Being a Better Writer: The Heavy Hand of the Writer · 4:33pm Apr 18th, 2017
So … I picked that title because it looked and read better than my other alternatives. One of which was “The Heavy Hand of Whatever” which really didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Another was the several knit-together topics that this post was to cover … which would leave you, readers, with a giant string to look at. Then the last was a giant string (______) in place of “the Writer.”
Oh, right, before I dive into things don’t forget: April 19th is a one day sale of all my works in honor of my birthday! That is one day away! Or possibly less … or maybe even in the past, depending on when you read this post. Hopefully you read it in time. Part of the goal I’m going for is for everyone who’s enjoyed one of my books to share their favorite somehow while the sale is on, so get ready! You can check this post for a quick reminder of all the sales. Got it? Good!
So, back to the mysterious topic at hand. This is one of those posts that was actually inspired by a book that I’m currently forcing my way through. Yes, forcing … It’s not a very good book. But, since what’s causing me to not enjoy it is an easily identifiable flaw, or rather a series of them … My mind immediately turned to this blog and started putting together a blog post. A blog post I knew would be written late, since I had work today, and I have family visiting tomorrow.
So … here’s the biggest problem with this book I’m trying to shove through (which, if you’re wondering where it came from, originated at my local library as my random pick of “Let’s try this”). Okay, second biggest problem next to its plot being ripped off pretty much wholesale from any generic book or film that has a Skynet plot. And this problem is … Crud, I barely know where to start. Technically, it’s a lot of problems all wrapped up under one giant umbrella, each one feeding off of one another to create a morass of issues. But at it’s core?
The book is extremely heavy-handed in it’s approach to, well, everything from the plot to the theme.
Let your hands carry you on to Unusual Things for the rest of this post!
That book sounds like it belongs on the school reading list.
Seriously, the school system seems to have a fetish for heavy handed books that seem to want to do nothing more than to beat you into submission with an overly simplistic idea, and I think it's probably a big part of why so many people get turned off from reading.
Heavy-handed comedy is my least favorite, yet in my (somewhat limited) experience, it is the most preferred.
One time, even, I submitted one of my stories to EqD (I know you just love them), and it was sent back twice, seemingly mostly because I didn't go and spell out all the jokes (resulting in this fiasco).
On another note, here seems to be the most reasonable place to say that I've recently read or skimmed through every one of the BaBW posts on Unusual Things (2+ years of content... there were some nearly duplicate topics). Something I don't think you had covered is the proper and improper use of references to other works. I know the ones you can find in works here can be quite painful to read sometimes.
I'm always enheartened by seeing terrible published books like the one you mention.
Because if something like that junk can find its way onto a library shelf, then the one I'm working on should be no problem! ^.^
(Yes, I know, there are greater ambitions than simply being published... I'm saving my more ambitious books for the 2nd and 3rd ones.)
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I could certainly see if being a byproduct of that same system.
And yeah, the American school system does, IMO, a lot of harm to the subject of reading.
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Duplicate topics were something that I heavily tried to avoid for the first two and half years of doing BaBW, but after that, I realized that I did have plenty of newcomers coming in all the time who maybe hadn't reread everything, and at the same time, after several years it wouldn't hurt to come up with a completely different explanation of a subject for those who weren't quite as taken by the first explanation. So I'm less reluctant to cover topics once more, or at least touch on them, than I once was.
On that note, references would be a good one to handle. I can write some on that, given my penchant for slipping references into everything I write. It's been added to the list.
EDIT: And yes, EQD isn't worth the bother. They're pretty poor, and tend to circlejerk hard.
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I'm of two minds. The first is "Man, stuff like this gets published and manages to hold three stars worth of reviews? I definitely can surpass that" (and I have)! But I'm also reminded of it whenever someone scoffs at anyone who's indie and dismisses them as "not good enough to get with a "real" publisher, because it shows they either A) don't read much or B) don't read a decent variety, because publishers publish a lot of very poor books along with the good ones.
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Well, they're good for 1000 views or so, if you make it in.
I'll usually submit my stories if they match the criteria close enough -- though I won't make any major edits on their behalf. But if the story already matches what they like well enough, why not grab the free advertising?
If your story is good enough to make it in, you're probably already getting around 3000-5000 views from Fimfic alone, but the extra thousand is still nice.
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I'm going to chalk this up the the fact that I looked at all of them over little more than two days. Most of the duplicate topics in the first half of the collection were different by name, and often explained from a slightly different angle, which is good for the purposes you just stated. Usually, I had just found them somewhat redundant because I'd read the other post(s) on the same subject less than an hour prior.
How could one not read everything?
I jest. You can blame one Bugsydor for pointing out that I had not managed to absorb all of Fimfiction's good writing advice just yet.
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Speaking of EqD and Bugsydor (I'm sure he'll forgive me for talking about him this much someday): everything he's submitted, to my knowledge, has been accepted with little hassle, even if not the first time every time. Only one story actually has over 1000 views. Of the two I've submitted, both being more widely and well received at the time on Fimfiction than his had been, both were shot down, and not because I can't write. My best guess is that his style of writing fits their views better than mine, which I suppose ends up tying into what you said:
I did post the entirety of one of the submissions/related message chains in the blog post that I linked to in my first comment here, if you're curious enough to take a look.
4501167 Yeah, it's really sad how bad it is. I know at least one person who read for fun before mandatory high school reading turned him off to books in general, and there's no way to know how many people could have developed a love of reading if the system wasn't so terrible.
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To be frank, I doubt it helps any. While I can only speak for myself, I know that whenever I see a story with something like "featured on EQD" in the description I usually ignore it based on my experience with the garbage they approve and the gems they reject. You might be able to cheat it up by not doing anything on fimfic to acknowledge the feature, but EQD's reputation is so bad at this point that you have to consider how people here will react to that as well.
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I teach a physics class for education majors. Every single one of them hates reading. They felt like being assigned a novel to read was a punishment, and they looked forward to getting revenge by assigning terrible books when they became teachers.
Not kidding
On the subject of EQD, I've got one EQD-featured story with less than 400 total views. I've got hugely popular (well... for me) stories that were turned down with no comment.
And on the subject of this article, well, I frequently end up with readers commenting that they're lost. I tend to err on the side of subtlety, but... like, not even subtle things. I don't know whether to say that I don't know my audience, or say that no matter which side you err on, some people won't get it and others will say it's heavy-handed.
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Is their reputation that bad? I'd like to think that most readers see their approval as at least some kind of quality baseline. Their tastes may be odd at times, but you know a story that's on EqD will at least not be some terribly amateurish hack-job that can't even get basic grammar right.
Well, at any rate, Fimfic tracks the outside pages that link to the story -- you can directly see how many referrals you get from EqD. It's impossible to tell how many readers you may gain or lose from a 'Featured on EqD' message, but you can see how many readers EqD has sent to your story directly ... which I usually find to be about 1000 or so.
Thanks for the reminder to avoid the trope of assuming that All Viewers Are Morons. I feel a lot better about the level of foreshadowing I'm doing in Desert Spice now.
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O, how we love to drag each others' names through the muck. One day, one of us is going to die from embarrassment at the hands of the other.
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Ugh. The only assigned reading I ever enjoyed was the abridged version of Les Miserables, and I've had an undying love of reading ever since my seventh-grade English teacher introduced me to her collection of dragon books. Why do they insist we read such things as Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye? Those books may have been revolutionary in their day, but their relevance has passed.
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As for the usefulness of EqD features:
I can confirm that getting posted there does generate significant additional traffic. I had a fic recently, namely Ember, Hoardsmelter, that was part of the Imposing Sovereigns contest. When it finally appeared on EqD, it experienced a surge of views comparable in size to (though definitely smaller than) its initial posting to Fimfiction and inclusion in the Imposing Sovereigns group. It was this surge that made it my story with the highest number of likes.
Said surge of viewers didn't leave any useful or interesting comments, but they did at least seem to like the story.
4501615 While they do guarantee a level of mechanical correctness, basic mechanics are rarely a serious problem and those stories almost always have obvious mechanical errors in the descriptions so I have no trouble avoiding the worst of it (that and the occasional typo is an inescapable part of fan fiction). The problem is that they have a bad habit of failing stories on having things like plots, characters, world building, and other essential components of an actual story which means most of what they do feature is soulless drivel that isn't worth the server space it resides on, let alone the time it takes to read it. I have still tried a number of their approved stories when the description sounds interesting, but my experience has been that they almost universally completely fail to deliver anything of substance. On top of that, there are a huge number of good stories I have followed which were rejected for some fantastically stupid reasons (the best example is probably a Lord of the Rings crossover that was rejected for emulating Tolkien's writing style), so at this point I actively avoid EQD featured stories since my experience has been that they consistently feature garbage and reject good stuff.
4501643 Based on the way you wrote that, it sounds like you functionally gamed the timing by posting it here first and letting it get the bulk of the views it was going to get before it went up on EQD so people here couldn't avoid it based on that feature.
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The quality of stories on EQD depends a lot on the genre and the prereader. True, most of the stories I've clicked on from EQD were pretty bad... but so were most of the stories I've clicked on from Present Perfect's recommendations, or Titanium Dragon's. Or the feature box. Seattle's Angels have a somewhat better record for me, but that may be due to the multiple reviews of each one before I even get to the click.
I will say that Lilies of the Field, my least-viewed story, the story into which I've put the most work, and the one that is personally most important to me... was improved vastly when my EQD prereader went through it in detail with me to discuss themes, characterization, and those other things that D48 mentioned. That gdoc has more words in comments than it does in the story. If for no other reason than that one single prereader and the huge amount of work he put in to help me get the story into a shape I could be proud of, I will still have some respect for EQD and their process, even if some of their prereaders approve junk.
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Present Perfect is one of EQD's core pre-readers, though, and quite a few of the other pre-readers are his personal friends. So that does tie that together.