writing tips & ideas that stuck with me
[ready, willing and able (1937)]
here’s a small collection of writing tips and ideas that stayed with me. i thought it would be best to gather them in one place as a post i can return to.
practice more. suck less.
write to please just one person. [kurt vonnegut]
write a full page, then delete everything but the best 1-2 sentences.
tell stories that you cannot help telling. [neil gaiman]
write like you talk.
list all the words you can think of to describe a topic.
feels too strange? that is exactly the thing you should write about.
writing is not thinking and then putting your thinking into words. writing is thinking, reading, talking, observing, taking notes, deleting, thinking on paper, hating your writing, and doing it all over again.
writing is noticing the patterns.
writing is translating. you convert the language of existence -what you see, imagine, feel, and sense- into the language of written words.
writing is an act of vulnerability. you invest a piece of yourself into your work, and open up to others' perceptions and judgments.
writing well is thinking clearly. that's the challenge and beauty of it.
we found out this really simple rule… we can take these beats… of your outline and if the words ‘and then’ belong between those beats, you’re fucked. you’ve got something pretty boring. what should happen between every beat you’ve written down is the word ‘therefore’ or ‘but’. [matt stone & trey parker]
so the beat is:
this...
therefore...
but...
this...
therefore...
and finally, a writing advice from tcannon i came across today that pushed me to collect these notes:
- Q: what happened?
writer: this happened. then this. then that. etc, all the way to the end.
just answer the question as clear, succinct, and to the point as possible.