Two Professional Writers Give 50 ACTUAL Writing Tips

Where Lily Orchard and her simple twitter writing tips failed, the Less is Morgue boys will endeavor to deliver.

[KatrinLittleDevil]

Another tip that helps me a lot:
"Negative character traits are actually their positive traits turned up to 11."

[NonPlayerCactus]

I will claim the title of ‘The British One’ when I defeat Henry in single combat

[narrihson]

"The best way to pay homage to something is to improve upon it"
This feels really inspiring for some reason

[dereckball]

Favorite: #45 “perfectionism is procrastination in disguise”
This one is really helpful

[torrik-]

A tip I've learned is:

Don't give your character positive or negative traits: give them worldviews and how they got there.


A worldview is how they see things. A person may be shy, but the worldview explains why they are that way: they fear being outcast or that they have an inherent self-image that they will always fail--it can be anything!

If you still want to give them traits, recognise that any trait can manifest in negative and positive ways depending how those traits bounce off of other characters and situations. Worldviews then can explain why they have those traits, or expand on them further.


Also, traits aren't always positive or negative, and people will have biases towards how they see traits. Some people may find someone with a clumsy trait as cute and endearing, while another may find them to be a hindrance. TheSupalexis and Rohan D left some great comments that further on this idea.

It is important to note that not everyone creates characters the same way, so this may or may not work for you personally.

[dabunnydabunny]

There's a degree of empathy behind these rules that's completely absent in Lily's rules.

[Gapeagle]

I remember getting flack on a fanfiction website forum for suggesting that reading stories helps you write stories. But I still think it's valuable to read, be it nonfiction, fiction, or whatever.

[Ragness]

My tip: Discarded ideas can be used in a different project later on. So keep them in the back of your mind.

[xxwolfxxninja]

26: dont speedrun the creative process.
Speedrunners: is that a challenge.

[cesarllanos]

My favorite tip was definitely “First draft for you, second draft for them.” A great tip, both for going easy on yourself as a person and figuring out how best to communicate your story as a writer.
Gotta say, least favorite was 27. I do think research counts as writing, as the best writers will be thinking about how the information they discover does or does not apply to their story as they learn.

[Pinka]

*Bonus Tip:* If you want to write a parody of something, actually do your research on the topic and try to understand why people like that thing (even if you don't personally care for it). Parodies born out of annoyance or full on hatred are seldom good ones.

[JMcAfreak]

A tip I learned that really helped me build my characters: Interview them! Have them answer in their voice. If you as a writer don't know how they'd answer a given question, that's a portion of the character you'll want to flesh out so that the character CAN answer the question. I have pages full of multiple interviews with each of my characters, and I refer back to them occasionally when I need to think of how they'd respond to a particular scenario. It's all about finding what THEY think, rather than what you think they should think.

[ImusakHctividar]

One tip I'd like to add is don't be afraid to write outside of your "comfort genre" if that makes sense. You can learn a lot from branching out. Write horror, write fantasy, write sci-fi, write cheesy romance, short form, long form, nonfiction, doesn't matter! There's a lesson to be learned in every genre style.

[nef]

"Perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise"

I have never been hit so hard by something I already know

[ajerqureshi]

Tip 7 is one of the oldest tips in the book of writing, and is great advice! However, I personally like to phrase it as "Write what you WANT to know, " because to me it allows people to write about genres and topics they may not have first-hand knowledge about. As long as they take the time to do research and figure out what it is they want to say about their particular topic or story, a writer is free to write about anything they are curious about.

[Kubna]

Fake tips, noone called anyone a huge turd every 20 seconds.

[MewGirlZ]

Tip 20 rings true. I've come to the conclusion recently that if someone sees a story idea I came up with, they won't write the same story beat for beat. I've seen plenty of concepts I would have done differently, and those have become the basis for many of my own stories.

Only I can tell a story the way I want to tell it down to the details and I need to embrace that and not be afraid that someone else will have something "too similar."

On another note, here's an art and design tip for you guys: Use a less confusing font when you make videos like these. The fact that half the letters are capitalized and half aren't had me thinking you mussed up the grammar on a few of these tips. (Other than that good show writers).

[theheavenlyfb]

took less than 10 minutes to give 50 actual worthwhile tips than what it too Lilly to do in an hour-long video and double the amount. Quality over quantity strikes again.

[KwakyWacky]

Glad there was only one rule referring to huge turds. The whole scat through-line was very distracting in orchards tips

[henrygalley]

Had a lot of fun making this video. Hope you all enjoy the tips! Happy writing, folks!