Recently on my Twitter feed (@AMDeanUK), I’ve gone through a spat of selflessly offering some helpful advice for writers, contributing my small parcels of wisdom to the ever-active and life changing #writingtips hashtag (it’s like a virus: it just won’t die); and it’s been a while since I added anything to my blog, so this seemed the perfect time for a thematically-related rant.

Let’s be frank: if you need to turn to Twitter to learn how to write, something has already gone horribly, horribly wrong, and “Stop! #writingtips” really ought to be the only tweet ever posted to that hashtag. But the clearly ludicrous nature of such advice, and the fact that 140 characters might not be the best format for sharing advice on writing, shall not hold at bay the inevitable tide of advice that Twitter draws forth from amongst those whose wisdom just really, really, really needs to get out there and help change the world.

We need to put things in perspective, give some concrete examples, as it can be hard to conceive by mere intellectual capacity and imagination alone, how vacuous some of the advice we’re delivered online can actually be. Amongst the helpful tips my timeline has shone into my spectacles recently have been, ‘A good title is important’, ‘Try to create compelling characters’, and the revelatory ‘Checking for spelling is a good idea.’ And there’s the ever present ‘Speak from your heart, from your real experiences’ kind of guidance, which is particularly useful for the vampire erotica short story writers who currently make up 99.4% of Twitter authors. ‘Don’t repeat yourself. Repetition is unnecessary’ is another personal favourite. By which I mean to say, it is another personal favourite.

Now at first — I shall make a honest confession — I mocked. I’m not proud of this, I realise I was harsh to the bit. I read all this wisdom, and I mocked. But then I realised how shameful was this impulsive response: I mocked not because I should, but because I could, and as a classic gem of the #writingtips stream once taught me, ‘We sometimes mock what we don’t no [sic]; write what you fleel [sic].’

So, I repent of my horrible judgementalism and mockery, and hereby offer to do just that: to write what I really fleel. Too long have I sat, dismissively and contemptuously, far from the great pool of authorial wisdom into which everyone on Twitter is collectively vomiting, but no more!

Therefore, consolidated here, I present . . .

A.M. DEAN'S FIVE TOP TWITTER TIPS FOR BECOMING A BETTER WRITER:

1. Use big words whenever you can. Simple is for sissies. Say 'philogyinst' instead of 'lover' & 'hebete-animus' instead of 'cow'. #writingtips

I posted this recently, when I saw that so many authors were writing things like ‘He saw the girl’ rather than ‘He visually settled an ophthalmic glance upon the femininity of the other’; and obviously you’re not going to write well if you take the easy way out like this. Definitely try to make sure that all your words have at least two syllables in them; but you should really be aiming for three or four for important words. A few common mistakes: don’t say ‘fear’ when what you mean is ‘collywobbled perturbation’ (look it up!), or ‘happiness’ when you mean ‘rhapsodic beatific bliss’. It’s the sign of a ‘bad writer’ (which, clearly, is more correctly written as ‘an imperfectually deficient wordsmith’).

2. Superlatives aren't enough. Make them stronger for impact: it's "the most best" and "the extremely finished" from now on. #writingtips

I can’t stress this point enough: it’s emphatically one of the most extremely important of them all. How can you expect a reader to know you really, really mean something if you only use the form of a word that explicitly indicates it represents the highest possible degree of a thing? ‘Tallest’ just doesn’t cut it next to ‘the very tallest’. And if you write ‘the greatest’ instead of ‘the very most greatest’, you’re just being lazy. Your reader needs to know that you really mean these things.

3. Where possible, try to write everything using passive verbs. #writingtips

It should be said that phrases written passively are read with more devoted attention and are perceived as possessing a greater intensity than those which are said actively. Don’t let the rush-and-focus attitude of the modern world trick you into using flawed phrases like ‘He shot her’ in place of the traditionally more meaningful ‘she was shot by him’, or ‘She ran to the car’ instead of the clearly superior ‘towards the car was a running in which she was involved.’

4. Also, use many adjectives. At least four or five per noun is a good aim. #writingtips

It’s a good idea never to let a noun stand on its own. ‘The Cat in the Hat’ may have worked for Dr Seuss, but that was back in simpler days when readers didn’t demand more for their hard-earned pound. ‘The Furry, Animalistic, Mid-sized, Pleasant Cat in the Felt, Broad-Rimmed, Multi-tiered, Bi-colour Hat’ is really a bare minimum for how he would title that classic today. Similarly, you should prevent the boredom that will creep into your reader’s experience if they encounter poorly constructed phrases like, ‘As the storm approached, the boat risked capsizing into the sea’. Draw in their imaginative attention by giving them something to work with. ‘As the luminous, stirring, vexatious portent of the storm voraciously and unyieldingly approached, the rickety, tinder-fragile, rocking, chipped, off-balanced boat categorically risked wholly and most completely capsizing into the wild, watery, wave-whipped sea.’ You see, that’s far better.

5. Writing important passages ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS is a good way to mark emphasis. Also, many exclamation marks!!!!! #writingtips

I’m constantly surprised how many writers fail to realise that PUTTING REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS IS CLEARLY A GOOD WAY TO EMPHASISE THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING HERE MATTERS. It’s as if the Caps Lock key on modern-day keyboards were being systematically ignored. Here’s a general rule of thumb: AT LEAST two or three words in EVERY sentence should be EITHER CAPITALISED or underlined or made italic; and obviously TRULY ESSENTIAL PASSAGES SHOULD MAKE USE OF ALL THREE OF THESE RESOURCES. And punctuation marks exist for a reason! A reader isn’t going to feel the shock of your character’s surprise if all she says is, ‘Wow!’ when she could so easily say ‘Wow!!!!!!!!’ This will knock your reader’s socks off. Similarly, REALLY probing questions should have at least three question marks, shouldn’t they??? And don’t forget the nearly endless possibility of punctuation combinations that can add impact and drama to otherwise lifeless words. A simple ‘What?’ is worlds away from a well crafted ‘WHAT??!!!!????’

Which is, by the way, precisely what I most often tweet in reply to the wisdom received on #writingtips.

AMD


A.M. Dean is the author of The Lost Library and The Keystone, amongst other thrillers. Do you want to know more about him? Visit his website at www.amdean-books.com, or follow his excessive Twitter addiction at @AMDeanUK.

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