice and takes.

The things is, it started out harmless enough. And in fact, there’s still some wisdom to be found in these old, rehashed adages. However, as writing continues to evolve, we find that some of it just doesn’t apply anymore. Writers have become bolder with their creations. With the advent of self-publishing, we’re pushing barriers and reinventing genres. All in all, we are trying everything, and the overused advice isn’t really helping anymore.

So how do we move forward as writers wanting to improve our craft? What advice to we follow when we’re looking for reinforcement and reassurance of how to move forward? How do we keep learning?

Easy. Take the old advice and put your own spin on it. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

We look at what we’ve been taught for centuries about writing, and we take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. We trailblaze and come up with our own guidelines for what worked for us.

Advice: Write what you know.
Spin: Write what excites you.

This particular piece of advice is as old as time. But “write what you know” just doesn’t apply in a world where imagination often takes the reigns and leads us down rabbit holes. Writers are curious by nature. “What if” is the ground upon which we form our stories. And we don’t always have all the answers.

This isn’t quite a problem for writers anymore because we have the internet. We are all interconnected and answers are now easier than ever to get. Research has never been more accessible. So write what excites you and fill in the gaps by doing research via all the resources that are now available to you. Write about astronauts even if you’ve never left your hometown. Write about stingrays even though the closest you’ve ever gotten to a sea creature are the goldfish in your local pet shop. The world is your oyster.

Advice: Adverbs are always bad.
Spin: Use them wisely.

Stephen King is famous for reinforcing this idea that adverbs are bad and that we should remove every single instance of it in our writing. Now, he might come for me, but I’m here to stir the pot and say that this isn’t always necessary. Adverbs are only bad when you’re relying on them too heavily. As with everything in life, there needs to be a healthy balance. Use adverbs when no other word or form of description will do.

Advice: Outline everything before you start.
Spin: Some magic happens in the unknown.

I’m a hardcore pantser. You could have an entire choir sing to me about the pitfalls of not outlining. You could buy billboards with this advice. You could try to hypnotize me, and I’m still going to pants my way through a story.

Here’s how I do it: I get an idea and it courses like fire through me. I have to write, at the very least, a little vignette about it. As I start writing bits here and there, I start discovering the story. As I start discovering the story, I start marking down bullet points of things that need to happen to tell the story I want to tell. Sometimes, as I continue to write these bullet points change — that’s okay! And that’s just what works for me!

I know writers who cannot move forward with a story until they’ve mapped out every single movement of every single scene. And that’s perfectly fine! That’s just how their brain works. Pantsing is how my brain works. Figuring out what works for you may take a few tries, but remember that there is no right or wrong way to write a story.

Advice: Follow the rules to get published.
Spin: Break the rules to find your voice.

Here’s some stuff I’ve heard over the years: You should have interchanging POVs for your MCs in romance novels. (Not true. Emily Henry famously writes romances from just one POV, and she’s easily one of the most popular romcom writers out there.) Your chapters need to be more or less the same length. (*Buzzer sound* Nope! Lots of novelists out there are finding what they need! Chapters are fluctuating from three pages to twenty.) Basically, give your story what your story needs. There’s an audience out there for everything. If every story were to follow all these “rules” we’d have a lot of boring stories all copying each other. We need to stir the pot once in a while. Try something new. Experimenting is how we find what works for us.

Advice: Good writers are always inspired.
Spin: Sometimes, it’s about persistence, not inspiration.

Sometimes our inspiration — that spark that wills us to write — gets stagnant. And that’s fair. The world — life — turns upside down a lot of the time and circumstances lead us to a lack of inspiration. Louis L’Amour famously said, “Start writing. The water doesn’t start flowing until the faucet is open.” Sadly, we can’t always count on our muse to get off her chaise lounge and do her job. Sometimes, she gets stuck eating chips and watching reruns of The Office, and the world blurs at her edges. Sometimes, we need to grab her by the hand, walk her to a field, place her in front of a sunset, and direct her on what to do.

You may get something or you may not. At the very least, you may get something that you’re later on going to change or delete. But think of it this way: at least, now you know you don’t want THAT. And that’s part of the work for us as writers. Figuring out what doesn’t work is as much as figuring out what does. But you can’t get there if you’re waiting for inspiration to fall on your lap.

So remember — the next time someone fiercely insists that their writing advice is written in stone but you know that it doesn’t work for you, smile and nod and go do your own thing anyway. Individuality is such a great part of how we express ourselves and create art. Creativity is not a one-size-fits-all. We need to try different things until we figure out what works for us. So don’t get bogged down by the “rules” of writing. They don’t exist. Get out there and create your own guide.