The Journal: Surface Advice

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In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Topic: Surface Advice
* The New Mentorship Program
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” Mark Twain

Topic: Surface Advice

That’s what I call the popular but basically meaningless buzz-words that some instructors recommend and then can’t explain, or can’t explain adequately, or explain incorrectly. It’s what I call surface advice. It sounds good but it explains nothing. At best it’s a waste of time. At worst, especially if the explanation is incorrect or the examples are erroneous, it can be downright harmful.

In today’s “Of Interest,” I almost included a link to an article by a fiction editor who counts among her clients at least two top-selling authors. But I didn’t.

As I read the article, it soon became apparent to me the author was only skimming the surface. Not because that’s what she wanted to do, but because her knowledge was that limited. And she couldn’t explain the subject technique well or provide in-depth advice on how to achieve it (wait for it)… because she doesn’t write fiction. She only talks about fiction. And she tries to teach others how to write fiction. She even writes books about writing fiction.

I’m not disparaging the editor’s character or abilities. She might well have the eyes and other sensibilities to be a great copyeditor, but she doesn’t have the experience to teach fiction writing.

To be sure, some of the points the author offered in the post were spot-on. As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

But even when her advice was correct on the surface, it was vague and thin, consisting mostly of the aforementioned buzz-words (e.g., “deep POV” and “add suspense” and “show, don’t tell”) without examples.

So I gave her the momentary benefit of the doubt and drilled down. In a separate post on “Show, Don’t Tell,” she did present examples, but they were nothing short of horrible. In both the before (tell) and after (show) examples, she was telling instead of showing.

The internet is rampant with such advice. My point here is not that you should avoid it — I’m pretty sure you can’t unless you live under a rock — but to literally Question Everything.

When you come across what appears to be valid writing advice, read it closely. Does it say anything you didn’t know before? Does it provide examples, and do the examples make plain sense to you? Are they examples you can apply to your own writing? And if you do so, do they enhance your writing?

If the answer to any of the above is No, run from that site and don’t visit it again.

Be careful out there.

The New Mentorship Program

I’m still revising my new mentorship program, and I’m very excited about it. It will feel good to get back into teaching directly, one-on-one, with students who believe enough in themselves to make an investment in their future.

I suspect I’ll have all the glitches worked out and be ready to announce the new mentorships formally in a few days.

Talk with you again when I can.

Of Interest

See “Tips for Historical Writers” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/tips-for-historical-writers/. Some good stuff here.

See “A Rare, Horrifying Logbook” at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/logbook-slave-ship-mary. Maybe story ideas.

See “Berggasthaus Aescher Wildkirchli” at https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/berggasthaus-aescher-wildkirchli. I hoped for pics of the interior.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 570 words

Writing of Body on the Beach (novel, working title)

Day 1…… 1135 words. Total words to date…… 1135
Day 1…… 1409 words. Total words to date…… 2544

Total fiction words for the month……… 7817
Total fiction words for the year………… 323100
Total nonfiction words for the month… 9400
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 146970
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 470070

Calendar Year 2020 Novels to Date…………………… 5
Calendar Year 2020 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2020 Short Stories to Date… 12
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 50
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 208
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

2 thoughts on “The Journal: Surface Advice”

  1. Also a helpful check is to see what they’ve published first. One of the biggest things that impressed me about Dean Wesley Smith was that when I ran across him, I had already read his TV tie-ins. There’s a lot of people professing expertise and have little published. There are two very popular writer/editors who land on the Writer’s Digest 101 every year, advising how to write fiction, and yet, I can count their fiction on one hand.

    Still another way to tell–and this is very telling–is if they talk about what they learned from other writers. The “experts” won’t because they feel that would mean they weren’t experts. Whereas on a site like Deborah Chester’s, she talks a lot about the writers she learned from, which DWS and Kris Rusch have also done. Kevin J. Anderson has also done that at Superstars.

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