When I started at my MFA program, a part of me thought I was already a fully formed writer in need of only slight tweaks. I figured that an MFA program would give me time to write and maybe a few new friends.
But after two years of workshops, a 200-page thesis, and a heavy load of literature classes, I left the program much humbler and, in my opinion, a much better writer. I was lucky enough to be taught by brilliant professors published in The Paris Review and American Short Fiction and writers whose novels were Oprah's Book Club picks. I also met wonderful peers who made me question my philosophy on writing.
By the time I had graduated, my writing style, my writing process, and my overall ideas about writing had completely shifted.
Here are the 10 best pieces of writing advice I got while in my program.
1. Writing is 90% grunt work.
This advice is blunt but true. Writers tend to romanticize the writing process, to imagine ourselves arriving at strokes of genius through some call of the muses. But usually, worthwhile writing is the result of sitting at a desk at a consistent time every day and refining the fundamental aspects of what makes a story work. Before we can bring a complicated character to life or even put down a good sentence, we must properly set the scene and help our reader feel grounded in the world of our creation.
2. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.
In my time as an undergraduate, I developed the unsavory habit of using a dollar sign for my section breaks. I viewed this as some quasi-intellectual commentary on capitalism. My professor told me, “All that is going to do is confuse a reader. Just use an asterisk.”
This advice doesn’t just apply to formatting but to sentence structure, plot, and every other aspect of writing. Prefer the standard to the offbeat, unless you have a truly compelling reason to do otherwise.
3. Master dialogue tags.
Nothing is more annoying in a workshop than having to correct the same dialogue tag issues repeatedly in a text. It’s difficult for a workshop reader to consistently spot every issue, and it can make your writing feel amateurish. That’s why it’s crucial to learn standard formatting.
My professors also had some stylistic preferences. For example, they encouraged me to avoid both ellipses in dialogue and adverbs to modify tags. Also, I learned that “said” or “asked” are the best option most of the time.
4. Tension is king.
A well-developed sense of theme or beautiful sentence-level writing can help readers immerse themselves in a book, but most of the time, it isn’t what keeps them reading. Good books introduce a sense of tension within the first few pages, and for short stories, tension should be present in the first paragraph, or even in the first line. Make readers want to know what will happen next.
5. Experiment with different styles.
I came into my MFA interested primarily in speculative and surreal fiction. I learned the most from trying to write cut-and-dry realism. Working on realistic fiction gave me a better understanding of how to keep readers interested without pyrotechnics. Writing in different styles teaches you a lot about craft, even if you eventually return to your original style.
6. Be careful with metaphors and similes.
My professor once described figurative language like this: “Metaphors and similes are like salt on a steak.” Too much salt might make you want to spit out a good ribeye. Early on, I was putting out a lot of salty writing. Using figurative language works best when there is something that is difficult to describe without the use of analogy.
This caution should also extend to using clichéd phrases. Whoever came up with “the elephant in the room” is a literary giant, but now, when a reader encounters this phrase, they don’t imagine a huge elephant parading around the kitchen. They just see these words and unconsciously skip them. When in doubt, delete.
7. Revise, revise, revise.
One of my favorite authors when I was younger was Jack Kerouac. Famously, Kerouac would write a full novel in weeks-long binges, make minimal edits, and get published. I felt there was some sort of magic in a first draft that gets pruned away with each successive version of a manuscript, and while there may be some truth to this, I would trade a little bit of magic for what revision has to offer.
Revision also isn’t as tedious as it is made out to be. Revision can mean radical and exciting things for a story that isn’t working. Often, it means auditioning new settings, characters, and plots. Online, some authors have been kind enough to offer up initial drafts of later-published novels. See if your favorite author has a first draft available. If they do, I’m willing to bet that the later version was more dynamic, engaging, and clean than version before it.
8. Funny is the new deep.
This one is kind of cheating because I got this advice as an undergraduate, but I didn’t really understand it until years later. One literature class I took while at my MFA was a history of humor class. In this class, we broke down theories for what makes something funny, and to me, the most compelling theory is that humor in some way demonstrates the ability to recognize and alleviate social rigidity.
Comic writing is often dismissed as more frivolous than “serious fiction.” However, writing something funny often means depicting deeply flawed characters, characters who expose some weirdness about the way humanity works.
9. Empathy is everything.
It's impossible to know exactly what's going on inside the heads of even our closest friends and family members, but reading gives us a truly unique insight into how other people see the world. If you can convey a believable worldview, full of anxieties, hopes, and heartbreaks, you can make a reader connect with any character.
Pixar movies are a great example. The protagonists can be polka-dotted monsters or toys that come to life, but audiences connect with relationships that feel genuine.
If you can make an audience cry or make them angry or make them laugh, your story is working. Find these emotions in your own life and create relationships that channel them, even if the characters are completely different from you.
For example, I experienced some social anxiety in my day-to-day life. Rather than exploring that feeling from my own point of view, I wrote a short story from the perspective of a girl experiencing a teenage pregnancy. Taking a feeling and then extrapolating it to someone different than yourself is a powerful way to affect a reader.
10. Read as much and as widely as you can.
There is no substitute for reading a lot, but this doesn’t just mean reading in your preferred genre. Sci-fi readers can learn a lot about character work from a slow-burning literary fiction novel. Literary fiction readers can learn a lot about plot from a mass-market romance book.
This also doesn’t mean reading good books all the time. Yes, good books teach us what is working, but bad books can be just as helpful by informing us of what we dislike on the page. Challenge yourself to read in genres you don’t normally read about that feature characters you wouldn’t normally come across.
Good writers learn their craft by exposing themselves to a breadth of titles. Find books where the back jacket copy wouldn’t normally attract you. Really just read. Writers are readers.
