September 12th, 2020
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Advice for unpublished authors from an award winner
Hi, I've been lurking here a lot because i love young writers. You guys are so inspirational to me. I've won numerous awards for my books, and I thought I'd share my advice
Add in your dialogue at the end. When I write, I have absolutely no dialogue in my first ten drafts. Then I look back through and add it in. Usually, you'll realize your story flows better with no spoken lines. But, if you see a place where dialogue makes sense, add it in there. Remember the 10000-1 rule. 1 word of dialogue for every ten thousand words of description.
Remember that killing off characters really draws a reader in. I usually get very attached to my characters and so it's really hard for me to kill them off. Last book I wrote, I had to go on antidepressants because I killed off my favorite character ever. She was my best friend ever. I usually opt for one character death every 35 pages. It crescendos the stakes.
Remember Chekhov's Gun. If an item gets more than 2 lines of description in a book, it needs to be relevant to the whole story.
Remember the 4 R's. Reread, rest, and rewrite.
Make your foreign friends translate the first 3 drafts into a language unknown to you and have them read it to you. If it doesn't sound rhythmic in another language, there's probably a problem with your prose.
Set up the status quo and then destroy it. I usually achieve this with asteroids. No matter what your world is, an asteroid destroying an entire nearby town will surely hook the reader.
Sex doesn't sell. If your characters have sexual desires, it won't relate to the readers. Unless your audience likes sex, if so, disregard.
There should be a little bit of you in each character, even the villains. For example, every male character in my stories and books are extremely beautiful and all the female characters want them. But remember #7.
Read a ton! I know you hear this a lot but it really helps. I reccomend in addition reading passages of your favorite books in a language you don't know. I use google translate. It really helps with getting a sense of rhythm.
When you hit a wall, plagiarize something temporarily. Just copy and paste a passage from another book, and then continue the book as if it's your own work. Just remember to take out these plagiarized passages at the end. Highlight and bold them so you don't forget.
Hope this helps! Happy to answer most questions in the comments.
September 12th, 2020
1
Comments:
[deleted]
I can't tell if this is a serious post or not because I see some normal advice and also some stuff that looks troll-y - all your characters are man candy because allegedly that's what you are? readers don't relate to sexual desire? slay characters indiscriminately just to manipulate readers? plagiarize?
(Side note, unless you're writing the Great American masterpiece of a novel, 10 drafts sounds like a crazy amount of time wasted on one project. Three is pretty standard before you leave well enough alone and move onto something else.)
Eyes are automatically drawn to blank space on a page (dialogue). Only the most patient reader will read through walls of dialogue-free text. On top of that, you say scenes "flow better" without it and that is the polar opposite of everything I've both experienced as a reader and seen advised about dialogue. If I start reading a book and it contains little to no dialogue, I say 'screw this' and chuck it at the wall in annoyance without giving it much of a chance. Dialogue is the energy and motion of engaging storytelling.
The only point I really agree with is #3. Too much rambling description is often spent on things that aren't important.
Seriously a weird post.
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BenjaminJamesCA
Troll / karma farming account. Look at the post history.
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A_Novel_Experience
I agree with so much of this.
But essentially none of #1.
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Ermhorckles
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EgoDefenseMechanism
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ASMEditorial
Love point #7. I’m a former Penguin Random House editor, and oftentimes sex scenes are completely unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot. You can establish romance between your characters without having to show them “in the act.”
Too often, it just reads icky and uncomfortable.
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LadyofToward
Well I guess you're the one with the awards, but how the hell do you write a novel without dialogue? I've read a ton of writing guides and I have never come across that suggestion once. I'm going to take my chances and disregard that.
What kind of genre are you writing for that has a death every thirty-five pages? Are they all killed by asteroids? Are you serious about this algorithm or is it such veiled metaphor that you're too clever by half for me?
What's the 4th R? Are you counting a 're-'?
You're lucky you have so many foreign friends that you can "make" them translate your drafts for you. Even if I subscribed to your theory that my prose might be faulty in Armenian, I simply don't have mates sitting around with time or skill to do that for my benefit.
Apparently you're extremely beautiful, just like all your male characters. What a pity they get killed by asteroids every thirty five pages. Or is that just the female characters who have nothing better to do than simper after your unrealistic heroes.
I agree with reading a lot. I hope you include a dictionary in your wide repertoire - I recommend it. Try looking up how that's spelled. Or perhaps you're too busy re-reading your own (Google translated) stuff.
Look, I don't know what awards you've won but tbh I'm going to disagree with you on a lot of this advice, and really just proves what unsolicited advice is usually worth. It apparently works for you and best of luck.
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CZ2128D
For the dialogue thing just refer to monologues. Example Hikigaya Hachiman, if you take out the dialogue I could honestly understand it just by what he thinks. Or the prologue from I want to eat your pancreas (available for free on novel updates but the prologue is set at the end of everything so if you’re interested read chp 1 first and when you finish the prologue as an epilogue.)
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