What should be the 10 commandments of writing?

mudbubble · Sep 30, 2009

As I understand them so far

1-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]get thy butt in the chair
2-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]thou shalt show not tell
3-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]thou shalt kill the passive
4-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Thou shalt know thy audience
5-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Revise until thy fingers bleed
6-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Covet thy Beta readers
7-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Thou shalt not become discouraged by rejection
8-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]If it works it works, if it doesn’t stone it to death
9-[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Study thy submission targets
10- Thou shalt not worship techniques because the story is king

others versions?.....

scarletpeaches · Sep 30, 2009

Thou Shalt Not Have Any Other Gods Before My Face Excepting Wally Lamb and Kazuo Ishiguro.

DeleyanLee · Sep 30, 2009

I only know one writing commandment: Thou Shalt Not Confuse Thy Reader

mudbubble · Sep 30, 2009

Nice one DL but perhaps that should read-

Thou Shalt Not Confuse Thy Reader Unintentionally

CaroGirl · Sep 30, 2009

Thou shalt not adhere to any commandment absolutely because someday thou might have to break it.

DeleyanLee · Sep 30, 2009

mudbubble said:
Nice one DL but perhaps that should read-

Thou Shalt Not Confuse Thy Reader Unintentionally

I respectfully disagree. Whether the confusion is intentional or unintentional, it's always a bad idea.

willietheshakes · Sep 30, 2009

Easy on the hopdoodle...

Dawnstorm · Sep 30, 2009

1. Thou shalt not succumb to the lure of simplicistic formulisms such as "show, don't tell."

2. Thou shalt not develop an aversion to elements of your language, such as adverbs or the passive voice.

3. Thou shalt not ask, "is it okay to...?". Instead, thou shalt do it and ask, "Does this work?"

4. Thou shalt experiment a lot, and thou shalt not be discouraged by failure. Rather, thou shalt learn from it.

5. Thou shalt strife to know thyself. Thou shalt not assume what worketh for thy favourite author must needs work for thee.

6. Thou shalt be as critical of your revisions as thou art of the text to-be-revised. Thou shalt keep a copy of the original, in case the original contained elements that worked better than the revision.

7. Thou shalt not belief in The Reader. There are only readers, and they quarrel amongst each other.

8. Thou shalt not covet your favourite authors' success.

9. Thou shalt not begrudge your least favourite authors their success.

10. If thou knowest how do it, thou shalt do something else instead. This be how thou learnest thy craft.

[ETA: ~~Thou shalt not~~ You really shouldn't mix thouh-shalt-not-isms with modernisms, or you get a stylistically lame post, such as mine.

]

mudbubble · Sep 30, 2009

Dawn Thou shalt learn the craft should've been #2 on my list.......

it is the first of them that I broke...

Freelancer · Sep 30, 2009

Thou shalt not give up when you fail
Thou shalt not copy other worlds
Thou shalt not use cliches
Thou shalt not dream about great success, rather try to achieve it

The other commandments of mine are already mentioned above.

Wayne K · Sep 30, 2009

Thou shalt not bore the crap out of thy reader.

KTC · Sep 30, 2009

1. Write More Better.
2. Write More Better.
3. Write More Better.
4. Write More Better.
5. Write More Better.
6. Write More Better.
7. Write More Better.
8. Write More Better.
9. Write More Better.
10. Follow Rules 1 Through 9 More Better.

Cyia · Sep 30, 2009

Thou shalt give thy characters a voice and free will to act as they would, not as thou wilst them to act.

Thou shalt make sure threads started in Act 1 are not dropped and forgotten untied by the end.

Thou shalt stone any character who behaves in the manner of a Mary Sue or Gary Stu, for this is an affront to thine readers.

Thou shalt stay in tense.

Thou shalt not use a thesaurus when "said" works just fine.

If thine manuscript disappears into the ultraviolet spectrum of prose, or takes on the look of an overripe eggplant. Thou shalt weed out thine adjectives. (or die

)

Thou shalt not pen a manuscript so long it will permanently cripple thy future readers to carry it around.

Thou shalt buy a dictionary and learn the difference between "honest" and "mean". Should the meanie prove to be honest, thou shalt thank them and improve thy manuscript. Should the meanie prove to mean, thou mayest hit him in his head with the overlong MS and send him to the hospital.

Thou shalt not use thy mother nor thy four-year-old as an accurate gage of thy abilities.

Thou shalt not go crazy once thou art published and annoy thy fans with insane rants.

Thou shalt not make the supernatural sparkle, lest thou write of fae and djinn.

Thou shalt follow guidelines; they knowest more than thee.

swvaughn · Sep 30, 2009

Cyia said:
Thou shalt not make the supernatural sparkle, lest thou write of fae and djinn.

I feel validated. Not even my djinn sparkle.

Love your list, Cyia! Especially #8 (gee, wonder whom that could be...

)

Phaeal · Sep 30, 2009

1. Read.
2. Write.
3. Read.
4. Write.
5. Read.
6. Write.
7. Read.
8. Write.
9. Read.
10. Write, write, write, write, write.

Phaeal · Sep 30, 2009

And...

11. Thou shalt not use "thou" or "shalt." Not even if you're writing a historical. Not even if you're writing funny lists of "thou shalt nots."

Why? Because they hurts my ears and eyes. K? See thee.

Nateskate · Sep 30, 2009

1) I probably won't reach ten!
2) Don't take critics too seriously
3) Find the right critics, ones that don't like to eviscerate people just because they can.
4) Look at life as a growth experience. One setback isn't the end of the world. Listen, ponder. Keep what is useful and discard the rest.
5) I'm done

Strange Days · Sep 30, 2009

mudbubble said:
3-thou shalt kill the passive
...

Disagree with that. When passive voice makes sense- it DOES make sense... I really do not like when in order to avoid passive voice various "they" or mysterious "people" are introduced at random... Passive voice helps you to avoid creating generic characters. As a reader- I hate generic "people" out of nowhere...

Stunted · Sep 30, 2009

Everyone's lists thus far have been so good!

Thou shalt write the book that thou wouldst want to read.

Thou shalt love thy work and, when thou doesn'tst, though shalt have faith that you will again soon.

Though shalt expect that writing the first draft of the middle shalt be tough.

Thou shalt read all kinds of books, and read them critically.

Thou shalt experiment to find the right balance of cockiness and humility.

Thou shalt put thine ass in the chair.

If thine ass is beginning to ache and thine labors growing fruitless, thou shalt leave the manuscript for three days and then regroup.

Thou shalt be wary of writing rules.

Thou shalt strive to understand all the rules, nonetheless.

Thou shalt not push thine story in artificial directions.

Thou shalt be aware of your weaknesses and try to improve them.

Thou shalt not become discouraged.

Thou shalt stop philosophizing and get to work.

stormie · Sep 30, 2009

Do not call your book a "fiction novel." Ever. World without end. Amen.

Cyia · Sep 30, 2009

At some point thou shalt minimize the AW window and actually do some real writing.

mudbubble · Sep 30, 2009

Strange Days said:
Disagree with that. When passive voice makes sense- it DOES make sense... I really do not like when in order to avoid passive voice various "they" or mysterious "people" are introduced at random... Passive voice helps you to avoid creating generic characters. As a reader- I hate generic "people" out of nowhere...

strange days indeed.. Most peculiar...sorry just made myself think of John Lennon for a second there....

perhaps this is only a commandment on my first WIP.. but in reading one of the Uncle Jim recommended links i got this----(and yes he agrees with you at the very end)--

1. Passive voice. This is the single most common error. More people make this mistake, and make it more often, than any other error in the writing of fiction. Let me rephrase that sentence, so as to illustrate the problem: This is the mistake most commonly made in all fiction. Note that in my second rendition, no one makes the mistake. It is simply "made." It is not clear that it is a mistake in writing. You could interpret the second rendition to mean that readers make the mistake. In passive voice, nothing is ever anyone's fault, because people do not do things. Things happen to people. "Irving ate the food" is active. "The food was eaten" is passive. Note that Irving has vanished completely. The food and the action of eating are made more important than the person who does them.
Writers most often drop into passive voice when they are unsure of themselves, when they don't want anything bad to happen to one of their characters, when they don't want their characters to do anything bad.
Remember that you story is all happening on paper. You can change everything later with a stroke of a pen. Don't be afraid. Be bold and adventurous. If you make a mistake, you can fix it later. If you kill a character, you can bring her back to life in the next draft. If your character commits a murder, you can give him a really good lawyer.
Note that passive voice cannot -- and need not -- be completely eliminated. See previous sentence for an example. There are times when it works

panda · Sep 30, 2009

Do unto your readers as you would have your readers do unto you.

MGraybosch · Sep 30, 2009

1. Read everything you can get your hands on. Don't restrict yourself to your favorite genre. That way lies stagnation.
2. Get your ass in that chair and write.
3. Ignore everybody who tells you you can't do it -- including the voices in your head.
4. If you're going to break a style rule, like "show, don't tell", you'd better have a damned good reason.
5. Be selective in what you show. Tell the reader only what you need him to know in order to make the story and characters work.
6. Avoid naturalism. If your only reason for showing a particular detail is that "real life is like that", then get a better reason or get rid of that detail.
7. Tropes are not cliches. Learn to distinguish between the two.
8. Remember Chekhov's law: If you're going to show a gun on the mantel, make sure a major character has an in-character reason to fire that gun.
9. Leave the thesaurus on the shelf unless you're beating a particular word into the ground.
10. Plot and characterization are what matter most. Everything else should be subordinate to your plot and characters.
11. Keep your facts and your terminology straight. If your story needs research, then suck it up and do the damn research.

seun · Sep 30, 2009

1. Read a lot.
2. Write a lot.
3. Give me a neckrub.

What should be the 10 commandments of writing?

Writing Anarchist

Living the dream

Writing Anarchist

Gentleman. Scholar. Bastard.

punny user title, here

Stand in the Place Where You Live

Rewriting My Destiny

adrift

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

who cares, anyway?..

Ich heiße Superphantastisch!

storm central

Rewriting My Destiny

its harders sto type withh paaws

Lunch Break Novelist

Horror Man