Things I Wish I'd Known a Decade Ago as a Writer
I have been writing for a long time. About twenty years, though the stories I was writing at seven probably shouldn’t count. Today, I want to talk about some of the things that I’ve learned from writing so much (and I have written a lot). I’ll be listing five things that I wish I had known a decade ago, so this is something of a letter to the version of myself that hadn’t quite received his first writing award, yet. Hopefully, if you’re a writer who’s just starting out and looking for some help, this will be exactly what you need!
1: Your First Million Words
For this post, I’m actually starting with the best advice that I can think of, which I know is counter to what most of these articles tend to do. I just don’t want to risk someone not seeing this because they dip in quickly and then dip out, so here is the absolute most important thing that I think I can ever tell to any aspiring writer: write your first million words. Your first million words are going to suck. They almost always do. They’re going to be weird, fan-fiction-tier words that no one will want to read and that you’re going to hate by the time you’re finished, but they are words you have to write.
Writing is absolutely a skill. It isn’t a talent. It isn’t something you’re born with. It is a skill and a craft, and like any craft, it has to be honed. It has to be meticulously perfected (though perfection in this realm is unattainable). As such, your first million words are much like your first million brushstrokes as you learn to paint. You will loathe your work by the time it’s done and it probably won’t be all that successful, but it is good that you did the work because it means that the next million words you write will be substantially better.
I wrote constantly for many, many years. I wrote all sorts of things and I even have a video that I posted a couple of months ago about my personal writing history. I wrote everything from tabletop roleplaying systems to fanfictions to video game novelizations. I did it all. I always had something that I was writing. Sometimes I was working on a science-fiction epic, other times I was wading through a fantasy epic that I would scrap a few months later. No matter the project, the important thing is that I was writing.
Then, shortly after I‘d written my first million words, I wrote the short story Edwin, which received my very first writing award, an honorable mention from a competition I had been entering for many years. This may actually have been after nearly two million words, but… hey, who’s counting.
Now, I know that writing a million words sounds terribly daunting and impossible. That’ll take you so long! That’s so many stories to scrap! But trust me, it isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds if you’re dedicated to becoming a writer and honing your skills within this field. This is essentially like writing George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords twice, but over the course of many years and probably over the span of many different works. You’re going to write all sorts of books. You’re going to leave many of them unfinished. All of these projects finished or otherwise, will contribute to your first million words. It’s all about practice, and once you’ve had enough practice to write about a million words, you’re probably ready to write something that you’ll be proud of long after it’s been finished.
2: Use the Word “Said”
Why oh why do so many writers struggle with this. Dialogue is often something that we make out to be a much more challenging aspect of writing than it actually is! When you write an excessive amount of dialogue tags or you feel the need to add an action to every. single. sentence., you break the flow of the dialogue and come off as… well, a fanfiction writer. A lot of fanfiction tends to have this problem: writers feel like they can’t say the word “said” too often, or they feel that they have to clarify who is speaking each and every line. Neither of these is the case!
First of all, most readers don’t even notice the word said unless they’re reading out loud (and even then, it barely registers). They don’t pay attention to it. The meaning is understood, and that’s really all that they need. It doesn’t matter all that much, it’s not important, and it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb when it’s used several times throughout a conversation.
Secondly, and possibly, more importantly, you don’t actually have to add a tag of any kind to every single line of dialogue. If it is possible for the reader to understand who is speaking without the use of a tag, and the tag would serve no purpose whatsoever, then you do not have to add a tag to the dialogue. Understanding this will enhance your dialogue and improve its flow so much. Especially when there are only two people who are speaking to one another, there is no reason whatsoever to add a tag for who is speaking at the end of each and every sentence. You can skip a few lines of dialogue here and there, just allowing what they’re saying to… well, do the talking.
3: Read!
You need to read. Not necessarily in the genre that you’re writing, although that’s important, but just in general. And, trust me, you need to read a variety of different authors. Most authors who have made a name for themselves have their own unique voice. Authors who some may recognize but who aren’t ultimately all that relevant in the literary space probably don’t have a unique voice or they have copied the voice of another author entirely, even subconsciously. By reading a variety of different books in various genres and from many different authors, you will expose yourself to all sorts of unique authorial voices and techniques that you can pull from to help shape your own writing style and voice.
I am a huge fan of Terry Pratchett. He is, without a doubt, my favorite author of all time. Period. I cannot imagine someone else usurping him as a writer. However, I have read so many works in so many genres and from so many different authors that my voice doesn’t just seem to mimic Terry’s. In fact, I think that I write very little like my favorite author. I have found my own unique way of writing that has been honed through years of both writing and reading. Now, if I only ever read Terry Pratchett and I read his books over and over and over again, my own writing would undoubtedly be a crude, barely-passable imitation of his that ultimately would have none of my own heart in it.
A great example of this dilemma is Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling (problems with her notwithstanding) had a very unique authorial voice and style. Her works were immensely digestible and so drew in a great many readers from all over the world. Other authors, seeing her success, copied her style. A lot of them. Tons of J. K. Rowling writing clones came out of the woodwork, and some even confessed to having copied J. K.’s style in the hopes of finding success. This, to me, just sounds… sad. What would those stories have been like had the author used a unique, personal voice instead of a copy of someone else’s?
So read, but don’t just read one author and don’t just read one genre. Read a variety of different works, even works that are far outside of your genre! You can take writing lessons away from non-fictional works just as you can from fictional works, and you can learn about writing fantasy from reading science fiction. There’s so much out there that you can study and learn, and if you spend all your time reading just in your genre or just from one author… you’re not going to sound unique and you’ll have no personal voice.
4: Explore Deeply Human Ideas
It wasn’t until I started using writing as a form of exploration (both of myself and of this world) that I started to write things that were deeply meaningful, personal, and impactful. Edwin was the result of me exploring an issue I didn’t understand. I was exploring an emotional, human concept of loneliness, isolation, and common struggle. When I began to use my writing as a way to explore these ideas and even work through some personal problems I was facing, the quality and meaning of my writing skyrocketed. The staunch difference between Edwin and the previous story I’d written is palpable. You can feel that I had started to take writing seriously as a form of exploration, both of ideas and of myself.
Not every story has to do this, but I believe that every story that is going to mean something to someone should do this in some way, even if it’s just a small part of the overall story. You should explore a concept or idea, and you should guide your reader through that exploration. It doesn’t need to be in-your-face (though it can be), but it should be present. You should try to explore a situation, thought, fear, or any other concept through a perspective that differs from your own. Try to see someone else’s point of view.
For me, this meant taking an idea that I was really struggling to understand and just… writing it down. Creating a character who struggled with these same concepts and plopping that person into my world so that this fictional individual could explore those ideas. From there, I started playing with more abstract ideas. I began to explore situations that probably wouldn’t happen to me, but that could happen to someone else. I started to use metaphors and similes to get a better grasp of these concepts.
Doing this ultimately led to me doing research, so that I could find people who identified with struggles I did not, that I might better understand them. It led to a great deal of empathy and, by extension, an uptick in the empathy expressed through my own writing. I continued to improve from one book to the next, but it wasn’t just my writing that was improving: I was improving. I was growing as a person through these works. Using writing to explore concepts, emotions, and humanity is a powerful way to improve yourself, your writing, and even the world.
5: No Wish Fulfillment
That previous bit of advice has a dark cousin, though, and that is wish fulfillment. It can be tempting as writers to tell stories that are basically us fulfilling our own fantasies and dreams. We often use writing as an escape—I know I do—but this can lead to writing that… really only means something to us, and even then, the meaning is shallow. When you write something that is essentially personal wish fulfillment, it comes off as cheap and the audience for the work is going to be surprisingly small. Even if you do somehow hit a big audience and make a lot of money from a book that was born from personal desire, is it going to have a significant lasting impact?
My suggestion is that if you want to explore a story that is going to be personal wish fulfillment, but you want to appeal to an audience beyond yourself and tell a story that will still be impactful, then you should explore the darker side of that wish fulfillment. What happens when it goes wrong? What’s the worse that could happen? Why would getting your wish granted be a terrible thing? Who knows, you might even learn something through this exercise! I know that I have.
Very early in my writing, really up until I was around seventeen or so, my books were very much wish fulfillment. I wrote people I didn’t like directly into my books. I wrote people I did like directly into my books. I self-inserted a lot. Many early writers struggle with this and it can lead to a repetitive storytelling mode that stays consistently at a low-quality level. Eventually, I wrote How I Ruined My Life and, while I’m not entirely proud of that book anymore, I did use that as a way to explore some of the darker things in myself and in the people around me. Instead of wish fulfillment, I sought to do the opposite, exposing the worst things about myself and exploring them. While I didn’t execute it very well, it was a start, and I’d encourage other writers to do the same.
Conclusion
There you have it, my top five tips that I wish I had known ten years ago. If I had known all of this a decade past, I probably wouldn’t have wasted as much time as I have on books that ultimately wouldn’t see the light of day. Especially the wish-fulfillment tip. If I could get one wish fulfilled, it would be that someone would go back in time and tell me to start writing stories that are going to mean something to anyone other than myself, especially because I—being my only audience for those works—would never read them again in the future due to how terrible they wound up being.
Okay, actually, if I got one wish, it would probably be for something deeper than that, like universal peace or something of that nature. An end to violence. I don’t know. Something like that. But I’m not getting any wishes granted, here—this isn’t a story that I wrote when I was eleven, it’s real life!
Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this post! It was fun to write and I’m starting to get into the swing of creating advisory content that isn’t about Dungeons and Dragons. Weird, I know. Especially weird for me, actually. I did that series for sixteen weeks, so doing something else on Monday feels… bizarre. Thanks for checking this post out and, if you’d like to support me, you can do so by subscribing to me on my YouTube channel or following me on social media! I’m @TLBainter on most social media platforms and I’ll have links for those down below.
Until next time, bye!