Pretentious Writing Advice vol. I: The absolute basics

Where it all started.

Readers have noticed by now (like, both of them) that, prior to this article, the lowest-numbered Pretentious Writing Advice on this blog was volume VII. A very reasonable question to ask, then, was: “What happened to Pretentious Writing Advice I through VI?”. Well, here's the answer to that!

In a previous life, I used to frequent forums about writing. Seeing as most-if-not-all members were still teenagers, me being in my early 20s meant that I was the “adult in the room” so to speak. I therefore adopted a wise-grampa persona, and took to cautioning them against my own personal pet peeves. The members' response tended to range somewhere between adulation and deification, so I kept writing more articles. My inspirations ranged from the fiction I myself consumed, to TVTropes, to How not to Write a Novel.

To my disappointment, the places in which we used to hang out went defunct one after the other, so I eventually just stopped writing articles. At the very least, however, I managed to salvage the already-written ones thanks to the Wayback Archive. It took decades to gather enough inspiration to write more, shortly after which my blog was also inaugurated; thus, I thought I might as well repost the old articles here too, after some further polishing of course.

So, without further ado: Pretentious Writing Advice Volume I!

(OK, one small piece of further ado: If you remember the internet hang-out spots to which I'm referring, and the user-name I used to use there, by all means please reach out. I'd love to reconnect!

…and also remember to take the necessary medication for your crippling back pain. We're not young any more.)

In everyday life, I often notice one thing: People forget the obvious. We forget our wallet at home, we forget to take the rubbish outside, a select few forget to feed themselves regularly. Needless to say, when we do complicated stuff like writing, the mistakes often pile up without us noticing. For that reason, as I was answering a post called “we can’t tell if you’re a good writer or not” somewhere, I took the opportunity to start making lists of common mistakes I saw.

You, the writer, will likely already know all those. Still, you’re welcome to use this as a check-list, to ensure you don’t ruin a good story due to silly oversights. So, without further ado, Pretentious Advice begins!

A good idea is never enough on its own.

I see this all the time in published fiction. The author has an awesome idea, turns it into a book, then slowly runs out of steam¹. (Or, in some cases, never had any steam to begin with.) As it just so happens, silly ideas make for stories I enjoy much more frequently than clever ones do.

Thing is, the good idea serves as just the appetiser to a story; it only gets the reader interested in hearing out what you have to say. If you don’t actually have something to say, your reader will give up on you mid-way through. Thus, while a good idea does help, the thing that will judge your worth as a writer is your drive and ability to share your thoughts and emotions with people.

Immersiveness (and therefore good writing) is judged on the details.

Every reader wants to feel drawn to what he/she is reading, to have a vivid image of it. This feeling is best achieved when each sentence helps reïnforce it, drawing the reader further inside the writing. This whole process is reminiscent of a slide, or a roller-coaster, which smoothly transitions from one place to the next. The operating word here, of course, is “smoothly”.

The reason the word “smoothly” is emphasised is because any mistake in your writing corresponds to a bump or gap in the ride; it's not a coïncidence that reading smoothness is referred to as “narrative momentum”. Yes, there do exist mistakes large enough to completely derail narrative momentum on their own, but even small mistakes can cumulatively ruin a story completely if they are numerous enough.

Such details can range from the most obvious to the most difficult: Correct your typos and spellings, use your tenses wisely, give your characters depth, research your subject, give loving attention to your punctuation, things like that. It's very dangerous to get into the habit of thinking of your mistakes as “too small to care about”.

If it’s your first time, you’re writing about yourself.

Just accept this for now, because it’s not necessarily bad. After all, you’re the person you know best, and you use yourself as a reference. One character is going to be your Author Avatar, and the story is going to rely heavily on that one character. That does not mean you can’t make it interesting; in fact, the more you care about other people in real life, the more you’ll care about your other characters. If you can manage that, no-one will care if you’re using self-inserts or not—they’ll understand that you can see beyond yourself, and thank you for it.

A quote I personally liked is “All fiction is our fantasies. It’s just a matter of how good we are at hiding it.”

(There is an article currently brewing in my mind –“currently” as in “early 2026”– that will explore this in more detail.)

Just because it’s original doesn’t mean it’s good.

Another classic. Everyone has read/heard a story that was totally original, like nothing seen before, totally unpredictable, and also utterly boring.

By broad definition: Art should be beautiful and didactic. More precisely, it should invite attention, and it should give people food for thought. Repeat this several times a day, because it’s your ultimate goal.

Some people, in making things original, forget that. They make a very unpredictable story that has nothing to say. This, of course, is not what originality is about: When you’re original, you can give people new food for thought, or offer them new ways to get drawn in your story. If originality serves neither of those, just scrap the whole idea.

Then again, it’s hard to be diligent and cliché at the same time, so don’t lose your sleep over it.

Combining narrative elements is not trivial to do correctly.

This is especially aimed towards naïve descriptions of stories that go “Oh, it has something for everyone! There's action, and romance, and comedy, and mystery, and…”

Everyone wants to have a broad audience. After all, great stories are the ones that can be enjoyed by lots of different people, so you (like everyone else) will be trying to achieve that. The first thing everyone thinks of, is to take stuff people like, and insert it in their story. Thus, if they like –say– skateboards, they’ll prefer a western that has skateboards over one that doesn’t, right?

This, of course, is like mixing cod oil inside your cheetos in order to increase their nutritional value. Magically, cod oil’s flavour and the nutritional value of cheetos are combined into one unholy abomination.

Similarly, when inserting differing elements inside a story, you need to take into account the way they interact with one another. Sometimes, they strengthen each other, and solidify the story’s foundations. Other times, when you insert them solely to please the readers, all they do is make everything worse.

A good way to judge for yourself is to remove each of the story’s main elements, one by one, and try to imagine what the story would feel like without them. If any of them leave the flow of plot unchanged, they should be weaved better in, or paid much less attention to, or even excised altogether.

(There’s an amusing anecdote about a pornographic film, wherein the guy turns to the girl out of the blue and says “I have brain cancer”. Was it a deeply erotic film, that also managed to move the viewers’ heartstrings for the tragedy, or was it a sorry excuse for either? You decide.)

Just because it’s your style, doesn’t mean it’s the best you can do.

Often-times, a reader/critic/editor/whatever will give you some advice that you find disagreeable. The reason being, “that’s not my style”. However, very frequently, such advice will have a very useful deeper meaning. The reader doesn’t want you to change your style; he/she has subconsciously recognised a mistake, and offered the solution that first came to mind. What you’ll need to do, is to figure out what the deeper essence of the mistake is, and then find a way to remedy it without losing your personal style.

As an example, suppose someone tells you your writing has “too much description”. Said person does not, of course, mean “please leave everything vague”. It can mean one or more of the following: “the description should not be presented all at once, because that becomes difficult to read”, or “you should deëmphasise certain unimportant details, to make the others easier to remember” or even “you could be as descriptive with a short, concise summary”. There’s a lot behind what people dislike, and it will help you immensely if you can decipher it effectively.

Once you’re clear on that, experiment. Edit your writing to find alternative ways to express yourself. You’ll be surprised at how versatile your style is.

With all that said, though, there's also the fact that at the same time…

Your readers’ advice is not always the best possible.

As you grow as a writer, you’ll get readers, then fans. Those people will often praise you, and give you advice on what they want to see next. Following their advice blindly, however, is just a recipe for disaster.

For one, what readers want is often different from what they say they want. Remember, your story’s goal is to be beautiful and didactic; if what they’re telling you compromises either, ignore them.

For two, there’s nothing a reader likes more than a pleasant surprise. If you just write what they want to read, they’ll recognise their own train of thought and predict what’s going to happen next, dulling any emotions they might otherwise have felt.

Lastly, readers commonly tell you a destination they want your story to reach, and leave it up to you to choose the trip. This trip, actually, is doubly or triply more important than the destination; even if you do decide to lead your story there, do not take any shortcuts towards it. First of all, tell the story you want to tell; you can choose the ending later.

Just because you enjoy writing it, doesn’t mean others will enjoy reading it.

There, I said it. I even kept it for last, just for added emphasis.

You’ll hear everyone say that the most important thing in writing is to have fun. I’ll agree; it’s a good place to start, but a very, very bad place to stop. See, if you have a good plot idea, whatever you write, you’re going to be satisfied by it. The reason being, since it’s a description of your imagination, you have a very good idea of what happens.

Your readers… don’t. If you want others to enjoy reading it, you have to try to achieve that, and try hard. You have to let them immerse themselves in your writing, allow them to sympathise with (or at the very least understand) your characters etc. If the plot exists solely to entertain one character, no-one is going to like it—apart from you, of course. There is much more to a good story than that, and it’s your job to find out what will draw the readers’ attention.

Post-script

One section of the original article has been removed. The crux of the advice was about making sure that the resolution of the story follows logically from the preceding events; not only regarding what happens, but also regarding the emotional tone. In particular, it was about making sure that reaching a “happy end” does not require ignoring plot-threads inconvenient to it. However, the actual phrasing was originally more of a “take that!” towards people who did not really deserve it, and as such has been removed until it can be phrased without tangents.