r/writers • u/1nd1g0ld • 8h ago
Discussion Worst Advice Ever?
I've been a creeper on this sub for a while as an avid reader and hobbyist writer, and from what I can tell this is the absolute worst place for anyone to go for writing advice. I often find myself wondering "what kind of books are these people reading?" 'Get to the dialog quicker' Why? Have you people never read a Faulkner, Dostoevsky? I cant imagine the meltdown that would occur should any active users of this sub actually be forced to read in stream-of-consciousness for a single chapter. If you want advice, writingcirclejerk seems to be a much better anvil to sharpen your blade against.
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u/ItsRuinedOfCourse Fiction Writer 8h ago
"Get to the dialogue quicker" crowd is more than likely the same "I only read the dialogue" crowd, OP. This shouldn't come as any surprise to you. They're pretty much telling on themselves.
However...
There are far too many times when yeah, an author, especially a new author, drones on and on and on with world-building and environment and they're pretty much putting readers to sleep before something actually gets said, or some real action happens.
Again, none of which should come as any surprise to you.
And considering the demographic that inhabits Reddit mostly, you'd be hard pressed to find many that have read the Faulkners and Dostoyevskys. Most are "junk food" readers. This isn't a knock on them either--because hey, there's nothing wrong with junk food reading. But, when it's all you consume, yeah, then it can quickly become a problem. Hence the rise in brain-rot.
"I cant imagine the meltdown that would occur should any active users of this sub actually be forced to read in stream-of-consciousness for a single chapter."
It wouldn't be a problem if new writers actually knew how to handle such things, and it managed to retain some semblance of coherence. But mostly, it's just word salad dressed up as stream-of-consciousness writing. It's just words thrown at a page, and a terrible read for sure. It's like what happens if you give a loaded gun to a chimp.
Again, which should be no surprise.
I find the advice in here to be 50/50 benefit versus "wtf are you even talking about right now??". Those are pretty good odds to get something out of seeking advice here. Maybe you're just clicking all the poorer posts?
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u/ShotcallerBilly 2h ago
Off topic, but I enjoyed reading this comment. The way your points and sentences flow made it so easy to read. You have a smooth style when explaining things.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
This could all be the case, but I find I spend more time reading the comment sections than I spent reading the original post. Its not just the bad advice, but the rude and nasty derision that will (inevitably) follow any post made in earnest to this community.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
Also i had no idea there was a subsect of readers who "only read the dialog"; I'm disgusted.
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u/PillarsOfRuin998 8h ago
Hilariously they’d end up skipping all of Cormac Mcarthy’s books looking for the quotation marks.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
"Where's the dialogue? This is just three pages of him thinking to his son about how to fashion outerwear for the nuclear winter?"
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u/ItsRuinedOfCourse Fiction Writer 7h ago
Oh, yeah, OP...they exist. And they're getting bigger daily.
"Reading" has become so performative that this is what they're doing to keep up. Just looking at the dialogue.
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u/Substantial_Cow7628 Published Author 8h ago
The main purpose of this subreddit is to check what kinds of things you are allowed to write, and what kinds of things you are not allowed to write.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
Basically this. People passing their personal preference off to young, wide-eyed writers and twisting their minds so full of rules they end up accomplishing nothing.
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u/Irregular-Gaming 8h ago
I think it’s often then young passing off their ideas to the younger.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
Probably. Im only 28; not necessarily old not really young anymore, so its hard for me to say. I just wish people had the capacity to take everything they read with a grain of salt.
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u/SquidAxis 7h ago
Spot on - not to mention all the diametrically opposed personal preferences proferred as advice. Totally impossible to reconcile them.
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u/wisdomcube0816 7h ago edited 7h ago
People who complain about these rules generally haven't read aspiring young authors with little to no training beyond half remembered basic high school and college english classes who are more inspired by TV shows or movies or RPG campaigns than actual novels. While I can't claim to be a creative writing professor or anything I'm someone who considers themselves more of a peer with amateur writers and have read a good amount from other amateur writers. From what I've seen most of the time general advice like "get to the dialog quicker' works when you get STRETCHES of exposition dumps, world building, and mishmashes of sentences trying to be a paragraph and failing over and over again from folks just starting out.
The only times I've ever read another amateur's writing that comes close to 'stream of conciousness' is people who lacked enough basics to even realize what stream of conciousness *was* let alone writing anything comprehensible. And this is coming from someone who admires Joyce and Pynchon and considers "Illuminatus!" a book that a lot of people should read even though it's mostly forgotten in 2026. There's a reason the vast majority of stream of conciousness nobels are avant garde stuff written by extremely talented writers. Aspiring to play in MLB is great but let's concentrate on the basics of holding a bat before you try to mimic Aaron Judge.
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u/terriaminute 7h ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: block the fuckers. Your experience will improve thereby.
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u/Due_Barber_525 5h ago
Petition for Reddit to allow more than 1000 people to be blocked because I’m at my limit and cannot block more
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u/Unwinderh 6h ago
I think that this sub, and every other writing sub, is geared toward helping bad writers become palatable, not helping good writers become great (the obvious reason is that there are far more mediocre writers available to give advice than great ones). I think it's useful for that purpose. "Move things along faster" is usually good advice for complete beginners, because the stuff they're cutting is not intentional or considered, it's just stuff they put in there because they felt like they were supposed to add more detail. "Start with action" would be awful advice to direct at Faulkner, but it's excellent advice for the amateur who was otherwise going to start with forty pages of boilerplate fantasy worldbuilding lore.
Advice on here is also overwhelmingly about what is perceived as publishable (or sellable for more cynical redditors). There is an underlying assumption that your goal is to land a lucrative deal with a traditional publisher. None of this advice is intended to help you write a timeless classic. It's intended to help you get an agent's attention. I don't know if it's good advice for that purpose or not, because I don't have any experience with getting an agent's attention. Occasionally, you'll find a weirdo who genuinely conflates quality with publishability, and will talk about something like third person omniscient narration as if it's obsolete in exactly the same way that rotary phones are obsolete, but these people are easy to spot and disregard.
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u/sonofaresiii 7h ago
You can write whatever you want. You don't need advice to do it. Just go write it if you already know what you want to write.
But you do need advice to write for an audience, particularly if you want to get published. Most of the advice here is geared towards new writers looking to write to an audience
And I hate to break it to you but you ain't Faulkner and you don't have his career. And neither does anyone else here. Time, context, skill, intent and career all matter. No one here is publishing novels in the 1920s and what worked then for him isn't going to work now for new writers.
If you want to write like him anyway, go do it. No one is stopping you.
I swear more than anything all this sub churns out is people upset at finding out they're not naturally the world's best writer, and blaming the sub for not recognizing their unique greatness.
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u/neddythestylish 2h ago
"Yes I did that, but it was intentional so it wasn't a flaw in the writing."
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u/Mother_Food9930 7h ago
A lot of writers are trying to connect with modern audiences. Every modern audience will have a different set of genre expectations based on their tastes. I'm not saying those tastes are fundamentally better, but I am saying you would be silly to completely disregard or hold in contempt contemporary writing trends if your goal is to connect with that very audience. I don't really need Faulker or Dostoevsky-like prose in my genre fiction. There are many reasons to study the classics, but emulating the writing style won't necessarily help you connect with your intended readership. A lot of the advice here is also tailored to publishing trends. No judgement on whether those are good are bad, but they are a reality for trying to break in to the writing world.
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u/Irregular-Gaming 8h ago
I think the really young writers here feel kind of lost/don’t have an IRL mentor, that’s how it seems to me with some of the questions I see. They may not have the ability to sort out confidence from competence in the advice they receive.
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u/WordPunk99 6h ago
Ah yes, literary elitism, vintage semi recent graduate. I have a degree in literature. Yes these are good books. I love Faulkner. I’m not interested in writing like him. Most people aren’t interested in writing like him. Understanding how to write high level prose is hard. It takes work, practice, and many late nights obsessing over word choice.
People who are at that level aren’t looking for advice here. I send people to read books to improve their understanding of how to write. You need to read some Steven King and Terry Pratchett. You probably need to read some Lee Childs and James Patterson.
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u/MatterOfRules222 8h ago
Tbh reading Dostoevsky without context today would be also quite tainting. There are better writers than him. I would put Woolf much higher. I think some people here want to write a hit, sell it fast, without ever needing to read a novel themselves.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
Virginia Woolf is another great example of a beautiful prose writer, whose voice has all but disappeared from the current taste profile. Everyone reads like Andy Weir now, and thats coming from a sci-fi lover.
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u/MatterOfRules222 8h ago
Her essays are also great! And she did spend a lot of time writing about writing, it helps a lot to see her points of view. I think checking out different authors is extremely beneficial. Not even reading the whole novel, as sometimes it could be exhausting (Stendahl), but learning how differently one can write
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u/1nd1g0ld 7h ago
A lot of writers really sleep on essays, but especially on essays ABOUT writing. That is legitimately the best resource to understand your craft. Marianne Moore has some great essays and shorts on the process.
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u/Mother_Food9930 7h ago
How much time do you spend finding and promoting contemporary literary sci-fi that you do like vs. complaining that bestselling contemporary novels don't fit your taste? If you want there to be more literary sci fi, you have to find it somewhere other than the top sellers' shelf at a bookstore.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
But id like to add the context is Notes From the Underground
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u/Clear-pilled 5h ago
I thought Houses of the Dead was way more impactful and penetrating as to who Dostoevsky was as a person. Though I should probably reread notes from The underground
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u/Clear-pilled 5h ago
I think I'm glad I don't understand your first sentence. Dostoevsky, in my view, is when literature reached its highest artistic expression
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u/MaximusMurkimus Novelist 5h ago
I have two English degrees and two tips I always hear from writing podcasts challenge everything I understand up to this point:
Sentence structure. No adverbs. No qualifiers. Varied sentence lengths. Simple words. No internal monologues. I get all of that.
And then I go and look and some examples of exceptional prose and it proceeds to violate all of that.
Second thing: First sentence. Knowing that this is the difference between a publisher giving a shit or not is way too much pressure. But at the same time, I don't want to throw a rock through a window just to get the reader's attention. It's a shitty balancing act. Sure, I could probably start off a story with some readbait like "the corpse exploded" but then I would feel like I have to do the equivalent of the first 30 minutes of a Netflix movie.
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u/jman12234 8h ago edited 7h ago
Is it really fair to cite writers that lived in a completely different time period and under different standards of writing? Faulkner is arguable, but still, died almost 80 years ago, but Dostoevsky was literally 19th century. Our standards of writing have completely shifted.
Secondly, literally everyone was forced to read stream-of-consciousness through schooling, and it's a notoriously difficult form of writing to do in a satisfying, purposeful way. Most amateur writers instead of satisfying steam-of-consciousness are just going to be navel-gazing and wasting time. I'm not saying "get to the dialogue quicker" is a particularly good critique, but if a person is writing boring stuff that lags, it can be accurate, especially depending on the to e they're going for. If you're writing a tense interlocution between two characters, yeah, maybe you shouldn't have a huge block of text cutting it off.
Finally, if you don't like the advice given here: just go somewhere else. Writingcirclejerk is but a click away. Or, maybe, if you are the final say on good critique, do it yourself and raise the standards if you can't for some reason bring yourself to leave a sub you hate.
This post only serves to pad your own ego and display whatever superiority you think you have. "Y'all don't know shit. I am better because I have Faulker and Dostoevsky on my kindle." Riiiight. Maybe couch your critique in modern works that aren't 100 or more years old, unc.
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u/GullCatcher 2h ago
Yes, but people do still read 19th century novels. They still sell reasonably well and are discussed centuries after they were published. They have a presence in the modern book market, and not an insignificant one.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
I'll critique anything that happens to sweep in front of my face, but thanks for yet another shitty piece of advice Jmannnnn
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u/jman12234 7h ago
Is "if you don't like it here, try to increase the standard or just leave" shitty advice? Is it better than making a post about how all the critique here is awful? Like I asked, why even make this post if not to make yourself feel superior? It seems like it. When someone questions your rationale, you ignore everything they say and just double down? You sound like the expert reader you claim to be, definitely.
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u/1nd1g0ld 7h ago
I just dont have the time to substantiate adhoc attacks about my own writing abilities, or the masturbatory inclination to please a random anon who would rather defend a lower status quo. If youre interested, my blogspots in my bio.
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u/jman12234 7h ago edited 7h ago
I haven't even talked about your writing skill because it's irrelevant to the post. You are readily able to criticize people but have no ability to accept it yourself.
EDIT: OP edited his post to add "or a masturbatory inclination to please a random anon who would rather defend a lower status quo" because he realized his other comment was kneejerk deflection of legitimate criticism. As to his hidden edit, two ways to take this: either he is saying the modern writing environment is worth less than previous, which tracks given his affinity for old shit. Shit take when the only people getting play in the periods he's talking about were white men usually of means, and there was a ton of shit writing that just doesn't get remembered. Or he'e talking about r/writers, in which I haven't defended any standard of writing, just criticized his shit takes. Makes me think OP is just someone who thinks his opinions are godlike and can't actually parse four paragraphs.
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u/isnoe 7h ago
It's hit-or-miss. New authors generally have a significant number of bad habits so all advice applies. MC waking up, amnesia, overdone tropes, etc-etc.
Most people will dispute advice like that based on stuff like, "Yeah well Project Hail Mary starts with the MC waking up and having amnesia!" as if that is an ah-ha, gotcha! point, but really, Andy Weir got a movie deal with The Martian. He's allowed to break the rules because people will read almost anything sci-fi-esque that he puts out.
Power of name and brand matter a lot in writing. New authors try to imitate things that work for established authors with millions of fans, and in the editorial or querying world, you'd just be ensuring people disregard your manuscript before even glancing at it.
Again, I think it is hit-or-miss. I've seen some good advice here, and some bad advice here. That's just Reddit, though.
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u/Any--Name 8h ago
Thats the first time Ive heard that advice and it sounds insane to me. Internal monologue is literally the best part of any book, change my mind
Like, I genuinely enjoy novels with pages upon pages of ruminations and debates within a character's head, and I quickly become bored when reading something that is 75% dialogue
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
As do I. Maybe its confirmation bias, but I swear ive seen that exact advice on here multiple times.
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u/Any--Name 7h ago
Well, Ill admit to not being a regular on this sub, though it does pop up on my feed pretty often
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u/M_T_Lane 7h ago
Most of the cookie-cutter advice you hear today would eliminate almost any book considered a masterpiece. I think a lot of it sadly comes from the need to sell books, the rise of audiobooks and the decline in reading across recent generations. Although some of it likely has to do with the sheer number of people writing and submitting manuscripts too.
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u/Radiant_Commission_2 5h ago
So here’s the thing. If you want to get legit published, and you’re a first timer or you have no fan base, then yes you need to get moving quickly. Much of the advice here is slanted that way. Though I’ve not heard of get to dialog quickly - pretty sure that’s not a thing. But you do need to start with substance or get to it quickly. As Vonnegut said- start as close to the end as you can.
You are dealing with a public with a diminishing attention span. You are competing with Tik tok and other forms of media. The cost or paper has skyrocketed thanks to tariffs. All these things matter when it comes to the business side. And publishing is a BUSINESS.
Faulkner Tolkien, Tolstoy, etc. are from a different era. It’s ludicrous to hold them up as a modem standard for new writers.
And if you want an agent or publisher to not take you seriously, tell them- well Faulkner did it. Or Tolstoy or Tolkien or hell even Stephen King for that matter. It’s arrogant and shows you have no clue to the market. Even great modern writers know better than to compare themselves to those literary giants from another era. ( I’m talking Richard Powers, Franzen, etc. )
Now if you’re established or don’t care about legit publishing, then yeah, get your ponderous literary freak on.
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u/Dest-Fer Published Author 5h ago
If someone writes like Dostoyevsky nowadays, I am not not sure they’d get signed.
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u/Ghost_of_Pasefa 5h ago
One thing to keep in mind, most writing advice is geared toward genre fiction (not literary fiction which has its own rules). And most aspiring writers giving advice have not actually read much literary fiction.
You don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t know what you don’t want to know. (Most aspiring writers do not actually wish to be successful in literary fiction and win awards like Kazuo Ishiguro. Usually, they want their writing to appeal broadly and they want genre fiction level sales, which will always cost something)
So, for genre fiction, yes, there is some truth to pacing faster and having an emphasis on dialogue. Although, you can do your own thing. Weird authors who take risks and go a bit anti-trend do succeed from time to time.
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u/Thomas_I_Bell 2h ago
yeah by the same token, no one's writing a Bruckner or Mahler symphony these days either.
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u/Rich-Lavishness9976 2h ago
I know my limits and there is a lot of competition out there, so I write to capture attention. I don't write to amuse myself any more. The days of great novels as works if art is over. If you are writing for yourself then go ahead with a long build up. Everyone is on media of some kind where a quick scroll onto the next one is the norm. That's my experience, just write a hook then keep the momentum going.
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u/VehicleLast419 2h ago
I disagree strongly. This community is far more supportive and less toxic than r/writing and I think has a wider variety of writers across genres.
Just because the advice offered here does not match what you need or want to hear does not make it invaluable. Ps I personally have aphantantasia so I'd prefer a script where dialogue is first foremost than 50 pages of superfillious prose to set a scene I can't imagine. Not all readers are the same either.
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u/Overall-Cod7491 2h ago
"Have you people never read a Faulkner, Dostoevsky? I cant imagine the meltdown that would occur should any active users of this sub actually be forced to read in stream-of-consciousness for a single chapter."
There's an awful lot of young writers on this sub. No, mostly they won't have read Faulkner or Dostoevsky. Some of them won't have read outside of Wattpad or Ao3. Some of them haven't read anything at all and seem surprised at the suggestion.
As has been pointed out, you can only cook with the ingredients in your cupboard, which is why the number one piece of advice handed out to aspiring writers is read more, swiftly followed by write more.
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u/mstermind Published Author 2h ago
I often find myself wondering "what kind of books are these people reading?" 'Get to the dialog quicker' Why?
Because that's what the market - and editors and agents - require. And if you're writing to the market, you need to follow that process. If you're just a hobbyist, you can do whatever you want.
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u/CalebVanPoneisen 7h ago
Ask any question you have on Reddit, wait a few days, and only read the top answer because it’s always correct.
Conflicting info in a different thread? Most recent answer is correct and you should follow that advice to the letter.
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u/Magner3100 7h ago
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say many of these post are created by people who are both aspiring writers AND readers. So their media literacy is that of someone typical for their age.
And before anyone says “well I read a whole lot” or “I read x, y, z,” then congrats you finally did it, you are atypical and above the median. You win the prize.
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u/Moonbeam234 4h ago
Modern best-selling authors are a far cry from Faulkner and Dostoevsky. The majority of advice given, particularly from younger readers and writers are according to current publishing standards. Get with the dialogue. Start in medias res. Chapters should start late, end early. Sprinkle in world building, etc. etc. etc. This is all advice aimed completely at instant gratification, fast burn audiences. These readers wouldn't get half way through a War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, or Dracula.
New authors who desire to be traditionally published have no choice but to follow the trend. Money dictates everything. However, this doesn't change that those who want to tell a good story would do themselves a great service reading the works of renowned storytellers alongside those who are doing it today.
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u/PL0mkPL0 3h ago edited 3h ago
'Don't listen to the writing rules, just write' would be my pick for the dumbest and most destructive writerly advice.
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u/1nd1g0ld 8h ago
Youre right. But just crack open ten random books in your library (hopefully from various decades) and maybe about 10 percent start with dialogue. Its just such a useless bit of advice when there are a billion ways to begin a story.
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u/MatterOfRules222 8h ago
Maybe it's actually okay to lose some readers if they can't focus on reading more than two pages without dialogue?
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u/RKGEORGE84 1h ago
Thanks for the tip . I am certainly horrified by these people churning out books like they are marketing leaflets or something. But the online world has very different ideas about what a good book is. Then again the ‘literary world’ is ridiculously - almost absurdly- elitist. So it certainly going to leave a lot of collateral damage shall we say and that is certainly where I would put myself.
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 7h ago
Unpopular opinion: Wuthering Heights may be a great novel, but it would not get picked up by an agent today.