Principles of Creative Writing With Advice from Famous Writers

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” 1. Be observant “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” Susan Sontag

2. Permission to write badly

2. Permission to write badly “Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” Raymond Chandler

2. Permission to write badly “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or ten pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” Lawrence Block

2. Permission to write badly

3. Show, don’t tell.

4. Stories must have conflicts; characters must have desires “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” Kurt Vonnegut

5. Write what you know “Write what you know.” Twain (or Hemingway [or maybe neither]) “Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?” Raymond Carver

6. Empathize with your characters

7. Revision

7. Revision “I don’t write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn’t work, or what simply is not alive.” Susan Sontag

8. Be creative “Don’t write what you know.” Bret Anthony Johnston “The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.‘” Tom Robbins

9. Occasionally break the rules, with purpose "Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.“ Truman Capote

10. Revisit “The best advice I can give on this is, once it’s done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it, as if you’ve never read it before. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that’s revision.” Neil Gaiman