FINISHING A STORY - Terrible Writing Advice

So we are up early in the morning and have finally conquered writer’s block! No more distractions. Let’s finish a novel! We have finally started writing the first draft. Nothing is going to stand in the way of getting this draft done! Nothing except this tiny doubt, that small voice that tells us that maybe my story is going to be terrible? Maybe, that voice is right? There is only one thing to do, ignore your fear and hope it goes away! Managing your own inner doubts is a skill a writer need not develop since once an author becomes rich and famous, all of those doubts instantly vanish! I mean, if we actually write, mean people on the internet might trash it. Better plan to write a perfect book instead! But how does an author craft the perfect story? A perfect story is made by a perfect outline of course! While short outlines can be a great starting point for a lot of authors, even if you end up ignoring 90% of it like I do, a huge highly detailed outline will help even more. Just keep tweaking that outline forever. Endlessly working on an outline is much better than actually writing a story and confronting our inner doubts. But planning a story isn’t enough. We may not have the courage to finish writing a book, but enough to brag about it We need to tell everyone we meet that we are writing a book! When someone asks what our book is going to be about, be sure to ramble out a bunch of half baked ideas before telling them that it will be an obvious best seller. A surefire sign that you book idea is great is when the person you are talking to keeps making increasing desperate attempts to escape the conversation. Wait a moment. Should we really be sharing our ideas? No. Because someone might steal that very original idea for a story. Writing is all about ideas, and not about actual writing. That would be ridiculous. Only good ideas make up stories and good writing is most certainly not a result of proper execution or engaging characters. It’s not like ideas are cheap. Better protect those precious ideas by judiciously pasting copyright notices all over your outline and on every draft chapter. Also be sure to warn any publishing house that the submitted manuscript is copyrighted and that they better not steal it! This will in no way make a writer appear unprofessional or insecure. Speaking of submitting to a publisher, we may have only a couple of chapters of the first draft, but I am sure it already has what it takes to claw its way out of the slush pile. Be sure that the query letter is both confusing and condescending. Publishers love that! While we are waiting for our rejection letter… I mean praise and acceptance to come in after our inevitable conquest of the slush pile, we can go back to writing. And by writing, I don’t mean actually sitting down and finishing the first draft. Instead, we need to keep working on the setting instead! Spend hours on end making maps? Meticulously craft dozens of highly detailed fantasy races? Have a magic system with hundreds of detailed rules and spells? Does the world’s creation story drag on for a hundred pages? Have you detailed every aspect of the setting’s art, music, poetry, and interpretive dancing? Don’t forget to the detail the history of the world down to what the main character had for breakfast. If you have one or more of these symptoms, then you may have contracted a case of world builder’s disease. Which is great! Creating a detailed setting is important which means it’s a-okay to go overboard when world building. Just keep building that world forever, heaping on more and more details. Huh. That’s strange. Why haven’t I gotten any writing done? It most certainly isn’t a result of that deep fear about being a hack that I most definitely defeated at the beginning of this video. It helps to remind myself that my writing will be perfect and that a writer should never settle for anything less that utter perfection in their writing. Speaking of making our writing perfect, let’s revise our chapter 1. Then let’s revise it again! Keep revising those early chapters until they are finally utterly perfect. It’s not like we can fall into the trap of just changing things rather than improving them. When a writer gets to this state, they should in no way seek an outside perspective to aid in the revision process nor should a writer consider moving on to the later chapters and just finish the first draft. We can’t let anyone else see our imperfect work as it might confirm those deep fears about not having any true writing talent. It’s all about talent since we all know that only talented people are successful. Now if our first few chapters are near perfect, then it might be okay to show it to a writer’s group or beta readers. In fact, it is a great idea to keep submitting the same chapter to the same writer’s group over and over and over again until they are sick of looking at it. Then move on to the next group in search of validation… I mean useful feedback. We need to see if our story idea is good after all before we write the rest of it. Now why do all of this? Because a writer must know if their work is good! This endless seeking of validation must be completed before we can finishing writing a book. If we can’t defeat our inner critics through sheer force of will or with an over sized ego, then a writer must seek the opinions of others in order to gain confidence in their writing. I’m a writer. I'm not like other people, I can't stand rejection, it hurts me. Best to avoid that pain by either destroying your inner critic or hoping it goes away. Never should a writer attempt to tame their inner critic and get it to work for them. Actually having the courage to face your inner doubts and push them aside to keep writing is way too hard, unlike curling up in a fetal position and weeping that work will never be any good so why bother even writing at all. Why settle for writing progress when one can experience an existential identity crisis instead! No. It’s better to wait and keep planning that perfect novel and keep it safely in your head. Actually putting down words to story means that our story is no longer in the realm of perfection. Endlessly seeking perfection is great even if it means never actually finishing anything. It’s not like writing the book is an important first step. Our energy is far better spent worrying about if our writing is good rather than actively trying to make it good. It certainly cant be that writing is a skill that takes time to properly learn and that learning to write may involve actual writing. Unless you actually have managed to finish a first draft. In that case, congratulations! That was the easy part.

Channel: Terrible Writing Advice

Views: 691,953

Keywords: Terrible Writing Advice, Not to guide, writing, Bad advice, How not to, guide, comedy, sarcasm, Novel, Novel writing, Writing a book, book, J.P. Beaubien, J.P.Beaubien, Terrible, JPBeaubien, JP Beaubien, deal with inner doubt, having confidence in your writing, finishing a story, finishing a novel, how to finish a story, finishing a novel is hard, tips for finishing a novel

Id: dmsjyVpPOOI

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ProfDagon]

Just found? Bro you gotta get with the times man.

Seriously though, he is amazing and I think I'm only half the writer I am because or these vids... Since I've never finished a book so I'm half of not a writer.

[u/Obskulum]

Funny stuff, and right on the money. I've never realized how dangerous world building was until recently.

[u/Narratron]

Congratulations! That was the easy part.

Yes. Yes, it was ...

[u/GoreWound]

I love this guy!

[u/BrightlyImagined]

I love him too! I crack up every time.

[u/[deleted]]

They are indeed the best

[u/ProletariatFerret]

This guy is amazing! This wasn't my favorite video of his though, you guys should check out his videos on dystopias are really good!

[u/nicpapac]

Just watched the one on Beginning a Story, wasn't very pleasant

[u/Thorvantes]

I like how in 1:25 the other guy talks about "time traveling Nazis" because that is exactly how his book begins. Points for self humor.