Advice From A Dude Who Hasn't Even Been Published – Keep Reading Advice

I know this is hardly necessary for aspiring writers who are scrambling for advice from every nick and cranny, but there does arrive a point in the writing process where a little voice tells us, “You’re not going to learn anything from there. Just move on.”

Maybe you’ve read a dozen books on how to write novels, how to write short stories, how to write in your chosen genre. Maybe you’ve taken a few classes, participated in a few writers’ groups. Maybe you’ve completed a degree in writing, or you’ve actually had something published.

There are a million opportunities for self-accreditation that might translate into, “I’ve got this, and I don’t need to read another article on how to write.” Why not? It’ll make me doubt myself again. It’ll simply tell me what I already know. It’ll waste time, which I could spend actually writing, speculating about the theory and method of writing.

Well, I can’t really refute the zero-sum argument about time management, but rather than thinking of it as time wasted, think of it as time invested. If a big part of writing is rewriting (and if you don’t agree with that, you might want to go back to Square One in developing your concept of what makes a writer) then a significant part of writing is in the part of rewriting that is rethinking the theory and method of your writing.

After all, if you rewrite the same way you write, you’re not going to improve anything.

But, beyond that, reading a few advice articles along the way can even help you understand more clearly what you’re doing right, so you can become a better you. Would you like a concrete example? I was hoping you would.

After a recent doctor’s appointment (no worries, I just pulled a tendon while running) I stopped by a bookstore I rarely visit, because my doc’s office is in a town a bit outside my normal stomping grounds. Walking past the magazine rack, I noticed Writing Basics from Writer’s Digest, and had one of those “You’re not going to learn anything new from that” moments.

Quick to recognize Pride when I see him (because we are quite regular companions), I slapped him down and scooped up the magazine.

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Inside I found an article by Elizabeth Sims called “How to Make Your Novel a Page Turner” which advises writers to end chapters with a bang. In fact, that phrase is in bold and all-caps, just to drive home the point.

The most important page turns in any book are those at the ends of chapters. Why? Because readers tell themselves, “OK, I swear I will turn out the light at the end of this chapter because I am committed to going to yoga at 6:30.”

An alarming 40 percent of readers who put a book down before finishing it never pick it up again … So you’ve simply got to keep them reading to the end.

… When you come to a point just before or just after [a Heart-Clutching Moment], break your chapter. This works every time.

This reminded me of an epiphany I had while reading my second Dan Brown novel. Yes, his writing is clumsy at the sentence and paragraph level. Yes, his characters are rather flat. Yes, his plots can be flimsy and their climaxes trite. In military terms, we would say he’s weak on tactics and strategy.

But he is the absolute master of the intermediate, “operational art” of constructing a chapter. Instead of making each chapter a self-contained little story-unto-itself, with a build-up and release of tension, he ends every chapter with some sort of “uh oh” or “aha” moment that entices you to start reading the next chapter to find out what happens. His chapter endings are never conclusions of any kind.

It’s simple. It’s devious. It is, perhaps, gimmicky. But, it’s effective as hell, and the sheer fun of the ride makes the reader overlook the weaknesses in Brown’s writing.

But, more importantly, Sims’ reminder immediately set my inner critic to analyzing my own writing. One of the weaknesses I had noticed in one of my own pieces of long fiction was its very un-Brown-like chapter endings. They were, from a narrative perspective and in terms of inspiring readers to read on, conclusions. Something that had been unsolved was solved, and didn’t get re-un-solved until the beginning of the next chapter.

In other words, a good plan for losing 40 percent of my readers at the end of every chapter.

So, did reading this article on advice cause me to relive the self-doubt I had about that earlier piece of writing? Did the inner critic stick his knife into the old wound and twist it? Nope, because since that epiphany about Dan Brown, I had written many more stories and had apparently incorporated this bit of writerly wisdom into my own method.

Now, I don’t remember making a conscious decision to do this, but let’s compare some chapter endings.

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First, from the afore-mentioned piece of un-Brown-like fiction:

I went back to my damp little office, wrote out a brief report, and then tried to forget the whole thing.

Yeah, and now the reader can set down the novel and “forget the whole thing.” Good going, former Me! There is only one way to adequately describe a writer who ends a chapter this way: dumb.

But, dumbth can be overcometh! Contrast that with this section break from a more recent short story, The Chameleon Missive:

When Tom and Diana — asweat with fear and rapping on my door in the dark anticipation of day — retold that final detail, I knew I would have to pay Mr. Applewerth a visit.

There’s no conclusion here, no relaxation on the part of the narrator which might allow the reader to also relax. This sentence offers only the “dark anticipation” of a day filled with escalating confrontation between the characters. What’s going to happen next? Keep reading.

And now, a chapter ending from my current work-in-progress, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die:

This woman took seven shots to the chest and just ran away? That qualifies as Observer business, I guess. “Let me get my pistol.”

If I can offer you any advice as a Dude Who Hasn’t Even Been Published*, that advice would be: You’ll rarely go wrong by ending a chapter with a character arming him or herself.

The point of all this, of course, is that Sims’ reminder of The Brown Epiphany (ooh… I like the sound of that… perhaps a writing advice title?) did not cause me to doubt myself again, but instead clarified a specific way in which I had become a better writer through practice.

Now, I feel inspired to follow the completion of Woman with a rewrite of that un-Brown-like novel, performing the requisite amputations and verboplasty, so I can fix it up into something far better than anything the former Me could have written.

And, although other tidbits of advice in the same magazine were news to me, there was really nothing new in that reminder from Sims about chapter endings. My “you’re not going to learn anything new” scoff could very well have been factually correct, yet it would still have been a practical mistake.

Never disengage from the world of advice.

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* Outside of a few college lit venues.

Tags: dan brown, elizabeth sims, fiction, publishing, writing, writing advice