Writing pointers Ive internalised up to now more or less for my own reference no one asked but i needed the refresher
- classic show not tell kinda subscribed to the Palahniuk school i dont have the article on hand but it’s good even though i forget to do it sometimes. My philosophy is show for the 80% of time where showing lets you puppet around sexier pictures, tell for maybe 20% of the time when you have a specific voice to the telling and if the pictures the showing makes are pointless/redundant/slow-downs. okay hey wait I found the article it’s called “Nuts and bolts”
- Ocean Vuong on metaphors where the metaphor HAS to serve a purpose or connect to something, or at least have an “underneath” underside to it that can’t be accessed through any other means, note: sometimes the metaphor comes to you but usually if you feel real strong about it and can’t seem to replace it with anything else then it’s probably got a hidden layer already that will show itself to you with time even if it doesn’t really make sense in the moment. This pointer is the main source of my anguish when i read my old stuff because Im always like fucccckkkkk this metaphor is so gauche, what are you doing
- again i dont fkin remember where this is from but the thing about external/internal prose - God i swear this is from someone’s medium account but i don’t know. Basically interior novels where page space is mainly your character’s thoughts VS physical space novels, with your characters moving around, acting out and interacting with an environment with their thoughts maybe veiled from reader. Kind of ties into Nuts and Bolts with the showing, but on a diff level I like to stay in the external realm in a way where you could block the whole novel as a play with clearer, charming actions that can translate to visually compelling stage directions. Of course it depends on how interior/exterior your narrator/character is but in principle i find it easy to dislike overly interior narrators (why should your reader care what your narrator thinks??)
- secondary to prev point, if the movement/interactions you block aren’t inherently stylish then they should serve a purpose, moving your characters from point A to point B necessitates a relevant activity at point B, a push factor away from point A, or valuable information communicated from what happens in the journey…wait i say stylish a lot i dunno if ykwim best example i can think of is from Miss Julie where (even though it’s secondary to the dialogue at hand) while Julie tries to bargain with Christine you have Jean VISIBLE TO THE AUDIENCE in the wings of the stage sharpening his razor two hands nodding to himself as she repeats exactly the words he used to bargain with her <- THAT is style
- kinda boils down to the common thing about ensuring motivations for all of your characters, like all of them should have wants that drive them to be in places (if you flesh your guys out wholly enough this should come naturally)
- on character voices best if you can reach a point where you can basically hear them chatting at you in your head: best examples I think are like, Mercymorn from the locked tomb (crazy brilliant and bonkers voicing from muir imo), Tennessee williams plays (but they’re plays so obviously the voices are meant to be heard - i just personally haven’t seen any of them performed so i hear them 100% based on williams’ skill in writing dialogue)… no real tips on getting to this point but if you’re going for a specific brogue obviously listening to it helps. Though the point of writing fiction is ofc that it’s fiction and you can make your characters talk funnier and smarter than anyone in real life might so like: liberties, my philosophy is style over realism in the tradition of stage monologues and the like, where your characters chat in the manner you wish people around you talked all the time (STRIKE THROUGH THE MASK!!!!!)
- word count for sake of word count is your enemy if you ever catch yourself writing a scene that bores you, if it bores your reader then no ones gonna be happy. Cut it and frame it in a way that you like enough to keep in at all costs
- lowkey been trying to cut down my semicolon usage because I grudgingly see the value of Cormac Mccarthy stylistic choices but laaaaiiiikeee its hard and sometimes you need it to install a kind of half-breath in your prose - i think the middle ground I want to reach is the use of it as a luxury and not like pepper (literally searched the last chapter for my semicolon usage and its 28 like 3 per thousand words :( help)
- literally never make me read the word cishet in a serious work of writing ever. “Dysphoria” no “trans” its 50/50 “genderfuck” get out of town no “intersectional feminist” no. Okay lol this point is just me being not liking any explicit integration of the present cultural-political terminology into writing and also me being a bit bitchy about this one lgbt cult novel named after a US state if you can guess which. My view is it will always be gauche and i dont like it and it tends to prompt me to say out loud to myself My God I hate gay people
More later if i think of it but i swear ive yet to meet the writing pointer from a true sage that is gonna transform my thinking and make what im capable of transcendental
