Twenty years ago when they were building the house in which we live — which is on a steep slope — they belatedly decided to add a walk out basement. The only way to add it to the house’s design, though, was to punch a 6-foot square hole through the first floor and put a spiral staircase in. At the bottom of the stairs is a short hallway into a dark room which you pass through to get to the well-lit basement.

We’ve made the dark room you pass through our study, which is where I do much of my writing.

The prior owners added wall sconces to lighten up the descent and chamber. I thought it fitting to swap them out for something that looked a bit more like torches. My family thinks I’m easily amused.

I think I’m just a writer entering my next adventure…

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1) Critique a lot of other submissions, and genuinely try to help. If you show up at your workshop and you can only think about yourself, you are already putting people off, and they will become more critical of your work. Don’t just crank through critiques as a required part of being in the group. Take it seriously and see what you can learn from what you are reading and how you are providing feedback. In addition to being well received as a writer, strive to be sought after as a critiquer — do this and your success and reputation as a writer will go up at the same time.

2) Of course, you don’t want to have any typos or spelling or grammatical errors in your work, but make double damn sure you don’t have any such errors on your first two pages. If you participate in an online writing workshop, as I actively do, then the same goes for any “auto  preview” function your site might offer. It is critical that you get your reader sucked into your story. Gaffs will bump them out at the start, and they are more likely to give up and quit or form a negative opinion about your work at the start.

There are good, free tools that you can use to quickly check your work. Here is one of the fastest and simplest that I have written about before: Hemingway Editor + Grammarly = Nirvana (almost)

3) Your start better be interesting… There is a lot of discussion about having a good “hook”. I’m not going to repeat it all here. However you do it, though, make sure your start is interesting. And to be clear, that does not always mean action. It can also be voice, character, setting, etc.

4) This one makes me crazy, and it is shocking how often I see it: Don’t say things that signal your work is not well prepared, such as: “This is a first draft…” or “I don’t really care for this story, but thought I’d throw it out to see what you all think…” or “I know this has a lot of typos, so please be sure to call out those in your crit…”. I’ve seen all of these statements before, and many comments similar to these. This is a guaranteed way to make sure I won’t crit a story, and I’m not alone in responding this way.

I’m sure there are other considerations, and of course, you want to develop a reputation as a good writer. But I wanted to highlight these four issues above because each one can have a devastating impact on how people form opinions on your work before they even get to the 3rd page. And this matters, because what we all really want to know is what readers think of our story, not just our sentences.

Other thoughts on how to ensure your work is given a fair chance in your writing class or writing workshop?

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In my writing workshop a long debate broke out about adverbs. Why they are evil, when they are needed and when they are not. The participants even offered example sentences of good and bad use of adverbs and when they are and are not needed for clarity.

This is killing me…

I’m reading a rather large novel at the moment. Adverbs? Not so many. Backstory? Loads of it. Expository dialog for the reader’s benefit? Yes, and heavy handed. Head hopping? Frequently…at least twice a page, I’d bet. And the author threw in a few sentence fragments to add more color. There are secondary characters — lots and lots of them — two of which have the same first letter in their first name.

Obviously this writer has a hard time with the rules for writing. Is it going to be an issue for this book and his chances for success?

I dunno… I think Dune has done rather well. Hugo and Nebula Awards, 17 trazillion copies sold (including the other titles in the series).

My take away: A great story is more important than writing that follows all the rules.

Now — before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion — I’m not saying the rules don’t matter. And what most people call rules I’ll call guidelines. The guidelines do matter. All else being equal, abiding them can make a story better.

Herbert reportedly took 6 years to write Dune. Given the immense complexity of what the novel depicts, my sense is that damn near every sentence, every paragraph in this tome was carefully considered and constructed. So his decision not to abide the traditional guidance  and supposed rules of writing was carefully considered and not the result of laziness or a lack of understanding.

So I suggest we not feel bound by “rules”. We should be very* deterministic about how we write and when we don’t abide the rules.

* adverb use intentional

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