Lee Child's advice to writers cuts against a lot of the standard workshop rules. He tells people to write what they feel rather than only what they know, and to be suspicious of most writing rules, including some he hands out himself. His core message is that a book lives or dies on the strength of the story and the writer's own instincts.
Write What You Feel
Ask Child for the worst writing advice around and he'll point straight at 'write what you know.' He argues it boxes writers into their own narrow experience, when the better instruction is to write what you feel. Swap in feeling and the whole world opens up, because emotion carries into situations you've never actually lived through. He's just as skeptical of 'show, don't tell.' There's nothing wrong, in his view, with telling a reader something in plain, declarative prose. The post-war thriller writers he grew up reading simply sat a reader down and told a story, and he thinks the modern rule against telling forces people to deliver information in strange, roundabout ways. Clarity, for Child, beats technique every time.
Stop Over-Planning
The other half of his advice is to think less before you write. Child believes success is largely accidental, and that over-planning is a reliable way to produce something mediocre. It lines up with how he works: no plan at the start, just a first sentence and a lot of trust. What makes a book work, he's said, is that it feels vivid and organic and has one imagination clearly in charge of it. Assigning yourself a formula to hit tends to drain exactly that quality off the page. His broader point almost cancels itself out. Most writing advice, he says, is really just opinion, and some of it is bad, so writers should hold all of it loosely, this advice included.
Success is always accidental, and the only way to really make a second-rate product is to sit down and think about what you're going to do.
Lee Child, Writer's Digest, 2013
For anyone stuck at the very start, his encouragement is blunt. Beginning writers are usually nervous and unsure of themselves, and the only real cure is to go and do the thing you want to do. He also thinks fiction tends to come easier later in life, once you've read enough and lived enough to have something of your own to say. He doesn't treat a late start as a handicap. In his telling, it's often when the real work begins. See how these ideas show up in practice in the full Lee Child writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Write what you feel. Emotion reaches places your direct experience can't, so lead with feeling over pure fact.
- Plan less. Child thinks over-planning breeds mediocrity. Start writing and let the story find its own shape.
- Tell the story plainly. Clear, declarative prose is allowed. You don't have to dramatize every last thing.
- Start now, even late. Nerves are normal. If you want to write, the fix is to sit down and write.