Questionable Writing Advice from Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was the whole reason I started this site back in 2018. I needed a secret bunker, a hidden base, a launch pad from which to bombard the world with my stories. I read about the Ray Bradbury Challenge to write 52 stories in 52 weeks. It started out okay, but after several weeks it quickly fizzled out. My rockets never got too far off the launch pad before exploding like fireworks in mid-air. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want it badly enough. I’m just not Ray Bradbury. I tried to follow all the advice and pattern my daily routine after his example, but we’re just not the same people.

Ray Bradbury is Ray Bradbury. Stephen King is Stephen King. Brandon Sanderson is Brandon Sanderson. Connie Willis is Connie Willis. Cory Doctorow is Cory Doctorow. Mary Robinette is Mary Robinette. But who the heck was Morgan Broadhead? I had to find out for myself. I couldn’t be any of those other people. I couldn’t write like any of those other writers. I had to write like me. I had to do my own thing. I had to find my own way.

Thankfully I didn’t have to do it on my own. Everyone who has come before on this writing path has left some breadcrumbs along the way. Not all of those crumbs have been snatched up yet by hungry squirrels and crows. Shallow footprints remain in the dirt. Shrubs and small trees have grown over the path, but if you get down on your hands and knees and know where to look, you can find broken stems and spots of blood mixed into the mud — all indications that someone has been here before.

Like all advice, there are parts I agree with and parts I don’t. As I’ve followed this writing trail over the years, I’ve learned that we all have to forge our own way. Sections of the trail have collapsed. Fires have burned out vast swaths that are now closed off. Trees have fallen, their thick trunks too tall to climb. Here are five tracks that Ray Bradbury left behind, pieces of advice that I’ve (mostly) been able to follow on the writing trail:

Quantity Creates Quality

“The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.” (from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001)

This was the first piece of advice I read from Bradbury. Like most of these nuggets of insight, I understand the concept: write as much as you possibly can. I took this advice quite literally and tried writing one shiny new story every single week. I quickly burned myself out. There are some people who have the time and energy to devote three or four or five or eight hours a day to their writing. To those people, I commend you and say ‘go for it.’ But for the rest of us who have full time jobs and children to take care of and other life responsibilities, writing one new story every week may not be possible. AND THAT’S OKAY! Do as much as you can as often as you can. I think that’s the heart of what Bradbury is saying here. Write as much as you can, but also, you can probably write more than you think…? I’m still learning how to balance things. No two weeks are exactly the same in my life, and I’ve had to be flexible and learn how to let some things go. At the same time, there are also days (weeks…months…) where I could have done more and just felt too lazy or tired or overwhelmed. Give yourself some grace when it’s needed, but also kick your own butt in gear when that’s needed too.

Don’t Think Too Hard

“The intellect is a great danger to creativity…because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth—who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.” (from a 1974 interview with James Day)

This is one I struggle with every time I sit down to write. Honestly, I think it’s the one thing that’s been holding me back the most from writing more, submitting more, and having more success. As one who suffers from perfectionism, I find it nearly impossible to switch off those voices while I write:

“This idea has been done to death.”

“You haven’t sold a single story; what makes you think this is the one?”

“There are a million other things you should be doing right now instead of wasting your time with this.”

“Your family needs you more.”

“Your job needs you more.”

“Ice cream…”

“You call this original?”

“You need to research more before you can write.”

“The inspiration you’re searching for is probably on YouTube. You should go look.”

“The answer to this problem must be in one of your craft books. Or probably in a new craft book. What are the top craft books on Amazon?”

…

You get the idea. Bradbury is telling us to switch off the brain, with all its many iterative voices, and write from the heart, from a place of feeling rather than thinking. It’s easier said than done, but it’s vitally necessary. There will be time to go back later and engage the brain during the editing phase of the work. But you can’t get to the editing phase until after you’ve gotten through the writing phase. Heart first, brain second.

Don’t Write Towards A Moral

“[Trying to write a cautionary story] is fatal. You must never do that. A lot of lousy novels come from people who want to do good. The do-gooder novel. The ecological novel. And if you tell me you’re doing a novel or a film about how a woodsman spares a tree, I’m not going to go see it for a minute.” (from a 1995 interview with Playboy)

In general, I believe this is true. After the success of James Cameron’s first Avatar movie, I was super excited to see the second one when it came out. Then I went to see it, and I hated it. The visuals were great, sure. But the moral of the story was a club to my head. I think it’s a mistake to write a story aimed at telling someone how they should think or feel about any given issue. The best stories I’ve read or movies I’ve seen present arguments for every side of an issue (there are usually more than two) and let the readers make up their own minds about what is right and what is wrong.

Having said that though, your story needs to say something. Often, you may not even know what that something is until after you’ve written it. Also, readers will pull their own messages out of your story based on which of their own life experiences they bring with them into the story. Cameron could have avoided bludgeoning us to death with his environmental justice morals simply by giving the story’s antagonists deeper motivations for their actions beyond just being greedy, uncaring baddies. Cardboard character cutouts who are bad just for the sake of being bad. Don’t tell your readers how to think, but definitely give them something to think about.

Study The Work of the Masters…But Only the Old Ones

“I used to study Eudora Welty. She has the remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line. In one line! You must study these things to be a good writer. Welty would have a woman simply come into a room and look around. In one sweep she gave you the feel of the room, the sense of the woman’s character, and the action itself. All in twenty words. And you say, How’d she do that? What adjective? What verb? What noun? How did she select them and put them together?” (from a 2010 interview with Sam Weller, published in The Paris Review)

“[Read as many short stories from the turn of the century as you can, but] stay away from most modern anthologies of short stories, because they’re slices of life. They don’t go anywhere, they don’t have any metaphor. Have you looked at The New Yorker recently, have you tried to read one of those stories? Didn’t it put you to sleep immediately? They don’t know how to write short stories.” (from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001)

This is a two-for-one. Study the work of literary masters, but only the old ones…? Uuuhhh…

I 100% agree with the first part, but 100% disagree with the second part. For sure we should be studying how “the great ones” mastered their skill. How did they say so much with so little? How did they create those memorable visuals in our minds? How did they show characterization? How did they convey that mood and message without actually saying it out loud? All very important skills to learn.

However…

Nobody writes like that anymore. Styles have changed in the last hundred years. Heck, even in the last few decades. If all you ever do is study the “great classics,” you’re gonna end up writing like that. It’s gonna creep into your dialogue and characters and descriptions, whether you mean it to or not. And then you’ll scratch your head and wonder why no one wants to read your stories. What’s popular and selling today is the stuff that’s written today by today’s writers. You need to know what the current trends are. You need to know what the current language is. You need to study what’s happening in the modern world because, after all, you want your stories to be relevant to today’s audiences. It doesn’t mean you can’t still learn the tools those classic authors used, but you have to apply them to modern problems in a modern world. Also, there are a ton of modern writers whose stories are just as amazing as authors from half a century ago. It takes time to find them, because there’s literally a sea of work out there, but they are out there.

Having said that, I’ll also admit I have a rough time understanding and following many modern short story anthologies. Some are downright confusing, jumping around quickly from topic to topic, using language and ideas that are completely foreign to me, bringing in modern phrases and concepts that I can’t even follow, let alone comprehend. I’m not sure if that’s a function of poor writing or me just being too darn old. Either way it’s a problem, because that stuff is selling today and I am not. It doesn’t mean I have to write like that; when it comes to writing, clarity is king, and I never want to confuse my readers. But you do need to be aware of what works and what doesn’t, and you can’t know what’s happening in today’s literature if you don’t study it with equal intensity as the “classic” stuff.

Write Only For Yourself

“You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things. I tell people, make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them.” (from a 2010 interview with Sam Weller, published in The Paris Review)

It may be tempting to look at trends, see what’s being published now in the market, and think to yourself, “Imma jump hard on that bandwagon and cash myself out.” It might be tempting to look at the news and see what’s going on in the world and write about that. It may be tempting to message all your friends or your social media group and ask them what you should write about.

Don’t.

Everything you see being pushed on the shelves at Barnes and Noble or on the Amazon or NY Times Top XX lists today are projects that authors started years ago. By the time that wave has finally washed up on the shores of book store shelves everywhere, the tsunami has already come and gone. You’re already too late. It’s like trying to time the stock market; you just can’t.

The only thing you can write about with true passion and conviction is the thing that gets YOU going. That’s the thing that will motivate you to keep going and keep working. You can never feel that same passion about someone else’s ideas. It has to come from inside you. Take this post, for example. Sure, I’m hoping that someone out there might find this information useful. But if I’m being honest, I’m writing this, really, as a reminder for me. I’m exploring these points and bouncing them against other ideas in my head and just trying to figure myself out a little bit more. If they help you out, great! Bonus. But most of what I write is just me exploring me. Selfish? Maybe. Useful? Definitely.

Having said that, there is a point to be made about understanding reader expectations. What draws people to science fiction? Fantasy? Manga? Horror? Romance? Thrillers? Mysteries? You very much should understand what people want from those kinds of stories, especially if you’re trying to write one. What are the tropes? What are the moods? What are the feelings? Why do people read those types of stories? What are they looking for? It’s true you have to write from your own heart. But these stories are going out to an audience, and every audience has a certain minimum level of expectation. It’s important for you to understand what that is, especially if your goal is to entertain them.

What pieces of advice do you live your best creative life by? Let me know in the comments.