It is hard to not enjoy the list of writing advice compiled by a recent graduate of Clarion’s Writer Workshop, from the workshops themselves.

Here are my favorites:

“One of the most important things I’ve learned here is that the shit should always hit the fan. THROW SHIT AT THE FAN.”

“Start with the goose bumps.”

“There’s all kinds of possibilities with a dead body.”

“I want your stories to kill people.”

“One really great strategy of fiction is to find the thing that a character absolutely will not do, and make the story force him to do that.”

“Dialogue is always a negotiation. Someone has more power than the other, or has something the other person wants, or loves the other more.”

“I rarely quote Hemingway, but he said ‘start the story where it starts, or halfway through.’”

“Readers create the character from the outside, not the inside. The writer does the opposite.”

“Reading stuff you don’t understand the first time is really good for you. Reading something you don’t like can teach you more about writing than something you love and vanish into like a warm bath.”

“A common way to structure stories is: ESTABLISH NORM. UPSET NORM. COMPLICATE & ESCALATE. CLIMAX. RESOLUTION.”

“Whenever you think you’re going to create a really strong character by putting “I” at the beginning of every sentence, you’re digging yourself a hole. It’s actually harder to bring “I” to life.”

HOW TO MAKE THINGS FUNNY. 1: Deadpan. People inside the joke aren’t laughing. 2: Distance. Charlie Chaplin said life seen in close-up is a tragedy, in long shot it’s a divine comedy. 3: Not too caring! Don’t make the characters too sympathetic. 4. Opposites Go Boom. 5: Piling on. 6: Everyone Has an Agenda. 7: Repetition. 8: Every moment of dignity should be punctured.

“To make a setting come alive for the reader, invoke at least 3 of the 5 senses. Taste and smell are the most vivid.”

“In-cluing, AKA Heinleining, is when you don’t infodump, you just show the tech or whatever working.”

“There are four reasons people commit crimes, in fiction: Love, Lust, Lucre, Loathing.”

General Romance Progression: Meet Cue. Acknowledgement of Feelings. Deeper Moment. Dark Moment. Resolution.

“In a short story, you get ONE of the following three things to be complex: structure, character, world. Unless you’re [FAMOUS AUTHOR]. [FAMOUS AUTHOR gets two.”

“Stories about death are always stories about life.”

“Shit can always get shitter.”

“I love stories about sinners who discover themselves by going in the wrong direction.”

“Loving someone and showing weakness/hesitation are the best ways to get a reader to connect to a character. Giving someone attitude is the best way to show activity (vs. passivity).”

“The moment that a character learns that magic is part of their world, when it was not widely known before, has to have a solid reaction—and it has to feel fresh.”

“Your character can go to heaven, but he brings his baggage with him.”