I’m not talking genre specific things, or when people are telling you how to write the book they would write, if they were writing your book/story (unless you are a ghostwriter under contract. That’s very different.) No, I’m talking about when you read a how-to guide, or an essay or column about what you as an author should do or not do, and you realize that it doesn’t quite fit. Or it doesn’t fit at all.
Sometimes, the information is outdated. A long essay about how an agent is absolutely necessary in order to advance your career is outdated. Too, if you read someone insisting that you have to start by getting short stories published in magazines, then submit a novel to an agent … Those days have passed. I had someone absolutely insist that unless I published with a major house (Tor, DAW, that kind), I would never sell enough books to make anything close to a living. This person lived in NYC, and was immersed in part of the non-fiction publishing world of a traditional publisher. For genre fiction, that idea is outdated.
Other times, generally is the problem. You start to read about patterns that absolutely will make your book irresistible to readers … and discover that the person writes formula romances. Yes, she absolutely has to fit certain patterns and tropes, because that’s exactly what her readers are looking for. Since you write, oh, historical fantasy, or hard sci-fi, her patterns won’t please your readers. They might not mind a romance in the story, but that’s not what they are reading for. The more you know your own tropes and genre(s), the easier it is to catch this.
One piece of advice that I bounced hard off of was to always break your protagonist. The story wasn’t really a good story if the MC wasn’t broken, emotionally, 2/3 of the way through the book. Daaaang. That’s harsh. And not a good universal. What if your MC is emotionally broken before the story really starts, and she spends the next three books healing, growing, and recovering from The Horrible Event? Does that mean you have written bad stories? The essay didn’t say which genre(s) the author wrote, but I can guess which ones were not on the list. Yes, characters need to grow, which can include suffering, failures, sticking their feet into their mouths, messing up and having to apologize, “dark nights of the soul*,” get physically hurt, and have to recover from all of the above. If your MC is perfect, you will find readers, but it will be a somewhat select audience.
Recommendations taht begin with “Always” and “Never, ever” need to be considered in the light of your style, your genre, and your characters. I had one of my first editors insist that I not have the MC kill a dog, but only stun it, or readers would wall the book. I gave in, but by that point in the series, readers know that she’s mercenary enough that if the dog is a threat, she’s going to deal with it her way. OTOH, I walled a book because of how the author showed that the character was weak, indecisive, and not a great person. Why I got angry was because I know the place, and there were three vet’s offices within sight of the character at that moment. Euthanizing the pet would have been far, far more realistic, and humane, than what the character doomed the pet to suffer. The author had not done his homework, and in so doing had lost a reader. There were other problems with the story, so I was on the edge of bailing out anyway.
“Never start a book with dialogue.” Why not? What is the problem that the rule is addressing?
“Always use the Hero’s Journey to plot your novel.” Guideline? Sure. Way to bat ideas around? Absolutely. Hard and fast rule? Nope!
“Don’t read in your genre, so you know your ideas will be fresh and unique.” Not even going there. That horse is so dead it has fossilized.
You can probably think of other things you’ve had suggested to you, or read, that can work sometimes, or in some genres are absolutes, but that bounce hard off of you. Write what you want to, give respect to the tropes in your genres and subgenres, but don’t assume that you must follow every other writer’s advice, even best selling writers. Things have changed a great deal since, oh, Stephen King and Danielle Steele broke into the market.
*Which in the original poem is a little different than most people think.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “The Author Should Do What?!? When Advice Doesn’t Fit.”
My bete noir is people who either start the protagonist as a waste of oxygen to “give them room to grow” or hand everything to them on a silver platter without explanation. The trouble with Rey isn’t that she can do cool Force stuff without going through a training montage in a swamp with a Muppet spouting fake koans. The trouble with Rey is her initial life of fending for herself is portrayed as sort of cozy-melancholy, not so hellish as to make her a total bada$$.
My bete noir is people who either start the protagonist as a waste of oxygen to “give them room to grow”
As much as I enjoy SAH’s story plots, this is why I stopped reading her books. I simply can’t stand the main characters, as they are at the beginning of their stories. YMMV.
I haven’t had that problem with her books, but I have run across my share of examples. The way I like to put it is that Luke Skywalker is not actually a gormless idiot in A New Hope, even if he’s played by one. He’s a fairly young man with decent mechanical skills and above average skills piloting and marksmanship. His main character failings are a mild amount of whininess and naivete, and he grows over the course of the series because he’s constantly in situations that require him to dig down and find resources he didn’t know had.
*other examples
Worst advice I ever had? “You should write!” Spoiler alert, you can never, ever stop or the plot bunnies will drown you in your morning beverage and tell the police it was a suicide.
On a more serious note…
Best stuff I write tends to be stolen, mangled, graffiti tagged, and packaged like cheap Chinesium into a new setting, plot, and characters because that’s how the writing works. Well, that and characters that have *ideas* about how things are supposed to go.
Same, same. What started as “i want a posh guy and a feisty cowgirl in a gaslamp fantasy setting” took on “what if the posh guy was a Dunedan whose ancestors came from Steampunk Numenor” and “what if the posh guy was a Hammer Films style monster hunter?” And the next thing I knew I was squinting at the end result and thinking: “gee, anyone who picks up on the subliminal Tolkien references is going to file this under Aragorn/Eowyn, which is not a couple I ship at all.”
Barring the fairy tale stuff where it’s intended to be obvious — never yet had someone identify a source material from which I got my ideas.
Jack Bickham’s rule that every scene should end in a disaster so that your main character doesn’t get what he’s after.
Every work more complex than the cumulative tale he cites has a few scenes where the main character gets something, because otherwise vast arrays of plot would be impossible.
I actually can’t recall any bad writing advice I got. Maybe I filter it before it sticks like the egotistical SOB I’ve always been, but I have taken a lot of good writing advice from writers I admire and respect.
As to characters being artificial, I try to avoid that by taking my characters from real life, and twisting them into something unrecognizable while keeping the core trait I want to play with. That’s how a middle-aged female colleague (possibly the progeny of an early tiger mom) who was barely adequate at her job and unhappy doing it became an 18 year old male mage’s apprentice.
I’m not above revenge motives in creating a character though. I once gave a greedy, conniving, weasily character a description matching Jim Baen closely enough that a fellow writer who had sold to him (when he was editor of Galaxy) recognized him immediately.