Will Self’s 10 Rules For Writing Fiction

In this post, we share English author, Will Self’s 10 rules for writing fiction.

Will Self, born 26 September 1961, is an English author, journalist, and television personality.

He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. His best-known novel, Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His memoir, Will, will be released in November.

According to British Council Literature: ‘Self is undoubtedly Britain’s leading satirical writer, whose dystopian visions, outrageous scenarios and pungent uses of language combine to hold up a distorting mirror to the self and society. ‘

Self is known for his satirical, grotesque, and fantastic novels and short stories that are set in seemingly parallel universes. Visit WillSelf.com

Here are his rules for writing fiction.

Will Self’s 10 Rules For Writing Fiction

1. Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in …
2. The edit.
3. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
4. Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).
5. You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.
6. Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is ­indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.
7. By the same token remember how much time people spend watching TV. If you’re writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching: ‘Later, George watched Grand Designs while eating HobNobs. Later still he watched the shopping channel for a while …’
8. The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can’t deal with this you needn’t apply.
9. Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination.
10. Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine… The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.

This advice first appeared in The Guardian

Source for image: Texas A&M University-Commerce Marketing Communications Photography, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:13323-Will_Self_Reading_-1660-Edit.jpg

 by Amanda Patterson

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