#256. Why “Just Start Writing” Can Be Terrible Advice for New Writers
episode
Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo | How to Write a Novel & Writing Advice
14 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
When does the advice 'just start writing' help versus harm new writers?
There's one piece of writing advice that gets thrown around more than just about any other piece of advice, and that is to just start writing. If you're stuck and not sure what to do first, that's okay, just start writing. If you're overthinking your plot and going around in circles, that's okay, just start writing. If you're not really sure who your protagonist and antagonist are, no worries, just start writing. You've probably heard the advice before. And here's the strange thing about this advice. It can literally be the best thing a writer ever hears or the reason they never finish their draft. It all comes down to how much clarity you have about your story before you sit down to write. And the tricky part is most new writers can't tell whether they have that clarity or not.
So today I'm going to walk you through what the advice to just start writing gets right, where it quietly trips up a brand new writer, and how to know when you're actually ready to start writing. Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.
All right, so let's dig in, and I want to start by being fair to this advice, because there is a real reason why the advice to just start writing is everywhere. And that is that you learn to write by actually writing, not by reading about writing. You can do all the prep in the world and still not really understand your story until you put words on the page. And at some point, you're not going to learn anything by prepping or planning. Some answers just aren't going to come from thinking harder. They're only going to come to you from actually writing. And that's exactly what drafting gives you, right? It shows you where your idea is thin, where your character's choices don't hold up yet, where you might have plot holes, and where the story in general needs more development than you realized.
So that part is completely true and I think this is what the advice is based on. The problem is that people hand out that advice like a universal cure to every writer at every stage as if when you act on the advice doesn't matter and it does. So let me paint you two completely different pictures of how this tends to play out in real life. Because in both of these scenarios, the writer ends up stuck for reasons they don't fully understand. So scenario one, I want you to imagine a new writer who takes this advice to just start writing completely at face value. They sit down, they open their document, and they literally just start writing. They don't have any kind of real sense of what their story is yet.
Maybe they have a few characters in mind, a handful of scenes, and maybe a vague idea of the ending, and also a lot of enthusiasm. And so at first, this probably feels really magical, right? The first chapter just pours out of them. They're discovering their characters, exploring their story world, and just falling in love with the whole thing. But then a few chapters in, things start to get a little bit wobbly. The plot wanders somewhere they didn't intend, the protagonist feels really inconsistent, their scenes start feeling repetitive or thin or just straight up boring, and that ending that they could picture so clearly at the start, well now they have no idea how to get there. So what usually happens?
Well, they go back to chapter one and they think, maybe if I just get this opening right, the rest of my book will click into place. Then six months later, they've rewritten that first chapter 17 times and they're no closer to the end than the day they started. And sometimes this means they stop writing.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo | How to Write a Novel & Writing Advice
#261. 5 Mistakes Writers Make Using the Save the Cat! Beat Sheet
#260. Student Spotlight: From Stuck at 25k Words to a Finished Draft With Lindsay Sfara
#259. How to Finish a Novel With Kids at Home & Limited Writing Time
#258. 5 Myths Keeping You From Finishing Your First Draft
#257. Stuck in Chapter One or the Messy Middle? What Your Stuck Point Reveals
#255. Student Spotlight: How Grace Draven Learned to Write Faster (Without Sacrificing Quality)