The Best Advice I Can Give to Aspiring Novelists and Screenwriters: It’s Okay to Suck

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a talk I give at universities, writers conferences, and even fantasy conventions. It’s called The Storyteller’s Toolbox, and it covers things that are, with all appropriate modesty, pretty much essential for storytellers to know. It’s aimed primarily at novelists and screenwriters, although I think the tools are equally useful to game designers, teachers, students, and people who give business presentations. In short, to people who communicate. In shorter, to people.

The tools in this talk are not rules or formula. I’m not a believer in formula. Save the Cat, I’m looking at you. But these tools are in the toolbox for one reason: they work. It focuses on three primary areas: character, world-building, and structure. Structure (spoiler alert) gets the most weight here (I explain why everything you’ve heard about the three-act structure is a great big hairy and damnable lie) but each of the three deserves its own talk. That will likely happen later, albeit with some help from a few of my partners at Gramarye Media and The Story Plant.

If you’re curious, here’s a (slightly dated) version I gave online for the Broadleaf Writers Association:

One question has come up at least half the times I’ve given this talk: “What’s the best advice you can give to people who want to write?”

It’s a great question, and to be honest, it’s one I struggle to answer, mostly because the single best piece of advice I can offer is this: if you have in your heart and soul the God-given ability to not write, I urge you to embrace it. Seriously.

Why? I’m glad you asked. First, it’s really, really hard. I mean, think about just typing 200 or so pages (or 120 if you’re writing a screenplay). That doesn’t count all the research, planning, and, you know, thinking up what you’re going to type on that blank page. Just think of the actual chore of typing. It’s hard. Plus, it’s lonely and the odds of success are long. According to WordsRated, only about 1 to 2 percent of completed manuscripts find a traditional publisher. Most never even get finished. Most of the ones that do get published only sell a few hundred copies. So the best advice I can give to people who want to write, especially those who want to write novels is . . . don’t.

Alas, most of the people who attend The Storyteller’s Toolbox (and, I suspect the ones who read this blog) don’t have that ability. That’s a very good thing (alas for them) because the world needs stories. Stories matter. They can change the world. The language of God is parable and story.

So I guess the question is, what’s the second best advice I can give? There are two answers to that.

The first, obviously enough, is know character, world building, and structure. The latter, especially, will save you years of editing and rewriting. I speak from experience. Another term for structure is “know your story.” I think most people who experience writer’s block have simply lost track of the shape of their story. Those, of course, are the three elements I cover in The Storyteller’s Toolbox.

The next and probably most important advice I can give is this: It’s okay to suck.

That’s important, so I’m going to say it again.

It’s okay to suck.

The simple truth is, everyone sucks when they start. Everyone. Well, I imagine someone, somewhere probably didn’t, but it’s hard to imagine that they have a rich inner life or that God loves them, or can really even stand them. Even experienced writers, some of the very best I know, have been known to write first drafts that suck. Badly. I can’t think of a single writer who doesn’t — for good reason — hate at least some part of their early drafts.

In fact, I might even argue that it’s better to suck at the beginning (not that most of us have much in the way of a choice, mind) so long as you’re engaged in the process, than it is to start brilliantly and not be engaged in the process. If you’re not loving what you’re doing—and by that, I mean the actual act of writing (which isn’t just sitting at your keyboard and typing, but that’s a pretty huge part), not just the happy afterglow of having written—eventually you’re going to burn out. On the other hand, if writing is what drives you crazy with happiness, as the great Ray Bradbury used to say, do it. No matter what. Don’t let anything get in the way.

I’m not suggesting you should make a career out of sucking, although God knows it seems like some people have. You shouldn’t. Why? Here’s the thing. You can get better. If you keep writing (and for God’s sake, keep reading) you almost certainly will. So it’s okay to suck, so long as you keep writing until you don’t suck (or at least until you suck considerably less), and then keep on writing after that. I don’t know if it really takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, but it can’t hurt. Every hour counts. Every word matters.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that sucking is part of the process. Sometimes the only way to get to the good is to get through the bad, and the worst thing you can do as a writer is to get so caught up in trying to make something perfect that you bog down and lose your momentum. You can always revise later. Also, sometimes the only way to make something that sucks not suck is to write more of the story, at which point the solution to not sucking reveals itself.

You should probably also be very careful about where you turn for feedback, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as both an author and a publisher, my friends, it’s this: there’s a lot of bad advice out there (although I am a huge believer in writers in community). That, I think, is probably a topic for another blog post.

As always, if you find this article helpful, please share.