I have been incredibly writer's blocked over the past few weeks and I've devised some rules to guide my pursuits as I head into NaNoWriMo. If this helps you, good, if you disagree with them, that is absolutely your prerogative. Writing is very subjective! I also don't believe in ultimatums. Often. Some of them are strongly worded and I don't necessarily abide by all of them... that isn't to say I'm ignoring them, but rather that I'm a work in progress as an author and I'm working my way into a more professional mindset regarding my craft. (I have attached some explanations for some in the form of comments.)  Please, if you think any of these are REALLY off the mark, argue with me about it! I'd love to instigate civil discussion. 

---CHRONA'S SIXTY THREE RULES (Tips) FOR WRITING---

1. Characters are the heart of the story. 

2. There is not and never will be shame in drawing characters and worlds from your own life. Your personal experiences are one of the best reservoirs you have and they will produce the stories that mean the most to you.

There will, however, be shame in using your story as a power fantasy or means of revenge. 

3. Starting a story without any outlines or planning is like starting an architectural project without any blueprints. You could hypothetically succeed, but do you really want to risk it?

4. A story in your head looks perfect because there are no specifics. Your mind fills in the details for you. Keep in mind that you will need those details when writing, and that idyllic picture will suddenly be vacant.

(That said, if you wait until you know the last names of every character, you will never write your book.)

5. There is no such thing as a truly original concept. There is such a thing as an original execution. What parts of your story are the most powerful? What are you trying to accomplish?

6. If you can switch two of your characters' roles in the story and no change occurs to the overall plot nor anyone's motivations and interactions, you are doing something wrong. 

7. The only uneditable thing is a blank page. It is better to write a hundred pages of what you deem to be garbage than to never write at all because you couldn't live up to your own standards. 

8. If your characters don't want anything, then they're not going to do anything. 

9. A good character has tensile strength: you can edit them down to a sound byte or expand on them for paragraphs. 

10. Read your own work out loud. It makes the awkward segments incredibly obvious.

11. Dialogue, like action, requires momentum. Consider this when spacing scenes. If the conversation is heated, putting in huge blocks of internal monologue or unrelated, irrelevant action is going to distract from the task at hand. 

12. Write one word. Write another word. Trudge through sentences. Then paragraphs. If your story is worth keeping, it will clear. If you've made it through 8000 words and everything is a chore, it might be time to shelf your book.

13. Imagery can do wonders for a story, but only if it's doing anything at all. Purple prose is real and it bloats stories. Likewise, sparse stories lacking in any kind of atmosphere are similarly snoozeworthy. 

14. List five qualities of your protagonist. 

Extrapolate on them. 

How does this trait impact your character's decisions? What does it do to their arc as a whole?

If it in no way changes them by removing this trait, consider revising that list. 

15. Read and read critically. If you're having problem with something in your book, read more-- although I'm not necessarily suggesting you should do so for matters of plot or character (this often comes off as derivative). Instead, I would advise looking at things like paragraph structure or dialogue. How do writers you like balance the internal monologue with action? How smooth does it make their stories? How do they differentiate character voices? Do they? (A lot of characters in YA novels sound the same. Sometimes across authors.) Once you've learned to recognize good prose in other novels (and bad prose!) it will be easier to pick apart your own work.

16. Having a character who disagrees with you does not automatically throw them into villain territory. Having characters with terrible opinions or flaws that are not cute, quirky, or pitiable does not throw them into villain territory*. It makes them layered.

*Excusing these flaws or handwaving them is obnoxious, though. If your character is a serial killer who is doing it for "the right reasons" or is just straight up supported by the narrative, with no justification, you're going to get some looks. 

17. Make writing a habit. Set aside an hour, close all distractions, and stare at the paper until beads of sweat form across your forehead. I highly recommend acquiring stayfocusd for Chrome, it's an app that automatically blocks sites for you, but it is REALLY serious, just as a heads up.

18. Find people to talk about your books to. Talk about them. Listen to other people talk about their books. 

19. Mundane details about characters are super fun for development and can be far more relevant than one might expect.

20. Fight flanderization like the plague. Yes, it can happen over the course of one book. It can happen over the course of one development cycle.

21. There really are no jokes funny enough to consistently 'break character' over. There are smart ways to get around this, but as a general sense, make sure you ask yourself "Would this character say this?" before having everyone in the book dish out one liners.

22. Style will never be a substitute for substance. 

23. At least with first drafts, your story is your story. Write it for you-- the audience will come later. 

24. Any setting, no matter how realistic, is not real life. Writing is stylized in the same way art is, if more subtly. You can ignore things, exaggerate others, play with how people talk and how events are described or unfold. It's called 'voice'.

25. Complexity does not automatically entail genius. Making your story more complex is not going to make it better just by throwing more stuff at it. Also be aware that audiences are often not going to keep up with everything, so if you DO want to add worldbuilding depth, natural integration is going to be your new best friend.

26. Human culture is full of intricacies you didn't know exist or were an issue until you're trying to figure out if anyone would stop your ten-year-old from taking a plane alone across continents. Every other subject matter (biology and animal behavior come to mind) is the same way. Research.

27. Fads die. If your story is part of a fad, it will die with the fad.

If the fad is bigger, it is very much likely to die sooner. Do not be fooled by the momentary prestige.

28. Your first novel is not going to be the Great American Novel. Your second novel is not going to be the Great American Novel. Your third novel is not going to be the Great American Novel. 

Write them anyways. 

29. Most of the rules exist for a reason. What seems trite or unnecessary to you (grammar) is generally the result of hundreds of years of refinement. Know why the rules exist before you break them. 

30. There are very few bad ideas. There are infinitely many ways to execute any idea, including a good idea, poorly. Execution is everything. 

31. Seek out interesting people. Seek out people. Talk to people. Bathe in the diversity of human experience. Even if you don't write humans, find other humans anyways and talk to them. Human interaction is the bane of many introverted writers but people are interesting and they will make your work interesting. 

32. Never tie your output as a writer to your self-worth. Never tie your output in contrast to that of other writers to self-worth. Not only do you have no context for the latter, but the former isn't going to make you write faster. It is going to make you miserable. 

33. typing like this in your books, especially in prose books, is not a masterful act of stylization. it's lazy and abrasive. put capitals on your sentences. 

34. Writing and handwriting are both full of minute quirks. If you read enough of your own material you will find diction, syntax, and details (how many time do you mention eyes?) that you lean on by instinct. Analyze it.

If you don't like it, take every paradigm your own writing possesses and shatter it.

35. Let your characters irredeemably screw themselves over. It'll happen at some point. You're not their mom. Let them fall into a pit of thorns. Let them deserve it. 

36. What are people going to come back to your story for? 

37. Writing is not a visual medium. People are going to imagine something different in their head than what you had in mind. You are not going to be able to detail every facial expression. Recognize this and learn to work with it and around it.

38. Tying up loose ends is immensely satisfying. Your narrative should weave things back together, so that everything is cohesive.

(Unless you end up doing a last-200-pages-of-Inheritance. Don't do that.) 

39. Writing stories with marginalized groups pasted in does not make your story interesting. Involving marginalized groups in interesting stories or drawing from honest experience of marginalized groups rarely reflected in fiction when writing will make you a stronger writer and your stories will make your stories interesting. Do not get them confused. 

40. Expect bad days. They are not a possibility, they are an inevitability. You will not be in love with your books every day for the rest of your life. Your books will not save you every day for the rest of your life. Do what you can, take breaks, and stand up again. 

41. Good prose is sharp. Be confident and deliberate in your word choice. Let your sentences bite. 

42. "It's weird" should never be an insult or a deterrent. Be weird. Write weird things. Be way out there with your concepts.

43. Being a contrarian doesn't make you a better writer. 

44. Quality over quantity doesn't just apply to wordcount. Eliminate filler scenes. Cross out characters who aren't pulling their weight. 

45. Mood changes halfway through a scene, with no prompting, wring the necks of anyone who reads them. 

46. The worst way to write is with contempt. Empathize even when it is inconvenient. 

47. Theming will almost always work itself out as you continue with a story. Write for fun first, because you love the characters and the plot. If you already have a theme in mind when starting a book, make SURE your plot and characters can support it, or you're going to sound preachy. 

48. People are drawn to characters they can see themselves, for better or worse, in. You would be surprised how often very well-defined, eccentric characters hit a chord with people and how rarely very generic characters do. 

49. Every subsequent time you break a rule, you make the audience less sure the rule will hold for future instances. Every insurmountable obstacle mounted by one character, and then two, and then three, diminishes the prestige of that obstacle and its worth in defining character strength. Keep exceptions scarce if you want them to have any kind of impact. 

50. There are a lot of things you will stress over and refine endlessly that no one will notice and a lot of things that you will do by instinct that people will find and pick apart. Accept this. 

51. Death carries weight. 

A senseless death, done at the expense of a throwaway character, will reduce this weight and destroy the emotional impact of your story. 

52. Emotion is experienced in different ways by everyone. One characters' grief may be nothing like another's. Same goes for positive emotions, ambivalence, and practically the entire spectrum. Use this. 

53. Cut unecessary adverbs. 

54. A villain is a character. Treat your villains like characters. If your villain is there to espouse political views you don't like or represent someone you hate and then get punched in the face, your villain will be boring.

55. Value your own work and your own time.

56. Don't expect to get popular overnight. Or in a year. Don't expect feedback. Don't check the numbers. They have nothing to do with the quality of your work. 

57. The most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal is sheer, impossible, unflappable grit. Revel in rejection. Commit yourself to learning from failure, striving upwards, and if you want it, fight for it.

58. Massive changes to your story are not a loss. If you have to do everything over even two-thirds of the way in, you've only grown that much stronger for doing it and your prior work will help you write the new draft. If you really, truly can not get around something, it is okay to let go.

59. You remember most brilliant twists because they made sense. They may have shocked you at the time, but most if not all great twists make sense and add a new layer to the story when you go back and read it over. A bad twist makes previous events make no sense, adds nothing but shock value, and is ultimately pointless. 

60. The fastest way to lose the trust of your audience is through strawmanning. 

61. Revision is the dual act of sticking to your guns and letting go. Knowing when you're being stubborn versus when the story will actually suffer from taking criticism will make you a better writer. If you need to make a snap decision, err with the former. If you can't justify your decision outside of 'personal style' or some other vague reason, it is almost definitely the former. 

62. To borrow a quote from Andrew Hussie: "I am making the kind of thing I would want to read. I am making the kind of thing I wish existed, but doesn't. Yet."

63. Write first out of love for the craft. Everything else will come with time and practice.