Your Best Writing Tips

[FeralSmile]

Novels are never published chapter by chapter.

Well... I mean... they always have been (literally since the dawn of the novel), and sometimes still are published chapter by chapter, but nevertheless I think it's great advice to treat them as if they cannot and will not be published chapter by chapter.

Sorry to quibble, but then writing is often about breaking rules. First, you should KNOW the rules and be able to follow them, and then subsequently you should do what seems best given the constraints of what you're trying to accomplish.

I think plotting out stories in advance and having a clear sense what happens is INCREDIBLY helpful 99% of the time. That's how you can inject foreshadowing, for instance, which is just lovely and makes readers happy when it's well paid-off.

 

[Thefireflies]

There’s some good ideas in this thread.

Make your characters relatable. Do this by getting into their heads and think plausibly of what they're feeling and thinking and how it would lead them to react in the situation based on their desires. This is motive. If you want interesting plot you need motives that the reader can follow along with, motives that are deeper than just wanting to get laid, even in a high smut piece, there can be at least something unique in the motive, something particular about why the character wants to get laid (and hopefully not too tropey). If you want the reader to connect to the story you need them to get emotionally invested.

Excellent advice. I’d like to add that if you have characters meeting one another (or perhaps they're already a couple) and they are going to hook up, give the attraction feeling and make their connection real. To help the reader connect to the story and characters, take time to develop the connections between characters, beyond stating they're obviously attracted to one another. As in real life, the ingredients to connection might include flowing conversation, eye contact, laughter, body language, touch, shared experiences, and whatever else it takes (alcohol lol).

Never let a villain get away with anything. Same for a character who is not a villain. Karma should come back around and hit hard.

I used to think this way, but no longer feel there are rules here, even in fiction. Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men left me frustrated until I accepted it was probably more true to life. This helped me appreciate the end of Blood Meridian, which is about a bunch of really bad villains, where the most villainous of all villains appears to get away with everything (though the end is totally ambiguous, yet it's still a masterpiece).

Editing is more than just about finding typos. Cut as much as possible. Sometimes less is more.

Less isn't always 'more', and it's editing time when I think I can pull a few thousand words from a story but end up adding a few thousand instead! Ramble away I reckon, just make it readable. Someone will like it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

* Proofread/edit everything you write, and cut out AT LEAST 1/3. Bare fucking minimum. Making it shorter is another way of reassessing what really matters, what has the most impact. When you gain enough experience with this, it becomes second nature. But always, always kill your darlings.

Well damn, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

I'm a pantser, stream of consciousness writer, and I reckon my final copy Is about 98% there in the first draft.

I've got over a million words published here, and not once has someone said, "You need to edit shit out of that."

Absolutist statements like yours above don't always apply. Not all writers write like you do, and you shouldn't assume they do. You might bloat your first draft, but that doesn't mean others do.

The rest of your points though, I agree .

 

[pink_silk_glove]

* Proofread/edit everything you write, and cut out AT LEAST 1/3. Bare fucking minimum. Making it shorter is another way of reassessing what really matters, what has the most impact. When you gain enough experience with this, it becomes second nature. But always, always kill your darlings.

I disagree, at least as a rule. It all depends on how you write. I have a friend who writes songs this way. He used to challenge himself to write three songs a week (!) and out of that he might get 2 or 3 per month that he felt were good enough to keep. The method worked very well for him. I'm different. I don't throw anything away because I just don't write anything bad. Hah, I'm kidding. I am so totally kidding! But seriously, once I get to formal editing, I don't cut much at all. But then again I'm a heavy plotter and heavy brainstormer and when I sit down to write I almost never force anything. Most of my cuts happen in my brainstorm before I even sit down. I also edit as I go. I write a paragraph or two, read it back and edit. By the time that I've finished a piece, every word has been re-read dozens of times over and over. The file always gets bigger. That's just me. I'm also a very slow writer. If I sit down for eight hours and get 2000 words, that's a lot. If I can put in three or four hours in the evening and get 500 or even 300 good words, I'll take it. So just by my methods, by the time that I get to final edits and proofing, it's all just stylistic choices. The plot is done.

If one is the type of writer to bang off reams of ideas until you find an end before going back to edit, then I'm sure that big cuts will work for you, but I would not say that it's a rule for everyone.

 

[FeralSmile]

I disagree, at least as a rule. It all depends on how you write. I have a friend who writes songs this way. He used to challenge himself to write three songs a week (!) and out of that he might get 2 or 3 per month that he felt were good enough to keep. The method worked very well for him. I'm different. I don't throw anything away because I just don't write anything bad. Hah, I'm kidding. I am so totally kidding! But seriously, once I get to formal editing, I don't cut much at all. But then again I'm a heavy plotter and heavy brainstormer and when I sit down to write I almost never force anything. Most of my cuts happen in my brainstorm before I even sit down. I also edit as I go. I write a paragraph or two, read it back and edit. By the time that I've finished a piece, every word has been re-read dozens of times over and over. The file always gets bigger. That's just me. I'm also a very slow writer. If I sit down for eight hours and get 2000 words, that's a lot. If I can put in three or four hours in the evening and get 500 or even 300 good words, I'll take it. So just by my methods, by the time that I get to final edits and proofing, it's all just stylistic choices. The plot is done.

If one is the type of writer to bang off reams of ideas until you find an end before going back to edit, then I'm sure that big cuts will work for you, but I would not say that it's a rule for everyone.

These are general rules, but the truth is that every author has their own approaches.

I think that for most, cutting some words really helps tighten their writing. Usually, I think it leads to a substantial and objective improvement. It's good to focus on what really matters, and to sacrifice the rest. Most writing, I think, is better when you cut some of it out.

Writing is ALWAYS ultimately about exceptions, but... the trick is knowing whether you really, truly qualify for the exception.

Most do not, I think.

 

[FeralSmile]

Well damn, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

I'm a pantser, stream of consciousness writer, and I reckon my final copy Is about 98% there in the first draft.

I've got over a million words published here, and not once has someone said, "You need to edit shit out of that."

Absolutist statements like yours above don't always apply. Not all writers write like you do, and you shouldn't assume they do. You might bloat your first draft, but that doesn't mean others do.

The rest of your points though, I agree .

I wasn't intending to be absolutist but rather generalist. I should have qualified more on that point and others.

Fair point.

I think writing advice is very circumstantial in general, so I didn't pause to sufficiently see how what I wrote might seem otherwise. There's context there for why I did so, but it's immaterial.

"Here are some basic general rules; good writers often violate some or all of them" is honest but challenging to apply. Better though than my first try.

 

[MelissaBaby]

If you’re okay with going outside your comfort zone by definition it’s not uncomfortable!

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "okay."

We don't all just write for fun. I have written a number of stories here on subjects that were extremely uncomfortable to write about. Was doing so outside my comfort one? Definitely. Was I okay with doing it? Fuck no, I was an emotional mess while writing some of them. But they were things I needed to write about, nonetheless.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If you’re okay with going outside your comfort zone by definition it’s not uncomfortable!

That's not how I understand "comfort zone". Plenty of people are willing to do uncomfortable things, if they think it's going to be worthwhile in some way. Skydiving, abseiling, baring one's soul to ten thousand randos on the internet...

 

[alohadave]

Proofread/edit everything you write, and cut out AT LEAST 1/3. Bare fucking minimum. Making it shorter is another way of reassessing what really matters, what has the most impact. When you gain enough experience with this, it becomes second nature. But always, always kill your darlings.

You are mixing some things together.

You should cut what needs to be cut, not some arbitrary amount. Not everyone creates a vomit draft and puts words on paper with no thought at all. Those of us that don't do this are self-editing while we write.

Killing your darlings relates to removing parts of the story that you like even though you don't want to, because they don't work with the story. You shouldn't just kill off and delete characters and plot lines to meet some arbitrary word count goal.

 

[yowser]

Some of my personal thoughts on writing and the process of getting from a thought to a story:

There is nothing wrong with writing a blatant sex scene with no story behind it.

There is nothing wrong with writing an emotionally erotic story with no sex scene.

There is nothing wrong with combining the two.

Challenging yourself to write things you don't personally like shouldn't be controversial.

Neither should writing only things you like.

Don't limit yourself beyond staying within the rules of allowed content.

Listen to input without feeling defensive about it. It's ultimately your story and you get to decide who influences what you keep and change in your story. (And don't be afraid to say, "No, I don't like that suggestion." You can also compromise. "I get what you mean. But instead of that, would this work?"

Understand that typos breed upon saving and closing the document. Full eradication of pesky typos and use of wrong words is only rarely successful. Accept it, but still make an attempt to at least cull them a little.

Mind your semicolons and narrative fucks (different from narrative fucking, which should be as plentiful as you want it to be.) (This is basically just: learn your crutches in writing and try to rein them in to reasonable levels. Make them count when you decide to utilize them.)

Jerks make memorable characters but people tend to not like them. Write them anyway because they are fun.

Don't forget to eat and hydrate while writing.

Sleep is for the weak (and the reasonable.)

If you get stuck on part of the story, remember: porn is research. So is fucking, so don't neglect your own needs and enlist your partner for assistance when/if it isn't coming to you on your own.

Sight and touch are the easiest senses to incorporate but don't forget smell and taste. Salty skin beneath a tender kiss and flick of the tongue and the smell of gasoline and oil on a mechanic can each trigger all kinds of erotic thoughts for people.

Hearing can be interesting to play with: a building orgasm that reduces a character's ability to perceive any noise beyond the immediate clapping of bodies, the arousing gruffness of a voice whispering in a character's ear, the innocent voice that promises to leave lovely bites and bruises along your skin all give opportunity to build up the interaction.

It's fictional. Have fun.

I think this is the best set of erotic writing rules I've ever encountered.

I'm not sure Murphy's Law had a corollary on typos, but it should have.

 

[Altissimus]

 

[OffNSFW]

Good stories have structure. All that English 101 stuff about the arc of rising action, setup/reminder/payoff, economy of detail. It's actually important! A lot of stories are just big ol' piles of incidents. (Usually trying to anticipate what the audience wants to happen next, I reckon.) Those stories usually lack propulsion and, in the end, get mostly forgotten.

That's not to say that you should start with a structure and start plugging stuff in like Mad Libs. But, when revising, you should start to feel a rhythm in the story, a sense that it's going from place to place in a natural way. Stuff that happens later should feel strongly related to stuff that happens earlier. If something feels missing or (much, much more likely) if something feels like it's bogging things down, fix it.

Related: If you're stuck on a scene because it's boring to write, see if you can skip it. Retool if you have to. If it's boring for you to write, why would it be interesting for them to read?

Also related: Write it because it's interesting to you. We've got plenty of people to write about stuff that's interesting for someone else.

Read your writing aloud! If there are sentences, word choices, or combinations of syllables that you stumble on, rework them until you get through them smoothly on the first try. We talk a lot about editing for structure or grammar, but basic readability is so important.

And you can chop out a lot of unnecessary description by focusing on a few well-chosen details that evoke a feeling or encourage people to connect to their own past experiences. "His cock was 9" long, the color of apricots, curved 2 degrees to the left, uncircumcized, with veins that spelled 'juicy.'" Vs. "He had a big, handsome cock." One of those lets them engage with it and decide what it means for them. Maybe it'll evoke powerful memories.

What else?

Write something short once in a while. It's good for you. A coffee break story.