Obstacles: Too Much Advice
Posted by Andie Ryan Blog at 9/25/2010 4:45 PM 
Categories: Fiction Writing Junkies, Revision Backroads, Writing Life, Writing Workshops
Tags: emotional truth characters teacher writing advice truth Lillian Hellman writing paragraphs talent dialogue writers
Categories: Fiction Writing Junkies, Revision Backroads, Writing Life, Writing Workshops
Tags: emotional truth characters teacher writing advice truth Lillian Hellman writing paragraphs talent dialogue writers
Lillian Hellman once said, "They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."
Someone's else's advice and experience can affect you in different ways. It can inspire you to write every word down and take it all to heart as you try to apply it. It can also paralyze you, like an information overload. You may think in response, "I know that, I know," and become frustrated in your quest for something you haven't heard before. You may not trust or respect or even know the person from whom you hear writing advice. It is suspect, perhaps because you don't have a point of reference of your own.
The best teachers know that writing can't be taught -- if it could, we'd all be in another place. Teachers can steer you toward finding your own voice. They're uncanny at picking out what one of my instructors used to call "writerly" passages -- writing that tries too hard, writing that shows off. They can give you tools to probe the depths of your characters, and show you structural flaws in how a story is plotted. Editors often function this way too.
But the rest?
I had a teacher in high school, Margaret Long (Mu, to those who knew her best). She once said to me of talent, "Use it always to create truth." I've never forgotten it. She taught dramatic arts with a passion that I hope high school teachers still possess. Whether students were playing a Chopin concerto, rehearsing a monologue, or writing poetry, truth had to prevail.
She was talking about emotional truth.
Like a proverb that has a variation in many different languages, writers know Mu's guiding advice in another form: "Write about what you know."
As a fifteen-year-old, I thought this meant that I shouldn't write a story set in Japan unless I'd been to Japan.
What I now believe it means, and what I think Mu meant for me to understand, is that a writer should write about the emotions he knows best -- the anger, love, frustration, unfairness, fear, risk-taking, courage, disappointment, happiness, euphoria, or loss -- that Milky Way of human experience that is his own. Weave these emotions into your stories and into the hearts and guts of your characters, and pull the strands tight. Give your characters honest reasons to feel these things, to sustain or overcome them.
Your own instincts will guide you more than you know. Set your story in Shanghai, Paris, Nebraska, or your own back yard. Set it anywhere in time. Geography is easy. But distance yourself from forced "messaging" that can make your story's emotional pillars crumble. Strive for honest, emotional truth, and keep rewriting your paragraphs and dialogue until you feel your pen ring it.
Reading blogs and articles and various trade columns helps many people, and if you find that strategy helpful too, great. I think most of these pieces are intended to help guide a writer's efforts -- no matter what your age -- and there is some good counsel out there, good advice from people who've been down the road ahead of you.
If, however, you find such resources congealing into one big institutional fog manufactured by a bunch of old windbags, that's fine too, if you remember one thing.
The best teacher when it comes to writing is the act of writing.
Our grandmothers knew this, but they called it the value of experience.
The act of writing. It's the lowest common denominator, the thing that joins us all together, the one shared experience from which all writers learn. We may learn at different speeds, we may have different proficiencies, varying successes and frustration, a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. But every effort we make is better than the last because of the doing.
Get in the chair.
Someone's else's advice and experience can affect you in different ways. It can inspire you to write every word down and take it all to heart as you try to apply it. It can also paralyze you, like an information overload. You may think in response, "I know that, I know," and become frustrated in your quest for something you haven't heard before. You may not trust or respect or even know the person from whom you hear writing advice. It is suspect, perhaps because you don't have a point of reference of your own.
The best teachers know that writing can't be taught -- if it could, we'd all be in another place. Teachers can steer you toward finding your own voice. They're uncanny at picking out what one of my instructors used to call "writerly" passages -- writing that tries too hard, writing that shows off. They can give you tools to probe the depths of your characters, and show you structural flaws in how a story is plotted. Editors often function this way too.
But the rest?
I had a teacher in high school, Margaret Long (Mu, to those who knew her best). She once said to me of talent, "Use it always to create truth." I've never forgotten it. She taught dramatic arts with a passion that I hope high school teachers still possess. Whether students were playing a Chopin concerto, rehearsing a monologue, or writing poetry, truth had to prevail.
She was talking about emotional truth.
Like a proverb that has a variation in many different languages, writers know Mu's guiding advice in another form: "Write about what you know."
As a fifteen-year-old, I thought this meant that I shouldn't write a story set in Japan unless I'd been to Japan.
What I now believe it means, and what I think Mu meant for me to understand, is that a writer should write about the emotions he knows best -- the anger, love, frustration, unfairness, fear, risk-taking, courage, disappointment, happiness, euphoria, or loss -- that Milky Way of human experience that is his own. Weave these emotions into your stories and into the hearts and guts of your characters, and pull the strands tight. Give your characters honest reasons to feel these things, to sustain or overcome them.
Your own instincts will guide you more than you know. Set your story in Shanghai, Paris, Nebraska, or your own back yard. Set it anywhere in time. Geography is easy. But distance yourself from forced "messaging" that can make your story's emotional pillars crumble. Strive for honest, emotional truth, and keep rewriting your paragraphs and dialogue until you feel your pen ring it.
Reading blogs and articles and various trade columns helps many people, and if you find that strategy helpful too, great. I think most of these pieces are intended to help guide a writer's efforts -- no matter what your age -- and there is some good counsel out there, good advice from people who've been down the road ahead of you.
If, however, you find such resources congealing into one big institutional fog manufactured by a bunch of old windbags, that's fine too, if you remember one thing.
The best teacher when it comes to writing is the act of writing.
Our grandmothers knew this, but they called it the value of experience.
The act of writing. It's the lowest common denominator, the thing that joins us all together, the one shared experience from which all writers learn. We may learn at different speeds, we may have different proficiencies, varying successes and frustration, a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. But every effort we make is better than the last because of the doing.
Get in the chair.
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