Tips & Tricks

Welcome to the final chapter in this course! Here I will give tips and tricks that didn’t easily fit elsewhere. That doesn’t mean they are less important. In fact, most of these are really important, but too advanced to explain earlier.

Readability Tests

There are many “readability tests”. While not a perfect metric, they are quite good at deciding how complicated your prose is and where problems might be.

A great one is the Hemingway Editor. It marks long sentences, needlessly complicated words, etcetera.

You shouldn’t let such tests or editors completely determine your prose. Instead, they ask you questions: “We think this sentence might be a problem. Is it a problem to you?”

Use it as a tool to sharpen your prose and quickly spot issues.

Similarly, such tests usually provide a “grade level”. People from that school grade (and up, of course) should be able to read this text. Use that as a guideline when writing for younger audiences.

Especially the past 5–10 years, most bestsellers had a grade level of 5, maybe even lower. Writers have figured out that you don’t need overly long sentences and complicated words! Hooray! It is pretentious and unnecessary. If you desire to reach a large audience and broad appeal, choose to simplify your prose, for which readability tests are a great tool.

It does not mean “dumbing down” or only writing sentences for toddlers. Read any of the bestsellers and the prose will flow and be more intelligent than that. It’s in the tiny differences: consistently picking simpler phrasings and shorter constructions. Only applying the full might of purple prose once in a while, when it truly means something.

Golden Tip: No unnecessary action

When you’ve written a lot of stories, you get a bit annoyed by the repetitiveness of some things. You find yourself writing similar sentences, over and over.

What’s the cause of this? Such sentences are usually small actions. The small things that we do a lot, every second of every day, perhaps to accomplish other goals. So yes, these are logical and natural to add to the scene.

I’ve learned, however, to ask myself the question: “Does the reader really need to know this? And do they need to be told, instead of inferring it themselves?”

Let’s look at an example.

Character A asks B about some historical fact. B sits in a chair, but gets up, walks to his bookshelf, searches the right book, takes it out, opens it, then flips to the right page. He reads the answer to A’s question.

You see what I see? We’ve described every single small action that B needs to do to grab that book and read the right page. If I were to write this as proper prose (instead of this summary), it would take maybe five times as many words.

But do we need this? If we just say “B grabbed a book and opened it to the right page”, we communicate the same information. The other actions are not relevant. They’re not the point of the scene. If needed, the reader can infer those steps in between. (The fact they grabbed the book, probably means they stuck out their arm and maybe left the chair.)

Again, it’s fine if this happens in the first draft. In your head, you probably play the picture of somebody getting up and getting that book.

In the second draft, however, constantly check if you can simplify your actions. If you can just leave out all those tiny sentences with insignificant steps in between. If you can find another way to phrase a sentence that gets across the same idea, but with fewer words (and verbs).

Many sentences like these are indicative of a bigger problem: you’re being too soft on yourself when it comes to cutting what doesn’t need to be there. With every paragraph, every line, be honest with yourself. Does this really need to be here? Does this add enough to the story to warrant its presence?

Leave the details of actions up to the reader to imagine/infer, unless it’s crucial to the story that they have the right picture in their head.

This can easily save you thousands of words. Even better, it makes your prose much more efficient and varied.

Write what you (will) know

A common advice is to “write what you know”. You can only write about something with authenticity and clarity if you have the actual experience or expertise. (Also, it means you probably care about the subject or are interested enough to show that passion through the story.)

This, however, gives off the wrong impression to many. They think they should stick to stories about their own life, culture, upbringing, and perhaps education or job. You can only write stories about the same few things your whole life! Too bad!

No, you can obviously change what you know!

You can learn new skills. You can gain new experiences, move to different places, meet new people.

As such, perhaps the most important skill of the writer … is to live a varied life of constant learning.

Many authors don’t necessarily recommend studying English. They recommend studying many different things, from now until the day you die. It will give you lots of inspiration and unique ideas. It will give you enough knowledge and expertise to “know” about anything you decide to write.

Entertainment comes first

And finally, finally, we get to the simple statement that many forget. As you read courses like these, as you practice and work your ass of, you might lose sight of the true goal.

Stories are meant to be entertaining. Serious ideas, deeper themes, educational content—it should all be a side-effect of a fun story. It should be in service of the entertainment value of your story.

You might follow all these rules perfectly, but if your story doesn’t entertain, it doesn’t matter. So you always, always, have license to break all rules and do whatever you like if you think it’s entertaining. (This also relates to my comment in the previous chapter about books being “edited to death” and removing any shred of fun or personality.)

Similarly, writing stories should be entertaining. If you’re not having fun, how will the reader have fun? If you feel a scene is “boring but necessary for the plot”, how do you think the reader feels? Ultraboring, because they don’t even know the scene will be important for the plot later ;)

If you’re not having fun (or struggling to continue writing), the common advice is to “do whatever”. Think of some silly, funny, stupid, weird thing that you want to write. Then do that. Continue the scene like that.

Usually, the scene you end up with doesn’t really work—but you enjoyed the process and got new ideas that do work.

Whenever I’m not having fun, I either …

• Take a break and replenish my passion for writing. (Because yes, that is certainly a limited resource that needs to refill.)
• Switch to another writing project which I feel like doing now. (“Just a few chapters for that new book idea”) => This can lead to many unfinished projects, so don’t do this all the time.
• Move a fun scene. Instead of doing it later (as I planned), let’s just pull the trigger now and see what happens.

I try to never just force myself to write the thing I planned, or the thing that was “supposed” to happen. If that doesn’t feel fun to write at all, it won’t be fun to read.