calebzhuett

the triangle man

i write games and books. sorry for the loud cover image i'm trying to delete it


got it in my head to share some of the writing tips that i think help me when i think about them! so here they are. i think they all apply to books but also to game design. most of them are just art tips

  • outlines are amazing. write an outline and then treat it like a boss for a job that's not very important to you. you still have to do the job but if you mess around a little what is the outline going to do? fire you?
  • if something feels bad it probably is. that doesn't mean you're bad, though, it actually means you're smart because you can tell that it's bad.
  • if you don't know how to fix something bad then it can't be fixed right now. fix it later or never fix it. it's your book and it can have some bad stuff in it
  • it's better to turn in something finished, bad, and early than good, incomplete, and late
  • nothing is a greater gift than editing. nothing. any time someone puts any energy into trying to make your work better is an enormous kindness and if you get mad at someone editing you, you need to keep it to yourself. you don't have to take every note but you do have to be grateful for any note given by someone in good faith
  • if someone is being dumb as hell about your work you can ignore them entirely, make a joke about them to someone else, and still be grateful
  • if someone hasn't read your work or is responding to a summary they are responding to marketing, not your work. you can learn about marketing from those conversations but you should never make any artistic decisions based off of them
  • know why you're writing! sometimes that means knowing your audience but sometimes it means knowing what's motivating you. It's tempting to make every piece of writing mean everything to you, but you'll be better off writing a bunch of different things to make you happy, to make money, to push your art, to critique something...sometimes you get lucky and can do it all at once but you should at least have a working hierarchy of em because they will eventually be in conflict when you make choices
  • following your goals and sticking to your values means you can be confident. and you should be confident. being confident is like 90% of your job. when you're writing you need to be confident you're making something amazing. when you're editing you need to be confident you'll find all the stuff you did wrong and make it better. when you're selling your work you need to be confident it's the best it can be. if you aren't it's either not getting done or you're hurting yourself
  • if you're scared of writing--like really actually scared hard to breathe feel like crying level scared, which happens to me sometimes--just go do something else. it's not worth it. but then when you're feeling better make a plan for next time and make sure you take time to think about it so it's less likely to happen again.

i'll add more if i think of em


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