Cheesium’s Writing Guide

This idea came up in a discord chat, and I’ve seen a lot of new NBM or NBM-adjacent writers out there which has been awesome. I thought it might be helpful to put together some opinionated “best practices and techniques” for new writers.

I’ll also say this isn’t meant as a critique of anyone’s work or style, and these can be thought of as my own general guidelines and stuff that works for me, not rules about how to write. There are many ways to write a good story. I break most of these rules somewhere in my stories, so they’re not even very robust.

I am also not really a “successful professional writer” or anyone that people have to listen to. But I do write somewhat popular stories (for this genre anyway) that are fun for me to write, and I did go to school to study this stuff for an ill-fated attempt at becoming a novelist.

All I hope to get out of this is maybe there will be more stories I like out there in the future.

Read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser

This is a better guide than anything here and there is a reason this is the #1 book on writing. A lot of this stuff that follows are just things I learned in this book.

It’s not a book about fiction writing. But it is a book that shows how to write clearly which is critical to writing good fiction, good emails, good marketing copy, or just about anything else you might ever need to write.

Ideas Don’t Matter

Well, they do a little bit. Every story has to have a reason you’re writing it. And it’s those ideas that we’re interested in ourselves.

They just don’t matter very much for how you write a story.

I have too many ideas. Ideas for businesses, ideas for products, ideas for side projects, ideas for weird stories. But none of those are going to become something more than an idea without execution.

Original ideas matter even less.

Ideas become ‘original’ through execution. As they’re developed by a writer, you find new ways to think about them and new places to take them.

Ideas can be stolen. There’s a lot of discussion on this broadly in the arts including the famous Picasso and Steve Jobs quotes. But using the same concept or borrowing a style from another story you like isn’t plagiarism, it’s inspiration.

One of my favorite bits of trivia is that Shakespeare “stole” the plot to every play he wrote. All of the stories he used existed in one way or another already, and most were already established plays with the same title (except The Tempest which might have been based on a current event).

In any case, getting good at the practice of writing is very separate from the work of coming up with good ideas to write about.

Write for a Reader

You often hear “write for yourself” as advice kicked around in workshops.

But what they mean here is: Don’t listen to your critics. Write about what you want to write.

Even better: Don’t listen to your own internal critic. Just get started and see how it goes.

But what you do want to do is write something your reader is going to value. Something that serves the story they’re reading. And something that’s interesting to read about.

This applies to every sentence and every word in the sentence. Because someone has to go through the process of reading it.

Many of the other principles of writing — stuff like “show don’t tell” or “use fewer words” — are really abstractions of this idea.

One further step is to trust your reader. Don’t over explain. Provide just enough to keep the story going, and let them figure out the rest.

This is the part that makes reading enjoyable — it’s not just finding out new information, it’s discovering a new story piece by piece.

Begin in the Middle

Every story I write starts with some kind of idea. For these weird ones, it’s usually a particular situation: “It’d be really hot if …”

To get there, there’s a backstory of some kind. The characters did A, B, then later C and now we’re in the good part with the D through MNLOP. So there’s always the temptation to begin all the way back at A and write your way through to D.

Building on “Write for a Reader” above, we should start at D or if that doesn’t work, maybe at C or B. But the backstory is usually just that — it can be abstracted and referenced by the characters if it’s relevant, or it can be inferred by our trusty reader.

There can be exceptions to this. Sometimes it’s fun to build tension. And you don’t always get to have tension if you jump in with both feet right away.

This also goes back to “hooking” the reader with the most interesting beginning you can manage. It shows the reader why this is something they want to read more of.

It’s also okay to write a beginning and realize later on it’s just backstory. But that process is valuable itself, because it primes the story and gets you to the interesting part. Just don’t be afraid to cut it out when you realize where the beginning really needs to be.

One Character Scenes are Usually Boring

They’re also hard to write, and can usually be summarized either in a flashback or with a character’s dialogue.

But with only one character in a scene, there’s usually no tension. Just themselves and their thoughts and actions. It’s very hard for there to be suspense, or much of a reason for the reader to keep going.

These scenes can be useful to wrap a flashback, fill in a character’s backstory, or provide some other ways to move a plot forward.

But you generally see them used in the beginning of a story because at some point before the story starts, the character has to be alone and deciding to go and set the plot in motion.

So be mindful these kinds of scenes can be a chore to read.

Don’t Edit, Just Fail

I probably begin five stories for every one I finish. Actually I probably begin around fifty or so if you count the ones that don’t even get started and are just an idea I wrote down. I think that’s a pretty good ratio.

What happens to them: I stopped thinking it was a good story. And because it was no longer good, it stopped being interesting to write much less to read.

And I could edit them maybe. Improve this sentence, move this part forwards, change the dialogue here or there. But the truth is always pretty simple — I’m just not interested in finishing them.

Editing and writing are separate skills. Some people do really good work with a series upon series of drafts. Some people also enjoy the editing process itself. I’m not one of them.

This is not a universal rule, but it’s my own approach.

If you want to improve “writing as a process”, then just write. Leave the bad stuff where it is. Try to write the same story over again if you still like the idea, or move on to something different. It’s the work of writing that makes you a better writer.

We can make an analogy to music: Some musicians are very good at cutting together an album. Some are very good live. And some are good at both. But a live performance can’t be stopped and edited, it just has to go on and happen.

Most of my own stories get one edit for typos and maybe removing conversation-type words like “So” and “Like.” But that’s all.

Stop as Soon as Possible

I use a lot of scene breaks. This goes back to some of the stuff above, because I always think it’s important to focus on the good parts.

If your characters are leaving a party where their arms were taken away, and next they’ve got to find a sorceress who lives on a houseboat to get them back, you don’t need to explain how they call an Uber to the Marina, make awkward small talk with the driver, and then ask the guard to open the gate for them. Just end the scene and jump ahead.

If there’s an interesting tidbit you want to add, just save the idea and…

Add Depth with Dialogue and Flashbacks

This is where you can add in the interesting details you’d otherwise need to construct a whole boring scene to include. So consider two possibilities:

“That guard didn’t even seem to care about our missing arms,” said Rachel, as we nervously eyed the gap from the dock onto the Sorcery Ship II. “Guess Mags gets a lot of these kind of visits.”

Or

It was at least six feet to jump from the dock to the edge of the platform. But Rachel had said if we wanted arms, this was the best ‘arms dealer’ in the area.

Still I’d felt a strange awkwardness in the Uber ride over and not just because the driver, who made more than a couple ‘lend a hand’ jokes. I think it was mostly that we had no way to fasten our seatbelts and he drove like a madman.

Both of these avoid the need to establish and re-establish entire scenes that might not be as interesting to read.

Write Words that Don’t Get Read

What I mean is: Use Paragraphs.

Let your reader scan.

Most readers are not going to go word-by-word-by-word. They will skim and scan your work first before their brain decides if it’s worth the effort.

Large blocks of text are very hard to scan. They’re also a chore to read through. They have their place in some stories — if there’s a continuous flow from one sentence to another, or if there’s an artistic reason to leave something in the last paragraph, or you’re just an absolute sucker for long run on sentences, the kind of sentences that work more like a continued stream of thoughts — there are reasons for those!

But.

Give your readers a chance to rest their eyes.

And paragraphs are the way to do this.

If there would be a pause in a story for any reason, whether something new happens, another character becomes the topic, or you just want to draw some emphasis to something…

Use a new paragraph to do something.

Develop Your Process

Everyone has different preferences about how they write something.

Myself, I plan out the story. I know what scenes are in it, where it’s going, and hopefully where’s it’s going to finish. This is because I’m starting from a point where there’s a few situations that I find very “interesting” and I want to get to them.

Others create characters and follow them where they go. They ‘grow’ the story and only find out where it will go from the process of writing it.

I like to write stories a markdown editor. I used to write them on paper, then re-type as part of an editing process. I’ve also come prefer a mechanical keyboard and gel pens and nice paper.

Whatever the process is, there’s no right or wrong approach. But it’s helpful to spend time trying out different approaches to find out what you prefer the best.

Break Rules

Writing is about communication. It’s not about strict rules. It doesn’t have them. If you can get your idea across better and more clearly by breaking a rule, do it.

English itself is a weird language. It started out as a Germanic language that’s been added to and modified by Greek, Roman, French, and Norse languages.

Now we’re at a point where the internet is about to change it even further, and even faster than ever. “Adulting” is a verb. “Because reasons” is a valid sentence.

They’re not valid because the rules of grammar say they are. They’re valid because people who read them understand their meaning.

So don’t feel boxed in by rules of grammar or otherwise. If anyone points out mistakes, you can listen and decide if you agree — but you don’t have to.

Ignore Your Ego but Ignore Critics More

Separating your ego from your product is one of the hardest parts about doing any kind of creative work. It can take time to build up that resistance.

Some writers love to pick apart other writers. Some are genuinely helpful and others just want to show off how smart they think they are.

When you do something you’re proud of, it can be hard to even show it to anyone else because you’re not sure how it’s coming across. For my own part, I can hardly be in the room with someone reading my own work.

The thing is to remind yourself of is when another reader is talking about your work they’re not really talking about you, they’re talking about themselves. A lot of feedback is just some version of “This is how I would do it.”

It’s easy to get drawn into negative feedback. A dozen positive comments don’t get as much of a reaction as one negative one.

You don’t have to listen to it. You can just shrug it off and do nothing with their feedback. It’s theirs. It’s not yours.

It’s also normal to feel sensitive about the work you do. There is nothing “wrong” with that feeling. If you feel strongly that no this is good work then you should trust yourself.

If you are giving feedback that’s not received well, the polite thing to do is drop the issue and apologize. Remember, the feedback you give being valuable to the writer is important in the same ways that writing needs to be valuable to the reader.