DUDE, WORST TITLE EVER | Nonfiction by Jim Roberts

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” That quote is attributed to W. Somerset Maugham, although no one seems to know for sure if he wrote it.

Deciding which advice to accept and which to reject is, for me, the most difficult part of writing fiction. There’s no shortage of advice from authors who have “made it,” either commercially and/or artistically. Some of this advice is available for purchase in books like Stephen King’s On Writing, to name only one. And over the years, writers ranging from Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Jodi Picoult, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway, William Faukner, Henry Miller, to Elmore Leonard have all given fancy lectures with lists of eight, ten, or eleven rules/principles/commandments for how to write.

Seems like a reasonable idea, right? Listen to the sages. They’ve been there, done that. I’m always all ears. Show don’t tell. Got it. Never use adverbs. Never, really? Kill your darlings. I’ve got plastic wrap, bleach, and a shovel. Just show me where to dig, Mr. King.

Maybe you, too, have seen writing rules from famous authors brandished about like a sacred wand in classrooms or writers’ groups and workshops. Maybe a peer across the conference table from you or at a safe digital distance on Zoom has thought they could fix your story by jabbing you with the magical show-don’t-tell wand. Their brilliant second-hand advice will save you and your heretofore dismal fiction.

But wait, there are contradictions across the lists of wisdom. Here’s a small sampling of how an aspiring writer can end up chasing their tail down a rabbit hole of guidance (did I just violate a rule about mixed metaphors?):

“Show don’t tell,” says Hemingway,versus “Tell effectively,” from Ursula K. Le Guin.

“Outline everything,” says John Grisham, versus “Outlines are stupid,” rebuts Stephen King.

“Write every day,” says Anthony Trollope, versus “Write when you can,” soothes Toni Morrison.

“Kill adverbs,” warns Stephen King, versus “Embrace ornamentation,” says Nabokov.

“Kill your darlings,” again from Stephen King, versus “Keep uniqueness,” urges John Crowley.

This is where I’ll turn a bit meta (no relation to Zuckerberg), because I am about to give you advice on how to deal with advice. And full disclosure: I am no expert. I have no formal education in creative writing, no certifications, no degrees, no MFA. But I’ve been on an intense journey for the past few years to publish two works of fiction, including my collection Of Fathers & Gods (Belle Point Press, 2024) and my very recently released debut novel And Your Byrd Can Sing (Silent Clamor Press, 2026). To complete these efforts, I have sought a great deal of advice from professors and peer writers across multiple states and have purchased much advice from developmental editors, seminars/workshops, and editorial services, along with “feedback letters” available from some literary magazines.

There isn’t enough space here to address every specific, so-called “writing rule” from all the famous authors listed above and the academics and editors I’ve met along the way, but I have developed a framework for making some sense of it.

Here’s a three-part approach to what works for me—and warning, there are no clear answers. Your results may vary.

Consider the Source

While attending my very first in-person workshop, the leader opened the discussion about my story with, “Dude, worst title ever!” He went on to tell me everything else wrong with the story, but I heard little of that critique after his stunning opening comment. A month or so later, this same guy reviewed another piece of mine and said it was not really a story, because it did not have a clear beginning, middle, end. “It is like something a fourth grader would have written.” I quit the workshop and fell into depression. Then I researched the guy. He had no fiction writing credentials that I could find and had self-published one non-fiction book that was basically about a vacation he’d taken.

Both of those stories he critiqued—virtually unaltered from the versions he saw—are now in my Of Fathers & Gods short story collection, and that book was a finalist for Book of the Year/Short Stories by Foreword Reviews. If I ever run into that particular workshop leader again, maybe I can say, “Dude, worst advice ever!”

Experiment Before Adopting

A very common piece of advice takes various forms but goes something like this: “Write every day,” or “Write a minimum of 1,000 words a day,” or “Write ‘x’ hours per day.” There are good intentions behind this advice (as true for most writing advice), which is aimed at encouraging aspiring writers to make writing a habit, and to practice, practice, practice. I get it and I’ve experimented with various approaches, such as the daily word count goal or the hours per day goal. And in both cases, daily writing made me miserable and unhappy and generally killed the fun of writing for me.

What works best for me is Toni Morrison’s suggestion about “writing in bursts.” I may go several days or weeks without physically writing, although I’m almost always writing in my head and often jotting down short notes onto my phone along the way, and then one morning I’ll get up and pour out a couple thousand words into my computer. Usually good words, words I’m happy with. If I had forced myself to do a thousand mediocre words a day out of abstract obligation, then I’d just be creating extra editing work to turn weak prose into something decent.

Look for Consensus of Critique

From a career as a data scientist, I have learned that the truth of things almost always lies in identifying patterns. Separating message from noise. Ignoring outliers and believing consistency. The guideline I call “look for consensus” applies mostly to the one-to-one feedback I get on a piece of writing. This works best, for me, in writers’ groups where everyone reads each piece independently and provides private notes on our work. It’s fine to later convene an in-person or online group meeting where everyone discusses a piece, but it is imperative that the initial critiques be determined in isolation.

Otherwise, there is the very real danger of groupthink. Let me briefly revisit the “Dude, worst title ever” workshop. There were about a dozen writers there around the table. The format was to read the story and come ready to discuss, no written feedback required. A majority agreed with the leader’s assessment, not only about the title, but about other issues he raised regarding the story. Over the next year, the same version of that story was reviewed by a professional developmental editor, a small-press publisher, and a half-dozen other writer-peers, some of them published. All those people gave independent written feedback. Not a single one—not one—made any mention of the title.

I’ve learned that while zero mentions of something doesn’t necessarily mean all is fine (although it’s a good sign), multiple independent mentions probably means there’s a problem.

Hemingway allegedly said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” T.S. Eliot put it this way: “The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” Writers bleed enough while metaphorically birthing stories from human conflict and pain, be it personal or observed. There’s little left to give the blades of fools and posers.

Yet along the way, I’ve also found many, many great mentors and teachers out there, and some excellent books on the craft of writing fiction. A couple that I like are The Art of Fiction by John Gardner and The Linchpin Writer by John Matthew Fox.

In the end, I’ve learned to make sense of all the so-called rules not by ignoring them entirely, but rather to lead with my instinct on what feels right. I’ve learned to hone a sharp eye regarding my own work and skills, to sift message from noise for myself, to tell the difference between sustenance and poison.

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