How being bad on purpose can be the best thing for getting things written
It’s some of my favourite advice to give fellow perfectionists. Having trouble getting started? Put some awful prose on the page. Make it as bad as you possibly can.
Think of it like scribbling on the first page of a new notebook or that first stain on new furniture or the first scratch on a new car.
Why? Because you’ll feel a little disappointment, followed by an immense sense of relief. Stop taking yourself seriously.
Here’s why it helps.
It clears out the creative pipes
Have you ever turned on a tap that hasn’t been used in ages? It coughs and sputters and wheezes, but eventually the water starts to flow. And boy is it ugly water. Who knows how long it has been sitting in the pipes.
They’re doing road work near my house and had to shut off the water for a day. When we used the tap the first time it came back on, the water ran muddy and gross for a good, long while. And even after it looked transparent, there was still a gritty texture and taste to it for a while after that.
But once I left the tap on for a while, eventually fresh water started flowing from it.
So, instead of trying to get pure, clean prose to flow from your fingertips the moment you sit down, make sure you clear the pipes first.
Write the worst paragraph you’ve ever written. Make it bad on purpose. Let all that muddy water flow away.
It acts like a warmup
You wouldn’t expect an athlete to run a marathon without warming up their muscles first. Even artists warm up with sketches and studies before working on a main project.
Creative writing works the same way. Putting down whatever comes to mind will get you into the right headspace. It doesn’t matter if the words you write are any good because you’re simply exercising.
Don’t stop at just one paragraph. Write another bad one, and another, and another until you feel it start coming out easy.
Blank pages are daunting, so make them not-blank
Pretty simple, right? We hate sullying something new—see my previous comment about new notebooks and furniture and cars—for fear of doing irreparable damage. And while it’s a lot harder to buff out scratched paint than it is to hit the backspace key on your keyboard, the effect is the same.
You know that tactic of taking off one or two of those “take a number” tags on a posted flyer to entice more people to take some? Do that to yourself.
Your brain will go “Ah, a first paragraph already exists! Time to keep writing.”
Consider: you don’t have to be perfect, so don’t try to be
Ruin the illusion of perfection to prove to your gremlin brain that it’s perfectly okay to do something imperfectly.
We’re meant to enjoy the act of creation. It’s difficult to do things we don’t enjoy when we make it into such a big thing in our minds, right? So if you’ve over-inflated it, let out some air.
Relax. Enjoy the process of writing. It’s going to go through revisions before the final draft anyway, so why not have a little fun while you’re at this stage?
tl;dr: Don’t take yourself too seriously. Go write some nonsense. Keep writing nonsense until it flows freely. And have fun with it!
it does not matter if the narrative makes a sudden left turn and the theme gambols about a bit as long as the journey was fun and the characters lovable and the mood hit just right. if the story still got told and there were honest tears and laughs, then it’s perfection
In a lecture series on Youtube, #1 New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson talks about the three P’s of plot structure: Promise. Progress. Payoff.
Promises are particularly important in the beginning of the story, as they draw in the audience.
Progress keeps the audience invested, particularly through the middle of the story. If there is no sense of progress, then the reader feels as if the plot isn’t going anywhere.
Payoff is what fulfills the promises of progress. It rewards the audience for sticking around, and if done properly, creates a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the story.
While all three can be tricky in their own right, many writers struggle to create a proper sense of progress, which can lead to saggy middles.
Luckily, Dramatica Theory breaks plot down into eight story points that essentially encapsulate progress.
If you apply them to your stories, your writing will always have progression through the middle.
1. Goal - Every story has a goal. It may be a goal of aspiration, such as becoming a top chef. Or it may be a goal of thwarting something, such as stopping a murderer. Whatever the case, a story’s goal is what enables us to measure progress. If there is no goal, then what one does, doesn’t really matter. We have no orientation or purpose, so there is no sense of moving forward or backward. The goal allows progress to happen.
2. Requirements-In order to achieve the goal, something is required. This can be broken down into two variations. In one, the characters must follow an order of steps, like following a set of directions. In the other, the characters must do or obtain things in any order, like a shopping list. The characters in Jumanji, for example,have the goal to restore the world to normal. The requirement is to win the game. But they must do this in a proper order–they can’t skip turns.
3. Consequences-Consequences are what happen if a goal isn’t achieved or hasn’t yet been achieved. In some stories, the protagonist is trying to prevent the consequences, but in others, the protagonist is trying to stop the consequences that are already happening. Consequences might be thought of as overall stakes. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, if Ralph and Vanellope don’t buy a new steering wheel for Sugar Rush, then its characters will be homeless.
4. Forewarnings - Forewarnings convey that the consequences are getting closer, becoming worse, or becoming permanent (depending on the story). If a dam is in danger of breaking, then a forwarning may be a crack that shoots out water. In Back to the Future, Marty’s family slowly disappearing from a photograph works as a forewarning.
5. Dividends-Characters will likely receive small rewards for little successes along the journey to the goal. These are dividends. For example, on her journey to fight in the war in her father’s place, Mulan is rewarded honor and a place in the military when she is able to retrieve an arrow from a wooden post that none of the men could get down.
6. Costs - Just as the journey may include dividends, it also entails costs. These have negative impacts on the protagonist’s well-being. In order to win The Hunger Games, for example, one must be willing to kill others, which also includes psychological trauma. In order for Frodo to get to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, he must suffer a loss of innocence. This is a cost.
7. Prerequisites - There are often certain essentials one must have, to pursue the goal at all. These are prerequisites.Prerequisites on their own don’t bring the goal closer. This is why they aren’t requirements. In Interstellar, a spaceship, equipment, and astronauts are needed to travel space to find a new home (goal). But simply having those things doesn’t necessarily mean the characters are closer to discovering a liveable planet.
8. Preconditions - Preconditions do not directly relate to the goal. They are “non-essential constraints or costs placed on the characters in exchange for the help of someone who controls essential prerequisites.” In Karate Kid, a prerequisite is that the protagonist must receive extra lessons from a master, but the master adds the precondition of doing chores. One does not technically need to do chores to do karate.
Some of these points are more direct–like requirements–while others are more indirect–like preconditions. The direct points will usually be more intense than the indirect. As you apply these elements to your stories, you’ll create a sense of progress–especially through the middle, which will help make any story more satisfying.
Not the school subject, which I know nothing about (sorry to my chemistry teacher). I’m talking about love. But more than that, chemistry is the way two people interact, and usually it is referring to a romantic sense (though there can be friend, familial, or even antagonistic chemistry). So here are some tips on creating and maintain some of those sparks to make your readers care about the relationships in your story.
Make it Slow
It doesn’t need to be slow burn. Hell, it could even be love at first sight. It’s not about the falling in love, it’s about the relationship itself. In real life, we don’t know what a partner is like until a month, 6 months, a year, maybe even a decade after being with them. First impression you is not the real you. Let the characters develop themselves naturally and slowly, and the relationship will not become too fast-paced and unrealistic.
Give them Differences
We’ve all heard the saying “opposites attract.” And since everyone is different in some way, that is true. Now, your romantic interests don’t need to be polar opposites. In fact, something which I will talk about soon is that they should have some similarities. But a difference creates conflict—good conflict. Conflict that can mirror character’s internal conflict, that can mirror the plot, that can lead to surprising bonds. Make your characters’ differences complement each other, and that will lead to great chemistry.
Give them Similarities
Wait, what? You just said to give them differences.
Well, yes. Both can be true. In the same way that every person on Earth is bound to have something similar and something different with every other person on Earth, your characters should have some similarities to go along with their differences. What is a common trait, or situation, or part of their identity that they can bond over. What do they share that nobody else shares with them? Answering this question can also answer the key question: why do these two characters specifically work well with each other, and not with anyone else?
Focus on Each Separately
You can’t make a good relationship unless the characters that are part of that relationship are also good. So, before you jump into trying to create chemistry, make sure your characters are fully fleshed out first. They should be able to stand on their own with their roles in the story. Make them complex, with motivations, goals, and a key role in the story beforeyou pair them together.
Note: Take advice with a grain of salt. These are supposed to be educational, inspirational, and/or motivational. If you have any corrections, requests, suggestions, or anything really, shoot an ask! or a submission! or a DM!
To the people who were tagged, let me know if you’re uncomfortable having your post and/or blog mentioned here and I’ll make edits ASAP.
Make them make selfish choices. Make them make good decisions. Make them makes bad decisions. Make them make morally gray ones too. Make them have bad habits, like biting their nails, or picking at chapped lips, or staying up too late and sleeping in too much.
Make them wear high end shoes, or shoes falling apart at the soles. Make them wear fancy clothes or wear a go-to laundry day outfit.
Make them ugly cry. Make them wheeze. Make them have pimples and blemishes and roseaca and eczema.
Make them human.
Don’t try to make a character perfect. Nobody is. Each and every character you make has different motives, different drives, different thoughts and personalities.
It doesn’t have to be on one page or a single paragraph; it can be gradual and wonderful, just as your main character finds out along the way, like you will too.
Here are some things to think about when creating new characters that will help you bring them to the next level. Some of these questions are interchangeable, but answering them can really help you when writing/playing your characters.
1. What do they want the most in the world? How far are they willing to go to achieve it? Specifically define what they wouldn’tdo.
2. Who are they the closest to? How would they react if those people died? How would they react if those people betrayed them?
3. What is their worst fear? How would they react when faced with that fear?
4. What is the worst thing that ever happened to them? And what is the best thing? Define how it influenced them and/or their lives.
5. If they could change one thing about themselves/their lives, what would it be and why?
6. Are they addicted to something? From alcohol to the thrill of the hunt, define it and don’t forget to use it.
7. Did they ever kill someone? If so, how did they react after their first kill? If not, how would they react if they had to kill someone?
8. Would they ever sacrifice themselves? If so, what would they be willing to die for?
9. How do they react to meeting new people? Is it easy for them to socialize? If they were at a party, where and how would they spend most of the time?
10. What are their flaws and weaknesses? Is it something that they can work on and improve over the course of the story?
…
Let me know if you’d be interested in more writing tips like this and what specifically would you like me to focus on :) See ya!
This is yet another consequence of ✨shitty writing advice✨ that’s like “if it doesn’t advance the plot cut it out!”
Hey. Have you considered. That scenes with character development. *Are* advancing the plot
Just saying, but the fascination with plot and only the plot is mostly European-based. I found this out by studying Worldwide Story structures and I ran into a hitch around the time I looked at Africa (yes, the continent), West Asia, the longer history of East Asia (Not the newer history), and especially Aboriginal, Pacific Islander, and North, Central and South Americas. What? Plot, What are you talking about? Threw me for a loop.
Early storytelling, mostly Oral pre-writing, from what I’ve looked at wasn’t concerned with the plot at all. That’s not why you’re telling the story (and No, I’m not arguing for evolutionary Anthropology, because that’s effing racist.) The reason you’re telling that story according to some studying, etc, is likely so your children don’t go off wandering near that pool of water and go drown themselves. Like say, all those water monster stories. Why do you need a plot? It’s a survival mechanism.
This follows with Better Ways to Live from Africa, Aboriginal and Indigenous (*some* not all ethnicities within), the point ain’t OK, what’s the plot and make it interesting. The point is !@#$, I need you to effing remember how to fish and navigate to this next island. So there *tends* to be more emphasis on tone, theme, etc. This is also why I had to change from “Plot driver” to “Story driver” The way story is thought of is different and the point is never the plot. Why the hell are you thinking about the plot, they tend to say. That’s not the point. I need you to remember this important thing, or I need you to be able to repeat this exactly. Or I need you to understand this story at different ages. Or I need you to get the moral already and engage with it so you remember it.
The whole thing about making stories “interesting” and engage the audience for sheer entertainment and nothing else is mostly a preoccupation of being settled and in a connected empire. ‘cause you’re less preoccupied by that time with how to effing survive with your livestock or foraging, etc. You got time for leisure and money to spare to get over your basic boredom.
In addition, this whole notion about character-driven, Plot-driven is entirely imperialistic and comes from the “Great Man Theory” so it’s time to deimperialize too. If you actually look up the Great Man Theory which was abandoned by everyone else except writers from some reason, I guarantee you’re going to feel sick very fast.
It’s the paternalistic notion that only Great Men get to be recorded in history because the rest of us are losers who don’t contribute anything at all, with a lot of side of imperialism made by an imperialistic asshole (and I do mean grade-A asshole). But THINK about that. Do you really think that because someone like Bass Reeves isn’t widely known he wasn’t awesome sauce and contributed nothing? Fuck, he was amazing. Do you really think because we didn’t know about Anne Lister though her Pro-Tory bits are questionable, she didn’t have any impact?
On the flip side of the theory, is the whole Greek Notion that we’re just pawns of fate, and effect nothing. This is where you get the plot-driven camp from the 1980′s. –;; Honestly, 1970′s-1980′s writing books give me a massive headache since they are so much based on yelling at marginalized groups and ignoring the movements of other fields and misquoting left and right. But the Greek Notion also sucks. And Athenians, mainly, used this to say conform to the state, don’t do anything, and women and slaves suck and should stay in their roles.
But in reality, we both sometimes just exist and do nothing, and still learn something and sometimes we do effect events. Honestly, I prefer to butterfly effect theory of time, because it’s not imperialistic and we haven’t left it behind and it allows other story telling devices without stepping on religious ideas of time that’s often in story structures. It allows quite a bit of flex.
And as I’ve said, not everyone writes like you. Not every ethnicity makes stories like yours. But I think we should do our best to celebrate that. Also, I have a deep resentment of imperialistic racist assholes being celebrated and continue to be celebrated in writer lore when everyone else has moved the fuck on. That includes Writer’s Block theory. That guy who invented it was an asshole, not because he was a Jew that escaped Concentration camps, but because every other theory on the list and his lines of evidence were pieces of shit and he hated homosexuality and thought it could be cured. And wrote papers against Kinsey. Psychology has pretty much said whelp, that was terrible methodology, but us writers just need to hang onto it. So, stop worshiping imperialistic homophobic racist sexist white cishet men without knowing it, and keep in mind the awesome diversity out there when you dole out writer’s advice. Know where and when your belief systems come from and make sure if you are parroting an asshole, say like Freytag to justify it beyond they were so-called “great” people. I have no words for how I’ve seen Aristotle abused, and I don’t even like the guy. (I’d punch him if I had a blue box).
we’re all suckers for a good romance, but quite often the characters just don’t vibe together and there is nothing more disappointing than that. any good romance should be one in which the reader genuinely wants the characters to be together, and i hope this helps figure it out!
disclaimer: i am not a professional author and everything here is based on personal experience and preference. i also have literally no experience with romantic relationships; this is all based on fiction.
give them obstacles
“why can’t they be together now?” is the question that you must always be asking about your couples, and if there is no clear answer, then something is wrong.
there should be a legitimate conflict keeping them apart. the classic one is romeo and juliet, where they are rivals, and nina and matthias are the same. with kaz and inej, it was their trauma. cardan bullied jude in the cruel prince and jo saw laurie as a friend in little women. make sure that there is a conflict that makes sense for the characters so that tensions rise and there is relief when they finally overcome it!
give them chemistry
don’t force the romance, let it come naturally. chemistry can be any combination of banter, physical attraction, common interests, longing glances, arguments, bonding moments, and friendship or alliances.
obviously depending on what sort of tropes you’re using, the combination will be different. but there has to be some kind of attraction between your characters that makes them feel like more than friends. multiple times i’ve read books where it feels like the characters are being forced to kiss each other by the author, and i realise this is incredibly vague advice, but let them play out their narratives in your head! don’t force them to do things that don’t seem to be working.
and my number one romance rule is The Kiss Rule: if they have to kiss for the reader to know they’re in love, then they’re not really in love.
give them grief
this kind of comes along with the ‘obstacles’ point, but let the fact that they cannot be together offer some sort of grief to the characters. or let the fact that they are together tear the characters apart.
<mark of athena spoilers> percy literally fell into hell for annabeth (yes my standards for men are too high) and honestly, that seems like a pretty important obstacle. but also percy’s fatal flaw is loyalty, which means that he will go way too far to stick by his friends’ side.
make it slow burn
even if your characters are attracted to each other at ford sight, don’t let them get together immediately. this comes hand in hand with my point about obstacles. make sure there is a reason the two aren’t together, and make it a g o n i s i n g.
add in a few *almost* kisses, build the tension, and let it drag out enough that the reader feels genuine satisfaction when they finally get together!
