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April 3, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
35:28
Episode 479 Scott Adams: How to Become a Professional (or just better) Writer
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Win big, a bunch of Dilbert books, I've written some fiction, and I wanted to teach you how to be a professional writer in 20 minutes.
And my challenge is to give you 80% of what you would need to be a professional writer to get you started.
You'll have to work a long time to get the other 20%, but I'll get you started.
I'll start with some resources.
Here are some resources for becoming a professional or even just a better writer.
Number one, a blog post.
And by the way, you can Google all of these titles and you can Google the blog post and it pops right up.
The Day You Became a Better Writer will give you tips on specifically how to write.
Those tips are also in my book, Win Bigley, in the appendix.
Back here. Appendix B. So if you want to see it in detail, you can go there.
These are the books I recommend on the topic.
Stephen King wrote a book about how to be an author.
It's a great book, and it's got some tips that I'm going to share with you in a minute.
There's a book called Getting Your Book Published for Dummies, written coincidentally by my actual publisher.
So I can verify that this is real good information, and I believe I have a blurb on the back of that book.
Writer's Market 2019.
The date changes every year.
They update it. That's the book you want to look at to find all the places to submit your material.
So it'll tell you where to submit to get published.
It'll tell you where to submit to agents, book agents, publications of all kinds.
So that's the source.
This book, Writer's Market, is what made me a professional cartoonist.
There's a similar book by the same folks called Artist Markets, and I use that version.
But if you want to be a writer, you want the Writer's Market.
Then this last one here, where it got a little bit erased, is supposed to say...
Save the Cat. That's the best book to start to learn how to be a script writer.
Save the Cat.
Save the Cat refers to a particular technique in writing movies and TV. So this one will get you started and gives you the structure of all movies and scripts.
So this is the Bible for beginning to be a writer for movies and TV.
Now, these are your sources, but if you wanted to talk to somebody live, and of course this is part of my reason for giving this lesson, you could use an app that my company makes.
I'm a co-founder, and it's called the Interface by WinHub app.
I will be on it.
I've scheduled my time for right after this lesson.
And you can find me, just download the app, interface by WenHub.
You can find it in the app stores.
And you can jump on here, and if you look at the bottom, there's a little place you can schedule to talk to me live as soon as I'm done here on the topic of writing.
There are a number of other types of writers on here.
There are script doctors, there are grant writer experts, etc.
So if you wanted to talk to a real-life person and pay for the time, use this app.
You see the amount that they're charging.
And you can be connected immediately for a video call, but you don't have to exchange personal information.
The app keeps you anonymous as much as you want to be anonymous.
Alright, so these are the main sources.
And now, let's jump right in to some writing tips.
The writing tips are a little bit different for fiction versus nonfiction, so I'll just talk about them separately and then together.
For fiction, the best thing you want to do is read a lot of fiction, because if you don't read a lot of fiction, you don't know how to make it.
You could probably pick up a college course and, you know, that'll give you some practice and some more tips.
But here are the big things.
Here are the main things you need to learn to be a good writer.
You want interesting characters.
If you look at the Dilbert comic, you can tell that all of the characters in the Dilbert comic have a stereotypical trait.
That's really good for comics, but for writing a novel, for example, you might want to give them some stereotypical traits, but you probably want to make them more complicated.
All writing is about the characters, so you have to create interesting characters.
I recommend Creating characters that are based on people you know.
Now sometimes I'll combine people I know into one person so that I'm writing about a real person.
It is way easier to imagine a real person and then write a character that's sort of based on your real person.
Because you can hear that person talk, you know what they would do in a situation, and then you can translate it to your character.
So start with interesting and real characters.
It helps to be dangerous or provocative.
It helps in two ways.
It makes your story more interesting.
It gets the reader more involved.
It gets them more emotionally involved.
But importantly, being dangerous or provocative might be the only way you can get attention as a new writer.
Don't go so far that you're going to put yourself in serious trouble.
But the feeling you want the reader to have is, my gosh, I can't believe this author got away with that.
Or I can't believe this author is not going to get beat up when he gets home.
Because, you know, the things he said about his family, they're going to get him for this.
So you should feel some sense of danger for the author.
If you do that, you can get people's attention.
You can rise above the crowd a little bit.
And then you can use that attention to find an agent, find a place to publish, et cetera.
You want to leave curiosity in every chapter.
Read any of the Harry Potter books to see the best way to do this.
At the end of every chapter, you want the reader to say, I wonder who did that.
I wonder where that's going.
So try to build curiosity.
If you've got good characters and you're building curiosity, You can get away with a lot of mistakes, and it's still going to be fun to read.
You want to listen to how people talk in the real world.
People do not talk in the real world the way your first instinct might be to write dialogue.
Because if you're writing dialogue, you might say, well, I'll have somebody ask a question.
I'll have somebody answer a question.
In the real world, people are very defective.
And even if you ask a question, They will usually answer a different question, or they will ask you a question like you hadn't even asked the question.
So keep in mind that people are deeply flawed, and if you write dialogue for deeply flawed and especially selfish characters, make all of your characters selfish, make them act in character, and they will be interesting.
And just pay attention to interesting people in your environment and say, ah, that would be a good character.
And just remember how they speak could come in handy.
All right. Whether you're doing fiction or nonfiction, it's hard to get attention.
So you want to build up your social network any way you can because those become your initial buyers.
They become the attention that you can attract.
They become the people who criticize your writing, which makes you better.
So you want to build up your social media following to be any kind of a writer.
In this day and age, the social media and the writing job are really just part of the same thing these days.
For nonfiction, here's a little tip that might apply more to nonfiction.
I think it applies to fiction as well.
Your editor will definitely make suggestions to your first draft that you are not going to like.
And you will be sure that these are not good suggestions.
Trust me when I tell you that the editors are better at this than you are.
They're reading it as readers.
You're writing it as the author.
You don't have the perspective they have.
And if your editor is even a little bit good, they're going to ask you to make very painful changes, but you should do it.
Every time I've made a change that an editor wanted, I started by saying, that's a terrible idea.
Oh God, the way I did it first is the only way to do it.
And then I think about it for a week, and then I say, damn it, my editor is right again.
Trust your editor. They're almost always right.
Now, when you get to my level of, let's say, writing, my editor will take my opinion a little more seriously, but when you're new at it, you might want to let your editor take the lead.
All right. Write in simple sentences.
This is especially true for nonfiction.
Nonfiction I think of as business writing, writing a news article, or writing humor.
These are all things which a simple business-like sentence is perfect.
So you want to keep things simple.
The reason you do that is that people don't want big flowery interesting sentences, which might be fine in fiction.
But is deadly in any kind of non-fiction.
So you want to keep it simple?
Here are the rules for keeping it simple.
Write direct sentences.
Never say, the ball was hit by the boy, because that's a backward sentence.
Start with the subject, the boy, and then tell me what he did.
Well, there's a boy, and he hit the ball.
This is correct. If I wrote this sentence, the ball was hit by a boy, you would totally understand the sentence.
There's no difference in understanding it, but your brain would work harder because it had to turn it back around.
You can read words that are upside down if you try, But nobody's going to write a book that they intend you to read upside down, because it's too much processing.
So when you're writing for nonfiction, you're trying to think of the mental strain you're putting on the reader, and you're trying to take it down to its minimum.
So simple, short, direct sentences.
And get rid of the extra words.
I'm talking to you adverbs and adjectives.
If I were to write a non-fiction piece where I said it was very, very warm outside, I should get rid of the very and the very.
One very was too much.
Two verys, way too much.
Get rid of extra adjectives that the reader will not remember tomorrow.
Because tomorrow they're going to remember, well, the author said it was warm.
They're not going to remember the word very.
If you don't think they're going to remember that word, and it doesn't have much of a change in the meaning, get rid of it.
Your reader will remember something like 10% of what you write for nonfiction, so you want to make sure that the parts that they remember are the parts you want them to remember.
Get rid of all the extra stuff.
A little rule I use here is to imagine that every word is a $100 value.
To you, if you take it out.
So if somebody said to you, here's your sentence.
If you get rid of this adjective, I'll give you $100.
I'll just reach in my pocket and I'll hand you $100.
All you have to do is get rid of this extra word.
Would you do it? Now, if that word is important, you'd say, no, because I don't want to look like a fool.
The sentence would make no sense if I take that word out.
But if the sentence still makes sense...
Without that word, and that's usually an adjective or an adverb, take the $100.
It's a great tip. Would you take $100 to get rid of this word?
If the answer is yes, get rid of it.
All right. Make your first sentence extra good.
You want people to be curious, excited, mad, You want to provoke them.
You want to engage them in your first sentence or two.
I will spend as much time on the first sentence of a piece writing it, rewriting it, rewriting it, rewriting it, until it's great.
Don't even write the second sentence until you can make a great first few sentences.
That's very important.
Somebody here is, in the comments I'm seeing, somebody is prompting me to say that you should write in a visual way.
That is correct. If you can tell the story in pictures so that the person is imagining the scene, you're way ahead.
People will be more engaged, they will remember it.
Don't talk in concepts, because people don't understand concepts, they don't understand them when they read them, and they don't remember them later.
But if you can turn that concept into an anecdote, a story, something with a picture, maybe an analogy, Analogies are good for explaining new concepts.
They're not good for persuasion.
Then that's good.
All right. Write for the reader, not for yourself.
Sounds obvious, right?
It's one of the hardest things to learn.
You tend to write what you would like to read.
Generally speaking, you are not like the people who are reading it.
There's something about you that makes you a writer, and the way you think is probably more unique than you think.
Write for the people who are reading it.
If they have a lower level of education, write to that.
If they don't have a sense of humor, don't put a joke in there.
But make sure you're writing to them, not to yourself.
It's easier said than done.
A good idea is better than talent.
And what I mean by that is for, and this is for nonfiction, if you're not very good at writing, and you're not great at forming even a sentence, but your idea is really good, You are still going to get published.
And I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
But the publications, the lower-end publications, let's say trade magazines, local newspapers, college newspapers, or even a blog, they're starving for content.
If you have a new idea A fact that nobody's talked about, a big idea, something that's just a good idea.
You take that, you write it up, you submit it to whichever publication, and that publication will say, this writing is terrible, but I love the idea.
And they will contact you and they'll say, we will buy your writing if you'll let us edit it heavily.
You, if you're smart, say, absolutely.
Are you still going to pay me the same amount?
They will say, yes.
We will pay you the same amount, even though we're going to rewrite a lot of it.
So don't be perfect.
Just have a good idea.
Your editors can fix that for you.
You want to find your voice.
When you read my writing, and let's say this book would be a good example, one of my latest, or actually my latest, you'll feel like you're almost listening to me.
It takes a long time to find your voice, but you want to write in a way that somebody knows the author.
This is for nonfiction.
At the same time, they're getting the information.
Now, you don't have to do that.
If you're writing for a newspaper, maybe you want to take your personality out of it a little bit.
But the reader will enjoy it more if they can imagine you saying it.
If they see you, hear you, know you by the words you put on the page, then you're nailing it.
That's called a voice.
The reason that I got selected from obscurity to become a famous cartoonist is that one of the editors who I submitted my material to heard my voice.
That's the best way I can say it.
There was somebody who looked at my crude, terrible comics, the very first ones I ever submitted.
They were poorly constructed in every sense, but the editor could hear my voice.
And that's what she said when she called me.
It's like, I hear a voice.
And now that's very difficult to achieve, and you've got to work on that for a long time.
All right. So those are your main tips.
I'm going to talk about Stephen King's advice for working your way up the, let's say, the writer's ladder, the career ladder.
What you want to do is write something at the lowest level you can get it published to practice.
First of all, you want to practice, practice, practice.
And then if you succeed at some lower level, you have a portfolio, something you can show to somebody at a higher level.
For example, if you wrote something for your college paper, you would have something to take to your local newspaper and say, look, college paper like me, here's my best article.
If they like it, they might ask you to write something.
So that's how you work your way up.
You could start a blog or write on someone else's blog.
And then if you've got a good social media following, or even if you just pick the right hashtag, got a good idea, Got a little viral action on your writing on your blog post?
Then you have that to, again, take to a publisher, take to a higher level of publication.
Publishing things in trade magazines, in other words, some industry, corporate idea, is way easier than almost any other kind of publishing.
They're starving for good ideas, and they will help you rewrite it if it's not great.
They just want a good idea that fits within their trade magazine, and you have a very good chance of breaking in.
So you work your way up little by little by small successes.
So, Those are a few of the tips.
Let me give you some more. You want to develop a writing system.
And by that I mean there should be something that you do every day in a similar way that through trial and error allows you to write well.
Here are some of the things you should think about.
Most writers, and I would say every writer I've ever talked to, follows the same pattern.
They either get up super early and they work from...
It's not unusual for a professional writer to start at 4 a.m.
and do most of their work before 8 or 9 a.m.
That's very common. Part of that reason is that the phones are not ringing, there's nobody else in the house who's awake to bother you, and you can just focus on this thing.
It's also true that your energy and your brain, depending if you're a morning person, this is where the experimentation comes in, for most people who are writers, they are morning people, or they've made themselves morning people, if that's possible.
But the other way you can go is late at night.
And it tends to be a similar effect.
So you can either start at 4 in the morning or 5 or 6 in the morning, early, early.
Or you also see writers who will start at maybe 10 o'clock at night.
The rest of the family's in bed.
It's all their time, and they can write until 2 a.m.
So that's typical, too. What you rarely see is a professional writer who wants to write in the afternoon.
Because your mind is not there.
The distractions are everywhere.
So make it a habit to get up early and write, even if it's just for practice.
All right. Make sure that when you're writing, you have a comfortable place to sit that's like a professional, serious chair.
And here's the weirdest little tip.
Keep your feet flat on the ground.
Now, I know what you're going to say.
I don't like to sit that way.
You're going to say, I like to lean back on the couch.
I like to put my feet up.
I like to cross my legs.
Don't do it. Or at least experiment with this.
You will find that if you put yourself in the physical situation of being completely engaged, meaning that your posture is good, your feet are on the ground, and you're looking at your computer, you will be much more productive.
I've tried a billion times to work on my laptop while I'm sitting on the couch.
Let me give you my impression of me as a writer sitting on the couch trying to write.
Five minutes out.
Because what your body is doing will inform your mind what to do.
If you put your body in an all-work position, this is not play, this is work, your mind will respond.
If you put yourself in a comfortable, put your feet up, sit by the fireplace, You can write for about five minutes, and then you'll be out cold, if you're like me.
Your brain will just melt.
You want to get natural light, if you can.
I put my workplace right by a window.
Some people like to work in the dark.
There's some personal preference, so you do need to A-B test things until you've got something going on.
You want to remove all distractions.
Don't have a pet in the room.
Pets are distracting.
Don't be hungry. Make sure you eat.
Make sure there are no noises.
You've got to get rid of all of it.
And I mean, you really have to get rid of all of it.
Now, ironically, people can write well, and this science has proven, in a cafe situation.
So if there's sort of a background noise, but you can't really hear anybody's specific conversation, that's actually a really good place to write.
It's sort of a, for whatever reason, it keeps you awake, because you're in public, But also, it is really easy to concentrate even with the background rumble of noise.
So test that. That's why a lot of people write at Starbucks, etc.
I do most of my writing when I'm not at my keyboard, meaning that if I'm in the shower, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write.
If I go for a walk or I go to the gym, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write the next time I am at my keyboard.
It is way better to sit at your keyboard With a 75% idea of where you're going than to sit at your keyboard and say, all right, what am I going to write?
Looking at the blank page with no ideas that you already have is just painful.
Don't do it. If you sit on your computer and it's five minutes and you got nothing, get up.
You're not a writer that day.
You are not a writer that day.
Just get up. Leave it alone.
Walk away. Take a walk.
Take a shower. Take a bath.
Go to the gym. Think of some things to write about.
A general idea. You don't have to have the sentences.
Just know where you're going. All right.
You want to eat right?
Exercise, light exercise, not exhausting exercise, and get enough sleep.
If you do not do these things to take care of your body, your body will be yelling at you while you're trying to write.
If you have not studiously and viciously gotten rid of every distraction that you can get in the outside world, which includes how you feel, your tiredness, your hunger, and all those things, you've got to get rid of all of those.
Very important. I've discovered that what I eat has a huge impact on my ability to write.
If I eat, let's say I ate a burrito, I'm not doing any writing after that.
Because the burrito, the simple carbs, just shut down my brain.
And all I want to do is like, wah, wah, wah.
But if I eat protein, and I eat clean food, you know, stuff that's not bad for you, I'm in good shape.
Energy is good. Alright, here's another tip.
If you sit down to write, and you cannot write something good, you've got some ideas, you know where you want to go, you start writing, and it's not good.
Write it anyway. Let's say you sit at your keyboard, and you still have a general idea where you're going, but you can't think of how to start.
Just start. Just start writing.
Write something bad, To write something good.
It's one of the best pieces of advice you'll ever get.
If you can't write something good, write something bad right away.
And I've actually yelled at people sitting at a keyboard looking at it who needed to write something.
It's like, if you're sitting there, you're not a writer.
These fingers need to be going if you're at the keyboard.
Otherwise, walk away.
Walk away. Write and then fix it.
Write and delete it.
Write and then fix it.
Write it 50 times wrong to get it right one time.
You're not a writer if you're not writing.
This is the most important rule.
Writers need to stimulate themselves and then go quiet.
Stimulate and then go quiet.
The stimulation is usually from the outside world.
You want to be involved in something.
Maybe you have a job.
That's your inspiration.
In my case, I had a day job for many years that became my inspiration for Dilbert at some of my books.
You have to go into the real world.
You have to travel. You have to challenge yourself.
You have to do something you've never done before.
Talk to some people you haven't talked to before.
You have to go out there and you've got to stimulate the hell out of yourself.
And then when you've filled your brain with that stimulation, you've got to go quiet.
Remove everything. Remove all the distractions.
And then you can call on that stuff that you've stimulated in your brain.
It's better to write what you know.
And if you're writing fiction, of course, that's not something you know because you're making up a whole story.
So you want to put parts of things you know, as I told you before.
Put characters in there that are at least...
Components or composites of people you know.
So you're always writing something you've seen, something you know, even though you created something new from those parts.
I write about business and work and persuasion because these are areas I know.
Writing about an area you don't know is only good if you're a reporter and you're learning it as you go.
Write to make your reader feel something physically.
You want your reader to feel something physically.
I'll give you three examples.
This book was written to give you a tingle.
It's called God's Debris.
I wrote it intentionally to make you have goosebumps.
And if you read the reviews, you'll see that I succeeded.
It doesn't work for every person, and you can't write anything that works for every person.
So just don't even imagine that.
But you're writing for a physical feeling.
This book causes people to go, oh my God, why didn't I already know that stuff?
Before this changes everything, I feel optimistic.
I feel enthusiastic.
Those are physical feelings.
You can feel enthusiasm in your body, not just your mind.
When I write this book...
Or this book, any of the Dilbert materials, I'm writing so that you'll go, ha ha ha ha!
I'm trying to make your body move.
I'm making you laugh, I'm making you tingle, I'm making you feel inspired.
If it's a horror book, you're making somebody afraid.
Think in terms of what you want their body to do.
If you can't make somebody's body change, you're not a writer.
That's a harsh statement, right?
But if you're not writing to make somebody's body change, their body, not just their mind, their body, you're not a writer.
All right? Keep in mind that writing is a lot easier than rewriting, and rewriting your own work is going to be 75% of the work.
So think of it in those terms so that it doesn't become a drag when you're doing endless rewrites.
If you think, well, that's the third time I've rewritten that sentence.
I'm just going to be good with that now.
You're not a writer.
You might have to write that sentence 25 times until you're happy with it.
Then you're a writer.
Rewriting is writing.
Writing the first draft, it's important, but it doesn't get you there.
All right. I believe I have hit most of my points here.
Let me talk about getting published.
So getting published is easier than you think.
So that's rule number one.
However hard you think it is to become a professional writer, weirdly, it's one of the easier things to do if you can write.
If you can't write, well, it's hard to be a writer.
But if you can write, it's pretty easy to get published somewhere and to get paid for it.
That's the first thing you need to know.
If you want to get a An agent.
And by the way, book publishers require agents.
They don't really require them, but for all practical purposes they do.
So here's how it works.
The publisher works with agents, lots of different agents, and they depend on those agents to bring them good books.
So the publisher doesn't want to be going out there and looking for books.
Sometimes they do that if it's somebody famous.
So in my case, for example, publishers seek me out because I was the writer for Dilbert.
So people say, well, maybe you could write a book too.
So in my weird case, they sought me out.
So the best way to write a book is to become famous for something unrelated.
If you can be famous for something, anything, Then some publisher wants you to write a book and they might find you.
But if you have written something or want to write something and you want to get an agent who can get you a publisher, the first thing you need to know is that the agents act as sort of like your lawyer, a little bit like a business manager, but not really, and a little bit like an agent.
So they do an important service.
Typically, they might take 15% of what you make, but you depend on them to get from the publisher more than it costs to have an agent.
So if the agent could not get you a deal that was at least 15% better than you could get yourself, well, you wouldn't be that happy with an agent.
However, if your agent gets you a good deal or shops at two different publishers and gets them bidding against each other, you'll be very happy that you have an agent.
The agent will also help you with the contracts, because they have their own lawyers, they have contracts that they've used before, so they will negotiate with the publisher on your behalf.
Very good stuff.
I have done books with agents.
My recent ones.
And I've done books without agents because I was famous so I could skip that step.
The agents do add a lot.
So don't think that your job is to not have an agent because they do add a lot.
Now, what you're really doing when you're trying to sell to a publisher is Is sell to an agent.
So how do you find an agent?
The source I told you about before, the writer's market 2019, will have lists of agents who are looking for books and what kinds of books so that you'll know that your type of writing fits this kind of an agent.
You want to send them a few chapters, maybe one chapter.
An agent will not read a whole book I mean, they will if they get really interested.
But if you're just pitching to an agent, think in terms of a few pages.
Think in terms of a chapter with an outline for your book.
And by the way, most of this will be in the sources that I mentioned.
So the books I mentioned will tell you more about this stuff.
So your goal is to find an agent if you're just starting out.
All right. And those are your main tips.
I don't know if I held this to under 20 minutes, but that was my goal.
I will make sure that this is posted to YouTube.
You can search for that there at, look for Real Coffee with Scott Adams.
Real Coffee with Scott Adams.
And this will get posted to YouTube within a day or so of showing up on Periscope.
You will also see this at the top of my Twitter feed.
And I put the notes from what I just did.
I included them in the tweet that I just sent out before I did this.
And I would like to ask all of you to try out the interface by WenHub app, my startup.
I'll be on this.
As soon as I turn this off, I will be live on here.
And I've got a scheduled time.
If anybody schedules that, I will talk to them and give them professional writing advice.
I've set my price at $25 an hour, but you could just do 15 minutes.
And there are other writers also on the app, and you could get advice from them, and it might be more specific to your So try the interface by WenHub app, please, for this kind of advice or any kind of expert advice.
It's a generic expert platform for an immediate video call, and people can charge as much as they want to.
So each expert puts a price on there, and you can pay it or not.
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