What do you think of Terrible Writing Advice? -

[Reporterward]

TWA has now been around for about 4 years. You can tell after about 18 months, he began running out of creative steam and now relies almost entirely on self-deprecating in-jokes and the tired Internet trope of whatever you like and is popular, I hate and is “terrible”.
This is a fate common with most Internet humor sites.
At this rate we need a Terrible YouTube Star Advise Chunnel.

 

[Erwin Rotten]

Do you think the craft of writing can be improved from just blunt force trying to write more and more as well as reading or do you really have to read books on how to write and whatnot to improve your craft?

Writing is enhanced through familiarity and knowledge. You can accomplish those two through both writing to get feedback and by reading on the craft, but either way a person must develop their own aesthetic(philosophy of art, which in this case is about writing). If a person tries to go case by case, they end up having a baseless understanding of what they want to do, and so it becomes capricious.

All a writer has to do is establish a few basics:

1) Your story is part of a monomyth
2) Your monomyth will either be premodernist, modernist, or postmodernist
3) Your story will go over a specific message through its main theme
4) Any theme that counters the main theme is a red herring, which reduces readership interest
5) Readers react positivity and negativity by both what is said and how it's said
6) Tropes are tools, not crutches nor diseases

After that, they simply have to go by their genre, theme, tone, direction, and plot. As long as the reader understands if their way of writing is going to be premodernist, modernist, or postmodernist, they will find the appropriate audience and proper writing style for such.

 

[Shoggoth]

Do you think the craft of writing can be improved from just blunt force trying to write more and more as well as reading or do you really have to read books on how to write and whatnot to improve your craft?

Directed force is always better than undirected force. It's like wood working. You can start just whittling away at some wood you chopped yourself with a kitchen knife. You might even git gud after a century, but it's better to have some guidance. Still, with even a small amount of guidance, you have to write a lot and be willing to throw it all in the trash in order to improve.

 

[Coelacanth]

TWA has now been around for about 4 years. You can tell after about 18 months, he began running out of creative steam and now relies almost entirely on self-deprecating in-jokes and the tired Internet trope of whatever you like and is popular, I hate and is “terrible”.
This is a fate common with most Internet humor sites.
At this rate we need a Terrible YouTube Star Advise Chunnel.

At first some of the advice he gave was pretty helpful and his jokes were pretty on point. But over the years he seems to have become the somewhat pretentious character he pretended to be at the start. I was especially disappointed in his Zombie Apocalypse episode - all he does is point out the problems that zombie fans like me have been complaining about for years and doesn't bring anything new to the discussion.

The problem with writing is what you accidentally touched on, it is a technical field. It isn't only an art, but also a craft.
"I don't have a muse, I have a mortgage" - Jim Butcher.
Listen to talks by guys have have published more than one hack series (aka George RR Martin) and they always talk about the insane amount of practice you have to put in, Brandon Sanderson's writing class is on youtube and pretty informative on that matter.
And the whole craft thing matters. To quote Butcher again, "What did she (his creative writing teacher) know about writing? She had merely published around 40 books, whereas I had a Masters degree in English ... So I wanted to prove to her how stupid her whole system was, so I did the character sheets and background and everything, and that was the first book of the Dresden Files".

Directed force is always better than undirected force. It's like wood working. You can start just whittling away at some wood you chopped yourself with a kitchen knife. You might even git gud after a century, but it's better to have some guidance. Still, with even a small amount of guidance, you have to write a lot and be willing to throw it all in the trash in order to improve.

This can't be said enough - anybody can write, but it takes a certain kind of person (usually someone who is going to fail a lot and has to be able to tank it) to be an author, a good musician or an artist. Stephen Pressfield has done extensive books that help people understand just what the craft of writing involves and what you're going to go up against should you decide you want to pursue it. I don't get that sort of feeling from TWA at all and in fact I don't even remember the books that he wrote - which says a lot about how TWA approaches the craft of writing.

 

[Fortunato Brown]

At first some of the advice he gave was pretty helpful and his jokes were pretty on point. But over the years he seems to have become the somewhat pretentious character he pretended to be at the start. I was especially disappointed in his Zombie Apocalypse episode - all he does is point out the problems that zombie fans like me have been complaining about for years and doesn't bring anything new to the discussion.



This can't be said enough - anybody can write, but it takes a certain kind of person (usually someone who is going to fail a lot and has to be able to tank it) to be an author, a good musician or an artist. Stephen Pressfield has done extensive books that help people understand just what the craft of writing involves and what you're going to go up against should you decide you want to pursue it. I don't get that sort of feeling from TWA at all and in fact I don't even remember the books that he wrote - which says a lot about how TWA approaches the craft of writing.

Should I get Pressfield's book "War of Art"?

 

[Some Badger]

I've watched some of his content, but I can't really get into his videos cause I'm not a big fan of the art style, which admittedly is a little hypocritical because I tend to watch a lot of stuff by History Matters (previously known as Ten Minute History). I'm ultimately pretty neutral towards his content beyond the visuals. I kinda get the impression that the channel is not for me, even though I'm big into fiction.

 

[Coelacanth]

Should I get Pressfield's book "War of Art"?

Absolutely. The War of Art is one of the best books for guidance I have ever read. It teaches you all about what exactly you're up against when you commit to a project (and this extends beyond writing). Some people who've read it find some of his advice a little fanciful - Pressfield has a keen interest in Greek history and mythology and does believe in bits of it - but I found nearly everything he brought up useful.

He also made follow up books to The War of Art but the one I'd suggest reading the most is Do the Work. It's a short read and is ridiculously cheap to purchase. It's a guide to help you through making a project and I refer to it constantly. As a testimony it is thanks to these two books in particular that I'm about to reach the end of the second draft of this project I've been working on and if I can help a fellow creator by suggesting these books then I will!

The other book I'd seriously recommend is How Not to Write a Novel if you're looking for something that goes into the mistakes fledgling authors make when writing/presenting their finished work to an agent or publisher. It's done much more for me than TWA has to be quite honest and it has better jokes, too!