Beginners Deserve Better Advice, And Writing Should Be More Interesting Than This.

Beginners deserve better advice, and writing should be more interesting than this.

1. Show don't tell is the most repeated piece of advice you will hear, and it's worthless. Showing is a tool, telling is a tool, deploy them where you think they're most effective. Telling the reader how someone feels is almost always faster than showing them, and sometimes its better to preserve the pace of a scene. Practice doing both.

2. Head hop as much as you want, whenever you want. Third person omniscient is a fun perspective to play with. Explore every feature of your writing to find new techniques and tools to help tell your stories. Practically, you'll probably want at least a paragraph break between "heads," and starting the new paragraph with either the character's name or a lead-in sentence to ease the reader in is usually wise. 3. "Infodumping" is just inelegant exposition. Be elegant with it. If you find yourself having to rely on dialogue for something as foundational as exposition, considering working to strengthening your prose.

4. OP is a coward. If blade runner can start with exposition, so can your book. It's challenging to make that interesting and engaging, yes, but learning how to do that is the entire point of learning how to write. Those are the skills you're trying to gain and improve.

5. If suspense is the only force driving your reader to turn the next page, you've wasted every page before it. They should be invested in your world, your characters, and your story enough to want to continue without you constantly jangling your keys in front of them like the subway surfers gameplay under a tiktok. Discworld doesn't have chapter breaks, and Terry Pratchett is one of the best writers the English language has ever produced. This advice is useful if you're writing a thriller, or if you need to rely on it for the first few pages or chapters while you're still getting people invested. Otherwise, your chapter breaks should serve whatever structural purpose you desire.

6. Subverting expectations is advice for comedians and disgraced game of thrones tv show writers. Sometimes you just want to set aside a scene to describe something beautifully, or to set expectations in the first place. Choose which events or sequences you summarise cautiously: you are erasing opportunities for style and storytelling.

7. Arriving late and leaving early is great if you're wasteful in your prose. Describing a character preparing for and leaving an event does not need to be exclusively a description of just those things. The way characters do things matters, actually. You don't need the pace of your story to be as fast as possible all the time. It's your story.

8. Epithets can tell you as much about the person using them (based on the perspective you're currently occupying) as the person they're used for. If you plan to use multiple perspective characters you can use different epithets to describe the same person. You can do the same thing from the same character's perspective as they progress through their character arc. Like everything else, they are a tool for you to use wherever you find appropriate.

9. Characters are allowed to be aimless if that's what their character arc calls for at some points, and having them shift back and forth from being aimless to having a set goal can be interesting. It's up to you to decide how driven any given character is at all times.

10. If you think a scene is required by the story but you don't think it'll be something you'll enjoy working on, try to rework the scene into something that achieves the same effect but is more engaging for you to write. (I don't disagree with OP on this point, I'm just wording it to be more actionable.)

0. Writing is an art. Be an artist. Don't feel pressured to follow another artist's advice exclusively because they seem more "successful" than you are. Seek out artists who make the kind of art you are inspired by, and try to learn from them and their art.

my 10 holy grail pieces of writing advice for beginners

from an indie author who's published 4 books and written 20+, as well as 400k in fanfiction (who is also a professional beta reader who encounters the same issues in my clients' books over and over)

show don't tell is every bit as important as they say it is, no matter how sick you are of hearing about it. "the floor shifted beneath her feet" hits harder than "she felt sick with shock."

no head hopping. if you want to change pov mid scene, put a scene break. you can change it multiple times in the same scene! just put a break so your readers know you've changed pov.

if you have to infodump, do it through dialogue instead of exposition. your reader will feel like they're learning alongside the character, and it will flow naturally into your story.

never open your book with an exposition dump. instead, your opening scene should drop into the heart of the action with little to no context. raise questions to the reader and sprinkle in the answers bit by bit. let your reader discover the context slowly instead of holding their hand from the start. trust your reader; donn't overexplain the details. this is how you create a perfect hook.

every chapter should end on a cliffhanger. doesn't have to be major, can be as simple as ending a chapter mid conversation and picking it up immediately on the next one. tease your reader and make them need to turn the page.

every scene should subvert the character's expectations, as big as a plot twist or as small as a conversation having a surprising outcome. scenes that meet the character's expectations, such as a boring supply run, should be summarized.

arrive late and leave early to every scene. if you're character's at a party, open with them mid conversation instead of describing how they got dressed, left their house, arrived at the party, (because those things don't subvert their expectations). and when you're done with the reason for the scene is there, i.e. an important conversation, end it. once you've shown what you needed to show, get out, instead of describing your character commuting home (because it doesn't subvert expectations!)

epithets are the devil. "the blond man smiled--" you've lost me. use their name. use it often. don't be afraid of it. the reader won't get tired of it. it will serve you far better than epithets, especially if you have two people of the same pronouns interacting.

your character should always be working towards a goal, internal or external (i.e learning to love themself/killing the villain.) try to establish that goal as soon as possible in the reader's mind. the goal can change, the goal can evolve. as long as the reader knows the character isn't floating aimlessly through the world around them with no agency and no desire. that gets boring fast.

plan scenes that you know you'll have fun writing, instead of scenes that might seem cool in your head but you know you'll loathe every second of. besides the fact that your top priority in writing should be writing for only yourself and having fun, if you're just dragging through a scene you really hate, the scene will suffer for it, and readers can tell. the scenes i get the most praise on are always the scenes i had the most fun writing. an ideal outline shouldn't have parts that make you groan to look at. you'll thank yourself later.

happy writing :)