u/hahatoldyousoso

I get it. We all have a vision for what our stories will be and we all take creative risks and we have reasons behind what we're doing. An editor is not going to be able to understand your story more than you do. That's impossible. So of course there are things you're not going to agree on. But it's unwise and frankly arrogant to dismiss an editor who tells you something is offensive and needs to be changed. You have to be willing to compromise.

I just turned down a client I was genuinely excited to work with because of this. He'd been working on the project for almost 2 decades and though there was still a lot of work to be done, it felt like a solid story. (And it was in my favorite genre.) Strong plot, strong voice, etc. But he was a middle-aged white man writing a Black protagonist growing up in "the hood" who very clearly had ideas about how a Black man can avoid a life of crime. His story was about something else entirely, but he chose to make the protagonist a Black man who's being hounded to join a gang. The characters speak over-emphasized AAVE and there are moments when characters make stereotypical or preachy remarks that a reader can ONLY be offended by. I resolved not to work with him unless he was willing to commit to deeper research, lightening the emphasis on the AAVE (it wasn't representational, it was degrading), and hiring a professional sensitivity reader.

We spoke for 2 hours. I tried so hard. I offered to do collaborative research so that we would both learn together; he said he was too busy. I offered to find short informational videos to send him and then asked if we could have more conversations regarding race; he said he wasn't worried about it. He immediately shot down the idea of a sensitivity reader. I asked him probing questions to get a sense of how familiar with the issues he was, and he gave every wrong answer. But he was confident he knew everything he needed to know. He was aware that some people would be offended by the material, but he said they weren't his audience. I told him I couldn't help him write a story that would perpetuate harmful stereotypes or racism and we parted ways.

As writers, we NEED to be aware of the social issues and political atmosphere around us. We need to be aware of how the things we write can be interpreted, and do what we can to get the right messages across. If you decide to touch on certain topics, you should be doing your research to make sure you're doing the material justice. Stories are far more powerful than we give them credit for, and if we want society to progress, then we need to have something meaningful to say. When dealing with complex, prevalent social issues like racism, you should not be taking your writing lightly. It's irresponsible to know that something you wrote is racist, or can be interpreted as such, and refuse to do anything about it. Our stories can have real impact on the world. White supremacists exist in America and they don't need more fuel, for example. From some of the comments he made, I'm positive I was not the first editor to tell him what I saw. He refuses to take any steps to make sure his story isn't racist. He doesn't care about the real-world impact his story could have. He's ignoring severe concerns because he wants to tell his story his way.

If editors are refusing to touch your money because something you wrote is problematic, PAY ATTENTION. Don't be so sure you know everything. At least look into their concerns to cover your own ass. And to make your work something you can be proud of.

Oh, and can middle-aged white dudes stop it already? This is not the first time I've come across a white man who thought he had some insight to share with the African American community. Stop thinking you have more to say about their lives than they do.

tl;dr: If an editor tells you something is horribly offensive and refuses to work with you unless you change it, there is a problem and you NEED to be willing to change something.

This is a topic that, for some reason, keeps coming up again and again in this subreddit. I've seen it three times in the past day alone, so I figure it's time for the no doubt weekly reminder that yes, you do actually need to read if you want to be a good writer.

There is not a single great writer that does not or did not read a shit ton of books. In fact, the Western canon (a real term and not a misunderstood Tumblr term as I also saw someone say on here) is dominated by people who had the sorts of upbringings where all they did was study earlier classics in detail. You don't wake up one day and invent writing from scratch, you build on the work of countless people before you who, in turn, built on the work of the people before them. The novel form itself is the evolution of thousands of years of storytelling and it did not happen because one day a guy who never read anything wrote a novel.

But what if you don't like reading? Then you'll never be a good writer. That's fine, you don't have to be! This is all assuming that you want to be a good, or even popular, writer, but if you just want to write for yourself and don't expect anyone else to ever read it, go for it! If you do want to be a good writer, though, you better learn to love reading or otherwise have steel-like discipline and force yourself to do it. If you don't like reading, though, I question why you want to write.

Over at Query Shark, a blog run by a literary agent, she recommends not trying to get traditionally published if you haven't read at least a hundred books in a similar enough category/genre to your novel. If this number is intimidating to you, then you definitely need to read more. Does that mean you shouldn't write in the meantime? No, it's just another way to say that what you're writing will probably suck, but that's also OK while you're practicing! In fact, the point of "read more" is not that you shouldn't even try to write until you hit some magical number, but that you should be doing both. Writing is how you practice, but reading is how you study.

All of this post is extremely obvious and basic, but given we have a lot of presumably young writers on here I hope at least one of them will actually see this and make reading more of an active goal instead of posting questions like "Is it okay to write a book about a mad captain chasing a whale? I don't know if this has ever been done before."

Caveats/frequent retorts

• If you're trying to write screenplays then maybe you need to watch stuff, too.
• "But I heard so -and-so never reads and they're a published author!" No you didn't. Every time this is brought up people fail to find evidence for it, and the closest I've seen is authors saying they try to read outside their genre to bring in new ideas to it.
• "But I don't want to write like everyone else and reading will just make me copy them!" Get over yourself, you're not some 500 IQ creative genius. What's important in writing is not having some idea no one's ever heard of before (which is impossible anyway), but how well you can execute it. Execution benefits immensely from examples to guide yourself by,

"If I force myself to read 1 page per day, will that help me to become a better writer?"

"Do I have to actually read books to learn how to write?"

"How many books do I have to read before I can start writing?"

"I have the attention span of a teenage Tiktok addict, can I skip reading books?"

It's absolutely baffling to me that I see these types of questions multiple times a day on here. I can not fathom the type of person that would try and willingly restrict themselves from the primary source of knowledge when it comes to learning to write - other books.

I also can't fathom the type of person that wants to be a writer but can't even muster the bare minimum of effort to pick up a couple of relevant books, find a quiet spot and make some notes while reading. I find that to passionately want to be a writer, one must have read at least one thing inspiring to light that spark. There must be a 'base line' interest in actually reading other work, if only to avoid living in the bubbled echo chamber of your own mind.

The tone of posts like the above often misrepresent what the poster is actually thinking in my opinion. They often come across like the poster has a 'lack of time' or 'lack of attention span' but it's clear to me it's rather an 'attempted corner cutting measure', 'lazy', or 'I want to be a writer but I don't want to put in the effort to be a writer'.

For reference, if you haven't got time to pick up a couple of books, read them and make a few notes, you're going to be horrified when you realise the time to do that is a drop in the ocean compared to the sheer time and effort it takes to actually write something with skill and proficiency.

Im going to be careful in my wording on this post because i know some people on this thread can get prickly.

Im going to preface that i’m not a ‘new’ writer, but also not an expert. My writing is very flawed, and im just asking for a discussion on this. I genuinely (not lying) wrote 600,000 words last year in drafts and personal projects unrelated to my goals for traditional publishing.

I know a huge part of the answer to this will be ‘draft first, edit later’, but I’ve tried solving this problem this way many times. But its a habit so engrained in me that its just annoying me at this point, and i need some thoughts on if there’s a way for me to fix it.

The problem? Filler language.

‘He saw that’, ‘he felt this’ ‘just’ etc etc etc. not just that, but i tend to over explain every single description i write. Im constantly couching my own language to make sure readers understand.

Its not just a writing problem. I DO THIS WHEN I SPEAK. i talk this way, and type this way in messages with friends, and its HORRIBLE in my writing. I genuinely think part of this is an autism thing, but i know it causes major problems in my writing. But finishing a draft and seeing that every single line needs to be changed because of this kind of language makes me INSANE!!! I need to think of methods to help myself work this out of my system. Simply ‘writing more’ doesn’t fix it, and neither does just getting more feedback. I know I’m doing it! I just don’t see how bad it is in the moment, because everything feels ‘necessary’ as i write it.

It’s probably in every sentence in this post and i cant even see it as I’m writing! If i had to edit this post to be able to post it without it being noticed i would rather just throw it in the trash.

Does anyone else have this problem so intensely? And any ideas how to slowly fade this filtering out of my thought process? Genuinely willing to try any insane, stupid idea.

Thanks!

As an amateur writer, I understand that certain things just come with experience, and some can’t be avoided until I understand the process and style a little more, but what are some more fixable mistakes that you can think of? Specifically stuff that kind of… takes you out of the book mentally. I’m trying not to write a story that people will be disinterested in because there are just small, nagging mistakes.