Young Writers Society

What are you controversial opinions about writing?

One of the things I notice in discussing writing online and reading about the craft of writing is that lots of people say the same thing. Common wisdom is taken as fact. In many ways, this is helpful. Rules such as 'Show, don't tell' are generally good advice to help a writer. But there's just as many, I think, which are repeated again and again and are not necessarily true.

So, this thread is for posting your (potentially) controversial opinions about writing, and then everyone can tell us how wrong or right we are.

Here's a couple of mine to kick us off:

It is better to be a good storyteller, than a good writer. The technical craft of writing is not as important as the craft of storytelling.

NaNoWriMo causes more bad writing than good writing. Agents and publishers have complained about its impact - with good reason. It would be better if it was called "National Terrible First Draft Month" because I doubt much good has been created from it. NaNoWriMo makes writers form bad habits which can be difficult to eradicate. (before anyone calls me out, I've completed NaNoWriMo -- twice). I think Word Wars can have the same problem.

This thread seems fun. I don't think I have any controversial opinions on writing, but I'll reply to yours.

While storytelling is important, I believe it's as equally important to know how to write properly. Some people (like myself) have problems transitioning an idea from brain to paper (err, computer). Some people don't know how to properly punctuate, etc. I believe one must know both to create a good story.

Now onto NaNo... I gave it a try last year after hearing about it forever. 50,000 words in a month is a lot. And although it's roughly 1,700 words a day, for some life gets in the way. On November 30th 2014 I had 10,000 words to go. I ended up writing 8,000+ that day. That's more than I've ever wrote in a day- let alone a few hours.

The point I'm getting to is yes, the majority of NaNo-ers are more concerned about word count than the actual quality of the story. In December I took a glance at my NaNo "novel." In fact, I'd be very ashamed to even call it a novel. It's a monstrosity. It's atrocious. Just plain bad.

BUT I did manage to get down a solid foundation for the story. It may be 48,000 words of rubbish BUT it's 48,000 words of rubbish that I didn't have in October. Now I've got a huge "manuscript" to revise and rework.

NaNo "helped" me get out something I didn't have before. (If that makes any sense.) Perhaps if I didn't skip a few days I could have written 1,700 words a day that were actually good instead of jotting down roughly 3,000 of rushed crud.

The bottom line for me is yeah, NaNo does help some. But would I ever submit a raw, unedited NaNo manuscript to a publisher on, say, December 1st? NEVER. It helps to get a draft out.

I've actually started to cut this opinion some slack after I picked up writing again recently, but here you go, anyway.

Sometimes I just want to shake people and say that your characters don't "talk" to you. They don't "do" stuff. You make them talk and you make them do stuff. And when you say you can't sleep because your characters kept you up all night with their witty banter and you just wanted them to shut up, you sound like you're insane.

HOWEVER. I do kind of understand that characters' independence stuff a little better now, because often I find that a scene I'm writing doesn't end up being like I had planned it in my head. But then, I'm still the one that does the writing.

"Writing is fun"

No, it is not. If writing is fun for you, nobody is going to read what you're writing. Writing is torturous, slow, grueling, and incredibly rewarding -- provided you get through the first three things. Regardless, good writing, to my knowledge, is never "fun".

Planning is overrated. Just write the thing and fix any issues in later drafts. That's what the later drafts are for.

Writing things beginning-to-end is overrated, too.

Interesting thread. I must delve in! Firstly, not to start any kind of feud at all, (I'm a peaceful member,) @carbonCore, I simply MUST disagree with your above statement. It doesn't matter WHAT I'm writing, I always end up enjoying it. Writing is my pastime, and my form of artistic expression, like what drawing and playing music is to others, and I've been compared to extremely amazing people. Now, who has the authority to do such a thing, I cannot say, but what I can say is, it is truly humbling and just causes me to enjoy writing all the more. Let me ask you this, if having others enjoy your writing is what makes writing fun for me, then how can your above statement be true? If they didn't like my writing, I would not be having fun, and vice-versa. You cannot enjoy writing in my case without your readers enjoying the works you create. (Paradoxes are so fun!) One way or another, writing for me is anything BUT grueling. It is beautiful, artistic, visionary, imaginative, and let's face it, on a site like this, you can learn so much in so little time! Thanks to some amazing people I've met, like @AstralHunter, for instance, my writing ability has improved more than it ever could have in school, and I'm so happy I decided to join way back in September of last year.

There's nothing like writing. It's among my favourite things in the world, because it IS fun. And I live to have fun and be happy.

I have to disagree, Cc, as well! Although there is a lot of work in writing, and it's not always easy- I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't enjoy it. I've heard of quite a few well known writers say that they write purely for the fun, and some even swear that if you're not having fun writing, no one else will find it enjoyable either ( I think this depends on the writer! ). Anyway, I believe you can have fun writing, and still get an enjoyable piece out of it, personally.

I must say, I disagree that doing NaNoWriMo is bad, if that is what you meant, Firestarter, though it obviously produces low quality writing. But I don't think any first draft is what the second or third draft is. That is why they are the first draft.

@carbonCore I must say, I have to disagree with you, overall, though I see what you are getting at. Certain parts of writing are fun, others are not. But overall, I thinkg most writers enjoy what they do. Being a professional writer is a lot harder than being a writer for fun, however, it is better than most jobs.

@Kyllorac I must disagree with you as well. There are two types of writers. On the one hand there are people like you who are discovery/panster/gardener writers who don't plan at all, or do so very littleoh and then there are the planners/outliners/architects. It all depends on where you fall in the spectrum.

I shall have to think of any eccentric qualities that I have, but for now, that is all I have.

Considering that the vast majority of writing advice involves planning, with not-planning things out often being pointed out as a cause of writing problems, I stand by my statement that planning is overrated.

If more people acknowledged that there is a spectrum of planning rather than assuming that planning is a necessity for writing, then I would have been able to find writing advice that was actually applicable to how I write instead of having to figure it out on my own.

Not that there's anything wrong with figuring things out on your own, but it gets pretty tiresome when you have to figure out a method of writing that works for you pretty much from scratch. :/

Then again, I have no idea what kind of advice to give a writer that writes spontaneously aside from "just write the thing however it comes out and save fixing things for later drafts", so.

I understand what @Kyllorac is trying to say. I would agree with him if I was younger - when I made a story by writing whatever came to my mind for exam, and still got high score for it. However, the longer I got involved in this writing activity, I had learnt from others that planning helped you to make your story cohesive and coherent. It sure helped you to cover all the inconsistencies you might had when you were writing the story, because if you didn't plan it, there would instances when you were like, "Damn, this isn't right, I have to start over!" or "Bullshits. I've just realized my plots are bullshits." So you could avoid being like that if you planned.

In my opinion though, writer who writes spontaneously and still creates excellent pieces has an advantage over writer who needs to make planning first. This is because the former can plan his writing, and make his story better, but the latter is unlikely to be able to write without planning without implicating the quality of his writing.

Unless you're like me, and planning basically results in getting bored with the project because you've already gotten all the important story stuff written out, so why bother writing out the story in even more gory detail?

All stories, planned or not, are going to have inconsistencies and issues in the first draft. You can try to minimize those inconsistencies and the intensity of future revisions through planning, or you can just roll with everything in the first draft and focus on fixing the inconsistencies in later drafts.

A whole lot of methods advocate the former without acknowledging that the latter also works. It's a lot more work in the revision and rewriting process, sure, and you don't get the advantage of avoiding a lot of issues that planning beforehand offers, but it still produces a polished piece of writing in the end.

Unless you don't do any revising at all, which is just a bad idea in general.

I'm going to disagree with @Demeter and say that my characters' lives are strangely separated from my own and they do things on their own. It's weird, I admit, and quite possibly insane (and I mean that quite literally; I am not trying to be glib with that statement at all), but that's just what happens in my brain. They keep me up at night sometimes with their stories, and that can be terrifying, sometimes, depending on what character is telling the story. It's also a reason why sometimes I desperately need a break from writing.

As far as controversial beliefs? I believe that poetry should always have a plot, or at least central conflict which the imagery pivots around. I think that the abstract poetry that deals purely with feelings is incredibly boring. I also think that the poetry that deals strictly with images with no emotion is also boring. There needs to be a balance between them. And a story needs to somehow come out in the poetry.

Never stick to the Rules.........

I say this because its true, if you follow the ground work of others how would you truly know what your abilities really are? Step Out of the box, and take a chance. Put finger to keys (or if your old fashion Pen to Paper) close your eyes, take a breath and have at it.

I believe that to be a writer you must have a good imagination; without it you're already on a doomed path. You must be able to see the lighter side of darker times and the darker side of lighter times.

My main controversial opinion is capitalizing the word 'I' in poetry. In general I like it capitalized, mostly just because I find it distracting if it's not. There are some poems where I think I not being capitalized works well, but it's still often distracting. I am warming to it, though.

How the word "capitalization" and "poetry" should not exist in any context next to each other.

I think there are times when a certain way of capitalization is not fit for a certain type of poem. If you're writing a "classic-style" poem, using a bunch of old style language and forms and patterns, it just makes sense to capitalize unless you're writing about something specifically that makes sense not to capitalize (like if you're writing in the POV of an old poet who has lost his shift key >.>)
There are other times when certain types of capitalization and punctuation just works /better/ (in my opinion) and I'm going to darn well state that opinion, and I don't need any flack for it.