250 Things You Should Know About Writing Read online

  12. Your Default State Is A State Of Rejection

  You're going to get a lot of rejection. From agents, from publishers. It's par for the course. Rejections are good. Treat them like battle scars: proof you fought the good fight and didn't just piss around on the sidelines. My upcoming book BLACKBIRDS was lucky to get picked up by an agent after one month, but not before a handful of rejections and a lot of no-shows. Then it took a year and a half to get published. Dozens of rejections. All of them arrows to my heart. But where each arrow punctures, the heart grows scar tissue, gets tougher as a result.

  13. Your Best Bet Is A Book That Doesn't Suck Resemble A Prolapsed Anus

  Everybody's got tips and tricks to get published. It's who you know. Get a good blurb. Get a rockstar agent. Consume the heart of a stillborn goat in a ritual circle made of shattered Milli Vanilli CDs. The biggest and best chance you have to get published is to write something that not only doesn't suck, but is actually pretty goddamn good. Go figure.

  14. Even Still, A Good Book Isn't Enough

  I'd be a naive douchematron (a robot that sprays vinegar and water from his face-nozzle) if I sat here and told you, "The only thing you need is a great book. Write it, stick it in your drawer, and the publishing fairy will come and sprinkle his jizzy magic seed all over it." You do have to know how to market the book. How to put it out there. How to get it in front of agents, publishers, and readers.

  15. Grim Taxonomy

  You may not be concerned about genre, but the publishing industry is. They want to know on what shelf it goes, and under what Amazon category. So that means you need to know, too. Though, let me be clear: this is not a precise equation. These are not well-defined margins. Get close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades. I know many authors whose books were one thing but then were labeled as something entirely different for marketing purposes. Just make a stab at it. Don't freak out.

  16. Never Give Someone Money To Get You Published

  The old saying is, "The money flows to the writer, not away from the writer." This is still true, though self-publishing has complicated this snidbit of advice (snidbit = snippet + tidbit). In DIY publishing, you may have to shell out the capital for an editor, or a book cover, or e-book design. But that's not you spending money on getting published. You're not placing cash in the hands of some charlatan. You're spending money on the book in order to get it ready for publication. You're still the one putting it out there. And money should still flow toward you once that occurs.

  17. Dudes With Guns, Chicks With Swords

  If you are traditionally published, you have a 37% chance of ending up with a book cover featuring some bad-ass holding a gun or some hot chick holding a sword. Or maybe a battle-axe. She's probably facing away from you and showing you one, maybe both, buttocks. Those buttocks are probably in very tight pants. Your book may be re-titled to something like DEMON SLUT or THE EDGE OF STEEL.

  18. Trends Move Faster Than You, So Run The Other Way

  You know what's hot right now? Stripper Frankensteins. You know what'll be hot next week? Occult epistolaries. The week after that? Pterodactyl erotica. You don't know what's going to be hot by the time you finish that book and get an agent and the agent starts shopping that book around. So just write what you want to write, and make it the best damn book anybody's ever read.

  19. Yeah, A Sock Full Of Quarters, Bitch! Woo!

  What I'm saying is, you won't get rich in publishing. But you can make a passable living. Feed your kids. Pay your mortgage. Long as you're willing to write like a motherfucker. You think you can live on one book a year, then you clearly believe your name rhymes with K. J. Schmowling. And I bet it doesn’t.

  20. The Midlands Of The Midlist

  "Midlist" isn't a dirty word. They may not be bestsellers, but they justify their existence. Midlist is a sign of a working author. An author who puts herself out there. Respect to the midlist. *pours toner ink on the curb for my homies*

  21. All About Maneuverability

  Small publishers don't move faster than big publishers -- but they can turn on a fucking dime. Same way a little boat can drive circles around a steamship. This is worth considering.

  22. Publishing Is Just The Beginning

  You get published, you're not done. You've got more books to write. Promo to do. Interviews. Book signings. It's just the start of it. That's a good thing, though. Makes sure you do more than sit in your cave and bleed words from your eye-holes. That said, you still need to get back in that cave and cry out more words. Otherwise, who are you, Harper Lee?

  23. Stare Too Long Into The Publishing Abyss, The Publishing Abyss Pees In Your Eye

  The publishing industry is the lava-eye of Sauron, the sucking sandy mouth of the Sarlacc pit (both of which look like sinister hell-vaginas, since we're being honest with one another). You gaze too long or get too close it'll suck you in. At the end of the day, your job isn't to be distracted by the industry because that will start to eat your soul. Your primary identifier is still storyteller, so that’s what you do at the end of the day. I mean, unless you’re that guy who sells ONE MILLION E-BOOKS, because that guy’s not a storyteller, he’s a human spam-bot.

  24. What I'm Trying To Say Is, Lie Back And Pump Out Those Word-Babies

  Your job is to write. Write like you don't give a damn about the publishing industry. Because you can. Write like that -- write like you fucking mean it -- and you'll find success. Love what you write and write what you want and you'll find the words come easy and the story comes correct. Don't worry right now so much with the publishing. Worry about writing. The other part will always come after, but by god, the writing has to come first.

  25. Oh, And One Last Thing: Never Give Up

  Publishing won't happen overnight. Self-publishing, er, does, but the epic sales don't happen overnight. Embrace patience, perseverance, stick-to-itiveness. Gotta have a head like a wrecking ball, a spirit like one of them punching clown dummies that always weeble-wobbles back up to standing. This takes time. Stories need to find the right home, the right audience. Stick with it. Push like you're pooping. Quitting is for sad pandas. And this jar of bees is for quitters only.

  25 Things You Should Know About… Writing A Fucking Sentence

  1. A Sentence Has One Job Above All Others

  That job is to convey information. It's job is not to be clever. It's job is not to sound nice. It's primary task is to present information. That's not to say it can't, or shouldn't, sound nice. Or be clever. But those are value adds. A sentence has another, more important job, and that is as an information delivery system.

  2. It Is A Fundamental Building Block

  Sentences comprise all that you write. They chain together to form ideas. Learning how to write a sentence properly, with clarity, and in a way that engages the reader or listener is the cornerstone of good writing. Sentences are made up of words and clauses (a clause being subject and a verb).

  3. This Noun Is Going To Verb You In The Naughtyhole

  The simplest sentence is a nearly naked clause of: subject verb. Becky ran. The dog barks. The robot will dance. Never be afraid to use a simple construction. It's short. Sharp. Punchy. Equal parts "flick to the ear" and "grenade going off under your chair." Throw in a direct object in there (and maybe an indirect object, to boot), and now we're cooking with a deadly biotoxin. I mean, "gas." Just gas. Definitely not making bathtub biotoxin over here. You didn't see anything.

  4. Some Clauses Still Live At Home With Their Parents

  ...while others go out and strike out on their own. Meaning, some clauses are independent, others are dependent. The former stands on their own. I'm not going to get into a whole compositional lesson here, but sentence construction relies on you knowing that dependent clauses cannot form their own sentences because they are immature assholes. They are subordinate, and like the remora fish must cling to the shark-like independent clause to survive. Independent clauses can come together to form sentences, if you care to do t
hat. "Hiram likes cheese, but he thinks milk is for dickheads." Two independent clauses, connected by that little word, "but." ("And" works, too.) If I were to instead write, "Hiram likes cheese more than he likes milk," then you can see that more than he likes milk is the dependent clause because it cannot stand by its lonesome.

  5. On The Subject Of Sentence Fragments

  Sentence fragments are generally a no-no. And yet, I use them. They work when they help to establish flow in the ear of the reader, and they fail when they break that flow. Nine times out of ten, they break the flow. But roughly 10% of the time, they allow your prose to pop. Use. But use sparingly.

  6. Simplicity Is Not The Enemy Of A Strong Sentence

  In fact, simplicity is the good neighbor of a strong sentence. He mows his neighbor's lawn. Picks up the mail. Doesn't tell the other neighbors about the weird bleating coming from the basement. A simple sentence can be thought of as "dumbed down," but that's not true, not true at all. Elegance and profundity may lurk within simplicity. Consider these two words: "John died." That's heavy. Two words like lead fists in your gut. John died. Oh, shit.

  7. Simplicity Begets Mystery

  John died. Two words. Not a lot of information. But that's okay. Because the reader wants that information. It creates in his mind an open variable in the story equation you're building. John died, yes, but how why when where? (Probably of bathtub biotoxin. In my basement. Ten minutes ago. Because he was an asshole who couldn't keep his mouth shut about the goddamn biotoxin.)

  8. Go Read A Kid's Book

  Children's books are written for, duh, children. The sentence construction in those books is about as simple as it can get, and admittedly, some of the stories are simple, too. But some of those stories can be quite complex, with a bubbling sub-layer of biotoxin... er, I mean, profundity beneath the surface of those basic, straightforward sentences. You want to get back to the heart of learning how to write a fucking sentence, you could do worse than by nabbing a couple kiddie books and studying their elegance.

  9. Clarity Defeats Confusion

  Whenever I do development or editing work, the most troubling thing I see are sentences I must mark with the dreaded three-word-abbreviation of AWK. Which, admittedly, sounds like the cry of a petulant sea-bird, but no, it stands for AWKward. As in, this sentence sticks out like a hammerstruck boner. Something about it is positively Lovecraftian: it unsettles the mind, it curdles the marrow. Its angles do not add up. What I'm really saying with that tag is, "This sentence doesn't make nearly enough sense." And frequently that confusion stems from a poorly-constructed and often over-complicated sentence. You must strive for clarity. As mentioned, a sentence must convey information, and information is not properly conveyed if I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

  10. How A Sentence Gets Lost

  Long sentences reduce comprehension in readers. The longer and more convoluted the sentence, the greater chance you will lose the reader's attention and understanding.

  11. The Forrest Gump Of Sentences

  A run-on sentence is a technically a sentence that takes a bunch of independent clauses and smooshes them together like melting gummi bears without the pleasure of punctuation or conjunction. In practice, just know that a run-on sentence is one that goes on and on and on. Feels rambly. Loses cohesion. Run-on sentences are loose butthole. Concise sentences are tight butthole.

  12. I Want To Buy The Semi-Colon A Private Sex Island

  I love those winking little cheeky fuckers like you wouldn't believe. You can't use them too often, but when you do, you use them in general to link two independent clauses without a word like "but" or "and." Mmm. Semi-colons. Come to me, semi-colon. Wink at me. Touch my man-parts. Don't tell my wife. Wink. ;)

  13. Destroy, Rebuild

  The way to fix a fucked-up sentence is the same way we'll end up fixing civilization: you have to destroy it and rebuild it. Break it down into its constituent parts and just rewrite that slippery sonofabitch. The real secret here? Most times, you'll end up breaking the sentence in twain as if you were Solomon. One boggy, busted-ass sentence is almost always made better when it becomes two leaner, meaner sentences. Bisect those bitches.

  14. Sentences Rarely Exist In Isolation

  Novels, scripts, blog posts, ransom notes -- whatever the body of writing, you will find more than one sentence living together. And so, writing a good sentence isn't just about nailing one sentence, but about nailing the sentence before it, and after it. They live in colonies, these goddamn things, like termites, or ants, or polyamorous space marines. It's like what they say about roaches: you find one, you know there's bound to be a whole lot more behind the walls.

  15. The Dancing Diagram Where The Sentence Shakes Its Word-Booty

  Each individual sentence has a rhythm, and you can diagram it -- Shakespeare was quite concerned with this, what with all that iambic pentameter. You can see it too in children's verse. Or even in unmetered poetry -- read free verse aloud and you'll find the rhythm, the way each word and idea flows into the next. And that's the key, right there -- "into the next." Each sentence establishes a rhythm with the one before it and the one after it. They flow into each other like water -- calm water here, rapids here, waterfall there, back again to still waters. We think of sentences as being written down and thus related to the eyes, not the ears -- but good writing sounds good when spoken. Great writing is as much about the ear as it is about the eye.

  16. The Doctor Sentence Q. Sentenceworth Variety Hour

  Each sentence must be different from the last. Variety creates a chain of interest. If I gaze upon a wallpaper with an endless pattern, my eyes glaze over and I wet myself. But look upon a wall with variety -- a photo, a painting, a swatch of torn wallpaper, a dead hooker hanging on a hook (that's why they call them "hookers") -- and your eye will continue moving from one thing to the next. Sentences work like this. Vary your usage. Short sentence moves into a long sentence. Sentence openings never repeated twice in a row. Simplicity yields to complexity. Each sentence, different in sound and content from the last.

  17. Each Sentence Is A Gateway Drug

  Like I said earlier, a good sentence begets mystery. It makes you want to get to the next sentence. No one sentence should try to say it all. Think of each sentence like a tiny iteration of a cliffhanger. Each is an opportunity to convince the reader to keep on reading.

  18. Is "Is?" Or Isn't "Is?"

  Some folks suggest that cutting any and all instances of the verb "to be" from your work will make that work stronger. They're probably not wrong, because "is" ends up fairly limp-dicked far as verbs go. Like with all things: find moderation. Don't go psycho on every iteration of the verb. If you see a sentence that uses some form of "to be" and you think, dang, this sentence could be stronger, then rip out that verb and dose it up with the corticosteroid of a tougher, more assertive verb.

  19. Passive Constructions Were Killed By Me, In The Study, With A Lead Pipe

  See what I did there? Yeah. You see it. Avoid passive constructions. They wussify your sentences. What makes a sentence passive? When the actor in a sentence is not the subject of that sentence. "Bob strangles Betty." Bob is the actor and the subject. But if you rewrote that to be, "Betty was strangled by Bob," you've made the subject of the sentence separate from the actor. You can spot passive language generally with the verb "to be" bound up with the past participle ("was strangled by").

  20. I Murders The Nasty Adverbses!

  An adjective modifies a noun, an adverb modifies a verb. Adjectives seem okay, and yet adverbs get a bad rap. What's the deal? Adverbs alone are not poison. They do not by themselves sink a sentence. In fact, what people often identify as adverbs is a small subset of the whole pie. For instance, that word I just used -- "often" -- is an adverb. It modifies "identify" as an element of frequency. If I say, "John lives here," then know that "here" is an adverb (modifying "lives" -- he lives where? Here.) How do you know if an adverb belongs? Read the sentence aloud.
"Gary giggled delightedly" has two problems -- first, giggling already indicates delight, and second, delightedly sounds clunky when you speak that sentence aloud. You notice it when you speak it. Again: we read with our ears as well as our eyes.

  21. Beware The Sentence With A Big Ass

  What I mean is, you don't want a sentence with a lot of junk in the trunk. Junk language, like junk food, is both easy and delicious. Writing a good sentence is often about what to omit as much as it is about what goes into the mix. Beware: clichés, redundancies, pleonasms, needlessly complicated clauses, bullshit intensifiers (really, actually, truly, severely, totally), euphemisms, and passive constructions.