Ten Commandments For Writers
Thou shalt not sprinkle characters into a preconceived plot, lest thou has got to know one’s characters. In the beginning IS the character, THEN the word, and from the characters words, ACTION is brought.
Let thy characters speak for themselves. This is not your story, it is theirs.
Thou shalt not mutter, whisper, blurt, scream, bellow, holler, gasp or exclaim, for it is the words and NOT the characterization of the words that must carry their own decibels.
Thou shalt infect thy reader with anxiety, stress and tension for those conditions that he deplores in life, he relishes in fiction.
Thy language shall be precise, clear and bear the wings of angels, for anything less is for women’s gossip magazines.
Thou shalt never rest for thy characters shall live in thy mind and memory now and forever until the book is finished and bought by a publisher.
Thou shalt imbue thy heroes with faults and thy villains with charm for it is the faults of the hero that bring the book to life, just as the charm of the villain is the honey with which he lures the innocent.
Thy characters shall steal, kill, dishonour their parents or neighbours, covet their neighbours house, wife, friends, children because readers crave excitement and yawn when characters are meek, passive and nice.
Thou shalt not forget that dialogue is as a foreign tongue, a semblance of speech and not a record of it, a language in which directness diminishes and obliqueness sings.
Thou shalt not vent thy emotions onto the reader, for thy duty is to evoke the reader’s emotions by dazzling craftsmanship, and in that most of all, lays the art of the writer.
These Commandments are from Sol Stein, ‘On Writing.’