That is the question.

[prillalar]

Writing advice I'm now trying to follow:

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -- Mark Twain

Writing advice I gleefully ignore:

It's often wise to cut down on verbs of being, replacing them (whenever possible) with action verbs; that'll make your writing punchier.

I loooooooooove the verb "to be". It's my favourite verb. I work those predicate nouns and adjectives as hard as I can. I like the flatness of it, the plainness.

What's your favourite writing advice? Or your favourite advice to ignore?

Comments

[glitterdemon.livejournal.com]

Hee. I've heard similar advice about the superfluousness of "very." Advice I tend to ignore, not because I disagree with it, but because I'm too lazy.

Something I'm trying to pay more attention to: overuse of adverbs. Stephen King says they're "cheating," which I don't strictly (heh) agree with, but he does have a point that many times a piece of writing is better served by taking the extra effort to get something across without using an adverb.

I tend to purposely ignore the rule about ending a sentence with a preposition. But, again, that's more out of laziness. And due to my time spent in popslash I've learned the literary merits of selective capitalization, or the use of the period not as the end of a sentence, but as something stronger than a comma. Er. You may have to read them to get what I'm talking about. Hm. I know there's grammar "rule" that I just vehemently disagree with that I cannot think of at the moment. I'll let you know if I do.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I don't know you, but I fear you, because your post is practically identical to what I was going to say.

Follow: "Death to all adverbs!" (Yossarian, Catch-22)

Ignore: Never end a sentence with a preposition.
I actually tried doing this when I first started writing fiction, but I quickly realized that the sentences I was constructing were a form of English that no one ever speaks. So I chucked it.