I learned the importance of forming a keystone habit and how it changed multiple

6 min readDec 6, 2020

When you write fiction, you are telling a lie. Your job is to convince the reader of the lie. You must get them to feel like they are living in the story you are telling. You do that with specific details.

It is useful for the writer to learn architectural terms, flora and fauna of their region, and the terms of the profession or hobby of their characters (if a character is a tennis player, they should speak fluently in those terms: serve and net, ace, approach shot, breakpoint, etc.). As a writer, it is your job to research and deploy specific terminology where appropriate.

A hundred dollars, ¼ of our monthly rent. A hundred dollars from the woman who buys $0.69 fuji apples instead of $3.99 strawberries. I suppose that was her love language — and this is mine.Good writing contains objects. John Maguire says the secret to good writing is in objects, not ideas — “things you can drop on your foot.” You must rely on concrete imagery that the reader can summon in their head.If you’re writing horror, you have your settings already — a haunted house, maybe, or a creepy roadside inn. If you want to write fantasy, you have an enormous box of tropes to choose from.

A hundred dollars, ¼ of our monthly rent. A hundred dollars from the woman who buys $0.69 fuji apples instead of $3.99 strawberries. I suppose that was her love language — and this is mine.No fledgling writer will succeed at avoiding all these pitfalls all the time. You will naturally avoid some of them, but others will be your Achilles heel, popping up in your writing again and again. You must learn to recognize your faults and vigilantly correct them.

After I confronted my parents, I decided to stop speaking to them forever. I planned to take a vow of silence for the next few years, get a job, and emancipate myself. I would not invite them to my graduation or my wedding or if I died before they did, my funeral. I was determined not to show my submission, but to let them know in subtle but measured ways, when opportunities arose, that I was not affected one iota by their dictatorship. So I put on my backpack, checked my deadpan in the mirror, and left for school. My mother called me back inside. She didn’t say anything, but in her hand was a single crumpled $100 dollar bill. Back then a one-hundred-dollar bill was an urban money myth, I had never seen one before. She unzipped the side of my backpack and placed the bill inside. Zipping it back up, she put a hand on my head.

Her wooly fur and chubby paws. The puzzling things she did to pique our curiosity. The way her mouth curved into a little smile when I scratched her ears. Every morsel of food she ate, every ounce of beauty she brought, every fragment of her undaunted spirit. I didn’t know what to do with the love I made for her.When people casually ask me if I’ve ever had a dog before, I answer yes, some kind of German Shepherd mix, her name was Mickey, after the Disney character yes. I say that she passed away not long after I got her and nod when they offer me sympathies and commiserate over their own losses. I don’t tell them the truth: that we abused her trust, that I let them abandon her when she has never once abandoned me, that she saved me but I could not save her.

The best way to account for all of them is to think of your fiction as a dream. You want to make sure the dream is fluid and has its internal consistency (it need not be “realistic,” but it must conform to the reality it expresses, in its terms). All of the above mistakes jar the reader out of the dream, reminding them that they are reading and breaking the fluid stream of images in their head.

One of the first difficulties a writer encounters is their limited vocabulary for ordinary words. These are the objects we use every day and the specific terms for them. It is not a “large shaggy dog,” it is a saint bernard; do not describe “white knobbly trees,” say “birch.” Often we see things every day in our lives but do not know the words for them. Make learning these words a priority.

That taught me to look at life in a much deeper way. I constantly asked myself during those days, was it all worth it? And that thought led me to think about my work, and I asked myself, have I been so busy in life, so much to cause harm to myself? That really helped me to take a step back and slow down.

In addition to using many physical objects in your writing, focus on using short, Angle-Saxon words over more extended, fancier Latinate words. “Walk,” instead of “ambulate,” “ask” instead of “inquire.”

One of the best ways to do this is to create a character and give them two attributes. Then, devise a plot that forces them to choose between their two characteristics. George R.R. Martin does this very well. In A Game of Thrones, we know that Ned Stark holds his honor in high esteem. He also loves his family. Through the events of the novel, Ned must choose between upholding his integrity or protecting his family. The external conflicts play out within the character of Ned Stark.

Brandi knows how to speak my language. In “Thick”, I have a lot of fun with columnists at elite publications. I use these columnists as a proxy for cultural hegemony. Whether we think they should matter is irrelevant. They do and one of my jobs is figuring out how they matter for different groups of people.The comedy drama that got me going went down with Kevin Hart but, like those elite columnists, there seems to be a larger point to make.

Certain things can completely change in a matter of days. When I was sitting on the beach, looking at the sunset, I kept thinking about how enthusiastically I had run just a few days before. At that moment, I was just sitting, feeling sad, thinking of the pain, hoping it would go away soon.

When you read, pay attention to the words the writer deploys. Underline the ones you do not immediately recognize. Practice using particular words in your writing. The serious writer will learn other languages, too. Words cross-pollinate across cultures, and learning another language will improve fidelity with your native tongue.

“In the work of beginning writers, especially those weak in the basic skills of English composition, the usual mistake is that the writer distracts the reader by clumsy or incorrect writing.” — John Gardner

Brand names are helpful, too. A character who wears Gap is worlds away from one who wears Gucci. A Timex is not a Cartier. Think about what kind of coffee your character drinks, the brand of cigarettes they prefer. The easiest way to build this skill is to notice it in your life. Pay attention to the brands and objects your friends and acquaintances use and what that says about them.According to John Gardner, writers all employ the same trick: creating a dream and putting it in the reader’s mind. Bad writing pulls the reader out of the dream and makes them aware that they are reading. Gardner identifies these seven common forms of clumsy writing in his book The Art of Fiction:Maybe running had nothing to do with it, or maybe it did. I had no way to find that out for sure. Neither the Doctors nor I could identify the exact reason. I went on a prescribed medication. The doctor suggested that I could run a few more days, but I wasn’t comfortable causing even more problems. I stopped at 70 days

I learned the importance of forming a keystone habit and how it changed multiple

Written by Delowarrs