Over on The Ink Well there is a great catalog of tips which provide assistance for all writers, even those who have not yet put pen-to-paper.
To help writers in the community strengthen their proficiency the regular weekly prompt also contains a Skills Challenge, which encourages participants to make use of the writing tips resource.
With my schedule and life being as it is I haven't had chance to partake in many challenges, but when I do I try to ensure I follow the prompt and the skills challenge.
It's a great way to revisit lessons I should already have nailed down.
Something the writing tips try to do is remind everyone most 'rules' for writing are not inviolable, yet neither are they frothy suggestions to be ignored at a whim. Having a firm grasp of what writing tips - even rules - exist, and why they do so, makes it easier to manipulate them in the furtherance of your writing endeavours.
I think my favorite tip, and one which two types of writers fall foul of, is 'Murder Your Darlings'.
In his excellent tome from 2000, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King says to 'Kill your darlings...' but the original saying is found in print back in 1906 when Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch suggested writers 'Murder your darlings.'
What do these giants of their eras mean?
To write is to love words, and ideas. And people in love gush. They let the world know how they feel in glorious, extensive, detail. There is no-one in the presence of people in love who do not know about it.
Their excess of emotion is unfelt by those in its thrall. Those who experience it second-hand see every longing look, hear each simpering giggle, they observe all the smiles and touches and gazes thought to be delivered surreptitiously. The environment is overwhelmed by the love of lovers and, sweet as it may be, it is a surfeit.
When friends take such a loved-up person aside and suggest every moment of every conversation need not be filled with how wonderful the persons objet de l'amour is the response is the same as to having suggested the person murder their lover.
And who would want a relationship to end so tragically?
But words are not people. No matter how beautifully crafted a sentence, paragraph, or chapter is, there are stories they are written in but where they do not belong.
Early on a writer needs to learn when and where this is true for themselves - unless they can afford professional editing services. If the said writer achieves a modicum of success then it's likely their publisher will provide editorial services that provide assistance.
Of course, some writers achieve super success. Which brings us to my earlier assertion that two types of writer fall foul of the rule, or tip, to Murder your darlings.
The first is the new writer who is wedded to each and every word they offer to the world. That's not to say they haven't deleted words, lines, even whole paragraphs. But, when they finally type The End, they fully believe each and every word, idea, and plot point is crucial to the tale.
The second is the writer who, having had initial work reigned in by wise editors, finds themselves successful and their work delivered as holy writ which no editors red pen may defile. Their works start as taught 250-330 page-turners lean as an endurance runner's physique, and morph into 600+ page behemoths which can be used as doorstops once read.
Below I am including a section of writing I have murdered. The story it once proudly prefaced lives on in my collection Moons, Myths, and Monsters. It took effort to wield the scalpel which excised it from the story. I fought to find a way that allowed it to remain. Yet, when the cut was finally made (with the assistance of a wise friend), the final edition breathed in a way which this beautiful piece of deadweight did not allow.
Content by stuartcturnbull, art from Clker-Free-Vector-Images at Pixabay.
'The world ended with Öraefajökull, the imposing mass which looms across south-eastern Iceland. Actually, for me personally, I think it ended twenty years before with Eyjafjallajökull, I just didn’t realize.
The volcano had ejected a thick grey volcanic soup up to twenty-thousand feet and it had the potential to turn airplane engines into deadweight, so all flights were grounded. The airline promised none for at least four days. My new H.R. department didn’t want to pay for flights the long way round, so I got a few more days in Montmartre.
Although born in England, France was home. The lushness of a childhood in the Dordogne will do that. And I loved Paris. Well, parts of it, this part.
News of the delays arrived on my Blackberry as lunch, a salad Niçoise, arrived. I glanced at the message, requested a half bottle of Chablis, and relaxed into the afternoon. Later I poked around antique stalls, thrift shops, and bookstores. In Rue Casimir-Perier I found a place which opened up from a tiny frontage to inhabit four floors and countless back rooms. To the making of many books, there is no end, and this shop also seemed to go on forever.
“Are you after something in particular?” The proprietor asked.
“A first edition Daudet?” I asked in jest.
He screwed his nose to the side and shook his head. “Not this week. A Proust, or how about a first French impression of a Dostoyevsky?”
I shrugged. Maybe it’s the English in me but I’ve never understood the French/Russian love affair, and my copy of À la recherché du temps perdu is as pristine as the day my aunt presented it.
“I’ll just browse.”
In a room so small it was surely once a broom cupboard I spied a book called 'Travels in Iceland'. Apart from the currently erupting volcano I knew nothing of the country, so took the book out. It had a stiff green cover and the title was printed in Richelieu Red, though somewhat faded on the spine. Its paper was thick and old enough to have become like yellow parchment. The print was uneven and, where printed pages had been folded unevenly before binding, the margins were squint. I began reading. The shop and book did that strange dilation thing with time and suddenly the shopkeeper was advising me it was time to close.
I grinned inanely while returning from a land of volcanic rock, hot springs, trolls, and faeries. “How much,” I eventually asked.
“Fifteen francs.” He shrugged at my frown. “Euros, whatever. So, your flight is delayed?”
“Me and a million other people.”
“Ah, but I bet there aren’t so many using the time to learn new things.” He shifted to let me past. “Now, I have a mistress to pleasure before getting home to the family.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I’ve always chosen to believe not.
Back at the hotel, I continued to read. The writer was a Major Serge Dassault of the 4th Hussars. His tone reminded me of Fred Burnaby, whose ‘A Ride to Khiva’ was a teen favorite of mine. There was the same imperious tone; the expectation that, as a member of a leading power of the day, one could travel wherever and whenever one wanted. That being said, Dassault was more poetical and where he wrote of trolls heaving rocks at their traveling party, or faeries dancing under a midnight sun, you could envisage the rock formations and flickering lights he described with such fancy.
I finished reading and went right back to the start. By the time flights were going again I’d decided my new job with a large Seattle software company would be more temporary than initially planned.
Then I was thirty-nine. Fifteen years had passed, I was redundant - not for the first time - and about to be divorced. At least the paternity test meant there would be no child maintenance.
For several weeks I wandered around Seattle feeling numb and waiting for the psychic shock to hit, or the creeping ennui of failing at life to engulf me. In small, non-chain, coffee shops I sat with my laptop hoping for the novel inside to manifest itself and tumble out. Mostly though, I surfed the web. Page after page of pictures showing abandoned buildings in a state of decay or reclamation by nature.
The article about Öraefajökull was a misplaced link on a page about tsunami warning programs - something I’d written algorithms for at USGS seven or eight years previously, just after getting married.
The feeling on reading it was like enduring a day of thick Seattle cloud and mist and, just when you’ve given up on seeing the sky until tomorrow, sunshine breaks through and Puget Sound sparkles like a million crystals scattered over a cobalt blue blanket.
Iceland had slipped from an immediate goal to a lifetime trip to be planned, to something for a future unlikely to ever happen. But now, now . . .
Flights were under seven hundred dollars. Leaning on old contacts I found a job monitoring the very volcano that had reminded me of my old Icelandic desire. Within three weeks my small selection of retained belongings were in storage and I was at the airport. ’Travels in Iceland’ was an old, and welcome, traveling companion.
Dassault arrived in Reykjavik by ship. The moon was high and full, the seas mostly calm, and the shore twinkled with moonlight reflecting from those windows not yet shuttered. We flew across the capital on a slow descent towards the international airport at Keflavik a short distance away. The capital city was laid out in an irregular pattern and lit with the same sodium yellow glow I’d seen in every night-time city ever visited. Still, my stomach knotted with excitement.'
Content by stuartcturnbull, art from Clker-Free-Vector-Images at Pixabay.
Editing is dreadful, but when it´s well done you are the only one that notices 😁
tru dat
We stopped by to show some appreciation, and have manually curated your piece.
Thank you
Hi @stuartcturnbull,
Thank you for participating in the #teamuk curated tag. We have upvoted your quality content.
For more information visit our discord https://discord.gg/8CVx2Am
!ALIVE | !BBH | !PGM
@stuartcturnbull! Your Content Is Awesome so I just sent 1 $BBH (Bitcoin Backed Hive) to your account on behalf of @vocup. (11/20)
BUY AND STAKE THE PGM TO SEND A LOT OF TOKENS!
The tokens that the command sends are: 0.1 PGM-0.1 LVL-0.1 THGAMING-0.05 DEC-15 SBT-1 STARBITS-[0.00000001 BTC (SWAP.BTC) only if you have 2500 PGM in stake or more ]
5000 PGM IN STAKE = 2x rewards!
Discord
Support the curation account @ pgm-curator with a delegation 10 HP - 50 HP - 100 HP - 500 HP - 1000 HP
Get potential votes from @ pgm-curator by paying in PGM, here is a guide
I'm a bot, if you want a hand ask @ zottone444
@stuartcturnbull! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @vocup. (10/20)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
