Nick Alimonos's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
The Tao of Writing
This post originally appeared at The Writer's Disease
For two decades, my family and friends have struggled to understand my need to tell stories, and to have those stories be recognized. They sometimes see it as just a need for approval, or praise, or fame. While praise does motivate me, what really drives me to write is much simpler: we who suffer from the writer’s disease are eternally lonely, trapped in our own minds, on islands of our own imagination, and the only way we know to truly connect to the outside world is through story. Through the written word, we share our views about life, in the hopes of someday making a mark, the proverbial hand print on the wall that screams, “I was here! Once, I existed!” If anything, blogging purges my brain of ideas. At best, it is my way of reaching out to my fellow human beings. And yet all of this, I am aware, must come across as egocentric.
There are so many things I would love to share about my writing experiences, from techniques I’ve learned, to things writers should do to avoid heartache. But since I have yet to prove myself to a publisher, the idea seems a bit vain. Now that I am seeking professional representation, I have to be extra careful about the things I post. I have often been criticized for egotism, and have since done my best to achieve a Buddhist-like selflessness. But a selfless writer is a paradox. How can a writer not be even a little self-centered, when he must come to believe, at some point, that his voice should be heard over the din of the masses? That his experiences are worth being known, and must be recorded for future generations? This contradiction, between the need for humility and the need for confidence, has plagued me for the past six years, since failing in my self-publishing ventures. Just like the famous koan that asks, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” there are many paradoxical enigmas in the writing profession. It is part of what I like to call the Tao of Writing. And, just like the Tao, nobody can teach you what it is to be a good writer, or offer up the secret to a great story; you simply have to discover that on your own.
Publishers, editors, and professors like to offer formulas for literary success, as if such a formula could be found after ten thousand years of trying, but the advice they give is often contradictory, if not inane. I fondly remember a story I wrote in my college days, "Anna," now lost to a computer virus, which featured a nun dragged to Hell by the Devil. My second year professor, the one with the PhD on his wall, kept insisting what Anna should have done. He didn’t like that she was a victim of random chance, that the Devil could steal her away despite her innocence. He recommended, of all things, that Anna be guilty of masturbation—which would have turned the story into a medieval morality play (not surprisingly, his PhD was not in English, but in religious studies). Everyone in my class thoroughly enjoyed Anna, however; they understood that the story had nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with the futility of fear. I changed the story for a better grade, but my professor didn’t like it any better, and neither did I.
To this day, if anyone uses the word "should" on me, I’ll likely punch him in the face. A story shouldn’t do anything but entertain the reader. Literature isn’t a science, and 1 + 1 does not equal 2. Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, once not-so-famously said, and I paraphrase here, “In this business, nobody knows anything,” and I couldn’t agree more. Give me a story that does something well, and I’ll show you a well beloved yarn that doesn’t do the same thing. Do all good stories need engaging, interesting characters? Not if you ask H.P. Lovecraft. Do all good stories need a well defined conflict? Not if you ask Joseph Heller, or Albert Camus or J.D. Salinger. If I’ve learned anything during these past three decades toiling at my keyboard, it’s that the only thing a writer needs to do is write. Writing is no different than any other art form. Nobody picks up a violin and starts playing beautifully from the onset, no matter how many rules and guidelines they may have studied beforehand. Becoming a good writer comes from a lot of hard work, from the 10,000 hour rule Malcolm Gladwell puts forth in his book, "Outliers." Being a writer someone will pay to read also comes from living. Herman Melville could not have written Moby Dick without having worked on a ship. Mastering the literary arts is a lot like meditating on the meaning of the Tao. It takes time, dedication, and endless practice.
Lastly, how does one persevere, or as I like to phrase it, ridiculously persevere, without throwing in the towel? Writers often give so much of themselves for zero reward. What insane person spends thousands of hours working on a job, without ever knowing whether they’ll get paid for it, or whether they’ll even be recognized? I think this explains why so many of us suffer from depression, from Edgar Allen Poe to John Kennedy Toole to, yes, J.K. Rowling. Some people have suggested that I simply “write for myself,” but again, this is a paradox. The act of writing is a form of communication, the transferring of thoughts, feelings and ideas to the mind of another. I am forever conscious of the reader when I am hammering out a sentence, which is why, to attempt to tell a story without having a listener in mind simply doesn’t work. And yet, we all must strive toward the goal of being heard, even though we can never know, with any certainty, whether anyone will ever hear us. The only way I can see past this dilemma, is to write to communicate without ever expecting anyone to listen, which is, again, a paradox.
Buddhists have been known to spend days creating beautiful murals, called mandalas, out of colored sand. Once the mandalas are complete, they wipe the sand clear, instantly destroying days or weeks of work. It seems like a crazy thing to do, but that is part of Buddhist meditation, the learning to let go of desire and permanence, to achieve without wanting. This is now what I must teach myself. To simply write, in the present tense, without past or future in mind. This is the Tao of Writing.
For two decades, my family and friends have struggled to understand my need to tell stories, and to have those stories be recognized. They sometimes see it as just a need for approval, or praise, or fame. While praise does motivate me, what really drives me to write is much simpler: we who suffer from the writer’s disease are eternally lonely, trapped in our own minds, on islands of our own imagination, and the only way we know to truly connect to the outside world is through story. Through the written word, we share our views about life, in the hopes of someday making a mark, the proverbial hand print on the wall that screams, “I was here! Once, I existed!” If anything, blogging purges my brain of ideas. At best, it is my way of reaching out to my fellow human beings. And yet all of this, I am aware, must come across as egocentric.
There are so many things I would love to share about my writing experiences, from techniques I’ve learned, to things writers should do to avoid heartache. But since I have yet to prove myself to a publisher, the idea seems a bit vain. Now that I am seeking professional representation, I have to be extra careful about the things I post. I have often been criticized for egotism, and have since done my best to achieve a Buddhist-like selflessness. But a selfless writer is a paradox. How can a writer not be even a little self-centered, when he must come to believe, at some point, that his voice should be heard over the din of the masses? That his experiences are worth being known, and must be recorded for future generations? This contradiction, between the need for humility and the need for confidence, has plagued me for the past six years, since failing in my self-publishing ventures. Just like the famous koan that asks, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” there are many paradoxical enigmas in the writing profession. It is part of what I like to call the Tao of Writing. And, just like the Tao, nobody can teach you what it is to be a good writer, or offer up the secret to a great story; you simply have to discover that on your own.
Publishers, editors, and professors like to offer formulas for literary success, as if such a formula could be found after ten thousand years of trying, but the advice they give is often contradictory, if not inane. I fondly remember a story I wrote in my college days, "Anna," now lost to a computer virus, which featured a nun dragged to Hell by the Devil. My second year professor, the one with the PhD on his wall, kept insisting what Anna should have done. He didn’t like that she was a victim of random chance, that the Devil could steal her away despite her innocence. He recommended, of all things, that Anna be guilty of masturbation—which would have turned the story into a medieval morality play (not surprisingly, his PhD was not in English, but in religious studies). Everyone in my class thoroughly enjoyed Anna, however; they understood that the story had nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with the futility of fear. I changed the story for a better grade, but my professor didn’t like it any better, and neither did I.
To this day, if anyone uses the word "should" on me, I’ll likely punch him in the face. A story shouldn’t do anything but entertain the reader. Literature isn’t a science, and 1 + 1 does not equal 2. Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, once not-so-famously said, and I paraphrase here, “In this business, nobody knows anything,” and I couldn’t agree more. Give me a story that does something well, and I’ll show you a well beloved yarn that doesn’t do the same thing. Do all good stories need engaging, interesting characters? Not if you ask H.P. Lovecraft. Do all good stories need a well defined conflict? Not if you ask Joseph Heller, or Albert Camus or J.D. Salinger. If I’ve learned anything during these past three decades toiling at my keyboard, it’s that the only thing a writer needs to do is write. Writing is no different than any other art form. Nobody picks up a violin and starts playing beautifully from the onset, no matter how many rules and guidelines they may have studied beforehand. Becoming a good writer comes from a lot of hard work, from the 10,000 hour rule Malcolm Gladwell puts forth in his book, "Outliers." Being a writer someone will pay to read also comes from living. Herman Melville could not have written Moby Dick without having worked on a ship. Mastering the literary arts is a lot like meditating on the meaning of the Tao. It takes time, dedication, and endless practice.
Lastly, how does one persevere, or as I like to phrase it, ridiculously persevere, without throwing in the towel? Writers often give so much of themselves for zero reward. What insane person spends thousands of hours working on a job, without ever knowing whether they’ll get paid for it, or whether they’ll even be recognized? I think this explains why so many of us suffer from depression, from Edgar Allen Poe to John Kennedy Toole to, yes, J.K. Rowling. Some people have suggested that I simply “write for myself,” but again, this is a paradox. The act of writing is a form of communication, the transferring of thoughts, feelings and ideas to the mind of another. I am forever conscious of the reader when I am hammering out a sentence, which is why, to attempt to tell a story without having a listener in mind simply doesn’t work. And yet, we all must strive toward the goal of being heard, even though we can never know, with any certainty, whether anyone will ever hear us. The only way I can see past this dilemma, is to write to communicate without ever expecting anyone to listen, which is, again, a paradox.
Buddhists have been known to spend days creating beautiful murals, called mandalas, out of colored sand. Once the mandalas are complete, they wipe the sand clear, instantly destroying days or weeks of work. It seems like a crazy thing to do, but that is part of Buddhist meditation, the learning to let go of desire and permanence, to achieve without wanting. This is now what I must teach myself. To simply write, in the present tense, without past or future in mind. This is the Tao of Writing.
The Devil's Advocate: Melodrama is Good
This piece originally appeared in The Art of Storytelling
In the 2004 film, Troy, Achilles kills Hector after a climactic battle, and Andromache, beset by grief by the death of her husband, basically does . . . nothing. The actress gives a performance of subdued shock, blinking heavily before slacking against the parapet wall. This is in stark contrast to the way Homer describes the scene in the Iliad:
"stunned to the point of death, struggling for breath now and coming back to life, [Andromache] burst out in grief among the Trojan women: 'Oh Hector—I am destroyed! . . . would to god he’d (her father) never fathered me! . . . and leave me here to waste away in grief!' "
and just look at how Hector’s mother, Hecuba, reacts:
"And now his mother began to tear her hair . . . she flung her veil to the ground and raised a high, shattering scream."
In the Iliad, Andromache’s reaction is an example of melodrama. Like cliche, writing melodramatically is one of those things writers are warned never to do. It’s been taught to me by many a teacher and many a book. We are told that melodrama is exaggerated behavior, that real people in real life don’t act that way. In written fiction as well as in film, there seems to be a growing trend toward subdued emotion. Almost never does an actor cry with rage, as Charlton Heston used to in movies like Ben Hur. Tonight I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2; and while I did enjoy the movie, Harry, Ron and Hermione’s portrayals left me cold. But I don’t blame the actors or the director. They did what resonates with American and English audiences today.
Examples of melodrama abound not only in Homer, but throughout Greek literature. In Euripides’ Medea, a wife slaughters her own sons to punish her husband’s infidelity. If you watch the play in the original Ancient Greek, women in the chorus run around the stage screeching (even in modern Greek soap operas, there is a lot of this going on). The Greek tradition of melodrama did not remain unique to Greece, but extended throughout Europe. The way Hamlet admonishes his mother for betraying her dead husband can only be called melodrama. The operatic songs in Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries also fall into this category. After the turn of the century, the trend was to move away from such theatrics. In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land that Time Forgot, the author describes, with great pride, how calmly the British make for the life boats after their ship is sunk by a German U-Boat. It was not long before subdued emotion turned from a virtue into the only behavior accepted by readers as realistic.
Despite my sincerest efforts to adopt it, the notion that melodrama is over-the-top has never sat well with me, because my personal experience differs greatly. There are certainly people who take pain and suffering with quiet reserve, damning up their emotions and keeping a “stiff upper lip,” so to speak. But I grew up in a Greek household, where screaming and hair pulling and table smashing was not too uncommon. My wife, who is from a much more subdued Moroccan culture, was horrified after first witnessing an argument in my family. She couldn’t understand how, the following day, we could all be chummy as if nothing had happened. Greece has a long storied history of civil war and reconciliation, because we are a passionate and forgiving people. One of my favorite movies, I Love You to Death, a dark comedy about an Italian family (which could have just as easily been Greek), illustrates the point beautifully. In the film, a wife attempts to murder her husband (played wonderfully by Kevin Kline) upon discovering evidence of his infidelity. After several failed attempts to kill him, and much hilarity, she is arrested. When her husband finds out about it, from the hospital where he is being treated for the bullet in his head, he immediately bails her out of jail—then begs on hands and knees for her forgiveness.
I am not opposed to the American and British ethos of subdued emotion, or subtext. In fact, I find it quite refreshing, because I am not a fan of arguments that leave your vocal cords sore (or having my wife try and kill me). But to be taught, for the sake of fiction, that people simply “do not behave that way” is absurd. Maybe not in your household, but they do in mine. If I were to write a piece of fiction portraying typical American life, a lot of hair pulling might be inappropriate. But in a fantasy setting, where cultures vary greatly from our own, how can we expect the characters to always react the same way we do? If we are to place our characters in settings inspired by ancient time periods, how can we not expect them to behave the way we are told by Homer people of that time behaved?
What constitutes melodrama is a matter of culture. In the early days of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, there was a bias towards women and sex. Today, we take for granted that women can play the roles traditionally reserved for men; women don’t have to be the damsels in distress; they can fight, even play the hero. We have also come to accept diverse sexuality as aspects of culture. No longer do we limit sex to monogamous man/woman relationships. And yet, the same cultural sensibility is not applied to verbal and emotional behavior. To me, it seems, every character, in every fictional universe, no matter how bizarre and alien, must conform to this credo of reserved emotion. Without even realizing it, a lot of fiction today is limited by American cultural biases. My wife has suggested that my novel might be better appreciated in foreign markets, since they can better appreciate its Greek influences. After all, I was not raised on a diet of Tolkien. My Lord of the Rings is the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights and the Kalevala. I’ve done my best to portray a spectrum of cultural diversity in Ages of Aenya, but I am unwilling to ignore my own social experience.
Often, critics will say, Who talks like that? And I have an answer for them. Greeks do. Or, more specifically, my father does. My father has been known to stand at the dinner table to recite, with perfect clarity, from Socrates or Solon or Herodotus. Nobody in my family finds this the least bit unusual. For the longest time, my father has asked me to write his life story. It is something I have been putting off due to my busy schedule, and to the fact that my writing style hasn’t prepared me for a biography. Still, I grin whenever I think of all the melodramatic things my father has said over the years.
In the 2004 film, Troy, Achilles kills Hector after a climactic battle, and Andromache, beset by grief by the death of her husband, basically does . . . nothing. The actress gives a performance of subdued shock, blinking heavily before slacking against the parapet wall. This is in stark contrast to the way Homer describes the scene in the Iliad:
"stunned to the point of death, struggling for breath now and coming back to life, [Andromache] burst out in grief among the Trojan women: 'Oh Hector—I am destroyed! . . . would to god he’d (her father) never fathered me! . . . and leave me here to waste away in grief!' "
and just look at how Hector’s mother, Hecuba, reacts:
"And now his mother began to tear her hair . . . she flung her veil to the ground and raised a high, shattering scream."
In the Iliad, Andromache’s reaction is an example of melodrama. Like cliche, writing melodramatically is one of those things writers are warned never to do. It’s been taught to me by many a teacher and many a book. We are told that melodrama is exaggerated behavior, that real people in real life don’t act that way. In written fiction as well as in film, there seems to be a growing trend toward subdued emotion. Almost never does an actor cry with rage, as Charlton Heston used to in movies like Ben Hur. Tonight I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2; and while I did enjoy the movie, Harry, Ron and Hermione’s portrayals left me cold. But I don’t blame the actors or the director. They did what resonates with American and English audiences today.
Examples of melodrama abound not only in Homer, but throughout Greek literature. In Euripides’ Medea, a wife slaughters her own sons to punish her husband’s infidelity. If you watch the play in the original Ancient Greek, women in the chorus run around the stage screeching (even in modern Greek soap operas, there is a lot of this going on). The Greek tradition of melodrama did not remain unique to Greece, but extended throughout Europe. The way Hamlet admonishes his mother for betraying her dead husband can only be called melodrama. The operatic songs in Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries also fall into this category. After the turn of the century, the trend was to move away from such theatrics. In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land that Time Forgot, the author describes, with great pride, how calmly the British make for the life boats after their ship is sunk by a German U-Boat. It was not long before subdued emotion turned from a virtue into the only behavior accepted by readers as realistic.
Despite my sincerest efforts to adopt it, the notion that melodrama is over-the-top has never sat well with me, because my personal experience differs greatly. There are certainly people who take pain and suffering with quiet reserve, damning up their emotions and keeping a “stiff upper lip,” so to speak. But I grew up in a Greek household, where screaming and hair pulling and table smashing was not too uncommon. My wife, who is from a much more subdued Moroccan culture, was horrified after first witnessing an argument in my family. She couldn’t understand how, the following day, we could all be chummy as if nothing had happened. Greece has a long storied history of civil war and reconciliation, because we are a passionate and forgiving people. One of my favorite movies, I Love You to Death, a dark comedy about an Italian family (which could have just as easily been Greek), illustrates the point beautifully. In the film, a wife attempts to murder her husband (played wonderfully by Kevin Kline) upon discovering evidence of his infidelity. After several failed attempts to kill him, and much hilarity, she is arrested. When her husband finds out about it, from the hospital where he is being treated for the bullet in his head, he immediately bails her out of jail—then begs on hands and knees for her forgiveness.
I am not opposed to the American and British ethos of subdued emotion, or subtext. In fact, I find it quite refreshing, because I am not a fan of arguments that leave your vocal cords sore (or having my wife try and kill me). But to be taught, for the sake of fiction, that people simply “do not behave that way” is absurd. Maybe not in your household, but they do in mine. If I were to write a piece of fiction portraying typical American life, a lot of hair pulling might be inappropriate. But in a fantasy setting, where cultures vary greatly from our own, how can we expect the characters to always react the same way we do? If we are to place our characters in settings inspired by ancient time periods, how can we not expect them to behave the way we are told by Homer people of that time behaved?
What constitutes melodrama is a matter of culture. In the early days of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, there was a bias towards women and sex. Today, we take for granted that women can play the roles traditionally reserved for men; women don’t have to be the damsels in distress; they can fight, even play the hero. We have also come to accept diverse sexuality as aspects of culture. No longer do we limit sex to monogamous man/woman relationships. And yet, the same cultural sensibility is not applied to verbal and emotional behavior. To me, it seems, every character, in every fictional universe, no matter how bizarre and alien, must conform to this credo of reserved emotion. Without even realizing it, a lot of fiction today is limited by American cultural biases. My wife has suggested that my novel might be better appreciated in foreign markets, since they can better appreciate its Greek influences. After all, I was not raised on a diet of Tolkien. My Lord of the Rings is the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights and the Kalevala. I’ve done my best to portray a spectrum of cultural diversity in Ages of Aenya, but I am unwilling to ignore my own social experience.
Often, critics will say, Who talks like that? And I have an answer for them. Greeks do. Or, more specifically, my father does. My father has been known to stand at the dinner table to recite, with perfect clarity, from Socrates or Solon or Herodotus. Nobody in my family finds this the least bit unusual. For the longest time, my father has asked me to write his life story. It is something I have been putting off due to my busy schedule, and to the fact that my writing style hasn’t prepared me for a biography. Still, I grin whenever I think of all the melodramatic things my father has said over the years.
The Devil's Advocate: Everything You Know About Writing is Wrong!
This article originally appeared in The Writer's Disease
How-To Write Fiction? Advice is everywhere, from books to magazines to the Internet. Most of this advice focuses on plot, character development, and style. If you’re an aspiring writer, you’ve probably gone over these factors before. But while I can’t argue that plot or character isn’t important, I consistently find a broad discrepancy between how writers are told to write, and how great stories are actually written. The very best authors seem to have attended very different classes than I did. Conversely, if you study the basics like a chemistry lab student studies the Periodic Table, you’ll often turn out fiction that just isn't exciting anyone, that is is just plain . . . blah. Sure, you might get lucky with a “great job!” or “Hey, I really enjoyed that!” But honestly, is that why you spent hundreds of hours slaving over your masterpiece? The only words I ever want to hear is, “Hey, when is the next part coming out? I can’t wait to read the rest!” Generating that kind of excitement, the kind that gets people to dress up in ridiculous costumes, is every author's dream. But the how-to books won’t get you there, and in many successful pieces of fiction, the basic ingredients of “good writing” are missing entirely (see: H.P. Lovecraft). Writing a book isn’t like baking a pie. It isn’t science and shouldn’t be treated that way.
Here’s a quick synopsis of a popular young adult novel: At birth, a child is delivered to uncaring foster parents. When the child reaches a certain age, they meet a mysterious stranger who takes them far from the home they grew up in, revealing to them their special parentage in a world of magic, monsters and mystery. As the story progresses and the child enters into young adulthood, they learn of a prophesy, that only they can save the world from a great evil.
Is it Harry Potter? Or The Golden Compass? The synopsis works for both. And yet, there is stark difference between the success of Rowling’s books and the success of Pullman’s. While the Harry Potter series sold a whopping 450 million copies, Pullman’s His Dark Materials sold only 15 million (still an incredibly high number). Of course, a lot of random factors are involved, like luck, timing, and the success of the films, but those factors alone cannot account for the difference. Even if you were to divide the Potter series into less than half, since there are seven Rowling books to Pullman’s three, Harry outsells Lyra by a factor of 12! Looking back at Creative Writing 101, the case could be made that Pullman’s character, Lyra, just isn’t quite as developed as Harry, or that his style isn’t quite as polished as Rowling’s. But I find the opposite to be true. On strictly technical terms, Pullman is a more accomplished writer. So how do we account for the difference in sales? Is it just a random numbers game? Did Rowling hit the literary lottery? I don’t think so. I believe, and most people would agree, Harry Potter is a better series. Why?
One word: ideas
What makes people want to read a book are the ideas the book contains. Like Jerry Seinfeld once said, who based his comedy on the obvious, people like things that are interesting. Start telling a person about a book and what’s the first question they ask you? What’s the book about? That’s it. They never say, “Oh, how is the writing quality?” or “How are the characters developed?” What people want to know is, does the book contain information they want to process. And when I say ideas, I am not referring to grand literary themes here, but every single concept, from the smallest kernel of a thought to the main plot. What makes Harry Potter great? Owls that bring the mail and chocolate frogs that jump and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean. Sorting hats and quidditch. Pullman also has a number of fantastic ideas in his series, like souls that take the form of animals, and a knife that cuts through dimensions, and intelligent elephant-like creatures that rove around on wheels formed from giant seeds. But his ideas and his characters are not as numerous, charming, or clever. Rowling’s greatest talent is her ability to conjure up ideas. When Rowling talks about how she came up with Harry Potter, she first mentions the birth of the idea, which came fully formed into her mind. Since she’d been writing from a young age, she already knew the basics of writing, so the rest was easy. Star Wars is another great example of the power of idea. The story is purposefully cliche, based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but Campbell never conceived of light-sabers or Darth Vader. Of course, a story is not an encyclopedia of interesting tidbits. A good writer shapes ideas like raw minerals, forging them through plot and character into a cohesive narrative. If the writer is truly brilliant, these ideas will flow seamlessly and feel inevitable, never incidental.
But where, oh where, do good ideas come from, you might ask? Well, this is where no how-to book can help you, because there is no magic formula for success. And what constitutes a good idea from a bad one is so subjective, so prone to variables of culture and taste, Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought would need a billion or so years to calculate it. This is why, whenever a best selling author is asked about their success, they look totally baffled. You never hear a Stephen King or a J.K. Rowling owing their fortunes to a set of literary guidelines they found in a book. But this isn’t to say that, as aspiring writers, we are entirely helpless to the whim of Fate, waiting around for a million dollar idea to strike.
If you’re serious about writing, elements of plot and character should come naturally. After all, writers are readers, and we know what we like and why. It’s the idea that separates the dreamers from the doers. Over the years, I’ve gathered a few kernels of wisdom that have helped me capture that all too elusive idea. So here’s my set of guidelines to add to the masses, in order of what I feel is most important:
1. Love what you write.
While it is important to consider reader tastes, too often we forget the most important demographic of all: ourselves. If you don’t love what you write, nobody else will. If you don’t honestly love an idea, if it doesn’t come from inside, you won’t make it work. Only J.K. Rowling could have written Harry Potter. Only you can write your masterpiece.
2. Live life.
Whether your novel is a romance between zombies or the adventures of squirrels in space, all fiction is about life. Life dictates your writing, which is a good thing. Instead of trying to fit some successful mold, embrace your existence. Don’t just write. Ride a bike, make love, hike naked through the woods. Ideas are hidden everywhere, and the ones that come from life are the most genuine.
3. Talk to real live human beings.
Forget the Internet. Meet people in *real* life. If fiction is about life, characters are about people, real people. Even if you write about thousand-year-old vampires, they must possess an element of relatable humanity. In Flatland, Edwin Abbot’s main character is literally a square, but you believe in the story because of the square’s human attributes. An idea can be anything, from a MacGuffin to a plot device to a new kind of character.
4. Read books.
Lots of them. Reading is good for learning technique, but more importantly, it gives you perspective. You will find there are no absolutes in fiction, no right or wrong way. This will you give the courage to find your own voice, and trust in your own crazy ideas.
5. Don’t just do something, sit there!
Remember when you were a child, how on-fire your imagination was? Ideas seemed limitless then. Children are more creative because they have time to be bored. Too often, in our rush-rush lives, we forget the importance of doing nothing. Find time to stare blankly. Quietly sip tea while contemplating your exact location in space and time. Great ideas sit at the cusp of the abyss.
How-To Write Fiction? Advice is everywhere, from books to magazines to the Internet. Most of this advice focuses on plot, character development, and style. If you’re an aspiring writer, you’ve probably gone over these factors before. But while I can’t argue that plot or character isn’t important, I consistently find a broad discrepancy between how writers are told to write, and how great stories are actually written. The very best authors seem to have attended very different classes than I did. Conversely, if you study the basics like a chemistry lab student studies the Periodic Table, you’ll often turn out fiction that just isn't exciting anyone, that is is just plain . . . blah. Sure, you might get lucky with a “great job!” or “Hey, I really enjoyed that!” But honestly, is that why you spent hundreds of hours slaving over your masterpiece? The only words I ever want to hear is, “Hey, when is the next part coming out? I can’t wait to read the rest!” Generating that kind of excitement, the kind that gets people to dress up in ridiculous costumes, is every author's dream. But the how-to books won’t get you there, and in many successful pieces of fiction, the basic ingredients of “good writing” are missing entirely (see: H.P. Lovecraft). Writing a book isn’t like baking a pie. It isn’t science and shouldn’t be treated that way.
Here’s a quick synopsis of a popular young adult novel: At birth, a child is delivered to uncaring foster parents. When the child reaches a certain age, they meet a mysterious stranger who takes them far from the home they grew up in, revealing to them their special parentage in a world of magic, monsters and mystery. As the story progresses and the child enters into young adulthood, they learn of a prophesy, that only they can save the world from a great evil.
Is it Harry Potter? Or The Golden Compass? The synopsis works for both. And yet, there is stark difference between the success of Rowling’s books and the success of Pullman’s. While the Harry Potter series sold a whopping 450 million copies, Pullman’s His Dark Materials sold only 15 million (still an incredibly high number). Of course, a lot of random factors are involved, like luck, timing, and the success of the films, but those factors alone cannot account for the difference. Even if you were to divide the Potter series into less than half, since there are seven Rowling books to Pullman’s three, Harry outsells Lyra by a factor of 12! Looking back at Creative Writing 101, the case could be made that Pullman’s character, Lyra, just isn’t quite as developed as Harry, or that his style isn’t quite as polished as Rowling’s. But I find the opposite to be true. On strictly technical terms, Pullman is a more accomplished writer. So how do we account for the difference in sales? Is it just a random numbers game? Did Rowling hit the literary lottery? I don’t think so. I believe, and most people would agree, Harry Potter is a better series. Why?
One word: ideas
What makes people want to read a book are the ideas the book contains. Like Jerry Seinfeld once said, who based his comedy on the obvious, people like things that are interesting. Start telling a person about a book and what’s the first question they ask you? What’s the book about? That’s it. They never say, “Oh, how is the writing quality?” or “How are the characters developed?” What people want to know is, does the book contain information they want to process. And when I say ideas, I am not referring to grand literary themes here, but every single concept, from the smallest kernel of a thought to the main plot. What makes Harry Potter great? Owls that bring the mail and chocolate frogs that jump and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean. Sorting hats and quidditch. Pullman also has a number of fantastic ideas in his series, like souls that take the form of animals, and a knife that cuts through dimensions, and intelligent elephant-like creatures that rove around on wheels formed from giant seeds. But his ideas and his characters are not as numerous, charming, or clever. Rowling’s greatest talent is her ability to conjure up ideas. When Rowling talks about how she came up with Harry Potter, she first mentions the birth of the idea, which came fully formed into her mind. Since she’d been writing from a young age, she already knew the basics of writing, so the rest was easy. Star Wars is another great example of the power of idea. The story is purposefully cliche, based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but Campbell never conceived of light-sabers or Darth Vader. Of course, a story is not an encyclopedia of interesting tidbits. A good writer shapes ideas like raw minerals, forging them through plot and character into a cohesive narrative. If the writer is truly brilliant, these ideas will flow seamlessly and feel inevitable, never incidental.
But where, oh where, do good ideas come from, you might ask? Well, this is where no how-to book can help you, because there is no magic formula for success. And what constitutes a good idea from a bad one is so subjective, so prone to variables of culture and taste, Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought would need a billion or so years to calculate it. This is why, whenever a best selling author is asked about their success, they look totally baffled. You never hear a Stephen King or a J.K. Rowling owing their fortunes to a set of literary guidelines they found in a book. But this isn’t to say that, as aspiring writers, we are entirely helpless to the whim of Fate, waiting around for a million dollar idea to strike.
If you’re serious about writing, elements of plot and character should come naturally. After all, writers are readers, and we know what we like and why. It’s the idea that separates the dreamers from the doers. Over the years, I’ve gathered a few kernels of wisdom that have helped me capture that all too elusive idea. So here’s my set of guidelines to add to the masses, in order of what I feel is most important:
1. Love what you write.
While it is important to consider reader tastes, too often we forget the most important demographic of all: ourselves. If you don’t love what you write, nobody else will. If you don’t honestly love an idea, if it doesn’t come from inside, you won’t make it work. Only J.K. Rowling could have written Harry Potter. Only you can write your masterpiece.
2. Live life.
Whether your novel is a romance between zombies or the adventures of squirrels in space, all fiction is about life. Life dictates your writing, which is a good thing. Instead of trying to fit some successful mold, embrace your existence. Don’t just write. Ride a bike, make love, hike naked through the woods. Ideas are hidden everywhere, and the ones that come from life are the most genuine.
3. Talk to real live human beings.
Forget the Internet. Meet people in *real* life. If fiction is about life, characters are about people, real people. Even if you write about thousand-year-old vampires, they must possess an element of relatable humanity. In Flatland, Edwin Abbot’s main character is literally a square, but you believe in the story because of the square’s human attributes. An idea can be anything, from a MacGuffin to a plot device to a new kind of character.
4. Read books.
Lots of them. Reading is good for learning technique, but more importantly, it gives you perspective. You will find there are no absolutes in fiction, no right or wrong way. This will you give the courage to find your own voice, and trust in your own crazy ideas.
5. Don’t just do something, sit there!
Remember when you were a child, how on-fire your imagination was? Ideas seemed limitless then. Children are more creative because they have time to be bored. Too often, in our rush-rush lives, we forget the importance of doing nothing. Find time to stare blankly. Quietly sip tea while contemplating your exact location in space and time. Great ideas sit at the cusp of the abyss.
The Devil's Advocate 3: The Cliche of Cliches
This article originally appeared in: The Writer's Disease
Clichés!
This was the obvious subject to tackle after my last two Devil’s Advocate posts. Now, I’m not talking about starting with "Once upon a time . . ." although I am not opposed to that either, but rather, story telling conventions, like the orphaned hero, or the one-in a million underdog, or the prostitute with the heart of gold. There is no more common advice in writing than: Be original! Or as one book I read put it, "Remember, novel means new!" So who am I, even playing the role of Devil, to challenge this sage wisdom?
For a long time I've thought about this, afraid any argument I could make would get crushed in a debate. But then the truth hit me: we claim to want originality, but our pocketbooks prove otherwise. Look at the top grossing movies of all time: Avatar, Titanic, Avengers. While greatly entertaining, each of these films tells a very simple, unoriginal story. The same is true for top-selling books. Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga spring to mind. Even George R.R. Martin’s critically acclaimed, A Song of Ice and Fire, closely resembles Lord of the Rings and The Once and Future King. A cursory glance at the “New Fantasy” shelf in any bookstore will almost always consist of dragons, elves, vampires, zombies, and hooded rogues. Where are the truly original works? Why aren’t more books like Mythago Wood at the top of everyone’s reading list? Why aren’t Franz Kafka or Kurt Vonnegut our most popular authors? If clichés were so off putting, dragons would have disappeared from covers years ago. The truth is, people continue to read and watch clichés, despite what writing professors contend, and there are several reasons for it.
For one thing, the average American reads between 6-18 books per year (statistics vary), while there are literally millions of titles in existence. Quite often, young adults cracking Eragon open for the first time have simply never heard of Pern or Dragonlance, nor do they care to. Teenybopper girls devouring Twilight have likely never heard of Bram Stoker. What’s cliché for one person isn’t for everybody, which is why the most well-read individuals are also the most ardent critics of the cliché.
Secondly, nobody can agree on what a cliché is. For me, "cliché" is a useless word. The clothing industry has the right idea when declaring that certain styles are “out of fashion”. Nobody is saying to never wear bell-bottom jeans ever again, but when a look appears too frequently, it loses its appeal. The same is true of literary tropes. In the seventies and early eighties, zombies were everywhere. For the next few decades, the walking dead dropped off the imaginary map, and then suddenly, without any provocation, the zombies came back. And in force! Just like bell-bottom jeans. Personally, I am sick of zombie, vampire, dragon, and elf stories. In fact, in the 2012 Writer’s Market, some publishers went so far as to state in their submission guidelines, “We do not want any vampire stories.” These publishers were responding to an expected shift in fashion. They realize vampire stories won't sell forever. So maybe, instead of cliché, we should be using the term fashion or trend when talking about books.
Thirdly, there is the prevailing myth that the opposite of the cliché exists. After all, if people hate clichés, they must prefer its opposite, right? But much like the giant squid, true originality is damn near impossible to find, or identify. Did you think The Matrix was original? Not if you saw Dark City or Existenz. In fact, the concept of "reality not being reality" is thousands of years old, dating back to the Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, with his allegory of the cave. Where The Matrix managed to be more original was in the mixing of ideas. Nobody had ever seen a noir/Sci-Fi/Kung-Fu/action film asking age old philosophy questions before; and keep in mind, it’s only the Kung-Fu part that set it apart from Dark City, which came out just one year earlier.
Since no human being can possibly read everything ever written, you can only say that a story is more original than another. As far as I am aware, E.A. Abbott’s Flatland, featuring geometric shapes as characters, is unique. But how can I know that for certain? I can only say with confidence that Flatland is more original than most stories. But weighing abstract concepts like originality is so open to bias, the whole exercise is pointless. Of course, I do not advocate photocopying Lord of the Rings and slapping your name on it, but I also can’t exclude anyone from writing a story involving evil magic jewelry that need destroying.
Historically, the idea of the cliché is a new concept. Take a look in any European museum, and you will find, with almost universal commonality, the same two subjects: Greek myths and the Bible. There is a reason Michelangelo found himself unable to stray from the Bible when he sculpted David. Any muscular man in a museum is assumed to be either a Biblical hero, a Greek hero, or a god. A statue of Conan in the 18th century could only have invited confusion. But with the invention of the printing press and the start of the Industrial Revolution, humanity experienced an intellectual explosion. For the first time in history, literacy became a thing for everyone, and global communication allowed for the exchange, and mixing, of ideas from all over the world. Out of this explosion came the first forays into fantasy and science fiction. Writers were free to explore any concept imaginable, and thanks to the minds of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, humanity became hooked on the new. Novels like The Time Machine dressed up old concepts in the clothing of science, but the idea of a stranger in a foreign land can be traced straight back to the Odyssey. The freedom of creativity that came at the turn of the century was a wonderful thing. Scientific discovery and sharing between cultures offered writers the set dressing to tell old stories in new ways, allowing for more originality, but the basic tenets of storytelling remains the same.
In the search for the ever elusive original idea, critics often neglect our literary roots. We are so accustomed to the notion of “new and improved” that we forget that the very best stories, found in Homer, the Bible, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Arabian Nights, have been told and retold for centuries. The Greeks and the Hebrews were fond of retelling their epics because they understood the value of story; they didn’t disregard or discredit inspiring ideas to meet the unrealistic demand for originality. They were of humanity’s first bards, so naturally, they discovered what truths resonated most with people; as the old adage goes, if wasn’t a good idea, it wouldn’t have become a cliché.
Why doesn’t the big bad wolf eat the three little pigs? Such an ending would make for a more original fairy tale, but people, by wide margins, prefer the happily-ever-after cliché. Even when the bad guy wins, as in some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, it’s to make a statement, to scare kids into caution. Sure, Hamlet dies and his girlfriend commits suicide, but it’s the injustice of it that makes it a tragedy. Even the film Salo, reviled for its depiction of rape and torture, was made in opposition to the fascism that inspired it. We humans identify with our own natures, clichés be damned. We want good people to find happiness and cruel and sadistic behavior to result in bad consequences. The Greeks and the Hebrews figured this out long ago, and since then, the cliché of good conquering evil persists. Why else do people flock in droves to watch a boy grow up to overcome great evil? It’s a tale as old as time and it resonates deep within our subconscious minds. We love our clichés, our story telling conventions, just the way the Greeks and Hebrews did. We may dress it up in a hundred different outfits; we may try to create the illusion of originality, but in the end, it’s just the same old story.
Clichés!
This was the obvious subject to tackle after my last two Devil’s Advocate posts. Now, I’m not talking about starting with "Once upon a time . . ." although I am not opposed to that either, but rather, story telling conventions, like the orphaned hero, or the one-in a million underdog, or the prostitute with the heart of gold. There is no more common advice in writing than: Be original! Or as one book I read put it, "Remember, novel means new!" So who am I, even playing the role of Devil, to challenge this sage wisdom?
For a long time I've thought about this, afraid any argument I could make would get crushed in a debate. But then the truth hit me: we claim to want originality, but our pocketbooks prove otherwise. Look at the top grossing movies of all time: Avatar, Titanic, Avengers. While greatly entertaining, each of these films tells a very simple, unoriginal story. The same is true for top-selling books. Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga spring to mind. Even George R.R. Martin’s critically acclaimed, A Song of Ice and Fire, closely resembles Lord of the Rings and The Once and Future King. A cursory glance at the “New Fantasy” shelf in any bookstore will almost always consist of dragons, elves, vampires, zombies, and hooded rogues. Where are the truly original works? Why aren’t more books like Mythago Wood at the top of everyone’s reading list? Why aren’t Franz Kafka or Kurt Vonnegut our most popular authors? If clichés were so off putting, dragons would have disappeared from covers years ago. The truth is, people continue to read and watch clichés, despite what writing professors contend, and there are several reasons for it.
For one thing, the average American reads between 6-18 books per year (statistics vary), while there are literally millions of titles in existence. Quite often, young adults cracking Eragon open for the first time have simply never heard of Pern or Dragonlance, nor do they care to. Teenybopper girls devouring Twilight have likely never heard of Bram Stoker. What’s cliché for one person isn’t for everybody, which is why the most well-read individuals are also the most ardent critics of the cliché.
Secondly, nobody can agree on what a cliché is. For me, "cliché" is a useless word. The clothing industry has the right idea when declaring that certain styles are “out of fashion”. Nobody is saying to never wear bell-bottom jeans ever again, but when a look appears too frequently, it loses its appeal. The same is true of literary tropes. In the seventies and early eighties, zombies were everywhere. For the next few decades, the walking dead dropped off the imaginary map, and then suddenly, without any provocation, the zombies came back. And in force! Just like bell-bottom jeans. Personally, I am sick of zombie, vampire, dragon, and elf stories. In fact, in the 2012 Writer’s Market, some publishers went so far as to state in their submission guidelines, “We do not want any vampire stories.” These publishers were responding to an expected shift in fashion. They realize vampire stories won't sell forever. So maybe, instead of cliché, we should be using the term fashion or trend when talking about books.
Thirdly, there is the prevailing myth that the opposite of the cliché exists. After all, if people hate clichés, they must prefer its opposite, right? But much like the giant squid, true originality is damn near impossible to find, or identify. Did you think The Matrix was original? Not if you saw Dark City or Existenz. In fact, the concept of "reality not being reality" is thousands of years old, dating back to the Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, with his allegory of the cave. Where The Matrix managed to be more original was in the mixing of ideas. Nobody had ever seen a noir/Sci-Fi/Kung-Fu/action film asking age old philosophy questions before; and keep in mind, it’s only the Kung-Fu part that set it apart from Dark City, which came out just one year earlier.
Since no human being can possibly read everything ever written, you can only say that a story is more original than another. As far as I am aware, E.A. Abbott’s Flatland, featuring geometric shapes as characters, is unique. But how can I know that for certain? I can only say with confidence that Flatland is more original than most stories. But weighing abstract concepts like originality is so open to bias, the whole exercise is pointless. Of course, I do not advocate photocopying Lord of the Rings and slapping your name on it, but I also can’t exclude anyone from writing a story involving evil magic jewelry that need destroying.
Historically, the idea of the cliché is a new concept. Take a look in any European museum, and you will find, with almost universal commonality, the same two subjects: Greek myths and the Bible. There is a reason Michelangelo found himself unable to stray from the Bible when he sculpted David. Any muscular man in a museum is assumed to be either a Biblical hero, a Greek hero, or a god. A statue of Conan in the 18th century could only have invited confusion. But with the invention of the printing press and the start of the Industrial Revolution, humanity experienced an intellectual explosion. For the first time in history, literacy became a thing for everyone, and global communication allowed for the exchange, and mixing, of ideas from all over the world. Out of this explosion came the first forays into fantasy and science fiction. Writers were free to explore any concept imaginable, and thanks to the minds of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, humanity became hooked on the new. Novels like The Time Machine dressed up old concepts in the clothing of science, but the idea of a stranger in a foreign land can be traced straight back to the Odyssey. The freedom of creativity that came at the turn of the century was a wonderful thing. Scientific discovery and sharing between cultures offered writers the set dressing to tell old stories in new ways, allowing for more originality, but the basic tenets of storytelling remains the same.
In the search for the ever elusive original idea, critics often neglect our literary roots. We are so accustomed to the notion of “new and improved” that we forget that the very best stories, found in Homer, the Bible, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Arabian Nights, have been told and retold for centuries. The Greeks and the Hebrews were fond of retelling their epics because they understood the value of story; they didn’t disregard or discredit inspiring ideas to meet the unrealistic demand for originality. They were of humanity’s first bards, so naturally, they discovered what truths resonated most with people; as the old adage goes, if wasn’t a good idea, it wouldn’t have become a cliché.
Why doesn’t the big bad wolf eat the three little pigs? Such an ending would make for a more original fairy tale, but people, by wide margins, prefer the happily-ever-after cliché. Even when the bad guy wins, as in some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, it’s to make a statement, to scare kids into caution. Sure, Hamlet dies and his girlfriend commits suicide, but it’s the injustice of it that makes it a tragedy. Even the film Salo, reviled for its depiction of rape and torture, was made in opposition to the fascism that inspired it. We humans identify with our own natures, clichés be damned. We want good people to find happiness and cruel and sadistic behavior to result in bad consequences. The Greeks and the Hebrews figured this out long ago, and since then, the cliché of good conquering evil persists. Why else do people flock in droves to watch a boy grow up to overcome great evil? It’s a tale as old as time and it resonates deep within our subconscious minds. We love our clichés, our story telling conventions, just the way the Greeks and Hebrews did. We may dress it up in a hundred different outfits; we may try to create the illusion of originality, but in the end, it’s just the same old story.
The College of Obscurity
This article originally appeared in The Art of Storytelling
I am not stupid, as far as I can tell, but if I am, maybe I can’t tell. Either way, I appreciate all kinds of writing. My interests are as diverse as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, from translations of Homer to French classics like The Count of Monte Cristo, to more modern fare like The Hunger Games and comics like Batgirl: Year One (currently reading). Recently, I cracked open a publication of short-story contest winners and, while the winning entry was well written, the finalists made me feel . . . how shall I put this, like a 2nd grader. I mean, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of this writing. Each sentence was so cleverly crafted, so cryptically meaningful, that to me it came across like gobbledygook (the language of goblins). Names and places were tossed at random. Metaphors met like atoms in the Large Hadron Collider. Paragraphs were so densely packed, they were like the super dense neutron stars I’d read about in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole. Here’s a sample:
But then she took a step backward, and saw me on the threshold, and in that motion was another inward turning because when she spoke again her voice was sweetened with courteousness, through what she said to my face all smiling is now not memorable. That seems to be the mechanism of memory, to gather in its thresher the heaviness, which is to say, not the smoothness of false sincerity but what has sunk to spread seed or to foul and rot in audacious stench. Something hateful inside.
Huh?
After a few minutes of intense focus, this is my best translation, keeping as many metaphors as I could:
When she saw me, something turned inside of her, and when she spoke it was sweet and she was smiling, but I don’t remember what was said. Memory doesn’t keep false sincerity. I recall only the heaviness of her hatred for me, which had spread like a rotting stench.
Better, don’t you think?
Now don’t get me wrong . . . not all short fiction is this way. I adore Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. And Flash Fiction, which I’d read in college, was composed of some brilliant, inspiring, and hair-raising stuff. I also appreciated the works of my classmates, some of whom were brilliant. But with the book of contest winners I was holding in my hands . . . I was forced to wonder, is this good writing?
In my view, fiction should be fiction, not poetry. I have advocated for a resurgence of poetic writing in many of my posts, but if a story forces you to read the same sentence two or three times, it’s too clever for me. In desperation, I sought counsel from fellow author Michael Sullivan, who wisely reminded me that there are a wide range of tastes; "don’t fall into the trap that what you don’t like others won’t," he told me. Fine, I can understand that. But the question remains, outside of the classroom, who actually likes this stuff? Let’s face it, fiction has stiff competition in this ADHD generation, from movies, video games, and the Internet. There isn’t a huge demographic for short fiction to begin with. I remember studying something similar, American Masterpiece Fiction, which nobody in my class really enjoyed. Now, here was a group of students uniquely dedicated to the written word, a minor demographic indeed, and yet our consensus was almost always: huh?. But there must be people in the world who appreciate this kind of writing, like the Mexican tribes featured in National Geographic who speak nearly-dead languages, otherwise, nobody would be awarding them winners of contests, right?
When I published The Dark Age of Enya in 2004, many criticized that the writing was esoteric and difficult to read. I’d tried too hard to be clever, I realized, and like Yoda said to Luke, I had to unlearn what I had learned. So much for college.
The danger in trying to be the next Shakespeare is that poetry can be confused with being obscure. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever read is that poetry makes "the rock rocky." If done correctly, a well written piece clarifies, makes details pop from the page, brings the fictional world to life. Beautiful writing is the special effects of fiction. It should never make things obscure.
Or maybe I’m just stupid.
I am not stupid, as far as I can tell, but if I am, maybe I can’t tell. Either way, I appreciate all kinds of writing. My interests are as diverse as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, from translations of Homer to French classics like The Count of Monte Cristo, to more modern fare like The Hunger Games and comics like Batgirl: Year One (currently reading). Recently, I cracked open a publication of short-story contest winners and, while the winning entry was well written, the finalists made me feel . . . how shall I put this, like a 2nd grader. I mean, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of this writing. Each sentence was so cleverly crafted, so cryptically meaningful, that to me it came across like gobbledygook (the language of goblins). Names and places were tossed at random. Metaphors met like atoms in the Large Hadron Collider. Paragraphs were so densely packed, they were like the super dense neutron stars I’d read about in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole. Here’s a sample:
But then she took a step backward, and saw me on the threshold, and in that motion was another inward turning because when she spoke again her voice was sweetened with courteousness, through what she said to my face all smiling is now not memorable. That seems to be the mechanism of memory, to gather in its thresher the heaviness, which is to say, not the smoothness of false sincerity but what has sunk to spread seed or to foul and rot in audacious stench. Something hateful inside.
Huh?
After a few minutes of intense focus, this is my best translation, keeping as many metaphors as I could:
When she saw me, something turned inside of her, and when she spoke it was sweet and she was smiling, but I don’t remember what was said. Memory doesn’t keep false sincerity. I recall only the heaviness of her hatred for me, which had spread like a rotting stench.
Better, don’t you think?
Now don’t get me wrong . . . not all short fiction is this way. I adore Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. And Flash Fiction, which I’d read in college, was composed of some brilliant, inspiring, and hair-raising stuff. I also appreciated the works of my classmates, some of whom were brilliant. But with the book of contest winners I was holding in my hands . . . I was forced to wonder, is this good writing?
In my view, fiction should be fiction, not poetry. I have advocated for a resurgence of poetic writing in many of my posts, but if a story forces you to read the same sentence two or three times, it’s too clever for me. In desperation, I sought counsel from fellow author Michael Sullivan, who wisely reminded me that there are a wide range of tastes; "don’t fall into the trap that what you don’t like others won’t," he told me. Fine, I can understand that. But the question remains, outside of the classroom, who actually likes this stuff? Let’s face it, fiction has stiff competition in this ADHD generation, from movies, video games, and the Internet. There isn’t a huge demographic for short fiction to begin with. I remember studying something similar, American Masterpiece Fiction, which nobody in my class really enjoyed. Now, here was a group of students uniquely dedicated to the written word, a minor demographic indeed, and yet our consensus was almost always: huh?. But there must be people in the world who appreciate this kind of writing, like the Mexican tribes featured in National Geographic who speak nearly-dead languages, otherwise, nobody would be awarding them winners of contests, right?
When I published The Dark Age of Enya in 2004, many criticized that the writing was esoteric and difficult to read. I’d tried too hard to be clever, I realized, and like Yoda said to Luke, I had to unlearn what I had learned. So much for college.
The danger in trying to be the next Shakespeare is that poetry can be confused with being obscure. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever read is that poetry makes "the rock rocky." If done correctly, a well written piece clarifies, makes details pop from the page, brings the fictional world to life. Beautiful writing is the special effects of fiction. It should never make things obscure.
Or maybe I’m just stupid.
Myths of the Writing Profession
This piece originally appeared in The Art of Storytelling
I’ll never be an Olympic gymnast, but watching these young athletes spin and flip through the air only solidifies in my mind my utter lack of agility. This doesn’t happen to me, however, when I am reading other authors. Instead of intimidation, I feel relief, a boost in confidence. I can’t help saying to myself, "Dang, if this can get published, I know I sure can!" The intimidating thing is never the reality, but what I imagine the competition to be. Which is why, sometimes, a good imagination can be a bad thing. Like when you’re an aspiring writer perusing your local Barnes & Noble’ New Science-Fiction and Fantasy section. The number of titles getting released might as well be endless, and the beautiful covers holding up to 900+ pages can be intimidating. Based purely on the illustrations alone, my mind conjures bits and pieces of brilliantly realized worlds and utterly fantastic stories, and the overflowing praise on the back flap makes these books seem all the more challenging to measure up to.
My biggest anxiety, however, is not that I can’t or don’t measure up, but that the literary world is quite simply saturated. Where does the Aenya Series fit on the current shelf of fantasy titles? Who has time for one more story? Our society is suffering from information pollution and I am not helping the situation by adding my voice to it. I’d wager there are enough decent books to satisfy an avid reader for a lifetime. Quite frankly, we may not need any new publications. My only saving grace is knowing that in most cases, these books are rarely as good as their artwork, and the praise attributed to them is completely overblown.
The snake-oil salesmen of the modern age are book critics. How often does a novel come out that you truly can’t put down? And is that even a good thing? You’ll never see a movie trailer claim to be so entertaining that you can’t look away. It’s gotten to the point where true masterpieces, like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, need new monikers to set them apart, like grand masterpiece or supreme masterpiece. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before your read-it-and-forget-it novel goes under the heading of grand masterpiece too, which makes me wonder what reissues of books like Dune will say in the future, super-duper-ultimate masterpiece? Point is, there’s a scarcity of great books in the world, or if many exist, they’re buried beneath the dreck. The reality makes the bajillions of new books seem less intimidating.
Imagination can also hamper a writer's confidence when you add the many ridiculous misconceptions regarding the writing profession. Hollywood would have us believe five year old prodigies can churn out operas, or that masterpieces can be knocked out in one sitting. Even experienced writers get taken in by these myths, like Conan creator Robert Howard, who insisted that each of his works were completed in one draft in a single night of sweat-drenched terror (in actually, Conan went through numerous drafts). And who remembers D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival)? a story about a piece of fiction so incredible, people will commit murder just to get their hands on it? What’s really frustrating is that, even if you don’t believe the myths, other people do, so if you’re not writing like Shakespeare in elementary school, you’re just not cut out for the job (see: my Dad). When I tell people I’m a writer, they either treat me like a genius, or like some delusional hack. They simply can’t conceive of a person who just works really hard everyday at getting better.
I am always annoyed when people ask me, “So, did you get your book published yet?” Honestly, most people have no clue how daunting the task can be. Or worse, they think it’s like winning the lottery, all luck and no hard work. Worse still, if you don’t get published right away, it automatically means you are hack. That’s the misconception everyone has, that there’s some guy in some lofty literary tower somewhere, some wizard of words reading every submission from cover to cover. The truth is, neither publisher nor agent is in the business of achieving or even understanding literary excellence. That’s our job. They’re just salesmen. Their job is to facilitate the sale of books. Typically, the deciding factor is whether your book looks like another book which recently sold well, which explains all the zombie/vampire/bondage/teen dystopias lately. Whether a book is good in some grand artistic sense means nothing to a publisher. For this reason, writers are often at odds with the business side of things. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a financial failure, but what writer wouldn’t have wanted to have written that book? Often times, great books see a lot of rejection, like Dune, which was turned down 11 times. Question is, did anyone bother reading it before throwing it in the trash? Was it rejected on the basis of Herbert’s query letter, or did someone actually read through it and say, no thanks? Nobody probably knows, but I imagine Dune was way over the heads of most editors. Cinnamon like drugs that make you see into the future? Giant worms the size of skyscrapers? NO THANKS!
At thirty-seven years, I’ve become aware of the hard realities of the publishing industry, and that has only helped to boost my confidence. Ages of Aenya doesn’t have to measure up to Melville or Tolkien, or anybody for that matter. People just have to like it. I am certain a segment of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi crowd will no doubt loathe it, based on what they think makes for good fiction, and I’m prepared to ignore them. Only the fans matter, and if the fans I have represent a sample size of the reading public, then it’s just a matter of time before the Aenya Series is sitting pretty on the shelf with other titles with great covers, making young aspiring writers everywhere feel anxious.
I’ll never be an Olympic gymnast, but watching these young athletes spin and flip through the air only solidifies in my mind my utter lack of agility. This doesn’t happen to me, however, when I am reading other authors. Instead of intimidation, I feel relief, a boost in confidence. I can’t help saying to myself, "Dang, if this can get published, I know I sure can!" The intimidating thing is never the reality, but what I imagine the competition to be. Which is why, sometimes, a good imagination can be a bad thing. Like when you’re an aspiring writer perusing your local Barnes & Noble’ New Science-Fiction and Fantasy section. The number of titles getting released might as well be endless, and the beautiful covers holding up to 900+ pages can be intimidating. Based purely on the illustrations alone, my mind conjures bits and pieces of brilliantly realized worlds and utterly fantastic stories, and the overflowing praise on the back flap makes these books seem all the more challenging to measure up to.
My biggest anxiety, however, is not that I can’t or don’t measure up, but that the literary world is quite simply saturated. Where does the Aenya Series fit on the current shelf of fantasy titles? Who has time for one more story? Our society is suffering from information pollution and I am not helping the situation by adding my voice to it. I’d wager there are enough decent books to satisfy an avid reader for a lifetime. Quite frankly, we may not need any new publications. My only saving grace is knowing that in most cases, these books are rarely as good as their artwork, and the praise attributed to them is completely overblown.
The snake-oil salesmen of the modern age are book critics. How often does a novel come out that you truly can’t put down? And is that even a good thing? You’ll never see a movie trailer claim to be so entertaining that you can’t look away. It’s gotten to the point where true masterpieces, like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, need new monikers to set them apart, like grand masterpiece or supreme masterpiece. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before your read-it-and-forget-it novel goes under the heading of grand masterpiece too, which makes me wonder what reissues of books like Dune will say in the future, super-duper-ultimate masterpiece? Point is, there’s a scarcity of great books in the world, or if many exist, they’re buried beneath the dreck. The reality makes the bajillions of new books seem less intimidating.
Imagination can also hamper a writer's confidence when you add the many ridiculous misconceptions regarding the writing profession. Hollywood would have us believe five year old prodigies can churn out operas, or that masterpieces can be knocked out in one sitting. Even experienced writers get taken in by these myths, like Conan creator Robert Howard, who insisted that each of his works were completed in one draft in a single night of sweat-drenched terror (in actually, Conan went through numerous drafts). And who remembers D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival)? a story about a piece of fiction so incredible, people will commit murder just to get their hands on it? What’s really frustrating is that, even if you don’t believe the myths, other people do, so if you’re not writing like Shakespeare in elementary school, you’re just not cut out for the job (see: my Dad). When I tell people I’m a writer, they either treat me like a genius, or like some delusional hack. They simply can’t conceive of a person who just works really hard everyday at getting better.
I am always annoyed when people ask me, “So, did you get your book published yet?” Honestly, most people have no clue how daunting the task can be. Or worse, they think it’s like winning the lottery, all luck and no hard work. Worse still, if you don’t get published right away, it automatically means you are hack. That’s the misconception everyone has, that there’s some guy in some lofty literary tower somewhere, some wizard of words reading every submission from cover to cover. The truth is, neither publisher nor agent is in the business of achieving or even understanding literary excellence. That’s our job. They’re just salesmen. Their job is to facilitate the sale of books. Typically, the deciding factor is whether your book looks like another book which recently sold well, which explains all the zombie/vampire/bondage/teen dystopias lately. Whether a book is good in some grand artistic sense means nothing to a publisher. For this reason, writers are often at odds with the business side of things. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a financial failure, but what writer wouldn’t have wanted to have written that book? Often times, great books see a lot of rejection, like Dune, which was turned down 11 times. Question is, did anyone bother reading it before throwing it in the trash? Was it rejected on the basis of Herbert’s query letter, or did someone actually read through it and say, no thanks? Nobody probably knows, but I imagine Dune was way over the heads of most editors. Cinnamon like drugs that make you see into the future? Giant worms the size of skyscrapers? NO THANKS!
At thirty-seven years, I’ve become aware of the hard realities of the publishing industry, and that has only helped to boost my confidence. Ages of Aenya doesn’t have to measure up to Melville or Tolkien, or anybody for that matter. People just have to like it. I am certain a segment of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi crowd will no doubt loathe it, based on what they think makes for good fiction, and I’m prepared to ignore them. Only the fans matter, and if the fans I have represent a sample size of the reading public, then it’s just a matter of time before the Aenya Series is sitting pretty on the shelf with other titles with great covers, making young aspiring writers everywhere feel anxious.
