Writers on writing

[John Dean]

I am running a creative writing course at the moment and have based part of the sessions on some ‘golden rules’ of writing. In researching the sessions, I came across the following quotes; taken together they make for a pretty good guide to writing:

 

Diana Athill

Only by having no inessential words can every essential word be made to count. You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

 

Roddy Doyle

Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".

 

Helen Dunmore

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It'’ a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

 

Geoff Dyer

Beware of clichés. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

 

Anne Enright

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

Try to be accurate about stuff.

 

Esther Freud

Cut out the metaphors and similes. In my first book I promised myself I wouldn't use any and I slipped up ­during a sunset in chapter 11. I still blush when I come across it.

Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.

Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

Never forget, even your own rules are there to be broken.

 

Neil Gaiman

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

 

PD James

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.