Best Advise for Writing

Giving best advise for writers is just as tricky as recommending the best book for all readers. I don't think there is any piece of information here that fits all needs, yet I can certainly share some of the tips I have had most use of and some of those I have had least use of, hoping that they will at least help others.

Part 1: Best for Me The most useful advise I have ever found for my writing, lied on the pages of the book "6 stars: from dream to bestseller", by Heidi Korsgaard and Mette de Fine Licht. By the time I read it, I had read quite a few articles on how to be interesting to readers, how important it is that people can relate to the story, how vital is dialogue in the scenes (this last bit of advise, I actually never needed, as in my stories often there is not much more than the dialogue). So I must admit, I started reading the book a bit arrogant and convinced that they most likely won't tell me anything new. For my pleasant surprise, I found many useful tips and here come top 3 in ascending importance. 3. The publishing is not the end of your effort, but the beginning. The life a book begins once it is out in the market and the presence of the author is needed all along the distribution period. Despite the tendency of some authors to remain hidden in the shadows, if you start on that journey, you have to be ready to shine along with your lovely piece of literature. 2. Ask for critical opinions. As simple as it can be, when you directly ask people what they dislike in your story, it gives you unparalleled opportunity to improve your writing. Of course it is not always easy to demand critic in the well educated society of today, where people are more polite than ever. And yet another hurdle on the way is that authors tend to be a bit like parents - always wanting their creation to be loved and cherished by everyone and tending to be blind for its flaws. I have been in this situation as well and my way out of it was realising that a story is eventually not a product, but a process and in a process there are always things that work good and others that are unsatisfactory. And the process itself is all about improving when there is room for improvement. 1. Interview your protagonist. Yes, this is the best advise, I have ever received: to sit together with the fictional character and take an interview with him/her/that person. It might sound irrational, but for me it works miracles. Each time I have creator's block, I use it. Last time it was Mike, who has turbulent times in the dance academy, the 1st person narrator in my novel 'Horo'. 'Hey buddy, how are you today?', 'Well, tired and irritated of waiting for the bath', 'C'mon, it's not such a big deal', 'It may not be for you, but I have had my own bath all my life....' And there he goes, a fictional character that reveals layers of his personality and lifetime that his prudent author was not yet aware of. People of firm logic and solid rational thinking are more than welcome to skip reading this paragraph, as I am about to conclude that protagonists like attention out of context. If we compare them to people at work, it is like their boss expressing genuine interest in their hobbies or inviting them out to eat cake in the middle of the busy day.

Part 2: Best for Someone Else

As already mentioned, I never got to find any useful advise about the balance between descriptive text and dialogue. No matter how many times I tried, I always stumbled upon lectures that a book shall not look like a PhD thesis, and no matter how absorbed the author is with the setting or the story, s/he has to let the characters talk to each other and make sure they are distinguishable by their speech. Another one that never made sense to me was to make a detailed plan of the story, before starting to write. I do plan scenes and sequences for my book but it is never detailed. Can't help but think that if I spent time to make a decent detailed plan, I would never actually have time to write the story.

Next is powerwriting. The process where you sit in front of the blank piece of paper and write everything that comes to your mind, without caring about logic or consistency of style. Imagine it is a little race between the hand and the thinking mind where cheating is allowed. It is usually timed at one of few minutes and can wake up the imagination of many writers. Mine seems to feel deeply offended and it crosses its arms in front of the chest and starts pouting so the piece of paper just remains blank. And the last advise for writing, I am sharing here, is to think about your reader. It has been identified as a tool to help you get more realistic story, a story your customer would enjoy. Something they can't do without. It might be a good advise, but reading it, the first thing I think about is drug dealers (they tend to have the habit of offering customers stuff they desperately need). When I write, I want to do it out of my authentic self, not out of the need to meet someone's expectation for a good book.