CB's Top 100 Writing Tips, Tricks, Techniques and Tools from the Advice Toolbox - Break the Rules, Not the Writing

By Carter Blakelaw

Make Words Tell Tales

A nuts and bolts guide to crafting words into great sentences and great stories.

For anyone wanting to hone their craft, drawing 100+ useful rules of thumb from more than a decade of writers' workshops.

You will discover:

• 100 rules of thumb to apply to your fiction
• The motivation behind each rule
• The pros and cons of keeping—or breaking—the rules
• Numerous examples of rule-keeping and rule-breaking
• How every rule helps keep the reader reading

 

Serious about your craft? Act now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Logic of Dreams
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393980773

Carter Blakelaw

Carter Blakelaw lives in bustling central London, in a street with two bookshops and an embassy, any of which might provide escape to new pastures, if only for an afternoon. For over a decade Carter has delivered critiques at writers' workshops and critique groups, some of whose members have transformed themselves into prize-winning and best-selling authors. However, it is the frequency of numerous weaknesses, as exposed by these groups and especially in the work of developing writers, that motivates the writing of this book.

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CB's Top 100 Writing

Tips, Tricks, Techniques and Tools

from the Advice Toolbox

Break the rules, not the writing

––––––––

Carter Blakelaw

www.carterblakelaw.com

––––––––

published by The Logic of Dreams

www.thelogicofdreams.com

CB's Top 100 Writing Tips, Tricks, Techniques and Tools from the Advice Toolbox: Break the rules, not the writing

First eBook edition. January 12, 2021.

© 2020, Carter Blakelaw. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by The Logic of Dreams

Requests to publish work from this book should be sent to:

[e-mail]

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Cover art and book design by Jack Calverley

Photography by Erik Witsoe from www.unsplash.com.

t-07-eB

Anon, Anon, Anon

Aspire! I say, aspire!

Create great works anon,

That I may now retire.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section 1. How to Choose the Words You Use

Rule 1: Anchor the Reader in Your World

Choose the specific word over the general

Rule 2: Make the Reader Feel Your World

Choose the sensory word over the evaluative

Rule 3: Tie the Reader to Your Specific Vision

Find the right word, exactly

Rule 4: Speed-Feed Your Reader's Imagination

Find the right word, simply

Rule 5: Make Some Descriptions Four-Dimensional

Find the right words for the right word

Rule 6: Keep Your Reader's Nose to the Text

Avoid the overused and skippable

Rule 7: Sprinkle with the Reader's Favorite Spice

Resonant words contribute to mood

Rule 8: Keep Your Reader Close to the Action

Keep a tight rein on your filters

Rule 9: Make Each Blow Count

Avoid diluting impact

Rule 10: Lazy Writing Is Easy

Avoid the clinch of cliché

Rule 11: Don't Pet the Dog!

Know your own pet words

Rule 12: You Had to Be There, Buddy

Showing and telling with words

Section 2: What's in a Sentence?

Rule 13: Write for Magnetic Reading

Flow—conceptual

Rule 14: Write in a Billiard Ball World

Flow—cause and effect

Rule 15: Write with Your Mouth Open

Flow—sounds

Rule 16: Write Against the Beat of Drums

Flow—rhythm

Rule 17: Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow

Vary your delivery

Rule 18: Don't Race Against the Clock

Craft a clear timeline

Rule 19: Include the Missing Link

Description—what to include?

Rule 20: When to Jazz It Up

Description—bring the static to life

Rule 21: Live Life on a Diet

Don’t over-pack sentences

Rule 22: Mainline Your Words

Keep sentences unambiguous, all the way to the end

Rule 23: No Peace, No Rest, No Sleep

Keep the writing alive, the reader awake

Rule 24: I Told You I Done the Deed

Showing and telling at sentence level

Section 3: Gluing Sentences Together

Rule 25: Rhyme Means Blues

Avoid rhyme and repetition

Rule 26: Upstaging

Dedicate each paragraph to a single character’s actions

Rule 27: Small Talk

Dialogue—avoid hiccups, burps and banter

Rule 28: An Unnatural Act

Dialogue—avoid implausible exposition

Rule 29: A Blunt Instrument

Dialogue—avoid on-the-nose speech

Rule 30: Phonetically Speaking...

Dialogue—don’t slavishly reproduce the phonetics of a dialect

Rule 31: Another Tornado of Words

Don’t overuse metaphor, simile, or comparison

Rule 32: Out of This World

Keep metaphor, simile, and comparison within the story world

Rule 33: More of the Same?

Consider the power of the extended metaphor

Rule 34: A Red Rocket Tumbled from the Sky

The dangers of metaphor in genre fiction

Rule 35: The Railway Timetable

Then and then and then—avoid lists of actions

Rule 36: She, Who What?

Get the pronoun antecedent right

Rule 37: There Is No Rule 37, Say The Grammar Police

Break the rules, not the writing

Rule 38: Quoting Chapter and Verse

Showing and telling with dialogue

Section 4: Most Beginning Writers Never Guessed

Rule 39: Stick a Pin in the Map

Time and place

Rule 40: What's the Point?

Character, goal, obstacle, and jeopardy

Rule 41: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

Contrived drama and information-hiding

Rule 42: He Said, She Said, They Intoned

Said Bookism and The Turkey City Lexicon

Rule 43: Advertising Needs and Wants

Dialogue and character goal

Rule 44: Choppy Waters

Emotional shift every time

Rule 45: A Question of Variety

Setting change every time

Rule 46: Never Letting Up

Problems must be problematic and ever-present

Rule 47: What's That Got to Do with the Price of Bread?

Make backstory do emotional work

Rule 48: All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for My Close-up

Manage POV proximity with care

Rule 49: He Thought, She Thought, They Agonized

Treatment—don’t head-hop

Rule 50: Sticky Prose

Flow—it’s a hooky world

Rule 51: The Domino Effect

Flow—write a solid cause and effect chain

Rule 52: You Don't Need a Stopwatch

Flow—real-time, fast forward and slow-motion

Rule 53: The One and the Many

Knowingly use representation or presentation

Rule 54: An Indulgence in Contemporary Life

Beware the ephemera of life

Rule 55: That Mysterious Statue in the Forest

Symbolism must serve story

Rule 56: The Airdrop and the Easter Egg

Intertextuality—one wink too many?

Rule 57: How to Decide What to Write

Showing and telling—when and what to dramatize

Section 5: The Gossip That Got Us All Started

Rule 58: Getting Character from Plot

Develop a character to fit the action

Rule 59: Getting Plot from Character

Develop a plot based on a character’s traits

Rule 60: It's Not Funny and It's Not Clever

Yes, officer—name, age and gender

Rule 61: Remind Me: Which Was Which?

Make character names distinct

Rule 62: I Got Stuck Over the Name

Make character names readable

Rule 63: But He Meant Well

Avoid a hateful main character

Rule 64: What the Protagonist Does

A protagonist must take action

Rule 65: What the Protagonist Is at Heart

A protagonist must have a flaw

Rule 66: Winning by a Hair's Breadth

An antagonist must be effective

Rule 67: The Four-Dimensional Foe

Give the antagonist the right arc

Rule 68: Everyone Faces a Different Way

Every character works toward some goal

Rule 69: Force the Reader to Take an Interest

It’s all gossip, really, you know

Rule 70: A Bad Hair Day Is No Excuse

Don’t look in the mirror!

Rule 71: The Superpower

The main character must excel at something

Section 6: Telling Tales

Rule 72: I Laughed So Much It Made Me Cry

A story must take the reader on an emotional journey

Rule 73: Whose Story Is It to Tell?

An author, a narrator, and a point of view might best be silent

Rule 74: Prepare for the Inevitable

Foreshadow later events

Rule 75: The Ubiquitous Versus the Common

Embrace trope, avoid cliché

Rule 76: A Sure-Fire Way to Dump the Reader

Don’t set out to shock the reader

Rule 77: Enjoy the Long March

Don’t defuse suspense too soon

Rule 78: Seeing Is Not Believing

Live the dream, don’t watch it

Rule 79: Don't Over-Egg the Pudding

No need to belabor the theme

Rule 80: Leave It Out, Mate!

What to include, what to exclude

Rule 81: The Unreal Body Part

Avoid mobilizing the mind

Rule 82: Sing Your Own Song

Treatment—find a voice

Rule 83: Through Gritted Teeth, She Told the Tale

Treatment—set a tone

Rule 84: A Second Coat of Paint

Amplify emotion

Rule 85: The Writer as Graphic Designer

Keep one eye on the layout of text on the page

Rule 86: Catastrophic Genius

Beware the Good Idea

Rule 87: Swearing on a Stack of Your Books

Keep your promises

Section 7: Just Between You and Me, My Friend

Rule 88: The Dialogue Between You and Your Reader

Write to genre

Rule 89: Roll up! Roll up! Read All About It!

Make sure it’s a story you’re telling

Rule 90: Think Big

Find the High Concept

Rule 91: Story Shorthand

Formulate a two-sentence synopsis

Rule 92: Order out of Chaos

Make each Act do its job

Rule 93: What Time Do You Call This?

Enter late, leave early

Rule 94: Once Upon a Time

Where to start—who, where, when and the inciting incident

Rule 95: Fishing and Story-Bait

Where to start—a hook by any other name

Rule 96: Laugh or Cry?

Where to start—mood expectations

Rule 97: Your New Best Friend

Where to start—narrative voice and POV

Rule 98: If There Were Only One Rule It Would Be This

Things only ever get worse

Rule 99: Tub-Thumping

Don’t proselytize—feed the reader’s mind

Rule 100: Common Advice

Write what you know

Rule 101: The End Is the End

Validation

Section 8: Extras: When Other People Get Involved

Rule 102: How to Triage Critiques, Feedback and Editorial Comment

Know the effect you want in the reader

Rule 103: Strictly Obey Submission Guidelines

Respect industry professionals

Rule 104: Be Professional, Modest and Polite

Publishing is a business, not the schoolyard

Section 9: If There Is Only One Thing You Ever Do...

Glossary. Terms of Craft

Rule 0: Understand What Writers Mean by...

Appendix A: Bibliography

Appendix B: More Material Online

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Index

Authentic Art in the Age of AI (a short manifesto for the creative mind)

The Man in My Head Has Lost His Mind (what makes us conscious?)

This Robot Brain Gets Life (how to make a machine that thinks like us?)

Tinnitus - a crime novel

Death of a Bad Neighbour - a crime and mystery anthology

Introduction

If only I knew then, what I know now, I would have abandoned all the creative guesswork much sooner.

For writers early in their creative journey, this creative guesswork is a rite of passage, as is apparent from the weak technique so often seen in writers' groups, critique sessions, and slush piles.

How often have you read a sentence that sounded great, but, on reflection, it made no sense?

We have all been guilty of those, guessing at what makes for good writing and relying on untutored instinct.

However, the writer does not need to rely on guesswork (nor indeed, ought the reader).

In this book, I isolate one hundred weaknesses frequently found in the manuscripts of writers who are not yet selling well. In what follows I have turned the weaknesses around and re-state them as rules, with pros and cons, to use or abuse—whichever you decide.

A smidgen over 100 rules in all: a writer's basic toolbox.

Some rules may seem commonplace to the practiced writer, such as how to choose words to immerse the reader. But some may intrigue even old hands at the game such as the minimalist approach I offer for creating plot from character, or creating character from plot, or the real reason why reading your text aloud makes a difference to what you write.

Dwight V. Swain in his book Techniques of the Selling Writer observes that the person who knows the how of a skill will always find work, but the person who knows the why will be master of their craft.

Following his advice, I also include the why of each rule—although the why for most rules is a variant of:

To keep the reader reading and when they get to the end to seek out more.

You may read the rules in any order without harm to comprehension. I hope you find a good many of them instructive and useful.

All examples are my own, except where specifically attributed.

But I would especially like to mention that my interest in narrative flow was ignited by Jeanne Cavelos in her blog post on Narrative Flow for Fiction University, January 15, 2019 (Appendix B). My attitude to genre is influenced by the paper Genre, Interpretation and Evaluation by Catharine Abell in her 2014 presentation to the Aristotelian Society (Appendix A) and by David Farland’s writings on fiction, especially his book Million Dollar Outlines, 2013 (Appendix A).

One last thing: a request. Please review this book at the store where you purchased it, to let those writers who might get the most from it, have some prospect of discovering it.

Carter Blakelaw

November 2020

Please note: The Appendices, the Index, and an audio-tagged Contents listing are available as a free PDF download at:

www.carterblakelaw.com/toolbox

Section 1. How to Choose the Words You Use

The writer aims to transport the reader to the story world and immerse the reader in that world by lulling them into the semi-dream-state that is the trance of seamless reading.

Every word plays its part to hold the reader in that trance by making the experience as convincing as possible.

Rule 1: Anchor the Reader in Your World

Choose the specific word over the general

The word poodle is specific; the word dog general; toy poodle more specific; mammal more general.

The word 'poodle' brings to mind a specific image, 'mammal' hardly any image at all. Using a specific word rather than the general brings an image instantly to the reader’s mind, without effort on the reader's part, making the story world immediate and vivid.

If the dog is a significant character in the story, it may be necessary to be more specific and to pick out this toy poodle from all the toy poodles in the universe.

For example, by adding specific detail:

The jet-black toy poodle with a bald patch along its back and