Some writing tips

[MayorReynolds]

I have some pretty strong opinions about writing advice that includes the word "never". (or "always", for that matter.) As you mentioned, there's plenty of reasons to break rules or guidelines, and making such generalizations that there is only one way to do something seems a bit extreme.

I think in Leonard's case, an interviewer asked for his secret to writing good novels and he laid out his ten personal guidelines. They probably weren't meant to serve as rigid teaching tools in writing courses. It was one old man giving his opinion on what worked for him. For him it worked well; for others it will be too rigid. They will have their own reasons for opening with a prologue, or weather, or something significant about the scenery.

For me, it comes back to this scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGaRKNY1Efk

A character who cannot escape their 9-5 Groundhog Day routine, who never finds significance and dies bored in a world that never changes for them...is in and of itself a conflict.

There's nothing wrong with trying to imitate what others have done, but that should only be the first step in learning. Too many wannabe writers are going to fall into the trap of thinking it HAS to be done this way because that way has led to success. They're going to buy a Syd Field or Robert McKee book, where some pompous windbag insists a character MUST learn something at the end and every important character MUST be introduced by the 20 minute mark. The result isn't a writer; it's an assembly line worker.

Fuck that. Read. Books. Not books with "How to Write Successfully" anywhere in the title. Read fiction and nonfiction prose by the actual artists. Watch what they do. Then write like an asylum patient until you carve your own guidelines out of it.

NOW, that said, you're gonna want to refine yourself. You're going to want peer review, and you will benefit from continuing to learn and self improve. Otherwise, you may end up with The Room. There's a reason "It was a dark and stormy night" has been mocked for over 200 years.

 

[SimonDoom]

While I can see the value in them (I even got a good tip out of reading them myself), the risk with rules this strict is that it teaches people to emulate a writing style. My personal writing style violates at least a third to half of those rules regularly, for example. Now I'm not saying my writing style is flawless or anything (quite the opposite, actually), but it is mine. New writers that might come across these rules might feel attacked, and like they're being told they're doing it wrong.

I don't disagree with what you're saying as a matter of principle. But as a matter of practical reality, I think far more Literotica authors go astray with the "do it your own way" mantra than with the "here's the way to do it" mantra. "Do it your own way" can be a justification for lazy and sloppy writing, and for not trying to improve. In my view, more often than not, it is. Most authors on this site -- and I would include myself in this group -- would improve their writing more by trying scrupulously to learn and follow well-accepted guidelines for good prose than by trying to break them and do it their own way.

 

[Hypoxia]

I think Elmore Leonard has been mentioned as an excellent writer -- but not of erotica. Yes, pr0n can be presented in a stripped-down style. Will your readers approve?

I'm all for "learning at the feet of the masters". Read authors of renown and appeal. See how they do it, how sentences, paragraphs, chapters, arcs are built. IOW copy until you develop your own voice, one that occupies readers. I've some stories intended as homage to lurid old pulp styles, or parodies of modern pr0n styles. PJ O'Rourke said of his LAMPOON days that learning to copy old styles was the key to satire. He's funny when he's not political. Find a style or three that you like, then embroider.