GORY Random Writing Tips and Tricks pt. 1
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1). Stop talking about writing. Stop reading about writing. Stop dreaming about writing. Stop doing things that don't qualify as writing. The thing that defines a writer is that the writer writes.
2). No, Seriously, Quit What You're Doing Right Now And Go Write
I wasn't fucking joking. Stop reading this post. Get out now. Go! Go. I will Taser you in the face, nipples, butthole and genitals if I see you hanging around here when you could be banging out perfectly good word count. Go right now and write. Come back here when you're done.
This entire book will be waiting for you. Like a stalker in your shrubbery.
3). You want to be Hercules, Boudicca, Annie Oakley, and Einstein right out of the gate. You want a perfect novel to pop out of your head fully formed like an adult-grown chicken right from the egg. Won't happen. You're gonna suck first. You're gonna suck for a while. Even when you're awesome you're still gonna suck a little bit. This is how you get better. Wade through your own word-waste. The less you write, the more you suck. You write a lot so you can suck only a little.
4). It's like kids in a classroom. Stop paying attention to Billy flicking boogers on Betty. Stop looking at Cindy's grades. So what if Earl, Jr. keeps fondling himself and smells like weird cheese? What other writers do don't matter. What matters is what you do. You have to write your story. They aren't sitting at your desk, with your computer, with your coffee, with your chimpanzee manservant. You are. Own it. Fuck you. Be your own writer. Tell your own tales.
5). The first empty page always makes you want to shit your pants. It's normal.
We're all scared.
6). Fuck it.
Don't do what everyone else is doing. Stop dicking around. Be brave! Be powerful! Take risks. Base-jump off Godzilla's nut-sack. Hang-glide into the fire-vagina of Mordor. Bleed on the page. You don't get up on stage and do a mumbly little rendition of I'm A Little Teapot. You get up there in a glittered sarong with dragon-wings on your back, with bottle-rockets taped to your inner-thighs, with the loudest, meanest, baddest-assest version of the song that fills your fucking heart. Write big. Write without fear.
Write with blood, guts, madness and majesty!
7). Early on, say yes. Take chances. Try things. All doors are open. All windows. All eyes. Take it all in. Embrace potential. You don't know if you don't like a food, a TV show, a bizarre sexual position, until you try it.
Try it all. Learn the power of fuck yes, motherfucker.
8). If you're not writing, that's your fault. It's not anybody else's. It's not your wife's fault.
It's all on you. Accept responsibility. Stop complaining. Fix your shit.
9). Realize what you love about stories, and bring that love to bear on the page. Let the audience in on that love. Your love should be viral, like cat videos or the norovirus.
10). I'm dating your story. It's the first date. You have, five, ten pages to make me want that second date.
Don't waste time.
After those ten pages, it's fuck or walk. Then you've got the rest of the book to make me want to put a ring on it. I wanna fall in lust, then love, with your story. I want to be heartbroken when its over.
I want to need it like I need a drug.
11). Pages of description make me want to go back in time and punch you as a baby. Except I can't because you've bored me so much I fell asleep.
Description is key. You need it. But you only need so much of it. Let the audience do some work. I know what a chair, a tree, a dude, a dildo all look like. I've got memory and imagination. The noun is enough. Describe those things that break the status quo. Describe only those things the audience can't already know.
12). Adverbs are not your enemy.
Examples of adverbs include: "Quickly," "There," "Upstairs," "Too," "Yesterday," "Only," "Abruptly." That list goes on and on: adverbs of time, place, manner, extent. The goal, as with all words, is to use them correctly and to not bludgeon your reader about the head and neck with them.
An adverb, like an adjective, is a spice. It can highlight a meal. Or it can kill it with too much flavor.
13). The best two things your story can do is to stir my emotions and to challenge my assumptions. Make me feel something (rage! lust! love! grief!). Make me think something (what is the nature of evil? what is the enemy of empathy? what happens if I sneeze while I'm ejaculating?).
14). The audience knows when you're talking down to them. Even kids are smarter than you think.
15). The story is your sandbox. Play. Build. Have fun. If you're not having any fun, we won't either. Just don't eat the cat turds. Every sandbox has cat turds. It's a scientific fact.
16). Not to say every day is going to be a fucking fun-a-palooza filled where it rains cookies and you construct your own magical dance-ponies. Some days it's just about working your fingers to bony, bloody nubs - about chewing words, spitting them out, smashing them together. When play fails, you gotta pull the magic from the story like pulling nails from boards with your teeth.
17). Think about your story. Think about your art. Go elbow deep. Get into the guts like you're trying to birth a humpback whale. Art is a kind of madness. Story is messy, weird, gory, greasy, hard to grasp. But always try. We're all flying blind. We're all feeling around in the wet-slick dark for the baby whale. Reach further.
Think more. Art harder, motherfuckers.
18). You edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite until it's done. Until it's right.
19). Your life is a tally of experiences.
Traumas. True loves. Hallucinations. Opinions. You once ate a spider. You once broke your femur. You once had sex with a dude and/or lady dressed up like a panda bear. You'd be a fucking dipshit not to mine your own life for the authenticity it provides.
20). Character is everything. Character choices create the plot. Characters build the architecture of the story. Characters have and transmit ideas. Characters shape and reflect the thematic argument. The characters form the bloody beating heart of your work.
21). You must punish and reward the characters in your story - which by proxy punishes and rewards the audience reading or watching your story. Err toward more punishment than reward.
Which, let's be honest, is more fun for you anyway.
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Okay those were my GORY Random Tips and tricks!
Hope you enjoyed, I sure as hell did.