Posts Tagged ‘advice’
The throughline is an invisible thread that binds your story together. It comprises those elements that are critical to the very heart of your tale — these elements needn’t be the same for every story you tell but should remain the same throughout a given story. You don’t switch horses in midstream, after all.
Once in a while you’ll reach for your creativity and all you’ll find are empty shelves — but creative types do not always have the luxury of sitting on our hands until creativity decides to show its face. Doubly true when deadlines (and by proxy, money) is on the line. What do you do? You do. Meaning, you create anyway.
Here’s why this matters: because both writing and storytelling comprise, at the most basic level, a series of word choices. Words are the building blocks of what we do. They are the atoms of our elements. They are the eggs in our omelets. They are the shots of liquor in our cocktails. Get it right? Serendipity.
I’ve been going through a process of “unfucking” a novel — parts of it fired really well, but it just didn’t feel right. Something about it just didn’t hang together, so it was time to break out all the tools a writer has in his arsenal — every scalpel, hatchet, reciprocating saw, Drilldo, and orbital laser I had. Thus I thought, “Well, hell, I should chronicle the grand unfucking at terribleminds.”
Seen a lot of folks giving advice to so-called “aspiring” writers these days, so, I figured what the hell? Might as well throw my dubious nuggets of wisdom into the stew. See if any of this tastes right to you. Behold, then: 25 things I want to say to you self-proclaimed “aspiring” writers.
