When You Take Writing Advice Too Literally

[@Xob_Driesestig]

Relatable. I'm doing 4 years in prison right now for larceny because an Instagram quote told me that good artist borrow but great artist steal.

[@yigithemperor]

"Commit war crimes." -very famous author

[@Agro50]

Painter*

[@AlkisGD]

@@Agro50 Struggling painter.

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

He was an author guys

[@Anika38d]

Word crimes! A category of war crimes specifically for writers ;D

[@xoso599]

Sounds like something a Canadian would say.

[@AmericanCryptid1]

“Take most writing advice with a pinch of salt” -me

[@Ryan_Thompson_Guitarist]

Alright, but I'm not sure how seasoning the advice would help.

[@tedarcher9120]

Help, my blood pressure is too high

[@j.s.ospina9861]

To be honest I didn't think of eating the advice before, but I suppose with the proper amount of salt it could be tasty

[@hharrybboy]

A large pinch

[@ProcyonNite]

Took some salt. Now what?

[@ChBrahm]

"Write what you know! But since Plato said the only thing we know is we know nothing...

[@gorilaazul2434]

Socrates said that, not Plato.

[@ChBrahm]

@@gorilaazul2434 see?

[@thegenderfluidthing8660]

Unironically, following the advice literally did lead him to produce several postmodern masterpiece (they just have to be understood within the context of the premise of the video). Would buy & read in a heartbeat

[@anastasiia6678]

Be a sadist to your character - is a good advice for solid drama actually

[@marcoz6281]

What about being a masochist to your character?

[@Josue_S_6411]

​@@marcoz6281Torturing a self-insert?

[@HobokerDev]

He's a literary genius thats why he takes everything... literally!

[@theylivewesleep.5139]

“You should rob a bank.” - Dante Aligheri

[@marcoz6281]

Nah, he would say "fuck the government"

[@theylivewesleep.5139]

@@marcoz6281 yeah, well he said you should rob a bank.

[@I5g58]

To be honest, I don’t think that writing advice is nearly as helpful as many of the people who give it think it is

[@bretginn1419]

It really isn't. I mean, it can be, but it's often just a look into the writer's philosophy, and is them saying "Go and do your own thing. Be afraid to take risks," and similar stuff. Not necessarily bad to hear, and it can inspire people, but the advice alone isn't particularly helpful.

[@futurist999]

Writing advice is my number 1 source of writing procrasitnation. “How can I write this story I have if I don’t even understand the basics?” - and no matter how many videos I watch, “the basics” just get more and more confusing. Now I believe firmly - Read stories of others, make up YOUR OWN rules, and write based on that. Don’t bother about advice at all. Because you’ll spend way too much time trying to wrap your head around vauge advice, and attempting to understand why and when it doesn’t applies. Which is even worse now, when there are hundreds of single-phrase advices, like “show don’t tell”, or “conflict is what story are about”, or “without character change story is not a story” with no nuance, or even worse - each person having a different explanation and interpretation of this rule. Writing advice is the mind-killer.

[@amilisom]

Write a bad story

[@thegenderfluidthing8660]

Truer words have never been spoken

[@OddlyAnimated1203]

​@@futurist999OMG I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME I KEEP FALLING INTO THESE TRAPS OF "WRITING ADVICE" AND THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS HAVING SO MUCH PROBLEMS WITH THEM- So they really do suck, huh 😭 I will stop watching them... And your advice is actually great, the first one I've seen - I've indeed learned more by only reading like 7 books compared to the 70 writing advice videos I've watched. Thank you!

[@FlankingLinex]

"Water isn't wet. It makes things that come in contact with it wet" - Bill Shake Spear

[@stanleydude3340]

"Water is always in contact with other water." - Stephen King

[@marcoz6281]

​@@stanleydude3340water doesn't count as it touches nothing but itself

[@louislee7621]

@@marcoz6281Why not?

[@yossithe9031]

​@@marcoz6281 **Steps out into the pouring rain** "It may look like I'm drenched in water, but water doesn't actually come in contact with anything other than itself!"

[@secondbeamship]

Water has the property of wetness due to its molecular properties. It adheres somewhat. Once enough water is on something it makes “non-wet” things “wet”.

[@DanLyndon]

"Murder your darlings" was Arthur Quiller-Couch. Stephen King just repeated it.

[@goggles8691]

Blatant plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery

[@crix_h3eadshotgg992]

@@goggles8691that feeling when your shitty superhero wish fulfilment webfiction gets ripped to Amazon (they already sold 13 copies):

[@peterswires8439]

No, it was Arthur Quiller-Couch.

[@DanLyndon]

@@peterswires8439 Thank you.

[@TheTrueRandomGamer]

"Fellate a shotgun." - Ernest Hemingway

[@ContingencyPlan100]

WHAT A GUUUYYYY

[@alex.g7317]

Depression be like

[@eternalyt5175]

Hemingway the OG throat goat

[@isaiahsanchevy9252]

Writing is super tough. I'm definitely guiltily of quote mining to counterbalance my creative insecurities. My inner critic was so active and loud, I exhausted myself. Now, idgaf. Didn't do an outline, didn't do any worldbuilding, and I've completed roughly half of the first draft of my first novel in about 5 months. It's GARBAGE, but with every new page written I have a clearer idea of where the tension of the story is, who the characters are and what they're after. Haha. Silly brain 😅 tl; dr The Ray Bradbury quote is real shit

[@adoniscreed4031]

I mean... you dont have to go from one extreme to another. You're going from making things too overwhelming but trying to listen to every deep quote at once to just ignoring all convetional good practice. How about just being rational and trying to find a middle ground? 😂

[@animalobsessed1]

I did the same with my favourite story that I've ever written. I had just one sentence as my idea of what I wanted it to be "about," and didn't bother with the structure of the story at all. Just wrote individual moments/scenes that popped into my head, often just half a page long. They weren't in chronological order, and often straight up contradicted each other. So many plot holes, but I had so much fun exploring the possibilities of this set up. About 3 years later, I had so much content from this setting, and was so familiar with these characters, I finally sat down and turned it into a coherent story. Added some details, removed (most of) the stuff that didn't make sense, provided some additional opportunities for the characters to show parts of their personality that I'd known they had, but had never written any scenarios for them to show them in. (There was a side character that turned into a main character, but he always had so little agency in what happened to him, that his moral compass pretty much remained unexplored in the original. That made him look like a better person than he was, since there was always that excuse of "didn't have a choice.") Telling myself that it didn't need to be coherent, was super helpful in avoiding writer's block during that first stage of getting all my ideas out.

[@RaichuKFM]

@@adoniscreed4031 The right way to go about writing is the way that actually gets one writing. Conventional good practice is just that; it's convention. What works for some people doesn't for others. Some people don't use outlines; some people don't lay out hard ideas beforehand and just let the story go and then work on making it more coherent in later drafts. That's not irrational! And like... That's the thrust of the video? Just do writing yourself and see what works and build your own way of doing it?

[@katlamb4606]

@@adoniscreed4031I agree with the commenter. I’ve tried to find a middle ground for a decade. I was better off following my instincts. Intuition is underrated.

[@patrickt.6492]

My favorite writing advice came from Elmore Leonard. He said that if it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

[@randompastahandle]

Serious writing advice, write a lot as practice. When we write something, lots of drafts are required.

[@charliewaterton3263]

“Don’t have children.” - Richard Ford

[@MorgottofLeyendell]

Awesome work as always. At the same time entertaining but also a scintillating discussion on the nature of being a writer.

[@ScadrianGhostblood]

Something I hate about quotes in general is that people act as if people who are quoted signify the value of quoted information. Who cares about who first said that people should follow their dreams? They should follow them regardless of the quoted person. Brilliant people are still humans and no matter their achievements, they can always be wrong about life and their advice shouldn't be followed just because they were famous.

[@LordJazzly]

Quotes by famous writers are one of the exceptions to this rule; writing takes a lot of time to do, that time takes away from being able to make money to support yourself by other means, writers make money from their writing by being famous, and the people with the largest amount of experience with the intersection-space between 'being a writer' and 'being famous' are famous writers. It's sort of - look at it this way, if you're going to follow someone's advice on something, I would argue it is at least _less worse_ to follow the advice of someone who has been successful once, than the advice of someone who has never been successful, ever. The successful person may not have done anything to _enable_ their success, but as a counterpoint, the unsuccessful person may be engaging in some sort of behaviour that is directly harmful to themselves - and they are no more likely to be aware of this than the successful person is to be aware of the reasons behind their success. Ideally, you'd want to seek advice from someone who has both succeeded _and_ failed, who has made studies of other people's experiences in their field, and who is thus somewhat well-positioned to understand very basic elements of the trade that aren't as dependent on subjective experience. Annoyingly, if you _do_ find someone like that, the advice you're likely to get is 'Don't ask me; everything in this field's changing and all the stuff I know will be obsolete by the time you get your career underway' (if they're being honest). This is because if one person's figured it out, then ten people have figured it out, and if ten have figured it out, one of _them_ has figured out how to break everything. That person will then either move to regulate or reform (which alters the environment and renders old knowledge obsolete) or disrupt (which does the same thing, but even moreso).

[@LordJazzly]

Of course, I say this from a position of discarding most of the 'advice' I've ever found, due to a lack of context/applicability (I'm not going to meditate on the meaning of something that's supposed to be practical; leave that to religion and/or philosophy, if and when there's time) - so my expectation from people reading what I've just written there is basically the same.

[@ScadrianGhostblood]

@@LordJazzly of course when a famous writer gives an advice about writing people should pay attention, but I do believe that even when successful people in a certain field give advice about that field, even they can give actually bad advice and not just misunderstood. It's the same way how it doesn't really matter how many great stories someone has written or how often good their taste when it comes to media is. People always have at least one objectively terrible opinion on storytelling. Some have more, some less, but every single human has their own biases and every single human is flawed. That is why I hate when people treat famous writers as this authority on what is good storytelling. Their advice will always be helpful, but shouldn't be treated as a rule.

[@LordJazzly]

​@@ScadrianGhostblood Well, yeah; I wouldn't even go so far as to say a famous writer's advice will 'always' be helpful - objectively terrible opinions aside (which I agree, people do tend to have), there are also the _subjectively_ terrible opinions to worry about, and those can be harder to spot, since they only cause problems for some people, in some situations. All I was arguing is that for an outside observer with no other experience to go on, a writer's career success is a visible metric by which advice given by them can be sorted.

[@ScadrianGhostblood]

@@LordJazzly yeah I can see that and I do definitely agree that we should listen to the advice of those writers, but we should also remember that in the end they are just people. And like you said, not every good advice will serve everyone equally. Everyone has a unique style of writing and advice from those writers will always specifically serve their style. Advice from Stephen King won't necessarily help me if I don't like his style of narrative. Even the universal advices are often only reliable depending on situation. My advice for people that struggle with writing female characters would be to gender swap their existing male characters. Not everyone should follow this advice because even I more often just write characters being female in mind. How we use the advice given by others depends on us.

[@DavidDecero]

"Water is wet." You’re so real for that. Sidenote: I love this concept for a video. Incredible stuff as always.

[@OfficeDuck-]

‘Its a matter of reading comprehension’

[@stillbuyvhs]

I see Amelia Bedelia has been reading writers' guides.

[@Sewblon]

Never take advice from someone who stands nothing to lose if you screw up.

[@matthijsvandijk5116]

Definately not going to take your advice then. Or am I?

[@Sewblon]

@@matthijsvandijk5116 I don't know. What do you think?

[@likanweeds8501]

Get the idea of the video, this is brilliant

[@tarvoc746]

There is no God, only Amelia Lazlo Bedelia.

[@YoLkE-22222]

1:06 um actuallyyyyy

[@secondbeamship]

When you take your English teacher’s advice too literally.

[@MrRosebeing]

I've listened to and read all of the advice, now I just write, alright? I'm doing it now, look Mom! I'm a writer!

[@JeffreyBeardsley]

Room is looking good! How'd that door behind Derrick open up halfway through?

[@emilianoluchi5508]

Might be first for the first time edit after the vid: Really good video, it really help on what advice from writers i should follow, and bye i gotta go see my darlings...

[@RobertPaulsim]

great!! love you man!

[@hamstershadow]

I want a sequel that includes Flannery O'Connor and Angela Carter Writing advice

[@FitzDizzyspells]

I don’t think “you have to be a sadist to be a writer” has anything to do with what happens to your characters 😄

[@pencrows]

"Show don't tell" (Makes a film instead)

[@ironhide5611]

Oh god. I have the same exact fidget spinner.

[@whoisjacinth]

First Comment😏 Im gonna write a short story based off these instructions

[@milicadiy]

This is hilarious 😅

[@feelswriter]

Ha. Good one!

[@Magus_Union]

Won't anyone think of the poor content creators trying to making a living off of deconstructed and distilled literary advice?!

[@Thevlid3]

1:01 water is not wet, I will die on that hill

[@lostmarble540]

you're actually not taking these quotes literally enough. Steal them from their original owners

[@jayvierjemmott7771]

BOB

[@ladyethyme]

🖤🖤

[@Dystopian-toast]

1:06 water is most definitely not wet good sir, it just make things wet.

[@godversesans5152]

Depends on how you define "wet"

[@Josue_S_6411]

Water is in fact, wet, unless maybe you have only one molecule of water.

[@Yesica1993]

Ha!

[@StopFear]

To the guy in the video: you should put some stuff on your walls so there is more contrast. It looks like there should be something on the wall.

[@DanielLois-zj6cl]

Lol

[@haroldshea3282]

mmm, akshully water is not wet, things soaked in it are wet

[@blueninja012]

water is soaked in water, unless it's a single molecule

[@haroldshea3282]

@@blueninja012 it's not "soaked" unless it's in a solid form like ice or snow tho. point is - a liquid can't be wet in the same way it can't be humid or slippery - it's a liquid

[@blueninja012]

@@haroldshea3282 I disagree however, neither interpretation can really be declared right or wrong I feel like, so... draw?

[@haroldshea3282]

@@blueninja012 pretty sure it can, words have generally accepted meanings and dry/wet, arid/humid mean lack or abundance of water in some environment or material and can't be a property of water itself. sure, "water is wet" is a common expression, but i was just being pedantic on purpose and not some kinda linguistic prescriptivist to tell pepl how they should use their language, just pointing out it's not technically a true statement

[@blueninja012]

@@haroldshea3282 show me a specific definition that say that water cannot be soaked, as far as I'm concerned it's just down to personal opinion also for the record, "wet" according to the google dictionary means "covered or saturated with water or another liquid," and as far as I'm concerned, each molecule of water is covered in water, which would make it wet no real correct answer though, since it's a language thing and we all speak slightly different languages

[@rickrolld9023]

the person who liked it now: 👏😑

[@benjaminkamp1375]

Funny thing about the "water is wet" comment is that it actually isn't true :). Hemmingway is cringing in his grave

[@excessivedetailbooktube]

Water is not wet, water makes other things wet.

[@justanotherglorpsdaymornin5097]

Wouldn't a singular water molecule makes all adjacent water molecules wet & vice versa?

[@excessivedetailbooktube]

@@justanotherglorpsdaymornin5097 No, because the definition of "wet" is that something is saturated with or coated in a liquid, which is not true of the relationship between water molecules. The word "wet" only applies macroscopically.

[@Errenium]

​@@excessivedetailbooktubeand yet when you feel something has been made wet, it's always the liquid that imparts that feeling rather than the thing itself.

[@oleksandrbyelyenko435]

Water is not wet. So it is not a true statement. 😂

[@sdantaray2]

Water isn’t wet

[@DanielLois-zj6cl]

Lol