How to Make Bad Writing Advice Your Secret Weapon

Advice from an Oprah’s Book Club Author

What is the worst writing advice you’ve ever heard? And how would you revise it to make it actually good advice?

I asked Eric Puchner this question last week at the launch event for his new novel, Dream State¹. In his class, ten years ago, I wrote the short stories that would eventually become my debut novel, Good People. As I spent the last decade reshaping six fledgling stories into a full-fledged novel, I turned to writing advice from various sources to figure out what “best practices” actually worked for me as a writer. In recent years, I’ve discovered that bad writing advice has been my secret weapon to developing a productive writing process. By interrogating why certain pieces of writing advice don’t work for me, I’m able to glean what writing habits, techniques, and exercises actually help me tell the stories I want to tell.

So, when Oprah announced Dream State as her 111st book club pick, I made the trek from New Jersey to the McNally Jackson in Seaport, excited to learn something new about writing from one of the most influential teachers in my writing life.

From the jacket copy: Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.

In conversation with Dinaw Mengestu, Puchner introduced Dream State as a novel about the impermanence of the homes we find in the people, places, and landscapes that surround our lives. During the Q&A, I asked Puchner about the worst writing advice he’d ever heard, and he zeroed in on two common pieces of writing advice and why he thought they were terrible.

As always, take what’s useful to you and your writing life and leave what’s not behind.

Bad Writing Advice (According to Eric Puchner)

1) Write First Drafts Quickly

The first piece of “bad advice” Puchner mentioned is any advice that says writers should “write first drafts quickly.” The problem with writing first drafts quickly—according to Puchner—is that attention to craft on the sentence level can get lost. He said that he often tells his students to write slowly, to take more time to consider the sound of each sentence and what those sentences ultimately add up to in the grand scheme of the story. In his opinion, fast writing creates “ugly sentences,” and slowing down the writing process on the line level can benefit a writer’s growth in the long run.

Given how much I talk about fast drafting in our craft lessons, you might be surprised to hear that I agree—to a certain extent—with this advice. Fast drafting is important to my own writing process because plot and story structure don’t come naturally to me. I need to see how my characters move through the macroscopic motions of a narrative in order to know if I’m telling the story I want to tell in the way I want to tell it. It’s a tired metaphor, but for me, plot and story structure are the bones of a house, and prose—on the line level—is the roof, the walls, the wallpaper. Before I can confidently put up walls or wallpaper or the roof itself, I need to know how many rooms are in the house, how big those rooms are, and where each room goes. For this reason, I need to write my first drafts quickly in order to lay down a functional foundation. This is also why I sometimes call my first drafts “draft zero” because I’m just telling the story to myself; no one else will ever see my first drafts.

That said, for me, “Write first drafts quickly” is not bad advice per se, but instead incomplete advice. Here’s how I’d revise it: “Write first drafts quickly. Revise your first draft before you share it. And complete as many iterations of your story as possible.”

When I was in high school, my mother liked to quote this tech industry mantra: “Fail fast. Fail often. Fail forward.” My writing process embodies this outlook on work by embracing revision. Revision is how we—as writers—create new iterations of our writing projects. From formal workshops in academia to the scripts I write as a video game writer, I complete three drafts of anything I write before I share it with anyone. Writing first drafts quickly helps me structure the stories I want to tell, but I always plan ahead to ensure I have enough time to revise before I get eyes on a piece.

If a craft lesson on drafting and revision is useful to you and your writing life, check out our post, “The Three-draft Process for Novels and Video Games (Part 1).”

2) Write as if Everyone You Know Is Dead

The second “bad” piece of advice Puchner mentioned was advice he’d actually taken to heart while working on creative nonfiction. He said he’d written and published some personal essays with the mindset of writing as if everyone he knew were dead. But in his experience, he found that people in his life often got upset about something in the piece, even if the piece had a glowing and adoring depiction of someone. When it comes to writing (and publishing!) as if everyone you know is dead, Puchner said, “It works if you’re Tolstoy.” But in his own writing life, he’s found that it’s difficult to write if he’s worried about upsetting people. For this reason, Puchner advises the opposite: if you’re writing fiction, just write fiction. The consequences of writing about people in your life may not be worth it.

Now, this advice is something that I hardcore agree with. While I don’t publish nonfiction often, my life inevitably influences all of my writing. Even though “Breathe for Them Both” is 100% fictional, this story is inspired by the fact that I witnessed a pedestrian get hit by a car when I was living in Korea. “Eat You Whole” is also 100% fictional, but Honey’s disdain for America and her motivation to stay in Korea is influenced by my own frustrations with navigating white spaces in the US as a Black woman. No matter what genre you write, influence from your life is nearly unavoidable.

During the conversation, Puchner ultimately said that every writer has their own obsessions, and those obsessions will come out in their work. I absolutely agree. I’d also add that our thematic interests as fiction writers should (and can easily!) be separated from the intimate details of the people in our lives. All this is to say that you can write whatever you want as long as you’re willing to face the consequences.

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So, what’s your take? Is drafting quickly good advice? Should writers write like everyone they know is dead? If it’s all bad advice, how would you revise it to make it good? What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever heard? How would you make it better?

Talking about why certain writing advice doesn’t work for us and what would actually work instead is one of the best ways for us to understand, develop, and individualize our own writing processes. So, let’s talk about terrible advice in the comments:

Dream State by Eric Puchner

Dream State, Oprah’s Book Club’s 111st pick, is available everywhere books are sold. Support independent bookstores and the free writing resources I create for Substack by grabbing your copy from the Craft with Kat Bookshop. Dream State is up next on my TBR list. Some of my favorite short stories are in Puchner’s collection, Last Day on Earth, and I am so excited to jump into this novel. If you pick up Dream State, I’d love to hear your thoughts. The Craft with Kat chat in the Substack app is always open.

Until next time,

Kat

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