250 Things You Should Know About Writing

Dialogue is action. It`s not separate from it. It is it. Action is doing something. Dialogue is talking, and talking is doing something. Even better when dialogue manifests while characters do shit: drive a car, execute some baddies, make an omelet, build a sinister dancing robot whose mad mechanical choreomania will reduce the world to cinders. Characters don`t just stand in one place in space and talk. They`re not puppets in community theater. Find language with movement and motion.

The other day on Twitter, the author J. Robert King said something that rang true: "No balanced person writes a novel." You sit down at the desk, shackle your mind to the project, wade into an imaginary swamp with made-up people. For days. Weeks. Sometimes even years. That`s fucking batty.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Write till it`s good, not till it`s perfect. Because you don`t know shit about perfect. Aim squarely for a B+, and hten it`s time to let others have a shot in getting the novel to that A/A+ range.

Let`s get this out of the way right now: if you start a fucking novel, then plan to fucking finish that fucking novel. Your hard drive is not a novel burial ground.

Be positive. Stay sane. The only way through is with wide-open eyes and a rigor mortis grin.

No Such Thing As Bad Writing Advice
There`s only: advice that works for you, and advice that doesn`t. It`s like going to Home Depot and trying to point out the "bad tools." Rather, some tools work for the job. Most don`t. Be confident enough to know when a tool feels right in your hand, and when it might instead put out your eye.

Stop stressing out. You get the one thing few others get: a constant array of do-overs. Writing is rewriting. You know the saying, "Drink till she`s pretty / till he`s handsome?" This is like that. Edit till she`s pretty. Rewrite until it doesn`t suck. You have an endless supply of blowtorches, hacksaws, scalpels, chainsaws, M80s, and orbital lasers to constantly destroy and rebuild.

Writing is the priority. Write the best work you can write. That`s true. But it`s not all of it, either. Writing is ever an uncountable multitude. We wish writing were just about writing. The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-picker, shame-farmer, god, devil, bibbering protozoa.

Even the roughest stone is made smooth by agitation, motion, erosion. Yeah, the writing life can be tough, but it needs to be. Edits are good. Rejections are, too. Write with a partner. Submit yourself to criticism. Creative agitation can serve you well. Embrace it. Look into that dark hole for answers, not fear. Gaze into the narrative vagina, and find the story-baby crowning there... okay, too far? Too far. Yeah.

Storytelling is what makes the world go around. Even math is a kind of story (though, let`s be honest, a story with too few space donkeys or dragon marines). Don`t let writing and storytelling be some throwaway thing. Don`t piss it away. It`s really cool stuff. Stories have the power to make people feel. To give a shit. To change their opinions. To change the world.

Nobody becomes a writer overnight. Well, I`m sure somebody did, but that person`s head probably went all asplodey from paroxysms of joy, fear, paranoia, guilt and uncertainty. Celebrities can be born overnight. Writers can`t. Writers are made — forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities — over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same writer you become.

Luck matters. It just does. But you can maximize luck. You won`t get struck by lightning if you don`t wander out into the field covered in tinfoil and old TV antennae.

Writing is a mechanical act first and foremost. It is the process of putting words after other words in a way that doesn`t sound or look like inane gibberish.

Вы – дилер, а персонаж – наркотик.

Персонаж – это ДНК в каждой клетке истории.

Пишите, пока не закончите, а потом переписывайте.

Не бросайте свой роман. Не делайте этого. Не заставляйте меня бить вас по яйцам. Поняли?

Процесс письма есть ремесло и механика. Рассказывание историй есть искусство и магия.

Развлекать может кто угодно. Жонглер развлекает. А рассказчик заставляет нас чувствовать. Заставляет нас беспокоиться, хотя у нас нет для этого разумных оснований. Развлечение – не последняя остановка поезда истории. Рассказчик – это первоклассный манипулятор. Рассказчик – это матерый кукловод.