First and foremost, it's best to just avoid it all together. Have you tried archery?

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Break some rules! There's nothing more useless than an "A+" story.

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If you start a sentence and don't know how to finish it, we recommend

 

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Trust your reader. The urge to explain derails a lot of very promising writing.

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If you're worried about overusing "that," you probably aren't; if you aren't worried, you probably are.

 

 

If you're not sure where to start, just start typing without thinking about it or whatever just start at the start and then you know go for it and hope what you wrote sounds good. Trust us, it works every time.

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Generally speaking, "Your writing would sound smarter if you used less profanity" is not the sort of thing smart people say.​

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Point: Don't ignore a journal's guidelines. ​​​

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Counterpoint: Screw that journal's guidelines.

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If you kill a character at the end, be sure to add something like, "Baauugghh! I'm dying!" Clarity is the secret to writing memorable death scenes.

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If you haven't read James Franco's short story collection, there's no need. Your imagination is serving you correctly.​

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​​​​ALL-CAPS WRITING IS RARELY NECESSARY.

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A lot of people are overusing exclamation points! Sure, they make emails more peppy! But letting this convention trickle into your prose creates tone issues!

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You can limit dialogue tags to "Jane said." Jane doesn't need to "argue." The dialogue will do the heavy lifting.

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​If you're pitching a novel to agents . . . fuuuck. Hang in there.

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Contrary to popular belief, writing a good short story is actually pretty damn difficult.​​​

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Remember, there are no shortcuts to getting published. Unless you know someone in publishing. Or you have a lotta social media followers. Or you played baseball or used to be in the mob or something. With only several hundred exceptions, there are absolutely no shortcuts to getting published.

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If you find yourself about to write "in order to," pause a second. You might be one the verge of explaining something to the reader that doesn't need explained. Or there's a stronger way to write the sentence.

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"Cemetery Dogs" would be a cool name for a story or novel, but what the hell is it about? Actual dogs? That's not for us to say. (But yes, it's actual dogs. Also they can talk.)