This is the final installation in my series on writing “rules.” If you missed the first two installments, you can read them here and here, respectively. These are the remaining “rules” of writing that all writers should know, with a couple of scriptwriting tips at the end for good measure.
Be professional.
Writing is a career, not a hobby. Okay, it can be a hobby, but not if you want to publish regularly. Even if you write part-time, you are still a professional writer, which means you need to act like one. What does this mean? Easy. It means you are a business person who respects the others on your team (librarian, editor, agent, publicist, etc.). You should treat them the way you treat anyone at work—with respect and good work habits. This means, even if you are in your bunny slippers, you need to keep track of your invoices, accounts, revisions, due dates, and all the other parts to running a writing business. It doesn’t matter if you have another job or two, you still need to be responsive and polite. Stay in touch with your agent or editor. Be sure to alert them to potential problems, like delays in securing interviews or conflicting research or any aspect of the job that may hamper your delivery.
Be on time.
This is key. If you have a meeting, show up on time. If you can’t, call or text. Deliver your stories on time. Punctuality is one of the best ways to ensure ongoing work. If you are late and unreliable, you will be dropped. Of course, editors and agents understand emergencies and will work with you if you let them know what is happening. Just be careful what you define an emergency and the frequency with which you have them. I worked with one writer who called in for everything, including an ingrown toenail. She didn’t last long.
Work hard—not just fast.
Deadlines are tough, especially when you’re juggling multiple projects. I get it. There are some projects I just want off my desk. But if I accepted the job, no matter how horrible it may become, I still have to do a good job. It’s easy to fly through some projects, but that doesn’t mean you should. Write a fast first draft, but sit on it before you edit. Other ideas may come to you. Spend time rewriting the piece to make sure it’s solid before you send it in. This is part of the working hard and doing your due diligence. Every client deserves your best. Okay, maybe deserve is a weird word for that, because I have worked for some demanding, irritating, unreasonable clients. What do I do about them? I choose not to work with them again, I do not compromise my work. If it has my name on it, it has to be my best or at least my best at that time. Sometimes those are not the same thing.
Edit. Edit. Proof.
It’s not enough to slap together a draft and send it in. Most of writing is rewriting. Be sure to edit at least twice and proof once before posting, sending or publishing. This is part of working hard, but it goes beyond that. Then again, maybe I’m just tired of seeing movies where the writer calls her editor after writing “The End” on the bottom of the manuscript and announces she is finished. What? A first draft is not a finished draft…unless you are in a movie, I guess.
Don’t steal—make sure it’s your work.
Okay, this is not so much an axiom as the law. You cannot plagiarise someone without breaking the law. Be sure your work is original. If you are worried you have paraphrased areas or adapted someone else’s work too closely, change it. You can also check your work through sites that check for plagiarism. I had to do this recently because I found a passage in one of my story idea books that I didn’t remember writing. I checked it against the database to make sure it wasn’t from someone else’s work I copied as a reference. It wasn’t. I’d written it. Now I just wish I could remember why.
It’s always about story.
Nothing else matters no matter what you are writing (except technical writing, which is I why I don’t write that). In nonfiction and corporate work, it’s up to you to find the story in your assignment. There’s always a way to use story technique to introduce a product, service or share news. It’s the story behind the assignment that will attract readers. No one, except perhaps engineers, want to read straight facts. There has to be some form and structure to the material—a point behind it. This is your story and your challenge. How do you write about a gadget and find the story? How do you write an annual report or state of the company speech using story structure? It’s not easy, but you can do it and when you do, your audience will thank you. Okay, they won’t really thank you because writers rarely get thanked, but they will enjoy that annual report and speech more because you found the story behind the boring stuff.
Don’t write about stuff that bores you.
It will show. I routinely turn down work in areas that bore me. Luckily, there are few subjects I don’t enjoy learning about. I am a highly curious person, but I draw the line at software, hardware, and technical for a technical audience. They are not for me and when I attempted to write those types of projects, you could tell I wasn’t interested. Passion matters, even when it’s a tiny passion that more closely resembles mild interest. Don’t be afraid to say you are not the right person for a particular job. If you can’t do your best work, then turn it down.
Script rules—
I decided to include two “rules” for scriptwriting that hold true for nonfiction scriptwriting. Screenplays are another beast entirely and deserve a series of its own. When writing nonfiction scripts, keep these “rules” in mind:
Don’t write what doesn’t exist
Unless you have a huge graphics budget, don’t include a lot of material about something that doesn’t exist because you can’t show what can’t be filmed. You can’t show a negative. If you write it, the screen will be blank, unless you can graphically render futuristic ideas. If you can, great. But know that whatever you write has to appear in the film and you can’t show a negative.
Write to complement visuals not to duplicate.
If you are showing a cat eating, you do not need to say, “This is a cat eating.” The audience already knows that. Instead add details they don’t know. “Cats are obligate carnivores, which means their digestive tract can only process meat.” This is a fact the viewer would not know without the narration.