Firstly, let me say that I love young writers. I worked as a tutor for about 5 years at both the K-12 and the college level, and there is something truly special about those still learning their way around words. They are willing to take risks that more experienced writers don’t, which can make for some true gems. There’s an earnesty and intensity in their writing that doesn’t exist elsewhere, and I cherish that.

Everyone began somewhere; no one was born with writing talent. Writing is something you learn and do, not something you simply have without hard work.

Every writer is still learning – ALL of us. Until the day we die, we’re learning.

So please do not take anything I say here as bashing young writers. However, here are some unpleasant truths that many don’t want to hear. Listen with an open mind and remember I say none of this out of snobbery or “these damn kids” vibes.

Writing takes years, if not decades, to learn.

Many younger writers give up well before they have established their own voice because they’re frustrated by their lack of progress. They may rush publishing and find themselves deeply embarrassed by their work, wondering why they bothered to put that out in the world.

If you are young, take heart: most debut authors don’t publish until their late twenties or early thirties. Many don’t debut until their forties or even fifties. They need to work the kinks out of their work and truly understand their craft before they’re ready, and this is normal.

You’re not failing if you don’t debut by 25. Few people do, and their work is … not great, to be honest. You can tell that someone needed a bit more time to cook before they could publish.

Your first (hundreds of thousand of) words will likely be unpublishable.

And this is fine! Writing unpublishable work is still writing, even if it never sees the light of day. Again, you must practice, and you can’t practice without actually … practicing. So don’t assume that your first project, or even your tenth, is going to be your debut.

I ascribe to the million word rule: you need to write at least a million words before you are truly ready to publish. Some people need more (I did) and maybe some will need a little less, but it’s a very good benchmark to identify if you’re there yet.

Fanfic is one of the best ways to learn.

Fanfic is excellent practice for many, many reasons.

• There’s no pressure to publish because you literally cannot do so legally. Unless you write a very good AU.
• You have premade characters to help you learn deep, consistent characterization.
• There’s established lore, keeping you from losing attention by focusing on worldbuilding instead of plot and characterization. (I have a love-hate relationship with worldbuilding, which I will discuss in another post later on.)
• You identify plots that resonate with readers.
• Fandoms, by definition, have other fans who can give you feedback and encouragement.

Decide when audience is important.

You should always write for yourself first and foremost or you’ll burn out. Trying to churn out perfectly commercial, readymade fan faves is not only difficult, but exhausting. It can truly drain you of any creative passion.

In the age of AI, your writing going to be lost to all this stupid computer-generated drivel. Developing your own voice is crucial to success and satisfaction.

However, there comes a point when you need to start thinking of audiences, especially if you intend to publish anything. What you care about is not necessarily what audiences will want. Your worldbuilding is fascinating to you, but it can turn off readers who just want a damn story, not to memorize a gajillion different terms.

Decide when you are just writing for yourself and when you are writing for a larger audience. Good beta readers are incredibly helpful for this, as they’ll let you know if your writing is boring or confusing.

Your audience does not care about you.

This is the most painful and crushing thing for writers to learn once they start writing original fiction for a wider audience.

It’s one of the cruelest parts of writing for more than ourselves and our fandom friends: we care about our audience and need to remember them, but they don’t care about us.

Before, you were writing for your friends (or maybe your family), who are fond of you and care about your feelings.

Random strangers don’t. They can tell when you’re seeking praise like a love-starved puppy by throwing a bunch of fancy things in your story just to make people go “waow … so smart and cool.” And it’s annoying, and it turns people off.

Do you really care about your favorite authors, or do you care about their stories? I don’t know anything about most of the contemporary authors I read except maybe some basic biographic details. I don’t try to reach out to them, don’t want to befriend them, don’t dream of meeting them. My favorite authors don’t even have a social media presence, they just announce a book and dip.

Many people (not all, but many) are the same way. Memoirs by unknown authors are one of the hardest things to sell because of this: people don’t care. Unless they know you for some other reason, your life experiences don’t matter all that much to them, because someone else has probably done the exact same things as you.

You are content to your readers, and your personal opinions don’t matter in fiction. I know, it sucks, but it’s true, and we need to acknowledge reality.

Simplicity is elegance.

This was a very painful lesson for me as someone who grew up reading Victorian literature. I love long, complicated sentences, and flowery prose, and descriptions that go on for 5 pages.

Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in anymore. Unless you are writing a story set in an earlier time, geared toward people who like that era, your story is going to be seen as bloated and boring.

Remember what I said – your audience does not care about you. This includes trying to impress them with your prose and all the fancy words you know.

It’s ok to use unique words every once in a while, or use technical terminology to more clearly depict a story, but if your message is getting lost in a sea of pretty language, then it’s pointless. Great authors can make very elegant sentences that are actually quite straightforward.

Feelings matter more than facts.

Much as we don’t want it to be so, it’s true in real life and it’s true in fiction. People feel things and make up their minds accordingly – and they will do that with your book, too.

People read fiction to feel something, whether that’s anger, revulsion, lust, happiness, or longing. We like certain genres because they push buttons that we want them to, and we enjoy certain authors because their writing resonates with us on an emotional level.

This is why, in my opinion, worldbuilding is one of the least important things (yes, even in fantasy). You can have the most fascinating, intricate worlds, but if your characters are flat and your plots are contrived, no one wants to hear about it.

Some of my least favorite books actually had the coolest concepts, but I didn’t like them because it was clear that the author was more excited about their worlds than about the plot or the characters.

Characters are everything.

We want characters to latch onto and think about. They don’t have to be nice characters, or even heroes; many peoples’ fan favorites are villains. But they have to be interesting, and we have to be invested in what they’re doing, either for good or ill.

If we want to learn a bunch of interesting facts, we’d go read nonfiction. The point of writing fiction is to get us immersed in someone else’s life for a while in order to forget about our own. It’s definitely a bonus if you create a super exciting and cool world, but that doesn’t matter if the characters are just exposition pieces for everything you’ve dreamed up.

I think about Brandon Sanderson’s work here. I haven’t read everything he’s ever written, but what I have read just felt like a little kid’s fantasy, kinda dumb.

HOWEVER. The reason, in my opinion, that Sanderson’s work is so popular because his characters are electric! We want these people to prevail against all odds. We feel for them. They have just the right amount of trauma and their reactions to things are realistic, if a little overblown at times. Sometimes they say dumb things and embarrass themselves, and it’s actually very endearing. They feel human.

He, to me, proves that you can have the most stupid bullshit world in the universe, but if you have great characters, people will be curious anyway.

Worldbuilding is the easy part.

Yes. It is. It’s very easy to dash off a bunch of history and backstory and weird words and details and strange rituals and etc etc etc. It’s easy to pull up a mapmaker and drop some oceans in there and name things. Making moodboards, playlists, etc, is easy.

The problem is when people spend so long worldbuilding that they don’t have a real plot or characters. Readers can tell because your characters feel flat and empty. You’re so excited to share all the stuff you made up that you info dump and get into these long monologues about things that, in all actuality, no one cares about.

I’ve talked to newbie writers who went on and on about their worldbuilding and all the fun quirky things they’ve come up with, but when I asked them what the plot was, they went quiet. When I asked what the characters want, what they learn, how they feel, they couldn’t tell me. Some even just stopped talking to me entirely because they were so annoyed that I wasn’t impressed by all their worldbuilding.

Again, we want feelings and characters. We want twists and turns and “oh shit!” moments. We want someone that we’d want to befriend, or kill, or fuck, or make our mommy. Reasons to cry or fistpump or hold our breath. Something that makes us slam the book shut and go “oh my god, how.”

After reading the end of Perdido Street Station, I felt *personally betrayed* by Yagharek. (I won’t spoil this 24-year-old book but it’s bad, let me tell you.) I was furious and walking around in a daze for several hours, stewing about it. The twist was gloriously written and something I should have seen coming but didn’t, and it completely upended my entire perspective for a while.

Other books have left me feeling warm and jubilant, or melancholy, or angry, or spellbound. That’s what I remember most about any book, and it’s probably the same thing you remember, too.

Feeling something is the whole point of reading fiction. Not to memorize details about a place that doesn’t exist.

Plots don’t need to be complicated to be fun.

Every plot in the world in the world has been done already. We are all basing our stories on something else, drawing on literary traditions from around the world. It’s the way we present it that makes a story interesting.

Think about some of the most beloved stories ever and distill them down to the real meat. They probably fall under one or more of these categories:

• Defeating an enemy.
• Falling in love.
• Discovering oneself.
• Confronting one’s past.
• Returning home.
• Solving a mystery.
• Saving/destroying the world.
• Reuniting with a loved one.
• Reconciling with someone (or ourselves)

You don’t need a million twists and turns to make something people want to read. Too many twisty bits, and people lose interest. Too many confrontations and it just gets melodramatic.

Many times, we know deep down how a story will end, but we want to read along anyway because we want to see how far you push characters we care about. We want to see interesting places and explore hidden depths, think about life differently, and have some fun.

Those just starting out should keep it simple, focusing instead on how to get characters to where you need to go.

And that’s about it! If you hated this, it’s okay. If you disagree, I get it. However, this is my opinion as someone who has been writing for 15 years. I hope you’ll ponder it and maybe find something useful.