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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29925
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29925
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You should follow the advice that makes you go, "Oh, of course, why didn't I see that before."

If you don't have that kind of clarity, then you have not understood the advice properly and will not be able to implement it correctly.

Thus if someone tells you to remove all your adjectives, and you go "Oh, of course, those adjectives add nothing and just slow down the text," then remove them. But if you go "Huh, what the heck is wrong with my adjectives?", then leave them alone because you are not in a position to decide which to delete and which to keep, and the person offering the advice may be talking through their hat.

This is not to say that all the advice that make you go "Of course!" is good advice. There is a lot of grossly oversimplified advice out there that sounds great but really does more harm than good. But once you have heard advice that makes you go "Of course!" you are going to follow it anyway, at least until your mastery of the craft grows to the point where your realize the advice is crap.

Or, if you want a more specific litmus test for writing advice, come up with a set of five or so writers who you particularly admire (mine would probably be Steinbeck, Waugh, Lewis, Kipling, and L.M. Montgomery) and try applying the advice to their work. It they seem to follow it, follow it. If they seem to violate it, ignore it.

But even so, don't try to follow advice you don't understand. You cannot possibly do it correctly unless it makes complete and lucid sense to you.

Original score: 4