Jonathan Franzen’s 10 More Rules for Novelists
1 min readNov 16, 2018
- The reader may be your friend, but they may also be someone else’s friend. That someone else may actually know the reader’s name, something you may not as you have never met the reader.
- Fiction that isn’t fiction may in fact be just a laundry list.
- The English language is made up of words, only 10% of which you are allowed to use. Using more than that is a lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of “expressing himself” or “narrating a story”.
- Write as yourself,unless you can write as Batman.
- The more people use their brains in writing their book, thinking is devalued along with it. I’m assuming you know what to do with this information.
- Every work of fiction is autobiographical. Unless it’s not.
- You hear more when you’re awake. I’m also assuming you know what to do with this information.
- It’s doubtful that anyone with a working phone or friends is writing anything worth reading. They’ve probably already frittered away their thoughts on Twitter. Or to Sandra over coffee.
- Interesting adverbs are actually pronouns. Trust me on this.
- Before anything, you have to learn to read. If not, editing your writing is a pain in the ass.
