Tl;dr local autist wants to make things less ambiguous and more helpful, other equally funny jokes coming next week
The writing advice 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is widely accepted as being categorically bad in just about every way writing advice can be, so much so that I'm just going to assume that you, the reader, already know why most people think it is bad advice, or are capable of coming to that conclusion on your own. That piece of advice is bad advice, as unambiguously agreed upon by a majority of authors. This is not a defense of this piece of writing advice. Instead, I want the first part of the phrase, and go over all the ways in which I think writing advice in general fails to resonate with me specifically, and extrapolate that to ways in which writing advice could, potentially, be better phrased or presented to make it more useful to more people.
For no reason at all, completely unrelated, I'm sure, let's imagine a hypothetical author. This author is highly motivated to write stories, lots of them, of nearly any genre or perspective, working with any tropes they happen to have in their head at the time. This author just really, really, can't get enough of writing words. This author, just like every other author, isn't perfect. Not every sentence is good enough to even consider attempting to edit, and not every edit is good enough to be worth keeping. That's fine though, this author is improving with every sentence they write, every paragraph they edit, and every scene they commit to posting. However, this author wants to improve, wants to get better. Reading more isn't enough. Writing more isn't enough. Responding to feedback still is not enough. This author wants writing advice, good, solid, useful writing advice.
This is where our hypothetical author runs into a problem. The more advice they see, the more discussions they peruse, the more youtube videos on writing they watch and multi-thread forum blogs of more successful authors they shadow, none of it resonates with them. This author doesn't get writing advice. When this author looks into common ways people organize their stories, none of them sound even remotely useful, and all the ones this author tried anyway were unhelpful. None of the discussion threads on what authors have found success doing or what readers enjoy the most actually help this author write their own stories. Suggestions of 'try doing this' or 'avoid doing that' are unhelpful, because none of those suggestions, or any of the following, actually provide information in a way that is useful to this type of author or this type of person.
Stepping back out of the totally hypothetical author's perspective for a moment, the problem I'm trying to demonstrate with 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is the same problem I have with 'Use a storyboard, so you don't get stuck', and 'Audience expectations aren't an enemy to be fought against'. Even though the latter two are legitimately and objectively good advice, they still aren't helpful to the type of person who actually needed to hear someone else tell them that.
What is helpful, but that I needed to figure out on my own, is that having a separate document of out-of-character explanations for plot details makes writing natural exposition and foreshadowing a whole lot fuckin easier. If someone had just told me, when I was starting out back in my teens, 'Hey man if you just write all your lore down on a separate document in advance of when you'll need it, it makes it way easier to edit into exposition and foreshadowing' I wouldn't have gotten stuck in so many of the places I used to.
I witness so often on this forum and others that people try and boil writing advice down into these binaries, 'do x because y', 'do a because b is bad', 'most people don't like 1, but 2 is fine', and so on, and, like, if I was at the point in my development as a writer where seeking out advice like that was something I was doing, that wouldn't help me, even though I know the people giving the advice are trying to be helpful. Even some of the best advice I've seen given is effectively locked behind a closed door to people who think the way I do, and it's a shame because I know for a fact a lot of that advice can be presented in a way that would be helpful.
So, I want to break down why 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is bad from this perspective. Ignoring all the other ways it is bad, I'm going to analyze this to show you what I'm talking about and demonstrate the way this piece of advice could be phrased in a way that I would understand and be able to utilize. Ok? K.
Part 1; Killing a character
So, what exactly is the phrase 'kill a character' asking the author to do? I know this sounds stupid, or like an incredibly condescending thing to ask, but I think it legitimately is worth asking in the context of what I'm trying to do here. The original spirit of the phrase implies the thing it's asking you to do is randomly select a character and begin removing them from the story from that point on. This isn't very helpful as instruction for an author, because it fails to even attempt to define what doing this would actually accomplish.
Take a second and think about what 'Killing a character' actually does to the writing process, on the side of the author and with no thought given to the actual story. I'll give you four- Time's up the answer is almost literally anything, entirely dependent on where the author is during the writing process. Killing a character when editing over major dramatic plot events gives you a totally different result to killing a character when planning out an action scene, which in turn is a different result to killing a character while coming up with rational romance progression, and so on.
A better way to phrase 'Kill a character' while preserving its original meaning, but making the intended result less obtuse, would be something like 'Try removing a character from a scene to check if it helps you move past that scene'. It's much longer, much less 'snappy' or precise, but to someone like me, stating what the intended effect of the action is supposed to be not only solves the 'what does that even mean?' problem, it provides an actual reason to apply the advice and see if it helps, whereas the former isn't something I could be convinced to try doing.
Part 2; Getting Stuck
Here's a question. What do you think the 'whenever you get stuck' is referring to in the titular piece of advice? No, seriously, if someone were to give you this advice well in advance of when you intended to use it, what would you consider 'getting stuck' within the context of following through on 'kill a character' as a solution to it? I personally get stuck in lots of places when writing. I get stuck thinking about a definition of a phrase within the context of my story, I get stuck thinking about where the plot is going, or how I'm going to continue an action scene without repeating something I've either done before in a different scene or have done before within the same scene, and I get stuck on way dumber stuff too, like debating which synonym of 'rope' I'd like to use because if I don't choose one I'm going to rip my hair out over rope not looking like a word anymore holy fuck.
Even if I get over being 'stuck' in the ways I described pretty quickly, usually within forty minutes or so, if I was hypothetically following the title's advice, which points should I have killed a character at? All of them? If not, which ones? None? If none, why not? Obviously these are rhetorical questions, even if they totally aren't actually and I would really like your answers. The problem here, as with part 1, is in the phrasing and the interpretation. See, even if you knew what the action the advice wants you to perform would accomplish, knowing when it's applicable at all, and more important why, are still important parts of effective advice.
I think this makes more sense if you think about the phrase 'when you are feeling unwell, try taking a nap in case you are tired'. What do you consider 'feeling unwell'? Think about all the different ways in which you could 'feel unwell' but not correctly identify the situation as one in which you should try taking a nap. Think of all the reasons why you might misidentify the feeling of being tired as being something else and judge that you don't need more sleep.
Instead, phrasing it as 'If you're not sure why you don't feel well,' would result in a greater likelihood of someone like me actually identifying the situation in which I'm feeling unwell to begin with. It accomplishes the same goal, of getting someone to attempt to follow helpful instructions, and it does so in a way that better indicates what the goal actually is and when and why the instructions should be considered.
Returning to writing, 'Whenever you get stuck,' is ambiguous, and unlikely to result in a correct identification of a situation in which its following instructions could potentially be helpful. Instead, try 'If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify,' for more clarity of when your advice is actually intended to be used, with the added side bonus that you've now also stated why you think the advice might be helpful; it could identify the problem even if it doesn't solve it.
Part 3, Conclusion; If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify, try removing a character from that scene to see if that helps you move past it
I'm aware of how aggressively long that piece of advice is, but knowing what it's derived from, it's difficult for me to come up with a coherent reason why someone else would want to shorten it beyond aesthetic choices, ones that specifically make it less useful to the type of people it would be most useful to otherwise. I know it can be a difficult concept to think about the ways in which information you have a solid understanding of could be difficult for others to understand, especially when you understand that information in a fundamentally different way, but we're all authors, right? Getting other people to understand information we already understand is practically an alternative definition of the thing that we call ourselves.
Anyway, the next time you have a really good nugget of wisdom that you think other authors could benefit from, try taking the time to break down exactly what it is you find useful and why, and building it up into something more robust and unambiguous than a simple set of instructions or a list of things that you do. I'd even accept something like
[Normal, quippy phrase that vaguely gestures at the idea]
And that's it that's the whole post, I hope to get some responses, bye!
The writing advice 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is widely accepted as being categorically bad in just about every way writing advice can be, so much so that I'm just going to assume that you, the reader, already know why most people think it is bad advice, or are capable of coming to that conclusion on your own. That piece of advice is bad advice, as unambiguously agreed upon by a majority of authors. This is not a defense of this piece of writing advice. Instead, I want the first part of the phrase, and go over all the ways in which I think writing advice in general fails to resonate with me specifically, and extrapolate that to ways in which writing advice could, potentially, be better phrased or presented to make it more useful to more people.
For no reason at all, completely unrelated, I'm sure, let's imagine a hypothetical author. This author is highly motivated to write stories, lots of them, of nearly any genre or perspective, working with any tropes they happen to have in their head at the time. This author just really, really, can't get enough of writing words. This author, just like every other author, isn't perfect. Not every sentence is good enough to even consider attempting to edit, and not every edit is good enough to be worth keeping. That's fine though, this author is improving with every sentence they write, every paragraph they edit, and every scene they commit to posting. However, this author wants to improve, wants to get better. Reading more isn't enough. Writing more isn't enough. Responding to feedback still is not enough. This author wants writing advice, good, solid, useful writing advice.
This is where our hypothetical author runs into a problem. The more advice they see, the more discussions they peruse, the more youtube videos on writing they watch and multi-thread forum blogs of more successful authors they shadow, none of it resonates with them. This author doesn't get writing advice. When this author looks into common ways people organize their stories, none of them sound even remotely useful, and all the ones this author tried anyway were unhelpful. None of the discussion threads on what authors have found success doing or what readers enjoy the most actually help this author write their own stories. Suggestions of 'try doing this' or 'avoid doing that' are unhelpful, because none of those suggestions, or any of the following, actually provide information in a way that is useful to this type of author or this type of person.
Stepping back out of the totally hypothetical author's perspective for a moment, the problem I'm trying to demonstrate with 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is the same problem I have with 'Use a storyboard, so you don't get stuck', and 'Audience expectations aren't an enemy to be fought against'. Even though the latter two are legitimately and objectively good advice, they still aren't helpful to the type of person who actually needed to hear someone else tell them that.
What is helpful, but that I needed to figure out on my own, is that having a separate document of out-of-character explanations for plot details makes writing natural exposition and foreshadowing a whole lot fuckin easier. If someone had just told me, when I was starting out back in my teens, 'Hey man if you just write all your lore down on a separate document in advance of when you'll need it, it makes it way easier to edit into exposition and foreshadowing' I wouldn't have gotten stuck in so many of the places I used to.
I witness so often on this forum and others that people try and boil writing advice down into these binaries, 'do x because y', 'do a because b is bad', 'most people don't like 1, but 2 is fine', and so on, and, like, if I was at the point in my development as a writer where seeking out advice like that was something I was doing, that wouldn't help me, even though I know the people giving the advice are trying to be helpful. Even some of the best advice I've seen given is effectively locked behind a closed door to people who think the way I do, and it's a shame because I know for a fact a lot of that advice can be presented in a way that would be helpful.
So, I want to break down why 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is bad from this perspective. Ignoring all the other ways it is bad, I'm going to analyze this to show you what I'm talking about and demonstrate the way this piece of advice could be phrased in a way that I would understand and be able to utilize. Ok? K.
Part 1; Killing a character
So, what exactly is the phrase 'kill a character' asking the author to do? I know this sounds stupid, or like an incredibly condescending thing to ask, but I think it legitimately is worth asking in the context of what I'm trying to do here. The original spirit of the phrase implies the thing it's asking you to do is randomly select a character and begin removing them from the story from that point on. This isn't very helpful as instruction for an author, because it fails to even attempt to define what doing this would actually accomplish.
Take a second and think about what 'Killing a character' actually does to the writing process, on the side of the author and with no thought given to the actual story. I'll give you four- Time's up the answer is almost literally anything, entirely dependent on where the author is during the writing process. Killing a character when editing over major dramatic plot events gives you a totally different result to killing a character when planning out an action scene, which in turn is a different result to killing a character while coming up with rational romance progression, and so on.
A better way to phrase 'Kill a character' while preserving its original meaning, but making the intended result less obtuse, would be something like 'Try removing a character from a scene to check if it helps you move past that scene'. It's much longer, much less 'snappy' or precise, but to someone like me, stating what the intended effect of the action is supposed to be not only solves the 'what does that even mean?' problem, it provides an actual reason to apply the advice and see if it helps, whereas the former isn't something I could be convinced to try doing.
Part 2; Getting Stuck
Here's a question. What do you think the 'whenever you get stuck' is referring to in the titular piece of advice? No, seriously, if someone were to give you this advice well in advance of when you intended to use it, what would you consider 'getting stuck' within the context of following through on 'kill a character' as a solution to it? I personally get stuck in lots of places when writing. I get stuck thinking about a definition of a phrase within the context of my story, I get stuck thinking about where the plot is going, or how I'm going to continue an action scene without repeating something I've either done before in a different scene or have done before within the same scene, and I get stuck on way dumber stuff too, like debating which synonym of 'rope' I'd like to use because if I don't choose one I'm going to rip my hair out over rope not looking like a word anymore holy fuck.
Even if I get over being 'stuck' in the ways I described pretty quickly, usually within forty minutes or so, if I was hypothetically following the title's advice, which points should I have killed a character at? All of them? If not, which ones? None? If none, why not? Obviously these are rhetorical questions, even if they totally aren't actually and I would really like your answers. The problem here, as with part 1, is in the phrasing and the interpretation. See, even if you knew what the action the advice wants you to perform would accomplish, knowing when it's applicable at all, and more important why, are still important parts of effective advice.
I think this makes more sense if you think about the phrase 'when you are feeling unwell, try taking a nap in case you are tired'. What do you consider 'feeling unwell'? Think about all the different ways in which you could 'feel unwell' but not correctly identify the situation as one in which you should try taking a nap. Think of all the reasons why you might misidentify the feeling of being tired as being something else and judge that you don't need more sleep.
Instead, phrasing it as 'If you're not sure why you don't feel well,' would result in a greater likelihood of someone like me actually identifying the situation in which I'm feeling unwell to begin with. It accomplishes the same goal, of getting someone to attempt to follow helpful instructions, and it does so in a way that better indicates what the goal actually is and when and why the instructions should be considered.
Returning to writing, 'Whenever you get stuck,' is ambiguous, and unlikely to result in a correct identification of a situation in which its following instructions could potentially be helpful. Instead, try 'If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify,' for more clarity of when your advice is actually intended to be used, with the added side bonus that you've now also stated why you think the advice might be helpful; it could identify the problem even if it doesn't solve it.
Part 3, Conclusion; If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify, try removing a character from that scene to see if that helps you move past it
I'm aware of how aggressively long that piece of advice is, but knowing what it's derived from, it's difficult for me to come up with a coherent reason why someone else would want to shorten it beyond aesthetic choices, ones that specifically make it less useful to the type of people it would be most useful to otherwise. I know it can be a difficult concept to think about the ways in which information you have a solid understanding of could be difficult for others to understand, especially when you understand that information in a fundamentally different way, but we're all authors, right? Getting other people to understand information we already understand is practically an alternative definition of the thing that we call ourselves.
Anyway, the next time you have a really good nugget of wisdom that you think other authors could benefit from, try taking the time to break down exactly what it is you find useful and why, and building it up into something more robust and unambiguous than a simple set of instructions or a list of things that you do. I'd even accept something like
[Normal, quippy phrase that vaguely gestures at the idea]
Nerd Elaboration resulting in increased length of post by a factor of ten, but hidden behind a spoiler so that it doesn't make you seem like a woke loser who cares about other people's ability to understand you
And that's it that's the whole post, I hope to get some responses, bye!
