Your Writing Code of Ethics

As an aspiring writer (I won't consider myself one now because what I produce is freaking godawful. I think that many of my ideas and concepts aren't too shabby, though), I have a personal code of ethics when it comes to what I will and won't do.

For me, my single most important rule is a personal detachment from my writing and my creations. It's like Batman's one rule: Batman doesn't allow himself the luxury of killing, and I take it upon myself to refrain from self-insertion as much as I possibly can. I don't use my writing as a world I can fantasize being in or "escape to". I try to make character's who are built from the ground up and aren't based upon me or anyone I know. Fantasizing, escapism, and self-insertion are things that I think can really spoil writing.

Your turn!

"Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person that doesn't get it."

That's a pretty good one. Of my earliest writing, few things do I regret more than the character who was directly based on several elementary school teachers I had. There was nothing at all original to her. Then again, I cringe every time I think about Harry Potter and the Final Battle, so it could just be lumping her in with the entire work.

A big one for me is, respect the characters. That means developing them on their own terms, not just The Villain, The Mentor, The Too Good for This Sinful Earth Waif Who You Can Tell Already Is Going to Die In Act Three. And don't hold your characters back from their challenges because you grow attached to them. It's a bit like Mrs. Whatsit says in A Wrinkle In Time: "You will give Meg the privilege of accepting this challenge." Give them the challenges to surmount, but let them have moments of triumph, too, places to shine. Try to love your characters, and respect them, and you'll write them better.

I think to go any farther would be to go into stylistics instead of ethics, so I'll stop here.

Every character you write has hopes, dreams, crushes, and what else have you.

Write them with that in mind.

Read my stories!

That's a very good one and I'd say the same, except that every character I create is a facet of myself in some way that I want to explore. With that in mind, detachment is even more important. Basically, to me it's about detachment from myself, trying to look at the way I am in a very cold and analytical fashion.

^^ Addendum and appendendation to that:

Never write flaws into a character just for the sake of having flaws.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

-shifty eyes-

If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.

I've been told that you write a million bad words before you write any good ones. Given that I'm only about 5% on the way, I live by the following rule:

“It's only practice, so try to have fun with it.”

'The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.'

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Hmm. I think the only hard and fast rule I have is 'don't give characters the same names as family members', which is mainly because I don't want to have to keep explaining that no, I didn't name the character in question after them.

"When your write with rules, it becomes formula nothing meaningful comes out of formula writing." - Someone said it, I just forgot who.

I tend to write just to write, my only real rule is that; every word is step toward improvement.

I don't see how being attached to characters is a bad thing, though I'm most likely misunderstanding the meaning behind it.

[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?

Similar to the OP but somewahat different-

Never get so attached to any story element in a fan-like way that you change your vision to make that element happier. I don't mind having characters start out as an Author Avatar, but I try to apply enough radiation to them that they evolve into something else, and I try to put them in situations that avoid making myself happy anyways.

I'm feeling strangely happy now, contented and serene. Oh don't you see, finally I'll be, somewhere that's green...

Don't be offensive just because you think it makes you cool. Respect your readers feelings. If you must be offensive, there should be a good reason.

Remember that there is a real world outside your stories. Don't encourage readers to do something obviously wrong. This can easily be taken in a legalistic fashion; obviously your characters are going to have flaws. What I really mean is don't imply that adultery or drug use is cool.

Don't use Lowest Common Denominator.

Stay roughly at the "PG" level. It is perfectly possible to write well without going below.

I actully have a self-insert story. It is the only one I allow myself, and is purely for my own enjoyment...or the amusement of a few select writer friends. I find it gives me an outlet to be utterly silly when I feel the need.

Really, my only rule is to write something everyday. Even if I delete it the next day, or it's a scene that ends up as an "extra" or side story, I simply must write something.

edited 27th Aug '11 7:12:49 PM by TheEmeraldDragon

I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, I am perfect.

• Write every day.
• Never lose sight of the potential audience.
• The protagonist must be more interesting than 95 percent of the cast. 100 percent is optimal.
• Although some sort of relationship must be maintained with characters, I must be willing to put them through hell for the sake of story-telling.
• All core characters must have at least two layers of depth.
• Mature themes must be presented tastefully. That means minimal cursing and usage of lewd terms. This is important in YA.

edited 27th Aug '11 7:40:35 PM by chihuahua0

I have a couple of things worth mentioning that I've mentioned elsewhere a time or two.

• Separate your opinions from your writing. Rarely do works of fiction espousing an author's opinion work.
• Don't be afraid to detach and let your characters develop lives of their own. In fact, encourage this as it is a very good method both for creating Rounded Characters (Character Development or otherwise) and better believable/possibly likable characters.
• Never, ever, ever rage-write. If you are angry over something, take it out on something else rather than your existing projects. Calm down, get it out of your system before writing again. You will regret the outcome of the rage-write on the re-read later on.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I don't know if I'd call it a "rule", but my one big guideline when writing? Write exclusively from a Watsonian perspective, and think of what I'm doing as if it was history, not fiction. Real Life is a lot more muddled and complicated then fiction, which to my mind makes it much more interesting. Some of the ways this works out (do note that these are my personal preferences, not advice, despite at the "you"s):

• Never have anything in your work solely for an out-of-universe reason, whether it be to teach An Aesop, appeal to some element of your readership, fulfill one of the Rule of Index tropes (although there I make an exception for Rule of Funny), or otherwise be there for some reason that doesn't have at least some kind of in-universe justification.
• Everybody is a person, not a character. He may not get as much detailing as the leads, but Red Shirt #3 is as much of an individual as they are, not some cardboard cutout who exists only to serve a purpose. As a result of this attitude, I am much less forgiving of characters behaving in unrealistic ways then I am of any other kind of writing mistake.
• Never let "the plot" warp your characters or settings into doing things that don't make sense for them. Let the plot be determined by the characters and settings, not the other way around.

On opinions: Or show the character who you agree with most getting completely demolished in a debate.

I guess one of my rules is to never have the most powerful character be the protagonist. A corollary is to never have the most powerful character be the most effective. *

Another rule I have, only for my main project *

^{The one I never shut up about on World Building}

, is to avoid any clear protagonist/antagonist characters, except in fictional works of fiction (it's complicated), in which case I try to write in fictional historical bias. But in the fictional historical fiction stories (it's complicated), everyone is pretty much on equal ground.

Still Sheepin'

my number 1 rule is to always avoid a deus ex machina to get to an ending, and that every single action, everyones intent and motivation contributes to reaching the ending i planned.

my 2nd rule is to never use rape as a plot device.

i used to do it with my older series but as ive grown older...yeah, its disgusting and i dont like it anywhere near the stuff i read, let alone in the stuff i write, when i know that it wont be handled well, and it will piss off and offend a lot of people.

my 3rd rule is to avoid author fillibuster by giving both sides of an arguement fair points and not favouring either side (or character).

if someone can tell which side of the debate i supported, i did it wrong

edited 27th Aug '11 8:24:37 PM by Tarsen

Get it done. That's all that matters.

I think my first principle is that Hollywood is wrong. Hollywood-shaped stories have *no* intellectual legitimacy.

I think it's in the 2nd Deathworld novel that Jason dinAlt tells the female character that she is to observe a clueless and pious religious character very carefully, and then always do exactly the opposite of what he does.

I'm not quite as extreme as that, with regards to Hollywood (they did, after all, give us the first "Die Hard" movie. And "Ronin"), but my approach to it is that they *are* more often wrong than they are right.

My 2nd rule probably is "Don't write porn".

I don't actually have anythung against porn. I read and watch it myself, but I think it is very useful to discern between porn and fiction.

When people want porn, give them porn. When people want fiction, do NOT give them porn.

One of the main characters in my Ärth setting is a badass ranger, Sláine of Ulster. The Irishmen (and many Scandinavians) in that setting view Sláine as some kind of Chuck Norris. If you can see Sláine, he can see you. If you can't see Sláine, you may have only a few moments left to live.

If I wrote stories about Sláine slaughtering thousands of Scandinavian pirates, that would be porn. So I don't write about that; I leave that in the backstory. Instead I give Sláine challenges that he's less suited to, such as solving murder mysteries and going undercover in a nasty magocracy to steal a valuable staff. He's not going to suck big time at those things. He is smart and adaptable. But he's not so well suited to and experienced at it that it's going anywhere near porno land.

I think the difference is, porn is stimulating, while ficiton is interesting.

The Battle of the Trees (which in our timeline somehow ended up set in Wales, with a re-named hero, and a lot of Christian themes completely alien to Sláine's world view) would be bad as a written story, although it might work well as a Hollywood movie.

Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. But more generally, I think it's unhelpful to judge a story based solely on whence it comes. That can be a useful heuristic, but you should generally judge stories by themselves.

My ethics...good question. Since I mostly write fanfiction, I suppose one prominent rule is "Don't write anything of comparable quality to My Immortal." In seriousness, try to bear in mind that I'm trying to make decent work, and not let the fact that it's not ever going to be published for money let me get lazy.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Due to the nature of my work, facts come first, even before the plot. If I need to take artistic license, I make sure to acknowledge it.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Your characters are not yourself. If they hold your views or express your opinions, this should grant them no special reprieve.

By the same token, your characters are not yourself, and if they should hold views or opinions you find reprehensible, this should incur no special penalty.

Nous restons ici.

My biggest concern is logic. I actually feel like I'm telling something that has happened in reality, even if it was in another world. I try as hard as possible to avoid plot holes of any sort.

edited 27th Aug '11 11:05:23 PM by Teraus

"You cannot judge a system if your judgement is determined by the system."