The Novelty of the Writer - 01

Everyone Has One... But Do They Know How To Use It?

Whenever I get into a really bad mood over a scene, or the fact that my latest chapter is a hunk of flaming shit, the one thing that really helps me to calm down, and put things in perspective, is the quote: "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

As a writer we are rarely going to reach that lofty goal. That's not to say that we shouldn't aspire to reach it, though.

Being a writer is hard. There are a lot of rules that we have to memorize. There are lots of tiny tools that have to be implemented. And whenever we write something, we are expected to stand there with our head down, our eyes down, and our hands folded while the critics verbally thrash us with everything they have in them, and we can't retaliate. Additionally, we are constantly fighting against the tide of other talented writers that elbow in to our space, try to fuck with our head, and become braggarts when they get a smattering of reader recognition.

Let's face it folks, if you want to be a writer, you really must want to be tortured.

Since the publication of my first novel, I've yet to make enough money to equal what I made as an accountant. I have yet to win the Pulitzer, or be nominated for the Nobel prize for literature. There are no framed copies of my novel's front cover art on my office wall indicating that I've sold a million copies to great review and success. And, the New York Times has not featured my novel in the best new category of anything.

If you want to be writer, you are typically saying that you want to be abused, you want to be poor and hungry until your break comes in, and you want to be shit on repeatedly. This is what it means to be a writer. What the fan fiction writers of the internet do, is not writing by those standards; it's pretend, and it's make-believe. Sounds harsh, right? Well, sure it does. You are probably chewing on your bottom lip, and ready to compose an asshat comment to verbally bash me for calling your creative outlet "pretend writing." But even in pretend, there is the dream of writing.

No one becomes their destiny unless they first dream of it. Little kids that "pretend to operate on stuffed animals" may one day grow up to become veterinarians. It's the dreams and in the pretending that fertile soul rests.

What that quote really tells me, is that if you want to be a writer, then you should want to be the best writer you can. It's important that you find your own path, and set your own goals to achieve this. Try as they might, other writers really cannot help you become a better writer. They can only offer you advise, and the burden of listening to it, or not is going to be yours. Ask yourself one question. "Why are other writers so concerned with helping you write?" Unless they are going to be reading everything you write, or publishing your work, then their interference is purely from an egotistical stand point. I'll admit to having a huge ego. But then, I'm a bastard, and I write what I want anyway. To prove this, I once wrote a story without any sort of punctuation at all.

Helping others has become this "scene" where it's "hip" and the "thing" to offer those lesser writers all one's earned and garnered wisdom.

This is thing though, and I really want you to listen to me very carefully on this. Writing is like painting. We are artists. We don't want your creative help. Rules, rules, rules... rules. If you really want to crush our dreams, and shatter our hopes, then by all means make it seem as if only the elitist pricks will ever attain this privilege of writing.

Every one has an opinion. Including me. But I'm going to tell you that you can write. Now, if all you care about writing is "Button Mash X Sweetie Belle" fan fiction, then don't bother wasting your time reading this. It's clear that you are only interested in popular hotness, and are only looking to cater to the fads of writing. You aren't interested in being artistic about your craft. Move on please.

If however, you want to be told that writing can be done, and all you have to do is suffer a fate like unto Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, then keep reading. Life might be good to you after all.

They Mythos of Writing

I'm not going to give you any of the basics. I don't care if you know what the hell a run-on sentence is, or not. I've gone on at length about how most people probably know how to write already. They just don't apply themselves very well to it. Because, if you know how things should sound when you say them, then you have a better than average understanding of what they should look like on paper. Re-covering this would be useless.

What I am going to cover, is all the myths, that you have probably heard from everyone, when it comes to writing. Those fancy little snarky phrases that sound real good, but hardly matter. Oh, and if you really want to comment, and offer me some hate, please be prepared for me to go find your work, comb over it, and find every tiny little flaw and expose it on the internet, so that I can make you look like a dunce. Because, that's how I roll.

Purple Prose

If you write fan fiction, there are those that are going to slap your hand when it comes to purple prose. They will offer you all sorts of reasons behind what it is, and why you should never do it. But the truth, is that purple prose is hard to write; the critics can't do it, and they take it out on your for trying, and probably failing at it.

What Purple Prose is, is simply writing with too much description.

The castle was an icon of sheer magnificence, a spire of majestic beauty that rose through the altitudes of the midnight sky upward of the lofty heavens, toward the utmost places where kings and the spirits of the departed made their realms. An obelisk, whose summit knew no reach, and whose towers knew no piercing of fortification. And, it was within this lofty, high, magnificent castle that the queen of the whole realms was secreted away, for all eternity. An eternity within an eternity. The likes that time itself could never fathom, and could never quell. Length of minutes stretched into eons, and hours into vast epochs.

Now, I'm sure that somewhere in there, you probably wanted to throw something at your computer screen, and yell, "Make it stop!" Right?

Purple Prose is just plain too much description. It makes the scene drag on and on. But, however, if you want to write that way, then understand that there is nothing stopping you. Some readers may want to read it. They may feel as if they are getting every ounce of realism, or pound for their buck. So go ahead and write it.

Talking Heads

We've been warned not to do this. And unless you are an idiot, then most of us won't do this anyway.

Talking heads is where you have all dialogue and no scene description. Sometimes it necessary to write pages of dialogue, and use very little in the way of scene progression. There is no "real rule" about doing this. None! Ever! If anyone tells you that you can't write a whole scene with just this:

"So what are you doing today?"

"I was going to the mall. You want to come with?"

"I don't know. I can't be out very late. I promised my cousin that I'd help him with his school project."

"..."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. I mean, if you'd rather cut the evening short, that's your call. But we were thinking of taking in a double feature at the cinema."

He laughed. "Watch a movie, or help my cousin with his homework. Why do I get the feeling that you are tempting me?"

"Maybe I'm the devil."

"I have heard that the devil can disguise himself as a beautiful woman."

"..."

"What now?"

"You really think I'm beautiful?"

If you are the writer, and you think that the scene calls for it. Then by-god make it so! Write that fucking thing with as much talking heads as you want. john Green when writing An Abundance of Katherines had a scene in there where two people are sitting in a dark cave, and have a conversation. Trying to write in that they did something or walked somewhere, leaned on something, drank something, would have been stupid, because they were sitting in a pitch black cave. There was nothing to progress with scene description, except, it was a dark cave! Get it!?

Weather Reports

I always want to barf my lunch up every time I read where someone uses this phrase. Which is supposed to mean that you can't write about what the weather in the scene was like when you start a story.

Um... what the fuck?

I also kind of want to laugh and laugh. Sure, unless you are going to be utilizing the weather to some effect, then we really aren't going to all of us start a story with a "weather forecast." When we do, it can be the exception to the rule. There are always exceptions, and you don't have to be famous or already established to do it. Just know that it can be done.

For example, Ray Bradbury's The Longest Rain went:

The rain continued. It was hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men’s hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain and it never stopped.

Now, he was using the weather as a vehicle for his story. If you're writing about tornadoes and you don't mention the sky or the weather at least once, I will kick your ass hole in ward to your small intestine is tickling your spleen.

Show Don't Tell (You Were Waiting On This One Right?)

I actually came across this again the other day in yet another self-help guide.

I think the reason that people write self-help guides are so they don't have to do any fucking work when it comes to reading a story. It's a unified socialistic approach to making all literature read the exact same fucking way. Well, if you want to make your work seem like a sterile lifeless hunk of cold steel, then by all means drop all the adjectives, adverbs, and descriptions, and stop story telling, and start story showing.

Showing more or less equals vague writing. When they tell you, "Write in such a way that you are not out right saying what's going on," they are telling you to be a vague dork.

"Her lips curled into a menace as she threw the glass of beer into his face." - Showing

"Curling her lips, she tossed the beer in his face. She was pissed. People started scattering. All hell was about to break loose." - Telling

Who the hell cares? Not me. I give a damn. Depending on your style, you could go either way. I like the second one. It's tight, and witty, and you the reader knows beyond a doubt that the woman is pissed. The first one, while following the vague rule of thumb seems right, only really reveals nothing. Is she doing this because she was angry? Or was she trying to murder him with the glass? Drown him? What were the consequences? How did this happen? What is going on?

Show don't tell is a bullshit rule, and if you want to write like it, then go ahead and do it. I hate it, and I can spot any... ANY story that uses it. How? Because they are bland lifeless turds that float at the top of the toilet bowl.

You Have To Know The Rules Before You Can Break The Rules

Ever heard that little gem?

Sure you have. Why I bet there's a self-help guide on this site that probably says it in quotes. But the fact, is that once again, it is a bullshit line of elitist nonsense. Being able to break the rules has nothing to do with a sound knowledge of them. If that were the case, then by that logic, I should able to run traffic lights, and stop signs; speed and not wear a seat belt, because I know the rules for driving so well, that I ace my written exam every time I take my driving test.

What a load of crap!

Sure, you want to know what a comma is. You want to know that words strung together make a sentence. But do you really need to be a published best seller with a million copies of your book in print world wide to be able to break a rule here or there? NO!

I recall a fan fiction that gained some mild glory for being written without any "Es" at all. As far as I'm aware, there's no rule that says it can't be done. The story reads like a person with Tourette's Dictionary wrote it. But hey it was revolutionary for a fan fic, and no one cared. Don't be afraid of taking chances. If you don't you will never find your niche, your groove, or what you can and can't do.

- to be continued.

Comments

Writing is a rough game, with critics and cut throat wannabe novelists dressed in a black robes holding red light sabers pointed at you. Against a legion of obstacles, only being armed with a stick. That how I feel now.
Well, better brush up on techniques and styles. I'm going to need a bigger stick if I want to be a writer.
I'd never be a script writer though. That much I know!

[bookplayer]

Mostly, I'm right there with you.

There are a few things in here I take exception with.

Why writers want to help other writers--

What I've found is that the writers who provide the most real "help" for other writers are doing it to become better writers themselves, and view it as a discussion rather than a lecture. This isn't new or unique to fanfic or the internet -- writers groups have been around throughout history. and while most of them (like the one at your local college or Barnes & Noble, or groups on FiMfiction) are bullshit, when you do find a group of like-minded writers who are interested in the same kinds of stories, respect one another without idolizing each other, and are interested in discussing the craft and theory of writing, you end up with a situation where brainstorming produces great ideas, where previous "rules" are challenged and dismantled, and where authors network and assist each other in gaining an audience. Groups like the Bloomsbury Group, the Inklings, the Algonquin Round Table, the Shakespeare and Company Writers, and more recently (in the 1980's) Endicott Studio.

Here on the website, I found the most interesting and informative "writing help" is on Bad Horse's blog, and in the comments of those posts. As with the writing group idea, it's not that his blog posts are always right or useful, but that dozens of other authors read them and take apart the information in them, challenging it, providing examples and counter-examples, etc. Bad Horse himself has admitted that he doesn't post them to inform, exactly, but to record his ideas and get the thoughts of those readers.

Anyway, the only other thing I took issue with is "you need to know the rules to break them."

First of all, you're misrepresenting what the term means, and what the idea behind it is.

To use your driving example, well, I don't know about you, but I've been known to speed in areas I know are light on traffic, non-residential, with good visibility. I know that speed limits are to help you stop in time to avoid accidents, and when I'm fairly sure that I'll have plenty of time to break, I break that rule. If there's an intersection that I know from experience rarely has any traffic, I might do a rolling stop there, and if there's one with heavy traffic I might stop even if I have right of way. When you understand the reason for speed limits, stop signs, and other traffic rules, you do tend to bend them in situations where the reasons don't apply.

You don't have to know that speed limits are to help you have time to safely stop in order to speed, but if you don't understand this you're more likely to speed through a busy commercial or residential area and get in an accident.

So, to that end, "you should know the rules to break the rules" has nothing to do with being published, or respected, or famous. It has to do with understanding what the rule is trying to say, so that you don't create the problem the rule was intended to avoid.

So, for example, opening with the weather report. When people complain about them, it's because the first line was setting the scene, when it was supposed to be hooking the reader. There are cases, of course, where the weather can easily hook the reader. Or where you're about to contrast the weather report in the next line in a way that would draw people in. And, on the other side of the coin, it's easy to do the same thing without the weather by focusing on some other, inconsequential thing. If you understand the reasons not to use a weather report, then you will know when using a weather report has nothing to do with the reason for the rule, or when you're using a weather report without even mentioning the weather.

[Davidism]

I'm nodding at your comment. I haven't read anything from Bad Horse, so I can't say one way or another about his help or guidance. I mean, I am being somewhat hypocritical when I rebuke writers for offering assistance, and then go and egotistically offer my own. Ah, my narcissism shows again. (tucks it away)

One of my biggest beefs with writers helping other writers, is that they want to help, but don't (for reasons) actually go very in depth in their "help" with regards to benefiting those they are assisting.

For example, the "Know the rules before you break the rules" is usually left at just that. And the average, or underaverage writer is left pondering what and how that should be taken.

To me is says that a writer can be exempt under certain circumstances, and then most gurus fail at giving an example. So, we have to assume that either a.) the helper is just trying to offer enough information to get the lesser writer to a better level, or b.) is trying to discourage them from experimentation.

Somewhere in there are the good writers that know the rules (well enough), and take either too much to heart, or not enough of it, and try to model their interpretation of the rules after those that set them, and everyone begins writing lifeless carbon copy.

As for the weather report, I was simply saying that "if it serves a purpose" a writer shouldn't be afraid of it. In my novel Mr God the weather plays a huge role in the narrative. Murder, chaos, and psychological warfare are being played out while the storm of the century rages on. For me to not use occasional weather forecasts and reports, or what-have-you would be ludicrous.

"It was a sunny day" is not against the rules. To me it's no different then, "Scene 1: Exterior, Day."

I think what really burns me a great majority of the time, is that writers that want to help other writers seem to do so with an ulterior motive. They tell the writer wannabee everything they cannot do, and never really tell them what they can do. Is this an attempt to sabotage the competition? I don't know.

So when one is given this grocery list of things they cannot do, the newbie writer now feels, "Well then what the hell can I do? I should just quit this writing shit while I can." It's honestly discouraging to a great many writers. I've had several tell me that they quit their dream because the rules were just too much. They were too inferior. To me that's not writers helping writers. It's writers helping writers quit so they don't pose a threat. Or they get the giant big head syndrome, and are so mighty they give the impression that they are a writing god, and unreachable by the lesser beings. Ugh.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that I'm not addressing writers that have no working knowledge of the craft. I'm not a teacher. I hate teaching. I'm talking to the people that already know what basic grammar and punctuation are, those kids that passed tenth grade English.

See, it all comes down to the delivery. And for a lot of writers, they actually fail at delivering good sound advice. Their own trial by fire gets convoluted, and glossed over by the years of writing, and in the end, they give out the facts, sans the effectual practicality. Some of the advice seems even contradictory.

Purple unicorn syndrome is one of my favorites.

In my novel, Murdered by Midnight, there is a large hulking bruiser that doesn't get a name until the end of the book. For the duration of the story is his referred to as, the Big Bastard, the Muscle, and the Linebacker Hitman. A good reader will know who I'm talking about. I don't want to be stuck with one description for the character. We get scolded for using the same words over and over again to describe a thing, but when it comes to a character we have to call them the same thing forever. Blows my mind.

Now, some writers enjoy being beat down. There are no doubt masochists that enjoy a good foot stomping, and they see the giant list of rules as something to "aspire to." I don't. I see rules as a crippling device, administered by better writers to keep the riff-raff from sprouting.

And just we are all on the same page. I will never tell someone to abandon proper grammar and punctuation. Ever. Challenge it, sure. Question everything... sure. As a creative artist, if we never question the rules, never ask why, we end up as nothing more than every other writer.

I think the bottom line, is that a good well rounded "guide" needs to be both encouraging and restrictive. Like I wrote about in Beta Readers; if all the feedback is negative, then a person's brain will shut down and you'll lose your effectiveness. The mind can only handle so much negativity before it goes into safety mode. So any self help guide that doesn't structurally offer encouraging advice with the discouraging, will get a fail from me.

[Davidism]

1770945
I tried adapting one of my short stories into a play once. I had to abandon it before I phased myself into a permanent state of alcoholism.

1771789 I phased myself into a state of alcoholism for a short period. Then I tried a cheap whisky and after that, I was contented with being sober. Unless I obtain the money -after purchasing an adequate amount of cigarettes for the week- to afford Jack Daniels, Grey Goose or Maker's Mark. NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE! GO CHEAP ON LIQOUR!!! That was my lesson. And it was learned after I down 2/3 of a liter bottle whisky, still painfully sober and hating that pungent flavor. Rather be sober than to try hard not to be.

On the screen play writer: I watched a documentary called Tales from the Script, featuring Hollywood screen play writers and their experience in the trade. For me, It was like a horror movie. It's on Netflix if you are interested.