Helpful Tips For Writers​

 

We’re most interested in true personal stories,

and we're open to anyone with a good tale to tell. 

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A few years ago Hugo Lindgren shared this excellent advice for submitting a “Lives” essay to the New York Times: More action, more details, less rumination. Don’t be afraid of implicitness. And Thom Yorke once noted: “Don’t get sentimental. It always ends up drivel.”

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If it reads like it would make for a Hallmark TV episode, don’t submit it.

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Meaning (or humor, or interestingness) is in specific details, not in broad statements.

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Write a piece in which something actually happens, even if it’s something small.

Don’t try to fit your whole life into one story.

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Don’t try to tell the whole story.

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Do not end with the phrases “Looking back now . . . ” or “I realized that . . . ”

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Tell a small story — an evocative, particular moment.

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Better to start from something very simple that you think is interesting (an incident, a person) and expand upon it, rather than starting from a large idea that you then have to fit into an short essay. 

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For example, start with “the day the Santa Claus asked me on a date”

rather than “the state of affairs that is dating in an older age bracket.”

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Where, exactly, did it start?

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Write past what you think the end of the story is. (Hat tip to Raymond Carver.)

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Do not make it about illness or death, unless that is the story you have to tell.

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Try an Oblique Strategy.

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Go to the outer limit of your comfort zone in revealing something about yourself.

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Embrace your own strangeness. If you can’t write it, try telling it.

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