some writing tricks that work sometimes

an annoying thing about Writing Advice™ is that, once you know the basics of “how to write a grammatical sentence” and some general protips like “this is what a plot arc looks like,” “here’s a couple style rules you should probably follow unless you know what you’re doing,” and so on… the most interesting tips sound kind of “wisdom-y” in a way that’s hard to put into practice, and often don’t make sense unless you struggle through writing some stuff yourself. (also, i do sincerely believe the correct answer for most writing questions is “go read a novel that does it well & think about it really hard,” and there’s no real shortcut around that, sorry!)

worse, once you’ve struggled through figuring out how to solve a particular writing problem, you often can’t really express what tip/trick you were using when you solved it. it’s like those veteran birdwatchers who, when you ask how they identified a particular oriole via a 0.5 second glance of a heavily backlit in-flight silhouette, will shrug and say “it just looked like one.” augh!

i think trying to formalize these tips/tricks, as you notice them, can prove useful down the line (as in: when i’m facing a plot dilemma, i’ve occasionally gone down a literal list of “stuff i’ve done that’s worked before” and tried using each and every one, like someone desperately trying to find which screw in the toolbox will fit into a particular bolt). so here’s three new ones i came up with recently; use as you see fit:

VIEWPOINT, PLOT, THEME: PICK TWO GET ONE FREE

( makes some references to one of my fanfics, but in a pretty non-spoiler-y way that doesn't require any advance knowledge )

THROW IN FUN BITS HERE AND THERE, I THINK? ESPECIALLY BIT CHARACTERS?

( makes some references to one of my fanfics, but in a pretty non-spoiler-y way that doesn't require any advance knowledge )

THREE IS THE BIGGEST NUMBER

( makes some references to one of my fanfics, but in a pretty non-spoiler-y way that doesn't require any advance knowledge )

okay those are the three formalisms i came up with. but i guess i’ll mention the other one that i did not come up with, but which i use all the time:

GIVE YOUR READERS WHAT THEY’RE EXPECTING, BUT NOT THE WAY THEY EXPECT IT

( makes some references to some of my original fiction, but lmao you definitely don't need to have read them before )

okay, that's the end of cringe writing advice from a random internet fanfiction person, you may resume your normal reading pages now :P