Ignore all writing advice (except this one)

Stuff I wish someone had told me (but I wouldn't have listened anyway)

A big part of being interested in writing is the engaging with writerly content. So many websites, Substacks, and podcasts debating plotting vs pantsing, showing not telling, avoiding adverbs, and starting with action. Some even insisting you shouldn’t start until you’ve mapped out character sketches so real that the characters could have birth certificates.

You also can’t say “said” and “asked” too much, and you need to vary sentence length. But most of all, you must, must, must write everyday with word count goals.

This kind of thinking permeates all writing spaces. Writing groups and writing workshops end up centered around feedback and advice, and reinforcing these “rules” of good writing.

Drowning in Feedback

While writing my manuscript, I was part of a few writing workshops, writing classes, and writing groups. Kind, thoughtful people in all these spaces took their time to read short excerpts of my work, and gave me very detailed feedback about how to make my piece shine.

I took all this feedback very seriously. I put all the annotated copies of my manuscript into a neat binder, and wrote down all the verbal feedback in my Moleskine.

And then I never looked at it again.

What was wrong with me?

It wasn’t until I attended a highly-valued feedback event wiht a highly-accomplished, extremely kind writer that it hit me what the problem was.

Until then, I’d thought that beginner writers just needed more feedback. But listening to detailed feedback that I knew I wouldn’t use, I realized the real problem - I was not ready for this kind of feedback!

The Seduction of Writing Advice

We want to be the kind of writer who takes advice. The kind who smartly discusses the flaws of the Hero’s Journey. Who follows Terry Pratchett’s structuring method. Who perfectly executes "show, don’t tell."

We want to have a smart person tell us exactly what to do with our manuscript, and then do exactly that, and prove them right, because that would be so great for both of us.

It’s a seductive vision - you find a Youtube video or a Substack post that tells you the one thing you should be doing with your novel. You do it, and it fixes everything, you grow five inches taller and a million dollars appears in your bank account.

So we persist, even if all we get out of it is to feed the dream a little bit as we fall asleep to a writing podcast at the end of a hard day where we got no time to write.

But WHY doesn’t any of this help?

Writing Advice is for Revision, Not Drafting

Most writing advice is about how to tell the story. But your first draft is about figuring out what the story even is!

Think of how most people come up with their ideas of good and bad writing - they read finished works and think about what they enjoyed vs what they didn’t. When you’re reading a book, you’re not negotiating with the story or the emotions at its core. You’re thinking about how the story is told. Any critiques are at the level of how the story is getting told.

Your first draft (or, in my case, first three drafts) however is about figuring out what the story is, at all. You can use beat sheets, maybe, to help with structuring your draft, but the draft is you figuring out what story you want to tell. That is determined by what you feel strongly about and what emotions you want to capture.

Stuff like writing prompts can help you find areas where there’s a story you’d be interested in writing. But once you have a vague idea, the next thing to do is really is to write until it’s all out.

The advice that is useful when you’re still figuring out what the story is whatever gets you closer to finishing your first draft. That’s the filter any beginner writer should use to decide what advice to take.

Some genres of writing advice that could be useful if you haven’t yet finished a draft are:

• First drafts are supposed to be bad

• Done is better than perfect

• Ask what happens next

• Reward yourself for progress

• Try writing everyday, even if it’s just 50 words.

• My personal favorite - the Storygenius plotting method.

How revision-stage advice can slow down drafting

This didn’t hit me hard until I got to revision stage. All the writing advice suddenly felt more relevant and useful!

• Word choice and sentence structure tips (like avoiding adverbs or cutting "was" and "said") make you self-conscious and interrupt your flow.

• Character development exercises (“What cocktail is your character?”) assume you already know who your characters are. But in a first draft, many of us are discovering them as we go. It’s okay not to know everything yet.

• “Start in the middle of the action” is great—if you know what the action is. But often, you need to write backstory first, then cut it later.

There are many many examples of writing advice that you’ll find everywhere in the writing sphere that are great once you have a grip on your story, but slow you down if you haven’t told yourself the story yet.

A lot of feedback can be of this nature as well. I gave my husband a chapter to read which was about ten pages of nothing happening before an exciting escape. He told me to cut out the ten pages. Which is good advice if I already knew where that chapter would fit in, and what was and wasn’t necessary in it. But if I didn’t, there’s no point getting bogged down by having to make those decisions yet.

But… why was I asking him to read my chapter in the first place, when I wasn’t ready for the feedback?

Why we seek feedback too soon

Though I didn’t incorporate much of the specific feedback we got, it was quite useful to hear the general vibes of the feedback. Through showing my work-in-progress to passionate readers and writer friends, I grew confident in the story having legs, in the general strength of my writing, and the aspects that excited people (references to real people and events that they recognized were loved).

Writing is a lonely pursuit, and it can take so long to finish some works. We need some indication we’re on the right path so we can keep trucking. Feedback is the way your community can show you they care, that they know your story and all the problems with your manuscript, and support and help you make it better.

So feedback can matter quite a bit this way. But we should be aware of what we want from feedback, so we don’t get discouraged by it prematurely. Only get the kind of feedback you need to keep going until you finish the draft.

Finish First, Advice Later

The most important thing about writing is you should tell your story to yourself first. This might be easier or harder depending on the connection between the story and you. Your story is the skeleton to hang everything else on, so focus on that before anything else.

Finishing your first draft is the most important milestone. The first time you do it, you’re feeling your way through in the dark. You don’t yet know what will help or hurt your progress, so it’s easy to get distracted.

Don’t focus on how elegant the language or the plot is, and disregard any advice or feedback on those lines (unless it helps you keep going). Focus on getting to The End and The End alone.

So, the next time you come across a writing tip, ask yourself: ‘Will this help me finish my draft, or is it something for later?’ If it’s the latter, set it aside. The only thing that matters right now is telling the story—to yourself, in whatever messy, imperfect form it takes. Everything else can wait.