Today’s you tell us comes compliments of Lane, @lweinberg18 on Twitter, who responded to my call for suggestions for these posts. I actually really love this question. Lane wondered what the worst writing advice people have ever heard from a colleague or editor.
There are two that I can think of right off, that I thought were particularly bad. The first was actually just in the past few months, on Twitter, when I saw an editor use the #pubtip hashtag to tell writers that they had to use only one POV per scene/chapter or they’d never get published by a romance publisher. I, and many others, pretty immediately took exception to that proclamation. It’s both bad advice,and it’s also untrue. There’s a vast, vast difference between rapidly switching POVs in a sentence or paragraph, and switching POVs in a scene. It’s okay to use more than one POV in a scene, honest. Just do it with purpose and don’t go crazy inserting random POVs in there. But yes, you can use more than one. And you’ll get picked up by a romance publisher. Just ask Nora 
The other bad advice I didn’t hear or see directly, but learned of years ago when I was working with an author on her manuscript. I noticed that some of her sentences were incredibly awkward and realized she had no instances of the word “was” anywhere in her manuscript. Nowhere. Not one. Turns out, a former editor of hers had told her to eradicate every instance of the word “was” from her writing and to never ever use it in writing. People, the verb “to be” and any form of that, including “was” is not bad. It’s an integral part of our language and tying your writing in knots to avoid every usage of it is both ridiculous and will lead to painful reading. Was does not always equal passive and you have my permission to give a good hairpull to the next person who tells you that was always equals passive.
Now you tell me. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever heard dispensed, or ever heard of people receiving? I know there’s a LOT more out there. I’m hoping someone has something really ridiculous to share!
I’ve been told that I ought to never use a prologue.
Not very exciting, I will admit, but I’ve heard it many times.
The worst advice I’ve received has more to do with publishing than writing. People will repeatedly hammer you down with the odds. They tell you getting published is like winning the lottery. They tell you that you *must* write several terrible books before you can even hope to write a good one. They tell you not to expect to make any money at it if you do get struck by publishing lightning. You know what? Screw the odds. Write the best book you can, thumb your nose at the negative people, and make a decision to prove them all wrong. Writers are not statistics.
lol Still chuckling as I consider how this don’t use ‘was’ advice gets around! Anyway, I once witnessed some advice given in a writing forum that told writers: Never use words that end in “ly” or you’ll be instantly rejected by editors. Oddly enough this advisor also warned against using “lazy” words like “were” and “was”
I had one person who told me to erase every instance of the word “had” in my novel because it was a weak and overused word.
Another person suggested editing the first chapter until it was flawless before I continued writing. Not horrible advice for some people, but for me it would mean never getting past the first chapter.
LOL the “was” thing rang a bell. In my case it was a grad school prof who would grade down for use of the word “that” in a paper. Any use of “that”. For some reason he had no tandem aversion to “which”.
The worst writing advice I’ve ever gotten is “Write what you know.” Then again, it’s also one of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten, too.
It’s interpretation, of course. It’s too easy to read this old bit of advice as meaning “Don’t write outside your comfort zone,” and then everything you write comes out autobiographical (that was the case with me when I was young). It isn’t until after you learn that WWYK isn’t about facts but about emotions, desires, dreams, fears, and so on that you can expand your writing into new worlds. Although the facts and people and places may be unknown to you, you capital-k Know what makes the characters who they are and why they act and react the way they do.
For me, some of the worst things I heard were along the lines of “Publishers won’t accept novels longer than 90K words from first-time authors” and “Be prepared for editors/publishers to cut at least a chapter or two” and “Beginning writers should start their novels at what they think is chapter two.”
So, I kept cutting away at my MS while I was querying. When I got the offer from Carina Press, my editor pointed out several places where she wanted me to ADD more information — and in every instance it was something I’d written but removed from a previous draft.
I have received the “was” advice multiple times…I just haven’t listened to it.
I’ve heard the “was” advice multiple times. But for me the worst advice has been “you need to write every day”. This used to stress me out SO much because during the workweek I simply don’t have the time. When I came upon the advice to focus solely on word count goals, my writing life became so much easier!
The worst advice I was ever given was when I was pregnant with my first child (who is now 6). I was told to give up on my dream of becoming published because once “that baby” comes, I will never have time to write.
I almost followed this advice ONLY because it came from a pubbed author. But, the more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I would NEVER, EVER tell anyone to give up on their dreams, especially this baby I was bringing into the world.
What kind of example would I be setting if I didn’t follow my dreams? Just because the road gets rocky doesn’t mean you need to quit. It means you need to fight harder.
Since this terrible advice, I’ve gone on to contract 18 books.
“Start at the bottom and work your way up.” in regards to submitting to publishers. Dumbest thing I ever heard, and yet it prevails to this day, with people thinking they HAVE to start at some no-name, bottom of the barrel publisher to ‘get their name out there’ before a bigger pub will ever notice them.
Forget that, do it the opposite way. Start at the top and work your way down. Publishing doesn’t work like your local McDonald’s where you start out cleaning grease traps and work your way up to managing the place. I submitted my very first MS to my dream publisher. It got rejected, but a year later the next MS I sent the same editor didn’t. That first rejection got my foot in the door with an editor, something submitting to a fly by night pub would never have done.
Go for the big fish, folks. The worst they can do is say no and if you’re planning to be a writer you’ll probably need to get used to hearing that word a lot anyway lol.
I’ve heard that “it” is also one of those ‘avoid at all costs’ words. I can see where that comes from, but sometimes, it’s ok to use it!
“Easiest way to write a book. Plagiarize.”
I wish I was kidding, but those were his actual words. A local writing group has been taken over by a self-publishing guru who is telling everyone to go into bookstores and see what’s selling, then go through the table of contents of non-fic books for the book organization, then basically re-write it and throw it up as a Kindle book. Because you’ll get to keep all the money yourself and not have to share with a publisher.
“Write what you know.”
Have yet to meet a boy wizard, a wicked witch or a Wookie and last I check it was still not possible to fly at the speed of light – so how did those stories ever get written?!?
I’m with J.L. Hilton on this one. I’ve come across the phrase ‘kill your babies’ several times in my writing travels. I know what the intention is, but for me it’s terrible advice. I started hacking away ruthlessly, so much so that much of my character building got thwacked for the sake of a smaller word count. I’ve since put my WIPs back together, and my characters are much stronger for it.
I think “kill your darlings” has very specific meaning that often gets bastardized and suggested for doing edits on a wider scale than meant.
“was” – “ly” – “write every day” – “brand yourself NOW, before you even finish your first book” – “shoot for the middle, or lower” – “your editor will cut your baby up, so pad the word count” – “passive = bad, cut it ALL” – “Stick with one POV for your whole book or it’ll never sell!”
I’ve heard them all and I’m sick to death of writing advice now. The words brand and platform are no longer allowed to be uttered in my presence. If I attempted to follow every insane suggestion I’ve heard I’d be fetal and drooling in the corner.
I’ve heard a ton of writing advice that doesn’t work for me as an individual. One in particular was “follow the market.” Nope, doesn’t work for me.
Might work for some others, though. And if I hear “branding” one more time I’ll choke.
“You can’t write in more than one genra: your readers won’t know where to find you in the book store.
I have heard this many time times from editors and agents at writing conferences. I always thought “So why not just encourage new, different readers?”
“Take out the description, its not needed” and she really honestly wanted it all removed, leaving only dialogue and sex so long as I didn’t stop to describe the bed or anything. LOL
When I started writing, age 13, my teacher told me to stop writing the romantic historicals and start writing gritty, urban dramas.
the other piece of bad writing advice was more recent. Never use “said,” this so-called advisor told me, find a more interesting word to use instead.
Like Denise, the worst advice I heard was about following the market. How, when by the time the market is in the market editors and agents are probably sick to death of it? I don’t want mine to be one of the many X types of books out there, and I don’t want to try to write a story that has to be yanked out of me when it doesn’t feel right
Never read reviews. Um… what? Take reviews with a grain of salt, sure. Remember that reviewers all have their personal tastes and prejudices, definitely. Don’t respond to a review/reviewer in anger, absolutely.
But why would you avoid reading reviews at all? Readers are the people who buy our books. We should want to know what they think, even when it’s not what we want to hear. I’ve gotten excellent suggestions and critiques even from generally negative reviews.
I wouldn’t ignore all reviews any more than I’d ignore comments from my editors.
I thought of another. ONLY use “said and question” for dialogue tags. “never use anything else”
I can’t make this stuff up.
Best piece of writing advice I’ve ever gotten. “Love you. Hate this story. Let’s fix the story because I know you can”. Love a good edit bitch slapping.
Hate edit advice of the week–you know, a new craze has started so everyone is expected to conform, like so and so complained online about too many green eyed heroes so we’re not having any green eyed heroes right now. Again, can’t make this stuff up.
I had someone tell me to count how many times I used “that” and gave me formula I had to use to get rid of the extra “thats”. I also had the “was” one – that one almost put me in the hospital.
I’m interested by what you guys are sharing. It’s especially interesting to me because I can see the grains of good advice in what you’re noting as bad advice, but the the good advice was too sweeping, gave bad explanations or the giver really didn’t understand that absolutes are just as dangerous as the thing they’re warning to do or not to do!
@Wayne
I actually think writing in one genre is good advice, but not because of finding you in bookstores. I think that’s a really, really simple way of breaking down the issue!
Kim, I call it “that zapping”. When I first started I did use THAT way too much. It was a fall back filler word for me. As much as I hated “that zapping” my doc needed it. Editor didn’t want them all removed just a fair number since I WAY overused it. Now, I tend to write without using it as a crutch but I’m still mindful in my read back because I know its a bad habit of mine.
Haven’t had the “was” one yet.
@Chela–I was given the “never use words that end in -ly” advice, too. I understand the point of not overusing adverbs, but I once entered a contest only to receive my entry back with every word that ended in “ly” circled, including words that weren’t even adverbs, like “family,” “rely” and “only” (used as an adjective, as in “his only son”).
But the worst piece of advice I ever received was given to me by a published author, who told me that because introspection is “boring,” I should never have more than three sentences in a row of internal monologue. I agree that dialogue and action make for quicker pacing, but never more than three sentences? That’s a pretty draconian rule.
So much “bad” advice starts off as gems of good advice and then they get twisted into sweeping “always/never” rules, like the adverb (ly) one and helpful tips to identify passive voice.
My favorite Worst Advice:
- Never start a story with dialogue.
- Head-hopping is okay because it’s a style.
- Write to the current trends.
- Your hero/heroine must meet as soon as possible (which became a rule about them meeting as close to page 1 as possible).
- If you have a typo anywhere in your first 3 chapters, you’ll automatically get a rejection letter.
Ah yes, the dictate against using “was.” It seems to come from two places–first the admonition against passive voice–which NO ONE seems to understand, and they often misinterpret to mean that every use of the verb “to be” constitutes passive voice. When I worked in technical writing I had to educate every new editor we got about that.
Second, as a poster said above, many writing books/teachers caution against using forms of “to be” because they are “weak” or boring. Problem is, if you replace every since “was” with a more “exciting” verb, you get purple prose.
I’ve been fortunate, by and large, to get very good writing advise. But sooner or later every one of my teachers got around to genre-shaming: “When are you going to write something serious?” “Science fiction is associated with ‘hack’ writing.” “You’re better than this pulp.”
Sigh. I had writer’s block for a solid year after I left college, and I still sometimes flinch from calling what I do fantasy (which isn’t strictly accurate anyway, in marketing terms). I say I write gothic westerns. Evidently that sounds cooler; I get a much better response from casual acquaintances.
“Make your voice conform to the style of the publishing house you want to sell to.”
If I do that, It’s not my voice anymore, is it?
Or…
“Don’t write fiction, they don’t make money. Be a journalist and earn a paycheck.”
Gotta love relatives.
My favorite, though?
“You need a serious critique partner who will rip apart your work and show you the fatal flaws in it before you ever send it out.”
Yup. Because authors are chock-full of self-confidence. I’ve been published for four years now, and I STILL close my eyes when I hit SEND on a submission.
I’ve seen more promising authors (and artists of other kinds, now that I think on it) give up on their dreams completely because someone who was “helping” gave them an “honest, no-holds-barred” critique. Believe in yourself, believe in your work, yes. Get someone to look it over, definitely. I have about five people who check my work out religiously before I send it to a publisher. But the kind of critique that puts you down, or makes you give up? No. Avoid like kryptonite, or you’ll never be Superwoman.
Can someone explain the adverb thing to me? Why do they exist if we’re not supposed to employ them? I recently (adverb!) read a book published in the 1950s and it had tons of adverbs. Is it a modern language, contemporary style thing? I get that in some cases it can be redundant and reflect poor writing (eg “That’s the worst thing I ever read,” he said sadly), but I don’t get why they’d be banned.
Another piece of bad advice that’s one of my pet peeves: Never end a sentence with a preposition. This not only forces the author to write — and make his/her characters speak — in an archaic way, but it’s just not correct, according to sources I’ve read, including the Oxford Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/ending-sentences-with-prepositions
On the -ly warning, it’s a good editing guide: check for adverbs (and searching for -ly will show most of them) because rewriting to eliminate them can often strengthen the sentence. I stick in adverbs all the time as placeholders for things I know will need reworking in revisions.
Actually, I stick in all kinds of placeholders for things to come back and fix later. I was working on a story not long ago and couldn’t remember a secondary character’s last name, so I filled in Mr. LASTNAME several times. Better than stopping my momentum to go look it up in my notes.
I don’t know if this counts, but I referred to a knight’s warhorse in an historical manuscript, and the editor crossed out ‘stallion’ and wrote ‘gelding’. That didn’t fill me with confidence
I heard of a freelance editor who told an author to replace all instances of “said” in her manuscript with those horrible overly descriptive dialogue tags instead, she gasped melodramatically.
I’m with Shae on the “ly” thing: there’s nothing wrong with the occasional adverb here and there, but finding the specific verb instead of hedging a general one with an adverb makes a stronger statement–like “She crept” or “She limped” or “She crawled” rather than “She walked slowly.” And same with the “to be” verb forms–we all need those! But there’s a reason “to be” is called a “state of being” verb. That’s because it just…is….
The worst advice I ever took was my own, when I discounted my high school guidance counselor’s opinion that I should become a playwright. I hadn’t heard of any female playwrights, or really any playwrights except for Shakespeare, and I thought the g.c. was being a dope because everybody knew real writers were people like Hemingway who became alcoholic and then killed themselves, which was not in my long-range plan. So I waited 30 years to write fiction. Just another example of why we should support the public schools.
Nice! I inspired this blog!
The worst advice I received: “Why are you writing? That’s stupid, it’s not like it’s going to make you money. Stop sitting around and get a real job!”
While taking a class on writing for magazines and newspapers the instructor told the class that we shouldn’t submit to Huffington Post because they don’t pay the writers. I thought that was a bit shortsighted. I recently had a piece published on Huffpost and it gave me 23,500 hits (in one weekend) to my blog. Sure, it would’ve been great to get paid for my work, but the benefits of attracting the attention of their large readership far outweighed the freebie.
I’ve been thinking this over, and one just came to me. I actually read an “advice” post where the author said that at the end of every chapter the main character should always end up in a worse position than he/she was in the beginning of the chapter.
Huh?
*Every* chapter?
In *every* novel?
In *every* genre?
I could see some version-lite of this advice in a thriller/suspense/horror novel. Maybe. But in a romantic comedy? A contemporary coming-of-age novel? A satire?
The “advice” was so ludicrous to me that I had to do some digging on the person who proclaimed it with such authority. It turns out that the person has only published short stories. No novels. No novellas. So, I suppose that the “advice” might ring a bit true if one were writing a thriller short story. However, to dole out this “advice” as absolutist sage wisdom really made me question the person’s ethos.
Plus, I just wanted to ask the author–have you ever actually read a published novel?
Only use said and asked as dialogue tags. Now, I am fully aware that my characters growl, snarl, and snort far more often then they should in my first draft. Heck, they are constantly raising eyebrows, rolling their eyes, sighing, and laughing – often at times where they shouldn’t – but I don’t worry about that when I’m writing.
When I’m editing, I do global searches for my crutch words, and if they are superfluous, I edit them out. That’s why there is a difference between the writing and the editing phases. If I was hyper-aware of rules and advice whilst writing, I’d never finish a novel.
Thank you for bringing this up! I quit listening to about 80% of RWA contest advice years ago because I was constantly hearing this kind of silly advice full of absolutes.
Never use “was”, never use an adverb, never use a dialogue tag, only use “said” or “asked” (note how the last two contradict each other…), use only short sentences, never write a prologue, never use description, never let your character look in a mirror…
The advice isn’t bad if you take away the word “never” or “always” and also make it specific to the writing. “This sentence could be stronger if you change the adverb for a stronger verb.” or “This paragraph slows the pacing because of the passive voice of the description.”
And note how I only quit listening to 80% of the “advice”. Because even among all of the parroted “rules” there is generally some helpful nuggets of advice.
(Let me guess, I should never use quotation marks in blog posts either…)
LOL at some of these comments.
I agree that most of these comments are not helpful at all. Whoever told these people these things, should be vaporized.
Now, there was one that stuck out to me. Using -ly words are considered lazy by even best selling authors. If you write: (“Plums deify!” John said, vaguely.) Other writers will have a problem with it. They do it every now and again, but only in the most extreme situations.
And yes, most don’t like any usage of -ly words
“Don’t rock the boat.”
Of course, I’m pretty sure that’s the worst advice every woman receives in ANY situation when someone wants to keep her quiet.
Love the comments, especially (hope the ‘ly’ is allowed here ha ha) the last one, Cristy’s.
Am a newbie and am researching for my first submission.
Worst writing advice “you’ll never get published”. Well, that still remains to be seen, but judging from the comments here I’ll certainly (oops) be giving it a try nonetheless.
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