“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin
“I really should start writing.”
Those five words have probably been spoken more frequently than just about any other words I’ve heard in my lifetime. We all have stories to tell, but few of us ever get around to telling them. We procrastinate. We struggle to get that first sentence on a page. We aren’t satisfied with our own words. We give up and move on.
Writing is like any other skill. You have to start with the fundamentals and practice them again and again. You don’t have to be born to write (I mean, is anyone?), but you do have to put in the hard work. You have to commit to telling the story you want to tell and then tell it. Trust that it won’t ever be right the first time you tell it. Understand that there will be times the words just won’t come.
The SANDMAN SPEAKS
As a lifelong reader of comic books, some of the best writing advice came from the authors I read the most growing up. Stan Lee taught me to never take my writing too seriously. Chris Claremont taught me to weave a truly captivating narrative. And Frank Miller taught me that taking readers into the darkness will always be a journey into mystery.
But it was the writer of The Sandman, Neil Gaiman, who influenced my writing most from a practical perspective. His advice was, quite honestly, simple and direct. Even as the craft took him to Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker award heights, he consistently remained true to his own advice.
- Write.
- Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
- Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
- Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
- Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
- Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
- Laugh at your own jokes.
- The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE EIGHT
Sandwiched on my desk between the gleaming halves of a T-800 skull is another one of my go-to resources, Kurt Vonnegut’s Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style. The book captures the essence of Vonnegut the teacher, a man who was beyond generous with his writing advice. Sometimes referred to as one of the grandmasters of American literature, Vonnegut was a prolific writer—he extended his craft in letters, essays, and plays—and speaker who didn’t rest on the laurels of his fourteen novels.
A true practitioner of the art of storytelling, his 8 Basics of Creative Writing grew his unique palette of writing experience: “His work is a mesh of contradictions: both science fiction and literary, dark and funny, classic and counter-culture, warm-blooded and very cool. And it’s all completely unique.” Vonnegut included the 8 Basics in the preface of his short story collection, Bagombo Snuff Box, and they are as timeless as his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse Five.
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Somewhere between Gaiman and Vonnegut, I found my voice. I discovered not just how to write my story but how to tell it. There’s a difference, and it’s not all that subtle. We all remember the great storytellers, which the best writers tend to be. Their stories capture the imagination, captivate the reader, and convey a narrative that transcends time. We might not reach the same heights, but with a little practice we can get a little closer.
Now, as the sun starts to set on an otherwise slow day, I really should start writing.
