Straight from the Human's Mouth: Who You Write For · 7:46am Feb 9th, 2015
OR: "Never Trust BP When He Gives You a Timeframe, Post the 2nd"
So when I first pitched a blog series, it was as a thing to help authors, and the reason I wanted to do it was because I’d seen a lot of other folks who talked about writing in their blogs, but who seemed to often give poor or even damaging advice—I wanted to sort of counter-balance that. I think I’ve come up with a nice starting point to that end.
Bear with me if you’ve heard this next bit a million times, please.
Oftentimes (when you’re in school, maybe, or even just around the site) you may be given a lot of advice that takes the form of clear, hard rules. “Show, don’t tell.” “Don’t use sentence fragments.” “Don’t swim for half an hour after eating.” And you might go out there, write something, and find that people think it’s a bit boring and/or uninspired.
Then, as you go along, you will probably encounter opposing advice, generally having something to do with artistic license. “You can be telly if you do it for the sake of your art.” “You can use sentence fragments if you do it for the sake of your art.” “You can swim after eating if you don’t mind cramps.” And you might go out there, write something, and find that people think it has no structure or that you broke rules by accident rather than on purpose.
And then, as you go along, you might be lucky enough to find someone willing to explain the “rules” to you in full. Your teachers probably didn’t because they had a schedule to stick to, and so they went with the safer advice so as to lessen the likelihood of your writing coming off as unprofessional. Your free-love-hippy-dippy peers/mentors didn’t because maybe they didn’t understand the reasoning behind the rules themselves, or maybe they wanted you to go out and make mistakes so you could learn from them, or maybe it was simply that they weren’t very good at explaining things. Regardless, you’ll really start to come into your own once you begin to see that despite the fact that anything is legal, breaking the “rules” is going to call attention to you, so you need to have a better reason for it than “art”.
Now, again, I’m sure most of you have heard something along those lines before. That it’s best not to be the dull office worker who follows along with everything management says, or the kid who’s just become old enough to see R-rated movies alone (and in his/her excitement about that fact, reveals to everyone just how young he/she really is), but rather the accepting yet discerning type who knows that rules are there for a reason and are broken for a reason. If you haven’t heard that, then I guess I hope you can see my point for what little time I spent making it, but I now want shift gears slightly into my main point of this specific blog (though another might follow in the future about all that in more detail, or covering particular rules or myths).
A key point of those three paradigms is that the first (rule-bound) is in many ways very small and closed. People often get locked into their one set of rules, but they have the advantage of being able to measure others by that set of rules (though others might not follow the exact same set, obviously). The second paradigm (rule-free) is infinite and open. Possibility and personalization is everything, but you lose out on being able to judge quality because you’ve made it a point not to establish tangible metrics. The third paradigm is a middle ground between the former two—it requires involvement and provides for judgement like the first paradigm, but it allows for the incorporation and appreciation of the second’s rule-breaking art. It asks a lot more of you than the first two, as well, especially as you dig deeper into it—you have to recognize that on top of the fact that the rules you used to know can be broken, there are alternate sets of rules out there which are as valid as (or potentially even more valid than) those you learned in your time in the first paradigm. Essentially, you come to see not just that nothing is absolute, but that everyone has their own ideas about what works, and not everyone is coming from the same background.
tl;dr: It’s pointless to argue with British English people about how they call the second floor the first floor, no matter how fun it can be. Both are valid.
I say all of that because, despite the fact that those folks in that third paradigm know how to apply the thinking to writing and reading, it sometimes seems like they don’t apply it to their thinking about writing and reading. The specific instance I want to talk about in this blog is a piece of advice I see thrown around a lot:
“Write for yourself.”
Mind you, it’s perfectly fine to me when an author says something like, “I write for myself, and that works for me—if you’re stuck in a rut, frightened about what your audience will think of you, maybe give that a try.” But often, I see it unadorned as simply, absolutely, “Write for yourself.” Or maybe with the addition of something like, “It shouldn’t matter to you what others think so long as you’re satisfied.”
Now, “nothing is absolute” is just about as absolute a statement as they come, but I stand by it despite the paradox. Particularly in a case like this.
I like people who write for themselves. I admire them for the passion I so often see from them. I think that they’re brave, soulful, and often—at least in the case of the vocal ones—far better than I could ever be at motivating other people to write. I am definitely not one of these people.
I don’t write for myself, and I’m not sure I could. I don’t make progress on anything that I think nobody is ever going to see. I care a great deal about what other people think of me. I would go so far as to say that writing a story has never, never felt as good to me as talking about that story with someone else. Can I be completely sure that it’s not in me to enjoy writing for myself and myself alone? Of course not. Still, I think I’ve been at this long enough to make the judgement that I’m the type of person for whom the most fun part of writing is discussing it.
Because of that, to me personally, the simple advice that I should “write for myself” is not helpful. I imagine that there must be folks out there who, having been given advice to that effect—and you must admit that it’s advice which sounds good and proper and motivational—have then wondered to themselves something like, “Highprofile McGee is a good writer, and he thinks that I should be able to enjoy writing for the sake of writing. But I can’t stop thinking about how much I want an audience. Is there something wrong with me? Am I petty?”
I’ll admit that that’s pretty much just hypothetical on my part; I don’t recall thinking along those specific lines myself. In fact, I think I went in something like the opposite direction, saying to myself, “Highprofile McGee is a good writer, and he thinks that I should be able to enjoy writing for the sake of writing. But I can’t stop thinking about how much I want an audience. Highprofile McGee must be wrong and a jerk.” Neither’s a great perspective to have.
My point is that giving off this absolute impression that writing for oneself is the way to go can be damaging when you don’t stress that it’s one perspective amongst many and it happens to be the one that works for you. And even if you do stress all that, not going into alternative perspectives won’t be helpful to folks in my situation. I see this like I do the advice in those paradigms from before. “Write for yourself” is that easy, quick, relatively safe advice that people pass along when they don’t want to or simply can’t get into specifics about why they’re saying that, or about what your other options are.
So now’s the time I give you another option—the way that works for me.
Like I said, I don’t write for myself—I don’t write because it makes me happy in and of itself. When I was first ironing this all out in my head, way back, I used to think that because writing didn’t make me happy, it must have been fame I was after. Mind you, I wasn’t ashamed of myself, and if you’re in it for the fame, even today I still don’t think that that alone should make you ashamed—it’s another valid perspective so long as that fame-chasing doesn’t leave you hurting folks or letting them down in some significant way.
But no, I eventually realized that I wasn’t in it for the fame either. It took me a while, because again, most folks who I’d see talking about this sort of thing would advocate writing for oneself—and oftentimes, they would name things like being in writing for the fame or the money as the antithesis to that. It left me with a sort of binary in my head that took a long time for me to reason around without any help.
I write to get folks talking about my writing. With me, preferably, and I also tend to prefer they be talking positively, but any talk at all makes the whole thing more than worth it to me. Mind you, I know that most everyone around here loves feedback, but I’ve come to see that it’s my end goal. I’m driven to write unique and/or varied things, and often things that at least on their face run counter to what people tend to like or are used to, just so I have something ready whenever I see the right kind of conversation starting up:
“Man, I hate HiEs.”
“Yo, you should give mine a shot.”
“Check it out. Another crappy alicorn OC.”
“I’ve got a fun idea for that.”
“Why’s it feel like nobody can get zebra rhyming right?”
“Bet I can change your mind.”
Talking about the ideas is almost as fun for me as talking about the completed stories, so I’m always having a good time with a conversation like those, whether someone decides to give what I’ve got a try or not. If they do give me a go, and especially if they liked what they read, then that’s just icing. This is the kind of thing that fulfills me, writing-wise, and you might be the same way.
So that’s what I write for, but technically the question was “who”. Who, if not myself, and if not the general audience of “anyone who happens to have a look”?
I think the most correct answer would be that I write for anyone who will read my stuff and talk with me about it on a regular basis. And what that boils down to is that I write for my friends. If I write something world build–y, I know that C^2 or Plum will be there to talk it over with me. If I’ve got something philosophical in mind, Plebeian’s made for a really fun sounding board. Heck, I helped put together a whole Skype chat of folks who are all about talking through stories and bouncing ideas off of, and there’s plenty of others I could go to and have a great time doing the same.
If you think you’re like me—if you think that feedback is the paramount, most satisfying thing about all of this—my advice to you would be to surround yourself with that type of person. Maybe put out a fic or two, join a couple of groups or chats, generally get yourself involved in the community—form yourself a base of people who you like talking to, and who like talking about stories. And then write to get a reaction from them, to make them proud of you and what you’re publishing. Involve them in your work and get involved with theirs. Get some of your ideas from what you know would surprise them.
It’s a hugely satisfying process for the right kind of person.
And say you aren’t the right kind of person for that. Say you’re not like me, but you also don’t feel in tune with the idea of writing for yourself and yourself alone. In that case, my advice to you would be to reason it out, like I eventually did. Reason out what it is that satisfies you most about this whole writing business, and hone in on that, letting it dictate what you do around here. I recognize that that’s pretty vague advice, but it’s a personal process of self-reflection, so I’m not sure I could get all that much more specific without going into examples I don’t have any personal experience with.
Any rate, think before you present a perspective of yours like “write for yourself”—or any such subjective thing—as though it’s anything other than what works for who you are. You might wind up confusing or alienating a guy like me.
Hope this hardly humble human’s helped. And, as ever, that I didn’t ramble too much. If you’re still around, or if you’re the type of person who skips right to the end of things, have a thing, even if deep down I feel like it cheapens my blog somewh—
Ha. This is going to be the blog’s preview image, isn’t it? What a fun disappointment that will be.
2781644
Seeing it full-on like that makes me realize how much sappier it sounds than I intended. I like it.
After reading this part:
My mind immediately thought of the Assassin's Creed motto, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
2781689
I was fighting throughout that entire portion not to make the reference.
2781701
I commend you for winning the bout, then. I would have caved in nearly immediately.
The key breakthrough for me, in learning to analyze the "rules", was realizing that "good" and "bad" in art is an emergent phenomenon of all the smaller components of the art, not an independent thing. A "good" piece of art is simply one that effectively embodies its intended aesthetic effect. In fiction, we generally call this the theme.
When writing, you have a definite space of possibilities. A single short sentence vs. a single long sentence. Short sentences alternating with long ones, short ones exclusively, long ones exclusively. Difficult words, easy words. Saxon words, Romance words. At every step you have a set of possible choices.
The thing to realize is that each possible choice you can make has a specific aesthetic effect. No one of them is "good" or "bad" in itself. Rather, the thing to ask is, does this element contribute to creating the specific aesthetic effect that I am trying to create with this work? A lot of times more than one possibility will fit the situation. Fiction is like music that way.
Any set of rules for art always and only holds good given a specific goal. If the goal changes, the rules change.
Most people probably think--and I am one of them--that written fictional stories ("fiction"), by their nature, have to include certain very general goals in order to be considered fiction at all. The goal of using the written word as a medium would probably be one of the least controversial examples of such goals. But what about things like the goal of pleasing the readership? Of employing a coherent narrative? Of using characters? I suppose arguments could be made that none of these are essential to fiction. But if a writer sets about deliberately to employ an incoherent narrative, he should certainly not complain when readers charge his narrative with incoherence.
The "basic" set of rules that people are taught when starting out is a set of rules that holds most of the time for most kinds of enjoyable stories that most people will like. That is their value.
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As for writing for yourself vs. writing for appreciation, both motives are selfish. There is nothing wrong with being selfish. But there is a third motive: writing so that other people will be able to enjoy or otherwise benefit from what you have written. This is an altruistic motive. However, it can easily cause various kinds of degeneracy, for example, propaganda written for the altruistic motive of edifying others.
Besides these, there is writing for the sake of producing good work. I suppose this motive could be called "writing for the sake of writing." It is probably the most "high" and "artistic" motive.
If someone is looking for morality cookie points in his writing, he should write for the sake of other people's enjoyment. If he is only concerned with finding a motive that will drive him to write, then he should just ask himself: What do I want to gain from writing? But anyone who actually enjoys the act of writing itself probably carries at least a bit of that core artistic drive, the love of art for art's sake.
A very interesting little (if you can call a verbose bit of wisdom little.) gem to read through. Doubly so at a long night and its 5am on monday. Yet, I rather enjoyed it. Though sadly my foci in what I want to write about is a bit, disliked to potential legal ramifications that can happen by CaD happy lawyers for the nature of what music brings up in its lyrics, or its theme. Such as this, as a song between chrysalis and her son. or this, which covers a soldier, now commander's battalion, and the act that follows when he brings his one truth. Even a nobles twisting tale, A final charge of knighthood into celestia's ranks. Or an opposed duet between a changeling and celestia.
All these are just from a right mood, but due to rules it is an all or nothing. I have to replace the lyrics, and yet, it loses so much if its done that way. The spirit perhaps remains, but the emotion does not. But thank you for a lovely, well written post. Doubled with a nice ending image for the many that may skip to the end.
This. So much. You have no idea how much I agree with this post, BP.
Trufax
D'awww
"Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." –Kurt Vonnegut
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See, I had originally worked that quote in, but then I came to see it as being more about not letting too many cooks into the proverbial kitchen, which was kind of a stretch to link to my topic, even if they are similarly worded.
I largely agree with a number of 2781778 's supporting pillars, but I'm probably going to end up at a slightly different outcome.
There are people who, when told "write for yourself", will interpret that to mean "I should act as selfishly as possible." (I do not believe that people who advise others to "write for yourself" actually intend this interpretation when they offer this advice. It's well-intentioned but poorly-worded advice. But let's stick a pin in that.) While tautologies are always bad (lol), it's pretty much always a bad idea to write selfishly as an author. "I don't care about fixing my grammar! Who cares if you think this shipping pair has no supporting evidence beyond author fiat? Screw you, you don't get to tell me that 12 sequels about my OC alicorn is too many!" Yes, the author may be happy for a time, but this happiness is fleeting and borne from ignorance. At some point, the author's standards will rise, or the lack of reader engagement will bother them, or they will understand in hindsight what they originally scorned. The author then finds themselves floundering: "I used to just write for the lulz... What should I write for, now?"
Which brings me back to my earlier point. I doubt that people who advise "write for yourself" truly wish for the aspiring author to go down that path, outlined above. What I suspect is intended, though it is not nearly as catchy, is "accomplish that which you wish to gain from writing." The huge disconnect with saying "write for yourself" is that, in order to accomplish "that which you wish to gain from writing", you need to figure out what "that" is! This aspect of being a writer is generally glossed over or omitted altogether, but it's so very crucial.
Some people want to connect with readers on a deep level, and have a lot of intellectual engagement. Some people want to just write down any silly idea that comes to mind. If you're expecting the former, but acting upon the latter, you're going to have a bad time.
Some people want to have a ton of readers who will read their intellectually-stimulating writing. Some people write FB-tier clop in order to amass tons of followers. If you act upon the latter, and then hope that your legion of follower will dig into your library and do the former, you're going to have a bad time.
On a couple of my fics, I've gotten feedback along the lines of "this accomplished what it set out to do." At the time, I originally thought that feedback like this was sort of hollow. Sort of like "it's nice, but I'm not engaged, and I can't think of anything meaningful to discuss." And in some cases that might still be true. But in some ways, I wonder if perhaps that is the most important thing, in an enlightened sense. Speaking personally, I have set out to do very different things with each of my stories. Some have been love letters to other franchises that I crossed over with. (Pluralization intentional. Please look forward to it.) Some have sought to be gut-wrenching. Some to make you smile. Some to make you bury your face in your hands, blaming me like there's no tomorrow. And personally, I feel like I'm really in tune with that. I've discarded draft after draft of Thesis because, on that fic, it's extremely important to me that I set the proper emotions, motivations, encounters, and reactions. While I've repeatedly considered it, I'm simply not willing to give anything less than my best. Meanwhile, this new project I'm working on, I'm just cackling maniacally the entire time, and beyond a quick editor pass, I have no interest or desire in writing fourteen drafts. It'll accomplish what I set out to do.
And that's the key, I think: that my expectations match the fic. If I went full OCD on my silly fics, I'd just wind up frustrating myself over nothing. If I gave less than my best on Thesis, I'd only have myself to blame for its failings. As it stands now, I'm able to look at two fics that get completely different fan reactions (viewcount and such) and be able to consider them both to be successes in their own rights. I might wish them higher success, because who wouldn't? But I feel satisfied in their current successes. This is what I believe it means, to "write for yourself".
I think the folks who I most-often hear say "write for yourself"--the literary folks--don't write for themselves at all.
People are natural storytellers. Any child of six can tell a story, and that story will be about someone who has some problem, or accomplishes something. That is, it will have a protagonist and a very basic plot.
But the distinguishing feature of literary fiction is that it often has no plot. Sometimes it does, but it will be a subtle plot, maybe something about someone who doesn't really know what she wants, or about something that happened in the past, or in which society or life or the protagonist herself is the obstacle. Some of these are fine stories, but they aren't the kind of stories people tell themselves at night lying in bed. They are so carefully-tailored to the demands of the literary market, so obviously descended from Joyce and Updike, that I just don't believe any of these people write for themselves.