People sometimes send me Asks wanting writing advice. I suck at it. I don’t really know how I do the writing, or how one should do the writing, or what one should do to get better at the writing. All I can ever think to say is “write a lot of stuff and you will get better at the writing.” Which is true, but hardly a bolt from the sky.
Well, as it turns out, I do have one piece of Legit Writing Advice, and I am going to share it with you, right now. If you were in any of my writing workshop groups at a con, you’ve heard this advice already.
Warning: you’re going to fucking hate it. But if you do it, you will thank me.
If you have a piece of fiction you’re serious about, something you might want to actually shop around, or just something you really are into and want to make it as good as you can…do NOT edit it.
Repeat. DO NOT EDIT.
REWRITE.
As in, print out the whole fucking thing and re-enter it, every word (or use two screens). Retype the whole thing. Recreate it from the ground up using your first draft as a template. Start with a blank page and re-enter every. single. word.
I hear you screaming. OH MY GOD THAT’S INSANE.
Yes. Yes, it is.
It is also the most powerful thing you will ever do for a piece of fiction that you are serious about.
Now, let’s get real. I don’t do this for most things. I don’t do it for my fanfiction. But if it’s something original, something I might like to get to a professional level - I do it. You absolutely COULD do it for fanfiction. It’s just up to you and how much time you want to sink into a piece.
You can edit, sure. But you WILL NOT get down to the level of change that needs to happen in a second draft. You will let things slide. Your eyes will miss things. You will say “eh, good enough.”
The first time I did this, on someone else’s advice, I was dubious. Within two pages, I was saying WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN DOING THIS ALL THE TIME. I was amazed at how much change was happening. By the time I got to the end, I had an entirely different novel than the one I’d started with. When you’re already re-entering every single word, it’s easy to make deep changes. You’ll reformat sentences, you’ll switch phrases around, you’ll massage your word choice. You’ll discover whole paragraphs that don’t need to be there at all because they became redundant. You’ll find dialogue exchanges that need reimagining. Whole plot points will suddenly be different, whole story arcs will reveal their flaws and get re-drawn.
You cannot get down to the fundamental level of change that’s required just by editing an existing document. You have to rebuild it if you really want your story to evolve. You will be AMAZED at the difference it will make.
It will take time. It will seem like a huge, Herculean task. I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t. But it is absolutely revolutionary.
Try it. I promise, you will see what I mean.
*PSA: Tipsy!Lori wrote this post. In case you couldn’t tell.
maybe i should try this with my comic scripts.
This advice is real.
I think to some extent in a comic this happens in the penciling, inking, colouring and lettering stages if the same person is doing all of them. I know that what I draw and what I use in the final lettering is very frequently not exactly the same as what was in the script. It still might be worth trying this with a comic script though.
When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.
In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.
And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.
And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.
And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.
And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.
And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him.
And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.
And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.
And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.
Sure, yeah! I’ll give you some of the top things I’ve learned in studying creative writing/life in general.
ONE: Never underestimate the reader. A lot of times people think that they have to describe every single detail so that the audience will know what they mean, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes simply saying “she gave him a curious look” says more than “her brows furrowed in curiosity, wondering what he meant”. You have to trust the reader to make that connection on their own while still keeping the writing smooth and limited. The reader will catch on to your hints. Don’t make it too obvious.
TWO: Master the art of flash fiction. The more flash fiction you write, the better your longer writing will become. Flash fiction is a story of 1000 words or less that really strips down to the wire and creates intrigue without giving too much away, very much like a short film. I had a whole class on flash fiction and my writing INSTANTLY improved afterward, especially because I am someone who thrives on descriptive language and often over-complicates things in my work.
THREE: Write 1,000 words or more every day. Stephen King said this in his book about what makes a good writer, and I believe it. I’ve been keeping up with this for the past year and it’s worked out wonderfully for me. I can feel my writing truly improving, and it gets you in the habit of pushing past writer’s block. You don’t have to publish what you write anywhere. Just write something.
FOUR: Read books. Like a sword needs a whetstone, a writer needs reading. Sharpen your skills in someone else’s forgery. Get inspired. Compliment other writers and appreciate when they compliment you back.
FIVE: Never ever ever ever ever ever forget the fans. They are the reason you do what you do. Don’t disrespect them. Want to break their hearts with plot? Go ahead! Want to make your story stick with them in good and bad ways? By all means! You are the writer and have full creative license, but understand that your fans are your sponsors and your network, the people holding you up. Don’t walk on them.
SIX: Learn how to take criticism, even the bad stuff. Writing will always leave you vulnerable to haters. Learn to ignore them and you’re unstoppable (but listen to those who politely present genuine complaints, however. Address them kindly, you might find they’re right!)
SEVEN: Know what needs your full attention and what doesn’t. As a future novelist I have to wonder what my focus is truly on–writing fanfiction while I’m working on my degrees, or saving all that creative juice for my novel? Of course, that’s not to say that I’m lazy over my fanfiction, but I don’t slave over it like I would over actual books. Fanfiction is free. It’s not my dream to write fanfic forever and I’m not getting paid, nor will it get me famous. Just be aware of your priorities. Don’t wear yourself out before your real journey begins!
EIGHT: Put your work out there. Poetry, fanfiction, original work, something. Get feedback. Learn how to interact with fans and take suggestions/criticism from them. Don’t be shy.
NINE: Get an ego (in a good way!). It takes serious guts to put your writing out there. It’s a part of you that you’re exposing to the world; of course you’ll get offended when someone tears it down, and love it when others raise it up. I’m convinced that every writer has to be a bit self-absorbed to make it, because confidence is truly the key to getting out of the gate.
TEN: Travel somewhere alone. You may think that going to Mexico, San Francisco and Italy for two weeks as a 20 y/o single white girl all by myself was a bad choice, but it was FUN and I made so many memories. You meet new people and learn to socialize, learn to break out of your comfort zone. You hear stories that inspire you from other people. You make new friends and have no limits on what you can do–it’s incredibly liberating. I can’t tell you how it helped me as a writer and a person to be able to stand in the Sistine Chapel around a bunch of strangers, looking up at Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and thinking to myself, “wow. This is art, this is history, this is the impact of what we create as people over hundreds of years. And I’m contributing.” I sat in that chapel for three hours watching people go by, surrounded by all this beautiful art and raw purity of the human existence and I was on no one else’s time. I spent days just walking around Rome and learning about humanity because I wanted to. It was powerful. Let humanity inspire you.
My thesis this semester is to take on a chunk of the Ars Goetia demons. I wanted to portray Baal in a distinctly less goaty fashion, and combine the bull and cat attributes he sometimes takes on. And, fun-sized Raum for a friend.
They’re all phenomenal. If you have five minutes, please watch each of them. Warning: some hit HARD.
Mary Blair (1911-1978)
Worked for Ub Iwerks, MGM, and eventually Disney. Known for creating incredibly vibrant watercolors, which clashed with the studio aesthetic at the time. Disney eventually let her loose, and her aesthetic can be strongly seen in Cinderella, Peter Pan, and especially Alice in Wonderland.
Evelyn Lambart (1914-1999)
Hearing-impaired Canadian animator who worked with Norman McLaren on several pieces that the Canadian government would later declare masterworks. She directed her own films, making her one of the first women in animation to take the director’s chair. She was known for scratching up film stock to create “jazz” like patterns, the sort of thing you’d later see in Fantasia,Donald in Mathmagic Land, and the like.
Lotte Reininger (1899-1981)
German director who created the technique of silhouette animation, preceding Disney by 10 years. Started out making titles for movies and moved on to make her own animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926!As for the rest of her career, well - watch the short.
Claire Parker (1906-1981)
Created the “pinscreen” animation technique, where 240,000 tiny metal rods were manually manipulated in and out of a board in order to create an animation – think tweaking pixels by hand. She and she alone owned the patent on it.
Alison de Vere (1927-2001)
One of the first women to work in British animation, and was design director for The Yellow Submarine. She went on to create many animated shorts at a commercial studio, winning prizes for virtually almost every single one of them. She is often credited as Britain’s first female animation auteur.
Anonymous: Thanks for all of the advice thus far! What does a script writer/ screenwriter's portfolio look like? Can you give a a few tips and examples? I have a few spec scripts written, but I am not sure how to organize it online or in print.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this question, anon.
This is a tough one because writers don’t really have portfolios. Writers have samples/specs and a “body of work”. It’s easy to look at an artists’ drawing and go, “Hmm. I like that.” With a writer, you have to invest time – something busy folks who hire people don’t have a lot of.
Spec scripts are good to have. You can write an original idea (probably the best course of action) or write an episode of an existing show (something that’s currently on the air and hopefully new, but will run for a few years). I wrote a Modern Family and a Regular Show spec before getting hired on Harvey Beaks. You want to make sure these scripts are formatted properly, so look up and read a bunch of scripts to make sure yours looks “official”.
This is a great resource for finding scripts and so is this.
The next thing you can do is make your writing easily available. We’ve already established people don’t have a lot of time to read your script, so don’t make it difficult for them to find it. Put it online! Post a link or an excerpt on Tumblr. Have it available for when someone finally asks to read a sample from you. But how do you get someone to ask you for a writing sample?
Networking! Go out and meet people. Email people you don’t know, but whom you admire. Meet as many people doing what you want to do and get their advice. Don’t force your samples on them (again, they may not have time), but let them know that you exist. The more people who know you, the higher probability of you getting hired. Numbers.
Lastly, keep writing. You just finished writing a spec or sample? Congrats! Get started on another.
Brad Bird told The McKinsey Quarterly in 2008, “The Incredibles was everything that computer-generated animation had trouble doing. It had human characters. It had hair. It had fire. It had a massive number of sets. The technical team took one look and thought, ‘This will take ten years and cost $500 million. How are we possibly going to do this?’
“So I said, ‘Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door’. A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.
“We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here (at Pixar). For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas. [x]
Hi, I'm Tim Lai! I'm a cartoonist living in Ontario, Canada. I like drawing cute and colourful things. This blog is a hub where you can find all of my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Flickr, Blogspot, and other posts in one place.
About My Work
I write and draw Lemon Inc., a comic about a seven-year-old who wants to be a business tycoon when he grows up. Until then, he runs a lemonade stand. You can read it at www.lemon-inc.com.
I have done some professional web and graphic design work, including designing the website for the webcomic, Just Joel. I'm also a member of the webcomic collective, Ink Bomb Comics.
September 17, 2015 01:30
Tumblr
343433 notes 
Reblog
Follow
RSS Feed
This is amazing. Some of them seem like they would be bad for business though…