What the genius of Ray Bradbury teaches us about writing.

His novel Fahrenheit 451,?in my opinion,?is second only to Orwell’s 1984 as the greatest dystopian novel ever written and its style and craft was way, way ahead of its time — no Bradbury, no Netflix’s Black Mirror. He’s one of America’s greatest writing exports throughout the 20th century.

Bradbury was a prolific novelist.

He wrote at least 22 novels with various others being left incomplete or unpublished. He was a philosophic figure and his ability to look into the future and predict things with unwavering accuracy gave him a supernatural aura and thus the style of his writing often strayed into science-fiction.

Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. — Ray Bradbury

But Bradbury was also a real writing craftsman, which may come as a surprise to some readers.

Many authors like Orwell, Hemmingway, Stephen King, and more are heralded as pushing the medium forward but Ray Douglas Bradbury, not so much. Bradbury isn’t the first name we budding writers research when looking for writing advice, but that should change with this edition.

He’s one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, after all.

He published a lot of content around writing advice readily available online and in books if you are willing to look. I naturally wondered across his finest writing tips and I’ve been using them to hone my craft for the last few years. Here are 5 of his finest pearls of wisdom on being a better writer:

1. Quantity creates quality

Bradbury says the best hygiene for beginning or intermediate writers is to write as many short stories. His logic is that if you can write one short story a week — it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories.

Some will be decent, some will be trash, but you’ll have 52.

Bradbury goes on to say it’s not even possible to write 52?terrible?short stories, he says it simply can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just awesome. So, basically, keep writing until it clicks, there’s always something.

2. Don’t think

Unknown to much of the writing community, Ray had a sign hung-over his typewriter that read ‘Don’t think’ — Bradbury was a big believer in the ‘writing muscle’. We’ve all had those times when we’ve sat in front of a blank Notion screen and thought our hardest to conjure up a narrative.

Bradbury wasn’t immune to this either.

Well, according to Bradbury’s advice, the best way to get the ball rolling is to simply flex that muscle — don’t think — even if the first few paragraphs make no sense at all, it’s all about the flow. No story, no narrative can be finished and polished inside your head. Start with something, and it will flow.

3. Get to the big truth first

A novel has all kinds of pitfalls because it takes longer and you are around people, and if you’re not careful you’ll talk about it. Bradbury often says the novel is also hard to write in terms of keeping your interest intense. It’s difficult to stay interested for two hundred days. So, get the big truth first.

If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it.

About the smaller truths, he famously said,

‘‘Let them be magnetized to it, drawn to it, and then cling to it.”

4. Write what you love

For many of us, writing is a pursuit of our obsession, with what we love but the draw of writing for a commercial motive is always a strong pull. But Bradbury reiterated how important it is to write for what you love. Only here can you draw from enough motivation to keep writing.

Write because you love to do something.

If you write for money, you won’t write anything worth reading. There are pieces that put bread on the table; there are pieces that fulfill your desire to become a writer. He gave an excellent quote in a 2002 interview published in?Public Librarieson why you should always write for what you love:

I want your love to be multiple. I don’t want you to be a snob. Anything you love, you do it. It’s got to be with a great sense of fun. Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. Ignore the authors who say, oh my god, what work, oh Jesus Christ, you know. No, to hell with that. It is not work. If it’s work, stop it, and do something else.

5. Metaphors make great stories

You can really see that Ray practiced what he preached. His stories were riddled with metaphors and you really have to read between the lines to appreciate his genius and storytelling. Fahrenheit 451 is almost entirely a metaphor, but it’s this that creates such readability and fascination with his work.

If you’re a storyteller, that’s what makes a great story.

The reason Bradbury’s stories have been so successful is that they have a strong sense of metaphor. Ray was brought up on and learned his craft from, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian myths. Influences like those created metaphors so intense that people may forget the novel, but not the metaphors.

Ray Bradbury is a rich source of creative wisdom.

His personal library was willed to the Waukegan Public Library, where he had many of his formative reading experiences. His grandson, Danny, said Bradbury's works had “influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it's always really touching and comforting to hear their stories.”