It's a very personal choice, but consider this: Every important thing I've learned about writing I learned from a writer. Yes, one of those writers was a college professor (not grad school), but for the most part, I got all my best storytelling lessons from interviews I saw on TV or read in books. That makes sense, right? Who better to explain writing than writers? And yes, of course many MFA programs employ distinguished writers who can impart these lessons to you directly, and that's great if you can afford it, but the knowledge is out there. Writers are showoffs who like to talk and give advice, and they like talking about writing most of all. Every one of these tips below can be learned for free, and I promise you, I could never have written my forthcoming novel, Notes from the Internet Apocalypse, without them.

If you think of a flashback done badly, it's a mere plot device -- a data dump where the screen goes all hazy and some facts are delivered to you.

The kind that Wayne's World used to make fun of: "Doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo ..."

The goal is to use the flashback less like a device and more like a memory. After all, there is no need for a flashback to be hokey. We all carry memories with us through our lives, and they come out when they're triggered by the things we're doing. That's what Salt's getting at. In order for a flashback to justify its existence, it needs to make sense to the action of the moment. If you use it that way, you're not only compressing action into a tighter story -- vital in both screenwriting and novel writing -- but letting the reader understand the character in a deeper way.

There's another secret perk of using flashbacks: If you do it the right way, as Salt suggests, then it forces you to have a deeper understanding of both the past and the present of your character. You will have to ask yourself why your character is thinking and feeling this, and you will create the through line of the character's life from that past moment to the present. When I got back the edits from my novel, the copy editor stumbled over the very first flashback of the book. He wrote, "This action feels like it's happening in the present." It was the best accidental compliment I've ever received.

That leads us to another more general point: You have to accept that writing is a trick. Every time you make a reader laugh or cry, you have used manipulation. Don't let that upset you. Readers want to be tricked. It's why we go to magic shows. We know that lady isn't really levitating, but we crave the moment of maybe and magic. It's the same with readers. We accept that stories are made up for our enjoyment. Writers who hide their trickery are not mean-spirited deceivers; they're just magicians who take the time to conceal the strings well enough to give their audience the gift of wonder.

What I mean is, they're connected. One scene leads to the next to form a full story. More importantly, writing often comes best when you're about 85 percent sure of where you're going. Sometimes, if you see the scenes too clearly, the magic disappears and you (or at least I) feel like a mere reporter of events. But if you stop while there's still a little left -- if you don't record every known thing in your imagination, but keep thinking about it -- something happens. Something J.D. Salinger said comes true:

wikipedia
"Your dog wants you to kill John Lennon."
No, no, no. He never said that!

Salinger said, "Novels grow in the dark," meaning that even when you're not actively working on them, your unconscious mind keeps building details. If you apply Hemingway and Salinger together, the little you leave "in the well" each time you write will "grow in the dark" and, ideally, when you come back to write again, you'll have more thoughts to get down on paper. Each newly formed idea will lead to another, slowly building. Then you can go back and edit to more fully understand your journey and focus it just enough toward the future. That's how it works for me at least -- I mean, if Hemingway and Salinger weren't good enough references.

But how do you know when you're a plagiarist and when you're doing something that merely reflects other elements while retaining your own soul? I came to that realization later in my writing life with the help of J.K. Rowling. I mean, think about Harry Potter. Aren't the muggles like Roald Dahl characters, isn't some of the gross-out humor Pythonesque, isn't Ms. Umbridge's pen a heck of a lot like Kafka's torture device in In the Penal Colony, and isn't the quest to destroy horcruxes while resisting their corrupting influence noticeably reminiscent of Frodo's journey to destroy the Ring? Yes, yes to all, but Harry Potter is still an awful lot of fun filled with compelling storytelling. So how do you tell? Well, in an earlier article and a lecture, I laid out what I like to call the "Ice Ice Baby" Test:

Essentially, I think sampling in music is an excellent analogy. Take a great song like Beck's "Jack-Ass." Sure, he takes the opening of Them's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and loops it prominently, but that's only the starting point. He overlays new chords and melodies to create a piece of music. Conversely, look at Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," which is built on Queen and Bowie's "Under Pressure." Ask yourself, what is the enjoyable part of "Ice Ice Baby"? It's the bass riff, right? It's the part of the song Vanilla Ice had absolutely nothing to do with creating. And that's how I feel about writing. No one reads Harry Potter looking for Rowling's Kafka allusions; it's just mixed in with her own original story about a school where strict rules of conduct are laid down and then repeatedly broken for the good of one special boy.

So yeah, before you kill your own ideas as cliche, maybe write them out a bit and see if you're building something worthwhile and new on the backs of your influences.

If all this advice did was make sure you ended your stories strongly, that would be enough. After all, who doesn't like a powerful ending? But much like good writing, this advice is a trick. You can't end strongly by worrying only about the last few sentences. It's like sticking a killer punchline onto a poorly told joke; it won't work. If you're really concerned about what your readers will feel in the white, then you have to make sure you're setting up an ending from the very beginning, and if you're doing that, well then you're worrying about every part of your book.

Dan died this past year, before I could tell him my first novel was going to be published, but not before I got permission to give one of my characters his name. The character's a clairvoyant with an encyclopedic knowledge of science, history, and pop culture, but he's not half as impressive as the real Dan McCall, a man who could redirect both you and your writing with just a raised eyebrow or a sarcastic laugh that somehow still comforted as it pointed you a better way toward home.

GLADSTONE'S NOTES FROM THE INTERNET APOCALYPSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

After experiencing the joy of pre-ordering Book 1 of the trilogy, be sure to follow Gladstone on Twitter.

Also, you can get all your Internet Apocalypse news here as we count down to release.

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