"The best way to develop character is to write the character."
"Take a 10-minute break and come back and look at it... I always find little mistakes or typos."
"If you have one takeaway from here, it's if revision is something that you hate, try to make a plan for how you're going to achieve a revision on your book."
"Write, be authentic to your own lived experience, try some new things with every character you write, and meld those two together."
"Ignore all the advice I give about writing books or creating online courses, because it's sort of like asking a lottery winner what numbers they picked."
"Never begin a paragraph with 'and', 'but', or 'or'... but one hundred percent for sure."
"You will have many drafts. You shouldn't submit anything until you've gone at least four, five, six drafts deep."
"The number one thing is just to write, try a lot of different things out."
"My single most important piece of advice for aspiring writers is to do the work, do the writing, and also do the reading."
"Write for humans, not for search engine bots."
"When inventing a new name, try to choose a spelling that can only be pronounced one way."
"Give your villain as much care in your character work as you give any other character."
"Write everything down, treat it like your jokes bro."
"You should be in a writing group if you're serious about this."
"Overly convoluted writing style waters your sentence down instead of making it stronger."
"Boring basic scene setups lead to a ton of filler, dragging your pacing down."
"Pacing is about hitting the perfect happy medium for the speed at which your story moves."
"Once you open that door, that becomes the door that you have to now deal with in every story." - BRANDON SANDERSON
"Think about your story in terms of its situation and character, not in terms of its theme."
"The biggest lesson about writing is: get up and do it."
"Write what you are interested in rather than what you know."
"Some of the best writing advice is to write what you know."
"Begin in medias res: grab your reader from word one."
"Your goal as a writer should be to make sure your audience keeps reading, and that means doing less not more."
"People will tell you you need to learn grammar, and this and that. You don't."
"Don't be afraid to have fun with your writing."
"You should just write to begin to figure out how it feels to get your ideas on the page."
"Assess levels on their own terms and timeframes where possible."
"If some of your lines sound like they were written by an angsty teenager, it's probably best to scrap those lines."
"Flashbacks are a neat narrative tool that should only be used to benefit the story that happens in the present day. In other words, there needs to be a good reason for interrupting the story."
"When rewriting, you can get more analytical and use these questions so that you can find and fix your scenes' problems."
"Identify the essential elements of your story so you can use them to focus on what you are actually trying to say and if you disagree with Dan Harmon and his story circle Harmon replies prove me wrong."
"Always write for yourself, don't be afraid to touch controversial things."
"Real writers write, so if you want to be a writer, you have to write."
"Readers are smart. Trust your readers to see what you're writing, read a scene and understand it."
"Every single scene... must count towards your ultimate goal for the story."
"By taking a page from J.K. Rowling’s book, you can give that same gift to your own readers."
"This task is particularly difficult, but if you have a structure in mind and you know how to write a good paragraph, that will make your life so much easier."
"The best advice for most new writers is, just keep writing."
"I do want to talk about shelving projects and why I decided to shelve these because I think shelving projects it's just something that is like a new writer I think you have to learn how to do."
"Show, don't tell. If you want the audience to have a takeaway that a certain character is racist, misogynist, hateful [ __ ] whatever, you would show the audience their actions."
"The key to good writing: understanding how to use specificity."
"Specificity: the richness and uniqueness of your story."
"Feel free to let yourself just stop on a section and move somewhere else and work on some other part of the book that keeps you excited."
"Specificity makes your writing come alive with detail and depth."
"There's no such thing as too long, only too boring."
"You just need to pick one of them, write about it, publish it and just do this every week for the next two years and I can pretty much guarantee that your life will change in an interesting way."
"Whenever you don't need a comma, don't put a comma. Less is more, less is better in writing."
"Never put your universe before your characters."
"Always think about the emotional reading experience."
"I'm a firm believer that when you write the stories that you create, they need to come from the heart. They need to come from experience."
"Fill your story with conflict and tension... inject that conflict."
"That writing should also face in the same direction."
"Don't describe things in your horror stories as terrifying. Describe them in a terrifying way."
"There's no wrong way to write a book. There's no right way to write a book."
"The pros of writing every day don't last forever."
"Write, write, write. You only know what kind of writing you love if you try it out."
"I would encourage authors to marinate in the sources."
"Just force yourself to write one page a day, just one."
"Show, don't tell, probably the most basic fundamental writing device that you get."
"You don't need to contrive a drastic surprise out of nowhere just to shock your audience."
"Write what you love to read, and that will be a good book."
"Be honest and don't avert your eyes from what’s the ugliest."
"It becomes kill your darlings it becomes I love this scene does it get me to the next scene."
"Don’t write what you know, write what you want to understand."
"A good thing to always keep in mind is story."
"First lines shouldn't be your priority; concentrate on character development, building a strong story, hitting appropriate story beats, pacing, and fulfilling promises."
"What I'm going to be going through today is really simple, really easy, and it's just such a great way to start off with planning your characters."
"He's about to do something new, can you not see it?"
"Writing what you know is just a good starting point."
"If your ending isn’t working, your set-up’s probably broken."
"Your villain is AS important as your main character, and should be crafted with equal attention and care."
"The beauty cliche has been done to death. Leave it behind in fairy tales, you are creative enough to dig deeper."
"This will give you a better idea of how to craft an antagonist who is layered and believable."
"Practice makes perfect, keep writing no matter what."
"You find yourself if you watch it enough its quoting Doc Holliday way more than you really should yeah yeah yeah."
"High Guardian Spice teaches a valuable lesson to naive and selfish writers who want to only make material they like."
"All stories are journeys, and contrived writing is like taking shortcuts from that journey." - Unknown
"Give it a Twist, give it a hook, give it a thing that's different from all of its compatriots, you know what I mean?"
"I'm a very strong believer in there being no set rules in writing."
"Characters don't exist in a vacuum; you need to consider the world as well."
"Every little thing should progress the story."
"That's really your only limitation. Everything else is free rain."
"They say to write what you know, and that's exactly what Bong Joon-ho did when it came to Parasite."
"Strike when the muse comes, write down your dreams or ideas."
"Use adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, prepositional phrases, make sure you appeal to the senses, and the reader will have a much easier time getting your ideas."
"If you want to organize your latest story, including crafting that epic climax, definitely check out Milanote."
"Shut Up and Write the Book is on its way. This book literally takes you through every step of the writing process."
"If your book is let's say 20 to 30 000 words below what is expected for your age category in genre, that might mean you don't have enough character development."
"Hack number 14: Remember to think about how your character speaks and their mannerisms."
"If you write a short story every week, you are bound to have at least a couple good ones."
"Start writing women as full and complete human beings."
"Keep your paragraphs one to two sentences each, and they'll be bite-sized and easy to read."
"Just write what you enjoy. You shouldn't write to please other people."
"If you write two crappy pages per day, you've won the day. That's a successful writing day."
"This opinion not impressive at all and if you want to learn about how not to write an opinion involving the Second Amendment I would recommend strongly you read the opinion of Judge Virginia Kendall in the northern district of Illinois."
"Read your own work if you can. Your voice might become inseparable from your message."
"Just write good [], just write good [], just write good [__]."
"Tropes can work if you write them well, but if you're not bringing a whole new approach to the table, you're copying what you've seen, and that's a cardinal sin against good writing."
"Avoid 'talking head syndrome' by shifting focus."
"If you don't feel that way about a character you've created, then you haven't finished them yet, that's all I'm saying."
"In order to be successful and set yourself apart from everyone else writing that particular genre story, you have to transcend the form."
"Write a lot and work hard and just keep getting up."
"In a mystery, if you don't know what's going to happen, have someone kick down the door and start shooting and figure out why they were shooting later."
"Focus on good content... Make it a good article you would want to read."
"Good writing is about energy transfer, not being professional."
"Hirsch's main advice to aspiring writers and showrunners is to focus on the characters and to write what you know from your life experiences."
"Show don't tell is very, very important when it comes to screenplays."
"Listening to people is one of the most vital skills you can develop as a writer."
"Write good characters... realistic three-dimensional like people you'd actually meet in real life."
"People giving writing advice are biased, and it's important to consider the nuances."
"Give everything you have to your writing; your reader deserves it, and so do you."
"Writers need to stop trying to appeal to everyone or what's popular on the shelves and in the Zeitgeist at the moment."
"Spend time with characters who have a similar energy and attitude as this character you're trying to write."
"This formatting master class is everything I've learned, every valuable lesson on formatting put together in such a way that is easy to follow, no nonsense, and will save you from ripping your hair out, which is always a bonus."
"Kill Your Darlings." Learning how to let go of often fun but weaker ideas is an important skill for a writer to develop.
"Every writer is different... Do what works best for you."
"Listen to the characters and don't try to force them into a scene or a situation."
"Trust me on this: stick to a single series or a single genre."
"The best advice I could give any writer: if you don't learn how to write, read scripts."
"Scripts are not literature, they have to be engaging."
"Reading bad scripts boosts your confidence because you tell yourself, 'I can do so much better than this.'"
"It's about writing, it's about the craft of writing, it's about him kind of, you know, letting go of some, some of his secrets to writing a good book and kind of sharing some of his rules for writing a good book."
"If your characters hate your scene ideas or the direction you're taking your story, you won't get much out of them."
"So you want to write a book? First, you must eat one."
"If you plan to do this professionally because if you try to rely on tropes to fill in the blanks of your story so you have a frame structure to hang shipping and jokes on, you're going to end up with a one-dimensional character like Rosemary."
"Constructing the environment of your book is the essence of world building."
"There is no one size fits all writing advice."
"Analyze why you didn't like it, find out all of the examples of clumsiness or bad thinking that spoiled the story for you. That will probably be a lot more helpful to your career as a writer."
"Asking yourself questions honestly can solve all your writing problems."
"Write what you're most attracted to because it will be more fun and engaging that way."
"Don't freak out. What I recommend doing is, again, creating maybe a second outline where you can reorganize your initial thoughts based on now the material that you do have and kind of shape that story that way."
"Transforming your weak character descriptions into something that is more robust and revealing is a version of the classic writing advice show don't tell."
"It's ruined a lot of people when it comes to writing. Show don't tell is like the great filter for a lot of people."
"It's not found in the easy stuff. I often say, people ask me for one line of advice to a beginning writer and my line is, finish what you start."
"Adding a stronger sense of perspective onto your writing will absolutely improve your paragraphs in pretty much every way. It will help you to avoid a lot of mistakes like repetition and monotonous sentences."
"Let's have active, strong viewpoints, concrete language, non-flabby scenes."
"Starting with a character waking up is probably one of the biggest first line cliches, probably the number one, and it's really just something to avoid at all costs."
"You are going to discover as you are writing that there are places where breaking the tension, there are places where diverting the reader into a joke will break the story."
"If the first line could apply to the average person on any given day, it's probably not a very strong first line."
"Every writer can improve their stories by keeping in mind the reader-character connection and strive to ensure that readers can sympathize with their characters."
"Show and not tell. I think every new writer struggles with this."
"telling detail fresh detail the good writers touch life often the mediocre ones run a quick hand over her the bad ones"
"Take what works for you, leave the rest. And that hopefully is good advice for literally everyone that you hear talking about writing."
"...structure that will help you build around it and turn your structure into a beautiful, fully formed, graceful, elegant article that you can share with other people and be proud of."
"Take your time when you're writing, enjoy it, and also search for the sentences and phrases that you want to use."
"If your characters in the novel don't become as real to you as the members of your family, then you're in a lot of trouble. Your characters are not going to develop."
"Pray before you write out and share your story. Write the way you speak. Don't be overly negative or positive. Be honest."
"The most important thing is understanding the question and just directly answering the question with your writing."
"It's really really important to know your characters."
"It's not a good idea to rhyme the word you just said with the same exact word."
"Keep your sentences short. Always use short words. Each sentence needs to be perfectly clear. Use Anglo-Saxon words."
"If you want the characters to be compelling, work more on developing them."
"To kill your darlings is to delete content, characters, or scenes that have no benefit to your story."
"You're putting the cart before the horse. The most important thing is a good story."
"Start writing your main paragraph... they're going to be big chunky paragraphs, they're going to be analytical, they're going to be evaluative."
"Too much filtering definitely ruins the reading experience; it's more a sign of amateur writing."
"A precondition for writing well is being able to write badly and to write when you're not in the mood."
"Number one productivity tip: if you're trying to write something, don't go back to the beginning all the time."
"If you can’t write interesting characters, that’s the thing that you need to be working on."
"Write what you know... that is the most successful way to start."
"The best surefire way to write is to just write something that you would personally like."
"If you've never read Stephen King's On Writing, I read this last year and I don't remember being so emotionally invested in it."
"Try to write as simply and concisely as possible."
"Make your writing as succinct as possible because you want to pack in as much analysis as you can."
"The biggest tip for creative writing is to try to have a bunch of symbolism."
"Look out for potholes like this, look out for places in which you can be consistent."
"If you're a fiction writer, this is a very good idea to work with."
"Make sure to write more than the required number of words; be coherent and logical."
"Keep your paragraphs distinct; a different paragraph should have a different message from the previous paragraph."
"It's a great method of showing, not telling."
"Just write as you would talk, not like someone else."
"You want to start with a scene that illustrates character, conflict, world, and ideally also stakes."
"I'm talking about writing here, so let's get this quick writing advice from Matt Stone and Trey Parker."
"It will absolutely make you consider the sound of your own writing or whatever you're currently reading so much more."
"I'm always trying to teach my students the joy of cutting. Everything can be cut by 50% and it's automatically improved."
"Kill your darlings. You're going to be okay."
"Write what you know, talk about what you know... it's about feelings that I've had or feelings that I've been adjacent to."
"This is cool, this is how to write a character."
"If you're going to be a great book, you have to capture the audience's attention immediately."
"Use simple sentences, use simple language; you are going to do it right."
"Don't write what you could show with visuals."
"If you're doing writing and you have a sentence and you have to justify that sentence being there, cut the sentence."
"If a section is getting long, think about cutting out any unnecessary fluff."
"The Hunger Games nails so many things that you should pay attention to when you are writing your novel."
"There really is no one way to write a first draft."
"Don't focus on punctuation; use your mental energy elsewhere."
"Keep the introduction and conclusion brief."
"Take writing opportunities when they come your way."
"You never want to say of a character, 'Jeff was angry.' You want to show us that he's angry."
"Set the plot clearly and make sure that it advances forward with every chapter."
"The most important thing is that it's entertaining and beneficial to your story."
"Every single thing you write should have consequences." - George R. R. Martin
"Summarize the argument that you've made, don't introduce any new ideas."
"One of the first rules that the fiction writer must learn is that the writer doesn't care about her; the reader says, 'Tell me about me.'"
"All you need to be a writer is to write."
"Always write about the ending, where the writer puts their ideas."
"Always trust your instincts as a writer."
"Make your writing real; be specific, real places, real examples and experiences."