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My old writing teacher said to never start with the weather, and I just broke that rule for the 6th time
Back in a community college class in 2019, my instructor told us flat out that opening a story with weather is lazy and editors toss those pages in the trash. I ignored her for years and kept doing it because it felt easy. Last week I counted my drafts and 6 of my last 10 prompt fills started with some version of rain or heat, and every single one stalled around page 2. I went back and rewrote the one about the bus stop starting with the guy's wet shoes instead, and it finally moved somewhere. So now I'm stuck wondering how many other prompt rules I shrugged off that were actually right. What writing advice did you blow off for years before it turned out to be true?
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jordanprice20d ago
Man, the "show don't tell" thing took me forever to actually get. I used to just write stuff like "she was nervous" and think I was done, and my scenes were so flat nobody could picture anything. Somebody finally told me to make a list of what a nervous person actually does with their hands and eyes, and it was like a light went on. Here's what I want to know though: when you rewrote that bus stop piece, did the wet shoes thing come to you because you were hunting for a better image, or did it just show up while you were staring at the draft? I'm curious if the fix was a trick you can repeat or just dumb luck that one time.
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