@determamfiddHave I ever mentioned that this man is a genius? No?
how has this person gained a livefeed of my brain
I feel personally attacked.
1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3 Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9 Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
The Ten Commandments
STEPHEN KING’S TOP TWENTY RULES FOR WRITING:
1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience.
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story. Your stuff starts out being just for you, but then it goes out.”
2. Don’t use passive voice.
“Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. The timid fellow writes “The meeting will be held at seven o’clock” because that somehow says to him, ‘Put it this way and people will believe you really know. ‘Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write ‘The meeting’s at seven.’ There, by God! Don’t you feel better?”
3. Avoid adverbs.
“The adverb is not your friend. Consider the sentence “He closed the door firmly.” It’s by no means a terrible sentence, but ask yourself if ‘firmly’ really has to be there. What about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before ‘He closed the door firmly’? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, then isn’t ‘firmly’ an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?”
4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.”
“While to write adverbs is human, to write ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ is divine.”
5. But don’t obsess over perfect grammar.
“Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all. “
6. The magic is in you.
“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”
7. Read, read, read.
“You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”
8. Don’t worry about making other people happy.
“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second to least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
9. Turn off the TV.
“Most exercise facilities are now equipped with TVs, but TV—while working out or anywhere else—really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs. If you feel you must have the news analyst blowhard on CNN while you exercise, or the stock market blowhards on MSNBC, or the sports blowhards on ESPN, it’s time for you to question how serious you really are about becoming a writer. You must be prepared to do some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagination, and that means, I’m afraid, that Geraldo, Keith Olbermann, and Jay Leno must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.”
10. You have three months.
“The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”
11. There are two secrets to success.
“When I’m asked for ‘the secret of my success’ (an absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married. It’s a good answer because it makes the question go away, and because there is an element of truth in it. The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible. And I believe the converse is also true: that my writing and the pleasure I take in it has contributed to the stability of my health and my home life.”
12. Write one word at a time.
“A radio talk-show host asked me how I wrote. My reply—’One word at a time’—seemingly left him without a reply. I think he was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. I wasn’t. In the end, it’s always that simple. Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord Of The Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”
13. Eliminate distraction.
“There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or video games for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.”
14. Stick to your own style.
“One cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what the writer is doing may seem. You can’t aim a book like a cruise missile, in other words. People who decide to make a fortune writing like John Grisham or Tom Clancy produce nothing but pale imitations, by and large, because vocabulary is not the same thing as feeling and plot is light years from the truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.”
15. Dig.
“When, during the course of an interview for The New Yorker, I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn’t believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that I believe it. And I do. Stories aren’t souvenir tee-shirts or Game Boys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all the gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.”
16. Take a break.
“If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings that it is to kill your own.”
17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings.
“Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)”
18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story.
“If you do need to do research because parts of your story deal with things about which you know little or nothing, remember that word back. That’s where research belongs: as far in the background and the back story as you can get it. You may be entranced with what you’re learning about the flesh-eating bacteria, the sewer system of New York, or the I.Q. potential of collie pups, but your readers are probably going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.”
19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing.
“You don’t need writing classes or seminars any more than you need this or any other book on writing. Faulkner learned his trade while working in the Oxford, Mississippi post office. Other writers have learned the basics while serving in the Navy, working in steel mills or doing time in America’s finer crossbar hotels. I learned the most valuable (and commercial) part of my life’s work while washing motel sheets and restaurant tablecloths at the New Franklin Laundry in Bangor. You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”
20. Writing is about getting happy.
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”
I really needed this, and now I pass it on to @thesylverlining
Take ‘em with a grain of salt and use your own best judgement, but I like a lot of these. :3 Thank you!
rifa:
So, let me guess— you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…
You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.
It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?
I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.
((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))
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HELLO
RESOURCES!
writers:
- break up your paragraphs. big paragraphs are scary, your readers will get scared
- fuuuuck epithets. “the other man got up” “the taller woman sat down” “the blonde walked away” nahhh. call them by their names or rework the sentence. you can do so much better than this (exception: if the reader doesn’t know the character(s) you’re referring to yet, it’s a-okay to refer to them by an identifying trait)
- blunette is not a thing
- new speaker, new paragraph. please.
- “said” is such a great word. use it. make sweet love to it. but don’t kill it
- use “said” more than you use synonyms for it. that way the use of synonyms gets more exciting. getting a sudden description of how a character is saying something (screaming, mumbling, sighing) is more interesting that way.
- if your summary says “I suck at summaries” or “story better than summary” you’re turning off the reader, my dude. your summary is supposed to be your hook. you gotta own it, just like you’re gonna own the story they’re about to read
- follow long sentences w short ones and short ones w long ones. same goes for paragraphs
- your writing is always better than you think it is. you just think it’s bad because the story’s always gonna be predicable to the one who’s writing it
- i love u guys keep on trucking
hey writers
friendly reminder that you are allowed to write selfishly. Your writing is allowed to be self-indulgent. You can have self-insert characters. Your stories can be pure wish-fulfillment.
Sometimes we get so caught up in wanting to please the theoretical reader that we forget our writing is first and foremost for us. It’s our art, our self-expression, and we do it for our passion and our joy.
Use other voices and perspectives to grow your own perspective and bring more to your writing. But you don’t owe it to anyone to create art for them, the way they want it.
Your writing can be a love letter to yourself.
How to correctly answer questions in a test.
ACCOUNT: Account for: state reasons for, report on. Give an account on: narrate a series of events or transactions.
ANALYSE: Identify components and the relationship between them; draw out and relate implications.
APPLY: Use, utilise, employ in a particular situation.
APPRECIATE: Make a judgement about the value of.
ASSESS: Make a judgement of value, quality, outcomes, results or size.
CALCULATE: Ascertain/ determine from given facts, figures or information.
CLARIFY: Make clear or plain.
CLASSIFY: Arrange or include in classes/ categories.
COMPARE: Show how things are similar or different.
CONSTRUCT: Make; build; put together item or arguments.
CONTRAST: Show how things are different or opposite.
CRITICALLY (ANALYSE/ EVALUATION): Add a degree or level of accuracy, depth, knowledge and understanding, logic, questioning, reflection and quality to (analyse/ evaluation).
DEDUCE: Draw conclusions.
DEFINE: State meaning and identify essential qualities.
DEMONSTRATE: Show by example.
DESCRIBE: Provide characteristics and features.
DISCUSS: Identify issues and provide points for and against.
DISTINGUISH: Recognise or note/ indicate as being distinct or different from; to note differences between.
EVALUATE: Make a judgement based on criteria; determine the value of.
EXAMINE: Inquire information.
EXPLAIN: Relate cause and effect; make the relationships between things evident; provide why and/or how.
EXTRACT: Choose relevant and/ or appropriate details.
IDENTIFY: Recognise and name.
INTERPRET: Draw meaning from.
INVESTIGATE: Plan, inquire into and draw conclusions about.
JUSTIFY: Support an argument or conclusion.
OUTLINE: Sketch in general terms; indicate the main features of.
PREDICT: Suggest what may happen based on available information.
PROPOSE: Put forward (for example a point of view, idea, argument, suggestion) for consideration or action.
RECALL: Present remembered ideas, facts or experiences.
RECOMMEND: Present reasons in favour.
RECOUNT: Retell a series of events.
SUMMARISE: Express, consider, the relevant details.
SYNTHESISE: Putting together various elements to make a whole.
not every conversation is a debate.
not every conversation is a discussion even.
a lot of conversations, especially those in safe places where people share private, intimate, closely guarded thoughts, are dialogues.
in a debate, you are trying to persuade.
in a discussion, you are trying to compromise.
in a dialogue, you are trying to listen.
it’s a subtle difference, but it’s an important one. please learn it.
ugh how the fuck do you cover letter
Greetings, Exalted One. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and friend to Captain Solo.
I know that you are powerful, mighty Jabba, and that your anger with Solo must be equally powerful. I seek an audience with Your Greatness to bargain for Solo’s life.
With your wisdom, I’m sure that we can work out an arrangement which will be mutually beneficial and enable us to avoid any unpleasant confrontation.
As a token of my goodwill, I present to you a gift: these two droids. Both are hardworking and will serve you well.
do you have any advice for someone who is terrible at writing introductions and conclusion? specifically, for lit essays. i don't have many problems writing the body but i can't for the life of me write a good intro or conclusion. or if i write one of them well, i don't know how to make the other different :/
Anonymouswell i for sure write my intro & conclusion deaaaad last - I tend to refine my argument as I go, so it makes sense to write them once i’ve gotten a solid grasp on what i’m actually arguing.
in general, try to make your introduction introduce the subject - that sounds dumb, but it should provide a little background, maybe give a quick survey of what others have said on the topic, etc. your thesis is a small part of the intro; it needs to fit, but it should really come in at the end of the section. your conclusion, in contrast, should focus on recapitulating your argument, but should also indicate why your audience should even care that they’ve just read the paper. i’ve always been taught that it’s the big “so what?” moment - what significance does your argument have? who will it impact? how?
