Writing: Bad Writing Advice

The second panel I attended during the 2015 Salt Lake City Comic Con FanX was Larry Correia, Jared Quan, Nathan Shumate, Dan Wells, Natalie Whipple, Dan Willis, and Johnny Worthen.  They went through a whole list of writing advice that they've heard throughout their careers, and that advice turned out to be totally baseless.  Chances are that you've heard some of these tips too.  You may have a lot of advice being flung your way, but you need to use your best judgment in determining what's right for your writing.  There really is no right or wrong way to write, and for every rule somebody has, there is a famous author out there who has broken it and got along just fine.  So here are some tips you need to take with a grain of salt:

• Anything that begins with "always" or "never." Any advice that begins with these two words insinuates that there's some kind of unbreakable rule you must adhere to.  In a universe where Cormac McCarthy can write without punctuation marks and William S. Burroughs can write without making any kind of sense, rules are counter-intuitive and runs contrary to artistic merit.
• Write what you know.  If we stuck to this rule, I would be stuck writing about mail delivery.  Wouldn't you love to be able to write about something out of your element, like aliens, or vampires, or magical wizards, or zombies, or war, or ancient history, or spies, or something like that? You should research, certainly, but if we only stuck with what we "know," we wouldn't be able to write much, because there's so much we don't know, and so much we can always find out.
• Kill the dog.  One author explained how he wrote about a woman being tortured to death.  The only thing readers reacted to was the death of a dog.  People love dogs, so don't kill them.
• Do as much research as possible.  You could be doing it for years if that's the case.  If you write a space opera, it will help to study some astrophysics, but you shouldn't have a need to write complex differential equations or anything.  You should research just what you need.
• Quantity does not equal quantity.  That doesn't mean the two are proportional at any level; you can have high quantity and high quality, or vice-versa.  The quantity/quality ratio is most applicable to many things, but not necessarily literature.
• Exclamation points!!! I use exclamation points!!! And you know what?!! They make every sentence sound like I'm yelling!!!
• In thrillers, every sentence should start with "suddenly." I admit that I do this often, but overuse can be tiresome.
• If the first book fails, you're doomed.  There are writers who find success in their second, third, tenth book, or whatever.  If the first book fails, try again.
• Show, don't tell.  You have to tell some things.  If you had to write about a road trip, it would get really boring really fast if you had to "show" every single rest stop they made.  Condense it to some short exposition and get to the good stuff faster.
• Don't back up your work.  I don't know what kind of an idiot would suggest this.  We all know that our work can be endangered by computer failure, hard drive failures, lost thumb drives, or even a gust of wind scattering your hardcopy pages.  Always back up your work, because if the unthinkable happens, you'll have to start all over again.
• Don't be too wordy.  Different readers have different levels of wordiness they enjoy.  Writers like Stephen King and JRR Tolkein are quite wordy, and still enjoy plenty of success.  It's up to you to discover what level of "wordiness" works for you and your readers.
• Don't read outside your genre.  If you don't vary your reading habits, you'll be missing out on potentially insightful reading experiences.  You can learn anything from any book, so don't limit yourself.
• Read outside the genre.  Even though it's good to occasionally read across genres, if you're a genre writer, you should still read within your preferred genre and become familiar with it.
• Change negative reviewers' minds.  You just got to let the readers change their own minds.  Otherwise, you could find yourself in an endless argument with your readers.
• Take out adverbs.  Adverbs add some necessary flavor.  Too much can be gaudy, but none at all can be rather plain and dull.  A fine balance is needed.
• Never use the word "said." Yes, it can be a bit boring if every dialogue tag is simply "he said" or "she said." There is a whole plethora of other descriptive words to use, but an overuse of them can be gaudy and confusing.  It can be especially awkward if you use other verbs, like "he smiled" or "she laughed" in place of a dialogue tag.  How do you smile or laugh out words?
• Only writers can give advice. You shouldn't discount anybody's advice, a reader can give good advice too.

When it comes to taking advice from readers or critics, it's important to know that the person giving the advice might not be from your target audience.  They might have a preconception of what they like to see in books, so they might come out saying that "books should have xyz," but it could be totally irrelevant to your work.  You should beware of anybody wanting to change your work.  There are even famous writers who give bad advice.  What works for them may not work for everybody.  The only people you really need to listen to are readers (within reason) and editors.  If they're being receptive to what's working in your book, leave it in, regardless of what "rules" exist; if it doesn't work, then remove or change it.  It's as simple as that; any advice or writing rule can be broken and has been broken by successful writers.  Above all, you need to listen to your own heart to figure out what the best choices are to make your work the best it can be.