Intro

If you’re a writer on social media, you’ve probably seen all sorts of accounts posting writing advice pretty much daily, telling you the many dos and don’ts of this particular creative pursuit. Most of these are pretty common, repeated over and over again by multiple different accounts, but others are less so.

Today, I’m going to share with you my five personal favorite pieces of writing advice, and why I choose to follow them.

So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

1 – You Don’t Have to Follow Every Piece of Writing Advice You See

So, this is both an actual piece of advice and a bit of a disclaimer for this post, because I think it’s important for writers—especially new writers—to understand before they start looking at writing advice online. You’re going to see a lot of different advice, and some—if not most—of it is going to seem stupid to you. (Yes, I speak from personal experience.) And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.

Pretty much all writing advice you’re going to see is the product of an opinion that whoever said it has, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. There is no right or wrong way to do anything creative; just because you agree with a piece of advice doesn’t mean it’s universally right, and just because you disagree doesn’t mean it’s universally wrong. It’s all based on opinions, which are purely subjective. 

Which means you get to pick and choose what you want to follow and what you want to ignore, based on your particular tastes, style, and story. Just do what feels right to you. 

So, even if every other piece of advice I give in this article doesn’t speak to you, I hope you’ll at least choose to take this one to heart.

2 – Show and Tell

An alternate version of the classic “show, don’t tell” that you’re bound to have seen a few dozen times if you’re at all familiar with writing advice online and on social media, “show and tell” outlines the times when you should give a slower, more detailed description of events in your story (showing), and when you should just give a brief overview (telling). 

Basically, you show the parts that are important—anything that moves any part of the story forward in a significant way, whether it’s the main plot, a character arc, a romance arc, or anything in between—and tell the parts that are less so, but still need to be included for the story to make sense, like travel scenes in which they literally are just traveling and doing nothing important to the story. 

I like “show and tell” better than “show, don’t tell” just because the wording isn’t as misleading. “Show, don’t tell” doesn’t actually mean that you should never tell, like a lot of people (understandably) misinterpret it for meaning. It just means that you should show, not tell, important parts, which is actually solid advice that serves as a good reminder. It does not mean that telling doesn’t have its place too.

3 – Make a Writing Routine (And Stick to It)

I’m a firm believer that practice makes perfect, no matter what the skill is, and writing is no exception. No one is born good at this, and you can’t get better unless you actually make the time to do it.

Now, finding time to write is obviously something that’s easier for some people to do than it is for others. People have jobs and families and other responsibilities that are more important than writing, but there are very few people out there who actually literally have no free time. If you find yourself struggling to find time to sit down and write, you might want to really start to pay attention to how you spend what free time you do have. Do you spend three hours watching TV or playing video games every night? Do you spend your whole lunch break just scrolling through social media? These time slots—or at least parts of them—might be better used for writing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to totally give up the things that you used to use that time for but, if you really do want to write, you have to be willing to cut back on things like TV or video games or whatever other non-essential things could be taking up your free time. And keep in mind that non-essential could mean different things to different people, just depending on your personal goals, values, and situation. Decide what’s actually important to you and what isn’t, and start from there.

As for actually setting up a routine for yourself, it can help to try to identify your most productive time(s) of day when you’re feeling the most creative and energized. If you don’t know when this is, the best way to find out is to just try writing at different times and keeping track of how much progress you make during those times, whether you do it by tracking word count, time spent writing, or whatever you personally feel best determines your productivity. After doing this for a week or so, you should have a pretty solid idea of when your best creative times are.

For example, I’ve always been a morning person, and I’ve found that I usually have the easiest time writing then, before the day really gets started and I have other things I have to do. I get up, have something to eat, then turn on some music and start writing. I usually get a good couple hours or so in during this time before it’s time to start working on other things, which is usually enough time for me to hit the day’s writing goal. 

Which brings me to another thing I’d like to mention. A writing routine doesn’t necessarily have to be something like “Every morning, I’m going to write from eight to ten” or something like that. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to write every day, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can have certain days where you plan to write, whether it’s every other day or once a week or whatever. The important thing is that, regardless of frequency, you’re making the time to write. You have a plan, and you make the decision to stick with that plan. And, by sticking to that plan, you can be confident that you’re making steady progress towards whatever your goals are.

4 – Take Time to Refill Your Creative Well

“Refilling the well” is a term that you may or may not have heard before in creative communities. Imagine that the water in this imaginary well is your inspiration, the books, movies, shows, games, or whatever it is that inspire you to write your stories. When you’re working on a project, you’re constantly drawing that inspiration up out of the well and putting it to use. 

The thing is, if you don’t keep a steady flow of new inspiration going into the well—done by reading or watching or playing stories that you enjoy—it’s eventually going to dry up, and you’re going to be left with no inspiration and thus very little motivation to write. So, if you’re a creator of any sort, it’s important to make sure that you’re consuming media that inspires you.

As a writer—on top of whatever else you may be outside your creative life—it can be hard to make taking time to do things like watch movies or read books a priority in your busy life; stuff like that doesn’t exactly seem particularly important. But, if you’re a creative sort, it is. In fact, seeing stories written by other people might actually be one of the best things that you can do to get better at writing because, whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re absorbing what you’re reading or seeing. Not only are you getting inspiration from it, but you’re also seeing how stories are typically constructed and executed; you’re getting a feel for different types of characters and how an audience might respond to them; you’re seeing how things like foreshadowing and plot twists come into play. All that, and so much more.

I know that I wouldn’t write like I do today if it wasn’t for the influence of the books I’ve read or the shows I’ve watched or the games I’ve played. I probably wouldn’t even write what I write today if it wasn’t for them. Consuming media is what gave me my love for fantasy and sci-fi, action and adventure, and so on. It’s also from reading books by other people that I pieced together how to write action scenes, dialogue, characters, and everything that I like writing now.

So, in short, take some time to read a book, or watch a movie, or play a game; it’ll help you in your creative life way more than you’d expect.

5 – Don’t Take Criticism Personally

Particularly if you’re specifically looking for feedback, it’s important to remember that criticism (the productive kind, at least) is meant to help make your story better. It isn’t a personal attack against you or your work—even if it can often feel pretty personal, considering the fact that you poured your heart and soul into this story that’s now under scrutiny. 

It isn’t easy, but you have to try to distance yourself from your work a little bit for this stage so that you can look at things subjectively. It’s important to remember that the point of feedback is to help other people read and understand your story, so that other people can enjoy it. Reminding yourself of this when you start feeling defensive or upset over negative feedback is a good first step.

Feedback is for getting someone with fresh eyes and a different perspective from your own looking at your work, so that they can see things about your story that you, being wrapped up in the thick of writing it, couldn’t see on your own. When receiving feedback of any sort—especially the negative kind—it’s important to keep an open mind and to try to see the issue from the perspective of a reader.

Now, if the criticism isn’t from an editor or beta reader or something—if it’s from, say, a bad review or comment—the variables can be a little different. The most important thing to keep in mind about this sort of feedback, though, is this: These are opinions. In most cases, they’re probably not even professional ones, just those of some crabby rando online who wants to share their opinion. 

I’m just going to go right out and say that any criticism you get after the story is published is useless to you as the writer. It’s already out there; it’s done. I understand that you might want to see how it’s being received and if people seem to like it or not, but I really do believe that it’s for the best that you don’t look too deeply into what people are saying about your work. 

So, if the criticism is from an editor or beta reader or anyone else who reads your story before it’s published, try to be objective about it and really think about what they’re saying before you make a decision. If the criticism is from anyone who reads it after it’s published, then the most productive thing you can do is ignore it; what’s done is done and, even if what they’re saying isn’t necessarily wrong, there’s no changing it now, so there’s no point in stressing over it and potentially suffering a major blow to your confidence. 

Outro

That’s it for today’s post. I hope that you’ve found this helpful, and that you’ll see about putting at least some of these into practice. Thank you for reading!