Sol Stein’s Top 13 Writing Tips
Whenever people share their favorite writing advice books, the same several books come up time and again: Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
But recently, a friend recommended a writing craft book that was foreign to me: Stein on Writing by Sol Stein. I decided to check it out and found a goldmine of knowledge for authors of fiction and nonfiction alike.
Here are the top 13 writing tips from writer and editor Sol Stein:
1. Learn from both fiction and nonfiction
“The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared were of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in.” -Sol Stein
Stein says that fiction and nonfiction writers have a lot to learn from each other. Writers of fiction are masters of evoking emotion, whereas writers of nonfiction are adept at conveying information.
The best authors are able to do both: they wrap facts in compelling stories. Read fiction to learn how to tell better stories. Read nonfiction to learn how to accurately relay details.
Don’t limit yourself to your tiny little slice of the writing world (poetry, self-help, fantasy, mystery, etc.). You can learn from any writer in any field.
2. Imbue facts with meaning
“Naked facts are frequently not enough to invite a reader’s attention to the rest of the story. It is their context — the writing, the container of the information — that illuminates facts for the reader and gives them significant meaning.” -Sol Stein
There’s a huge difference between information and story. The former is the raw details: who, what, when, and how. The latter adds the key ingredient of WHY. Why should the reader care about the information you’re sharing?
Anyone can relay facts, but only a true writer can imbue those facts with deeper context, meaning, and purpose.
Use these questions to guide whether you’re delivering more than facts:
- Did you begin your piece with a story?
- If you were the reader, would you continue reading your story after the first one or two paragraphs?
- Have you devoted as much attention to the vehicle of your content (the story, pacing, and formatting) as you have the content itself (the core message, plot, or takeaways)?
3. Move beyond accuracy into art
“Reporting in nonfiction can be accurate, like a photograph taken merely to record. The best of nonfiction, however, often sets what it sees in a framework, what has happened elsewhere or in the past…sight becomes insight, reporting becomes art. Like fiction, nonfiction accomplishes its purpose better when it evokes emotion in the reader.” -Sol Stein
Consider the difference between the two sentences below:
- “Yesterday Henry Sorbino was arrested for stealing a purse.”
- “Yesterday morning Henry Sorbino walked into the K-Mart on Eleventh Street carrying an umbrella and walked out carrying an umbrella and someone else’s purse.”
Stein offers this example to show how clever writers can find more artistic ways of sharing commonplace information.
Find a new way — your way — to breathe fresh air into musty tales. Mine the mysterious out of the mundane. Illuminate interesting tidbits from otherwise insipid stories. Move beyond accuracy into art.
4. Speak the unspeakable
“A long time ago I took an oath never to write anything inoffensive. In working with literally hundreds of authors over a period of many years I concluded that the single characteristic that most makes a difference in the success of an article or nonfiction book is the author’s courage in revealing normally unspoken things about himself or his society. It takes guts to be a writer…
What people who are not writers say to each other in everyday conversation is the speakable. What makes writing at its best interesting is the writer’s willingness to broach the unspeakable, to say things that people don’t ordinarily say. In fact, the best writers, those whose originality shines, tend to be those who are most outspoken.” -Sol Stein
I’ve read similar advice from Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk, so I think this advice is really important.
Stein offers the following example from a story about a businessman who picks up a hitchhiker named Uck, then immediately regrets his decision:
“The skin of Uck’s hand seemed flaked, reptilian. Even when the man tried to smile, his face didn’t cooperate. Like Peter Lorre’s, his lips thinned, but that was all. I thought if this man’s mother had pressed a pillow on his nose and mouth when he was a baby, would anyone have convicted her?”
Holy shit. That is dark stuff. But the visceral nature of that description is also what draws in the reader. How many people do you know who would have the guts to write something like that?
The closer you can get to capturing human nature at its deepest, darkest, and most interesting, the more compelling your work will be. That’s not to say that you need to write dark material, but you DO need to write honest material. And honesty in both fiction and nonfiction means exposing things for what they really are.
5. Make your readers care
“I am convinced that we need to know the people in the car before we see the car crash. The events of a story do not affect our emotions in an important way unless we know the characters.” -Sol Stein
The best writers create characters that become almost real to readers. One of my favorite examples of this is the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling made readers care about the fate of the entire wizarding world, even minor characters like Dobby the House Elf and Aragog the Spider.
(Spoiler alert.) Both of those characters were initially unlikable, and if they would have died early in the story, readers would’ve just turned the page and moved on. But before killing off those minor characters, Rowling made readers care about them by showing their softer side: Dobby’s love of Harry and Aragog’s dedication to Hagrid.
Don’t waste a bullet on someone whose death will mean nothing to your readers. Make your readers care about someone before anything significant — good or bad — happens to that character.
6. Describe characters through their actions
“We individualize by seeing characters doing things and saying things, not by the author telling us about them. Don’t ever stop your story to characterize. Avoid telling the reader what your character is like. Let the reader see your characters talking and doing things.” -Sol Stein
Are you describing a character’s personality when you could instead show it?
Rather than describing your protagonist’s personality (“Dave was a talkative showboat who never ran from a fight”), consider plopping your reader into a scene with some dialogue from Dave (“That’s right, Terry, I socked the guy. One punch and he was flat. I’m right proud of it too. Next fella who treats me that way will get the same horizontal treatment.”).
Or show Dave’s talkativeness through his long diatribes while other characters struggle to get a word in. Or introduce Dave’s ex-girlfriend who broke up with him because he often came home with black eyes and never listened to her.
Find a way to personalize your characters through their words — not yours.
7. Create tension and stress
“Writers are troublemakers. A psychotherapist tries to relieve stress, strain, and pressure. Writers are not psychotherapists. Their job is to give readers stress, strain, and pressure. The fact is that readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction.” -Sol Stein
In life, lack of conflict often leads to happiness. In literature, lack of conflict leads to unreadable stories and uninteresting plots. Conflict fuels suspense, which keeps the reader engaged.
According to Stein, “The worst possible way to start a story is with something like ‘They were a wonderful couple. He loved her and she loved him. They never argued.’ The result is instant boredom. Boredom is the greatest enemy of both reader and writer.”
Build suspense throughout your story, and also offer readers brief periods of humor or relief from the tension. Too much tension can put the reader on edge, but the right amount keeps them engaged.
8. Leave the hero hanging
“‘Suspense’ derives from the Latin word meaning ‘to hang.’ Think of yourself as a hangman. You take your reader to the cliff’s edge. There you hang your hero by his fingertips. You are not to behave like a compassionate human being. You are not a rescuer. Your job is to avoid rescuing the hero as long as possible. You leave him hanging.” -Sol Stein
One effective way to build tension throughout a story is to run multiple plotlines in parallel. For example, Chapter 1 concludes with Shirley in trouble, then Chapter 2 focuses on Shirley’s boyfriend running from moneylenders. Chapter 3 comes back to Shirley and ends with her in a new predicament. By shuffling between characters and their respective dilemmas, there is no place for the reader to stop to even take a pee break!
“The writer’s duty is to set up something that cries for a resolution and then to act irresponsibly, to dance away from the reader’s problem, dealing with other things, prolonging and exacerbating the reader’s desperate need for resolution,” says Stein.
Act irresponsibly. Delay gratification. Conclude chapters with loose ends rather than tidy bows. The longer you can wait to tie the bow, the more pleased your reader will be when they open the present.
9. Establish credibility
“Credibility is central to much of what the writer does. He creates a world in which the invented characters must seem as real as the people who surround us in life. What happens to them, however extraordinary — and it should be extraordinary — must be believable…The worst mistake that a story writer can make is to have unconvincing motivation for actions that are central to the story.” -Sol Stein
Stein advocates for “planting” information early in the story that tees up your character’s motivation for their future actions. If you want your well-behaved protagonist to rob a bank at the end of the story, you’d better find a way for your reader to understand that character’s motivation for robbing the bank.
For example, if your protagonist’s motivation is mere survival, then plant a story of her watching her son lick the inside of his bowl of Ramen after a sparse meal.
But if the protagonist’s motivation for the heist is thrillseeking rather than survival, tee up that character trait early in your story. You could include a flashback of your protagonist at age 10, stealing a candy bar from a 7–Eleven even though her weekly allowance was rattling in her pockets.
Plant character motivations in the fertile ground of your reader’s mind, then water those motivations with illustrative stories.
10. Avoid unnecessary repetition
“One plus one equals a half.” -Sol Stein
It’s tempting to say the same thing in multiple different ways. After all, repetition can be a powerful tool when used correctly. But Stein advises writers to beware of unnecessary repetition because it weakens writing.
Author Neil Gaiman puts it like this: “Start with the idea, that instead of being paid by the word, I am paying by the word. That the fewer words I can use to tell my story, the better.”
Every word should serve a purpose. Don’t use two words when one will do.
11. Refuse your first impulse
“The first thing you see is usually a cliché. We see the tall man, the attractive woman, the room full of people, the clean-cut lawn. The writer’s job is to look for distinguishing detail, the particularity, in visualizing what his reader is to see…Ideally, the writer sees something that everybody will recognize but that no one has seen quite that way before.” -Sol Stein
Every writer comes pre-programmed with years of default phrases and clichés. Your job is to learn how to override those defaults.
One of Stein’s favorite words is “particularity” — the act of painting a unique and vivid mental image for the reader. Here’s one example he offers:
- Lazy description: “Vernon was a heavy smoker.”
- Better description: “When a waitress heard Vernon’s voice she always guided him to the smoking section without asking.”
Rather than settling for the top-of-mind cliché, push yourself to find a more vivid description.
12. Create the envelope
“I have sometimes described the reader’s experience to students as an ‘envelope.’ It is a mistake to fill the envelope with so much detail that little or nothing is left to the reader’s imagination. The writer’s job is to fill the envelope with just enough to trigger the reader’s imagination.” -Sol Stein
Have you ever read a novelist who emptied an entire inkwell describing the texture and color of every piece of clothing worn by a character? How did you feel while you were reading that lavish description?
Some writers can get away with that level of detail, but for many writers, it’s better to create the envelope and let your readers fill in the additional details.
Stein advises employing one or two “markers” for each character: easily identified signals that relate key aspects of the character to your reader. Common markers include clothing, tattoos, mannerisms, foods, or speech patterns that quickly identify your character’s social class, personality, and upbringing.
13. Read what you want to write
“In the end, you write what you read…What I have never witnessed is a writer’s work succeeding notably in a field he doesn’t habitually read for pleasure.” -Sol Stein
While you can (and should) learn from every type of book you read, it’s important to spend significant time absorbing the best work in your field.
This is one of the reasons I read the work of authors like Ryan Holiday, Tim Denning, Sinem Günel, and Anthony Moore. Consuming their work helps me become a better creator.
Rather than avoiding the work of people who make you jealous, sit humbly at their feet. Learn from them. Then go out and do what they do, in your own way.
The book Stein on Writing is packed with insights for authors of any genre. If you enjoyed this digestible summary, I suggest checking out the full book.
Happy writing!
