Thought I'd post my old writing advice guides onto this blog since I deleted my old one. I hope it's helpful!
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Listen. I respect the hell out of teachers. The vast majority of them work crazy hard and most of the time, including the times they give you well-meaning ‘writing rules,’ only want to instill good and helpful habits into you.
That doesn’t change the fact that many of these rules are stupid.
Here are my top five ‘writing rule’ pet peeves, and five rules that should be followed.
✗ Don’t write ‘said.’
Okay, I know this is common knowledge by now, but it’s so important. The concept that you can never write ‘ so-and-so said’ is hurting novice writers’ narratives. Said is invisible. Said is powerful. Said is transformable. If every quote ends in a strong synonym, it is distracting. Sometimes, in an established repartee, quotes don’t need to be tagged at all. Or an adverb following ‘said’ might be better for the narrative than any single verb.
Eg. //
“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” Claire announced.
“You love everything,” he muttered.
“Including you!” she giggled.
versus.
“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” said Claire.
“You love everything,” he said impatiently.
“Including you!”
✓ Don’t write ‘something.’
Cold hard truth, baby. ‘Something’ is a draft word. It’s what you write when you want to think of a replacement. I cringe when I see it in a sentence that would have been improved tenfold by a specific noun or descriptive phrase in its place. There are times when ‘something’ works or is the only option, but experiment by replacing that word with more description before deciding it’s necessary to keep.
Eg. // He pulled something shiny from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A metal flask. versus. A flash of light caught the metal he pulled from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A drinking flask.
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✗ Avoid adverbs.
This is true and false, but I’ll address the false part first. The concept that you can’t use adverbs at all is ridiculous. Don’t blindly (!) replace every adverb in your prose with a single verb because someone said you should. You want whatever you are writing to flow well and to deliver the best impact or imagery. Sometimes that means adverbs. Or you might want the verb to be discreet (such as when using ‘said’) but still want to invoke emotion. That also means adverbs.
Eg. // "Don't do that!" she spluttered, panicked by the urgency of the situation. versus. "Don't do that!" she said frantically, panicked by the urgency of the situation.
✓ Use strong verbs. At least consider them.
Verbs make the world go ‘round, people. Most of the time, a strong verb will make your writing flow well and deliver the best impact or imagery. Weigh a strong verb against an adverb + weaker verb and decide the one you want to keep in a scene. Don’t just stick with whichever you wrote first because you grew attached to the sentence.
Eg. // She held up her blood-slicked sword proudly, her other fist raised triumphantly. versus. She thrust her blood-slicked sword into the air, her other fist clenched high in triumph.
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✗ Don’t use a thesaurus.
I. HATE. This rule. I had an English teacher in middle school who marked any words she thought you had looked up as wrong. As a young reader with a large vocabulary, I was always needing to prove that I hadn’t just picked a random synonym from a thesaurus, that I knew and deliberately chose those words. (That sentence has a great example of a necessary adverb! Get BENT Mrs E. (She also hated adverbs.)) This is the same idiotic concept as telling artists not to use reference images. Use a thesaurus if a certain word is failing you or you hate every word you’ve come up with yourself. There’s nothing bad or shameful about it.
Eg. // There are no examples for this. I’m not sure how I would even do that. Insert stock photo of someone perusing a thesaurus here?
✓ Don’t use words you aren’t comfortable with.
Now, when you search the great wide web for a synonym to a word and then choose whichever one sounds nice because hey, the internet said it was interchangeable, so it must be! … Yeah. Don’t do that.
I use a thesaurus to find words that I can’t think of in the moment but they are always ones I still know. Every word has a subtle (or not so subtle) connotation that you need familiarity with before deciding it is the perfect replacement. Know your words before you start playing Mix n Match.
Eg. // Amusement in the profession puts transcendence in the performance. (Utter nonsense, written by me and thesaurus.com) versus. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. (Inspiring quote, written by Aristotle)
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✗ Don’t end sentences with a preposition.
Whoever made up this rule is an elitist hack. (I just googled it, and supposedly it began with a bunch of 17th century scholars who thought English should have Latin’s grammar, so. Yeah. Elitist hacks.) Ending sentences in prepositions sounds wayyyyy more natural than the alternative. If you don’t want to sound stilted, beat this rule into the dirt.
Eg. // They didn’t know of what she was capable. versus. They didn’t know what she was capable of.
✓ Be conscientious of your sentence construction.
A lot of grammar rules are bogus. Not ending a sentence with a preposition, not starting a sentence with a conjunction, not laying face down on the floor and screeching… Oh, right, that latter one isn’t a rule, it’s just what you want to do when you have to think about grammar.
But, regardless of bogus grammar rules, you need to put thought into your sentence construction. Editing (not writing) is the best time to do this. That’s when you can make sure the words flow together naturally as an individual sentence, as part of a paragraph, and within the chapter as a whole.
Another common construction faux pas that I see is disregarding the sequence of events because you believe it will have greater impact. In reality, if you avoid putting your narration out of order, it usually results in stronger sentences.
Eg. // "Tell me it's not true!" He stood in the doorway after bursting into Kyle's room, panting from his sprint up the stairs. versus. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time and burst into Kyle's room without knocking. "Tell me it's not true!" he demanded breathlessly.
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✗ If you break writing rules you’re a bad writer.
If anyone tries to convince you of this, kick them in the neck. (You heard it here folks, kick your DANG TEACHERS IN THE NECK.) (Not really, please don’t.) (If you do, though, don’t say that I encouraged it.) (I’m not encouraging it, I just want to make that clear. Please be nice to your teachers, they have hard jobs.)
Rules were made to be broken. You just need to know the rules in the first place in order to decide to break them, so it’s never a bad thing to educate yourself on general writing advice. Still, there is a fine line between creative liberty and bad writing, and sometimes a famous book or author turns the latter into the former. Know your stuff, but don’t be afraid to throw your stuff into the fire and watch it burn. (Figuratively. Don’t literally throw your possessions into fire, that’s irresponsible on so many levels.) (A lot of parentheses in this rule rant.) (Now that’s just bad writing.)
✓ Take writing rules and advice with a grain of salt, but don’t ignore them.
As a novice writer, or even an experienced one, it is hard to differentiate between which rules work best in your own prose. You may only realize it in hindsight. That doesn’t mean you should ignore every piece of writing advice or dismiss criticism of your work. Think critically about your own style, read books you enjoy and think about their styles, and deliberate– don’t dismiss. Maybe your writing style requires no dangling prepositions or never using an adverb. That’s your decision to make. Just… don’t make it because you’re too stubborn to see how you can improve.
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That’s all I’ve got! Do you have any pet peeves about common writing advice? Feel free to reblog and add your own!
Don’t forget to write a sentence of your story today! Thanks for reading~
For artists who have problems with perspective (furniture etc.) in indoor scenes like me - there’s an online programm called roomsketcher where you can design a house/roon and snap pictures of it using different perspectives.
It’s got an almost endless range of furniture, doors, windows, stairs etc and is easy to use. In addition to that, you don’t have to install anything and if you create an account (which is free) you can save and return to your houses.
I've been moving to fandoms really frequently and I have followers of each fandom I have been in, for example, I have followers that just followed me for my FNAF art, and they are just dealing with other kind of content, others for my mcu art, animal crossing, etc.
And well, I have been working in other blogs for each fandom I was, and probably I'll draw more in the future, here they are!
FNAF blog → @bawn-bawn
Animal Crossing blog→ @gay-canids
MCU blog → @stickyparker
IT (Movie) blog→ @eddie-sp-p-p-paguetti
I'll update this post when I come into more fandoms or if I add more.
I'll use my main account to reblog my most "popular" or more liked posts in each of the blogs in the moment.
And I'll use @parsheli-reblogs-stuff to just reblog stuff, that means that you can stop following that blog... Or maybe just to answer questions or other stuff, I'm still thinking about it.
