Writing Advice: How NOT to Write Edition · 4:29am Jun 30th, 2014
In the past, I have made some attempts at giving writing advice. Between my limited qualifications and the delivery itself, however, said advice was of questionable merit.
Today—in order to reconcile my limited skills with my desire to help others improve—I thought I would try something different. One of the most reliable ways to learn is from mistakes. In this post, I will walk you through one of my discarded stories, and try to pinpoint why it was not very good. Then, theoretically, you can learn from my mistakes and go on to make your own! Everybody wins, probably!
This was a rather unorthodox way to construct things for me, so apologies in advance if parts are a little hard to follow or the structure is a bit odd. Please comment if you spot something that needs elaboration or rearrangement, and I'll do my best to fix it.
With that, on to the fun part.
The story in question is called Librarian Librarian Librarian. You can find the original Gdoc that I used for editing here (including some very astute comments from Burraku Pansa).
Concept/Prose
The concept of the story was taken from a post in the TVTropes pony fanfiction thread; in a discussion about the differences between the various pony types, I wondered aloud what it would be like to have a story where one each of the three pony types have the same job. Since all three pony types are fairly different when it comes to talents/abilities/superpowers, I thought a contrast of how they do the same mundane job (librarian) would be interesting.
Already problems show themselves. My initial concept was more suited to an essay or worldbuilding lecture than a proper story, and it lacked focus. The latter issue, in particular, is a thread that runs throughout my entire attempt at this fic.
After writing half of the story, then taking a long break, and finally forcing myself to finish a conclusion, I had what I thought was a passable first draft. It clocked in around 5800 words. This is where, in retrospect, more problems show themselves. I really had to slog through the first draft—the actual act of writing was incredibly boring, and I didn't feel any attachment or interest in the characters. This should have been a red flag—if even the author is bored by a story, chances are your readers will be no better off.
I asked someone from The Proofreader Group for editing assistance (the aforementioned Burraku Pansa), and despite going through another draft or two the story did not change much. It was when moving to the third draft that I realized the story's main flaw was being boring.
Let's take a look at some of the passages to get a better sense of what I mean.
Soft Shock glanced over the card again. She blew an errant bit of green hair out of her face and looked up. “You do realize this was due a week ago?”
The pegasus looked to the left. “I know, but…”
Soft Shock sighed. Her horn lit up and a quill floated out of a nearby inkwell. “If I had half a bit for every patron that came in here with a late book and said ‘I know, but’ then I would be a very rich mare.”
“Couldn’t you make an exception just this once?”
Soft made a large, sharp check mark on the card. She wrote a few numbers next to it and slid it back inside the sleeve in the book. A box filled with folders floated out from under her desk. She flicked a few of them forward. T-A…T-E…T-H, there we are. She pulled out a few slips of stapled paper and glanced over the first page.
“This is your third late book, Mr. Thunderstruck. So no, I can’t.” She wrote a few numbers on the form and slipped it and Thunderstruck’s library card back inside the box. She levitated the box under the desk and turned back to the pegasus. “Since you’ve had so many late books, I’m sure you know the drill by now. You can have your card back when you pay the late fee.”
Thunderstruck sighed. “Fine, I guess I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Soft Shock smiled. “I appreciate a good book as much as any pony, but rules are rules.”
“I guess.” Thunderstruck turned and trotted out of the library, his hooves clacking loudly on the tile as he left.
This is how the story opens, and despite being nearly 300 words long, almost nothing happens. A lack of conflict can be used well, but there are several problems that prevent this from being engaging;
* Actions are described in a very dull way. All of the mundane actions that both characters take are described in the barest terms possible. "She did this." "He did that." "She wrote something down." Slice of life stories rely heavily on their prose being engaging, since the events themselves do not have any inherent excitement.
* There is no payoff. While there is some very bare buildup (we want to see how the characters react to the late book), the resolution is over in a sentence or two. Stories rely on the reader being curious how things will turn out, and this blunt resolution to even a minor conflict gives the reader no payoff. It is impossible to feel happy or interested, because how the conflict and its resolution was presented was over so fast.
* There is limited description of characters and setting. A slow start is a common trend in all fiction—introducing the readers to the characters and setting takes time, and so the audience does have some tolerance for slowness at the beginning. This story, however, makes almost no effort to describe the characters or library to the reader. Combined with the above problems, it makes attaching to the characters impossible, which is the opposite of what a story should do.
All these problems (and more) repeat across the entire story, so I will spare you sitting through more of it. Suffice to say that this passage is a decent encapsulation of the unengaging writing.
Plot
Next, let's look at the story's plot and flow, such as they are. The initial sequence of events goes like this;
Unicorn Librarian talks to Late Customer.
Unicorn Librarian does some paperwork.
Another Patron comes in looking for some Starswirl books.
Unicorn Librarian summons Pegasus Librarian to help Patron.
Unicorn Librarian tells Pegasus Librarian what the Patron wants
Unicorn Librarian and Pegasus Librarian have an inane chat.
[. . .]
You can see how boring this is from the summary, and this is only the first 1200 words of 5600. As pointed out in the previous section, stories have to engage the reader. All the actions that the characters take both drag on too long and have very tenuous connections to each other. It takes Pegasus Librarian another 800 words to show the Patron where the section he needs is, and another 700 to grab some books and return to Unicorn Librarian at the front desk. The pacing goes beyond slow and into glacial. The introduction of a new character (Earth Pony Librarian) does nothing to alleviate this problem. Indeed, her interactions with the other characters are more of the same inane conversation and overly drawn out mundane tasks.
The story ends when the three ponies finish up and leave. There's a few minor goodbyes, and then the story ends as they head home.
The plot line also had other noticeable shortcomings. The ostensible point of the fic was to highlight the differences between the pony types, but the only time all three are together is at the end. The concept did not inform the themes, and as a result the plot line did not explore the subject matter properly—the contrasts between pony types are not evident enough to carry the story, and the events themselves are not interesting enough to make up for it.
It is clear then, that the plot and flow have several key issues;
* They don't engage the reader
* There is only a tenuous connection between events, both thematic and otherwise.
* Events take too long to happen.
* The plot doesn’t follow through on the concept
Editing
Finally, let's take a look at the editing process (though given my “involvement” in it, that may be too charitable a term).
Again, I must point that many of the problems mentioned thus far were pointed out by my editor in their very first readthrough of it. Looking over the Gdoc revision history, however, reveals a very limited number of changes. Here’s a passage to illustrate;
An errant sunbeam hit his eye. His eye squinted shut and he glanced up at the ceiling. He looked up. The strip of glass panels across the center of the roof gave a clear view of the sun. Huh, guess I spent longer shelving books than I thought. Didn’t expect the sun to be that low.
He looked down. There was a large “517” painted across the shelf in white block lettering. He looked to the right; tThe other shelves had similar labels. They were large enough to be readable five shelves over. They were there to help the other pegasi staff locate things quickly—new hires even had a habit of carrying binoculars as they adjusted to the sheer size of the building. Of course, Helter hadn’t been made one of the head librarians for nothing. Not that he needed them.
These edits don’t do anything to address the problems the editor pointed out. If anything, they make the glacial pacing and dull sentence structure worse. Rather than targeting the problems that had been pointed out, I thought a few minor adjustments would fix the problem. I did not utilize the advice I was given properly.
This can be seen as late as the third draft—instead of actually correcting problems, I was just adding more of the same, making the story longer/different, but not better.
Conclusion/TL;DR
We can see then, that this story had many issues; bland concept, unengaging writing, paper thin plot, and lack of changes across drafts. All of these combine to make a very boring, dull narrative, without any emotional weight or interest. The writing can’t carry the concept, nor stand on its own.
Hopefully, there are lessons here that can apply to other stories, not just this one. Synergy between themes, concept, and plot; individual sentence structure backing up plotting and flow; and the importance of appraising and applying advice are all among the lessons that this story taught me, but those are hardly the only ones.
Thanks for sitting through this entire post. With any luck, it was not a complete waste of your time. Comments welcome, naturally.
At first the title threw me for a loop: "huh, since when does anybody here write theatre?"
But yeah, I read the story and I can see what you mean. Nothing happens, at least nothing interesting. I often found myself skimming over paragraphs, and finding it hard to follow exactly what the librarians were doing and why. Scrapping this project was a good decision.
2245385 Yeah, in retrospect the attempt at humor doesn't make up for the potential confusion. And hyphenation wouldn't really help. Changed the title to something a little less obtuse.
2245416 Yeah, this works better. Though really this post is more "what not to write" than "how not to write". The problems with the story are almost entirely in the premise (or rather, the lack thereof), not in the execution.
Highlighting the differences between the races by showing how differently they'd perform the same job is a pretty decent concept, and there might've been a really interesting story in that. Where you went wrong is in choosing to make the job that you studied a librarian. Librarians can be interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's hardly the most riveting job in the world, so there's challenge in that. Of course you're going to get bored and create a subpar story if your focus is something as difficult to make interesting as that.
If it were me, I'd have made it about a roadsweeper, or a dustman. They meet lots of people, travel around, might see some bizarre things as part of their jobs, and you can do some interesting character-building with them.
2245505 I'd have to disagree. As covered in the post, the execution was pretty terrible too
2245853 Another problem is that I know practically nothing about librarians (or garbage collectors for that matter), so I was using the Theme Park Version of them as characters. Such a shallow portrayal isn't conducive to a slow character piece. I'm sure a better writer than I could find a usable plot in there.
I did have another idea along similar lines--pony smokejumpers/firefighters dealing with a massive forest fire--but that was more about how magic doesn't make things trivial, rather than contrasting the pony types with each other.
2247194 Well, yeah, but even with perfect execution (if such a thing existed) you'd be hard pressed to write an interesting story from this premise.
2247194
No reason that the firefighter version couldn't have been about both things. Combined the themes and ideas, as it were.
2248173 True. And I suppose Smokejumper would have a more naturalistic contrast--showing the different pony's contributions would be a result of the plot, not the goal of it, unlike this mess.
Something to consider if I ever get around to writing it (or if anyone decides to use a similar idea), I suppose.
hi hi
An interesting little article. This is something I struggle with myself. Except, when I start to realize that what I'm writing is junk, it oftentimes never gets finished. Cause its junk. Of course the hard part is figuring out how to improve, but sometimes it takes practice and reading stuff that is interesting to get ideas.
I've often heard it said that you should write about what you know, but I don't think you have to have personal experience as a librarian to write about it. You can always search for accounts of people who do have first hand experience.
As for the idea of librarians themselves, I think it still has merit. Were I writing it, I might aim for it to be a comedy. Maybe there was yet another monster stomping through town and all the books got knocked off the shelves, so the unicorn and the pegasus make a bet. (drama!) Who can re-shelve the books faster? Then to make matters worse, the boss says the library needs to stay open, and they have to deal with patrons at the same time. The obvious surprise twist at the end is that after all their increasingly harebrained schemes, the Earth pony beats the both of them though straightforward hard work.
((Smokejumper sounds like an interesting premise. I could see it starting out as each one trying to prove that they are the best, and in the end, they have to work together to succeed.))
2249206 Basing things on non-personal experience can be tricky. Yes, there's the chance it will inject novelty into your writing, but there's an equal chance that you will either misrepresent/misuse the information in question. As mentioned in my previous comment, this story did the latter (mostly because I elected not to do any information hunting at all).
I suppose it (partly) comes down to how much and where you do your research. Fiction has a nasty habit of copying other fiction in order to get details, but doing some reading or interviewing won't always make a more reliable a picture.
Hello :)
I do have a question. Would you rather follow said tropes and build a story based on that, or create original tropes, given that this is a fanfic site? Do you even need tropes, because frankly, I don't like having to refer to something to write something.
2259415 I usually don't base ideas on tropes, but recognizing tropes that are already there can help refine one's ideas.
Different people use different formulas for creating plots, so I would say it comes down to personal preference.