Interesting podcast episode - no rules to writing

Actually I think my analogy of writing as a swimming pool with a shallow and a deep end is pretty useful.* People like to separate genre and literary writing as if they're completely disconnected, but that's not true. Really it's a spectrum, with subservience to genre conventions at one end and near-complete freedom from them at the other. But before you leap into the deep end you should know how to swim pretty darn well. Some people seem to have absorbed this along with grade-school grammar and spelling, or from reading a lot. Their brains are wired differently, they can absorb the basics without needing to study. If you're one of them you already know it and nothing I or anyone else says here applies to you. But of course you won't find them hanging out on a writing forum dedicated to learning craft and skills. The natural writers (AKA geniuses) were getting published when the rest of us were learning how to flip burgers or deliver newspapers.

* Actually let me change that to a lake or an ocean, where you begin by splashing around in the shallows close to shore before you roam out into the deep.

 

One more thing I feel is important to say. When you get advice here from people on the message board, much of it comes from books they've read or videos they've watched about writing craft. But you're getting the super-condensed version, whatever they can remember of it, distorted in various ways, and boiled down to what they're willing to type up right here and now.

Books are written by people (usually, or hopefully anyway) who know what they're talking about, have many years of experience at it, and have the time to really write it up in full, since they're being paid a good working salary. It's their job, they do it full time, and they spend many months if not years (with the help of their editors) putting it together and fixing the mistakes (I suppose this applies more to books written 10 or 15 years ago and before—much of this doesn't seem to apply to newer books).

But of course there are advantages to focused comments on a message board as well. For one it's personal attention to the specifics of what you've written, which you can't get from a book or a video. Both are extremely helpful. But I would try to balance the load so you're getting some of both.

 

@Xoic I disagree with so very many of your beliefs about genre and literary fiction. Please don’t take that personally though, as I disagreed with several other members’ comments in your How are genre fiction and literature different? thread. In fact, I imagine I would have few, if any, co-signers on my positions on this stuff.

I will say this though: I’m grateful you’ve voiced your beliefs on this subject, because it’s caused me to form a much more thorough understanding of my own beliefs and intuitions. So, thank you. Even though you’re wrong.

 

Haha, yeah, I think we disagree on many things, probably aside from writing as well. And yet we do end up having some fascinating discussions.

I do understand that my ideas are very specific, and will work only for people who are wired like me. But then, younger me disagreed very strongly with now-me on all these points. And yeah, the discussion is important, whether we all agree or not (which we never will).

And future-me will probably wonder what the hell was wrong with present-me.

I also want to say that my ideas are constantly evolving on these topics. I've changed my stance in several ways since a few months ago, and it's because of discussions like this one.

Also I may be on the complete wrong side of Dunning/Kruger when it comes to LitFic. In fact I'm sure I am, I just can't see how.

 

Just looked up the Dunning Kruger Effect, just to refresh on our terms and it comes with a very handy graph. If you look closely, really close, no, closer still, there, you can just about make me out, see, on the crest of Mt Stupid, I'm waving. Now, how do I get down from here?

To be clear, I absolutely agree that writing well is a craft, that there is enormous learning needed and growth comes with an introspective analysis of output and reaction of others to same. It is a process and, as such, the process is just as important, if not more so, than the outcome. There is a way that I can learn to write well that will be meaningful to me and ways that are vacuous. I'd prefer to not have it than pretend by writing someone else's stories.

The merits of method books should always be held in suspicion and there are at least as many happy to relieve your wallet as deliver useful instruction. And I'd also disagree with the suggestion that those who make it wouldn't hang around a writing forum. But, as mentioned above, disagreement is healthy and does pose questions whose answers help us along.

 

Is emulation even possible without learning that, though (assuming you're emulating what you consider good)? Or the reverse: is learning how to write well possible without emulation?

I think would be pretty hard to write novels that don't have personal meaning infused, or it would at least demand a much greater work ethic.

 

That isn't really what I said. I was talking specifically about the geniuses, the ones who don't need to study but just innately know how to write. Sure some of them might hang around, but they don't do it to learn how to write.

And if you understood what it means to learn the craft of writing you wouldn't say things like "Writing someone else's stories." If that's the kind of advice you run across you've found some bad books. It's also funny that you seem happy to take that same advice secondhand from people on the forum.

But this discussion could go on endlessly (and has for too long). We're not talking about the same things and I don't think we see things the same way at all.

In fact I think I need to stop taking part in these discussions about theory and craft. I need to be making art. I just was feeling the squeeze since I slowed down on posting to my blog—I felt the need to contact human beings in some way, and this forum is still the main outlet for that.

 

It is. I'd suggest there's an analogy in speech. We don't learn to speak - persuasively, or publicly - by consciously impersonating effective speakers. We often absorb some mannerisms or turns of phrase from them (politicians and TV presenters or whoever), but that's unconscious and eclectic.
It's possible to learn to write well just by:- learning to speak, gaining literacy in school, reading, and practicing writing. The reading and the practice needn't be anything to do with what we ultimately want to write - in fact it's better if it isn't. Reading the news and writing graffiti underneath it (or whatever else comes naturally) is better for the brain's creative apparatus than reading horror 'best of' anthologies before embarking on a horror story.

I don't agree that writing is a craft - it resembles a craft, and many authors make a craft of it - but it doesn't have the (implicit) purpose of creating objects with a function
Books aren't objects created to impart meaning - they are meaning
And with crafts passive products are made by an active craftsperson - but with stories it's that culture tells them using an author
I don't think genius is innate - that's almost the opposite of what it means. There isn't some deal that Dionysus comes down and blesses unblemished overachievers with optimal brain-development chromosomes
As soon as readers start thinking that way - getting above ourselves - we can be sure an illiterate, or self-taught, or insane author - or even a fast-food chef - will arrive out of nowhere and overturn everything

 

This is such an interesting discussion. I read quite a few posts and was thinking about what I might add to the conversation, and then I realized there was yet another page of comments to read

I agree with some points made, and disagree with others. And that's fine; I think writing is a very personal thing, and I won't presume to know what might be the best way for someone who is not me to pursue it (to whatever end).
Craft, theory, structure, and measured against what? Academic orthodoxy, peer/contemporary approval, or the preferences of our audiences, the readers? I'll always write for the readers.

Don't presume to know what they want. Know what you like to read yourself as a reader, and try to write that.
That's what I've been doing, anyway. I don't know if that's going to work for me, or for anyone else. It's just a basic idea, and maybe I am a basic bitch

 

Possible, I'll grant.

I agree that creativity shouldn't be derived too far down the chain—that's what a lot of writers do these days and the work generally suffers, but that's a slightly different topic; I was referring to composition & structure. Yes, composition involves creativity, but not that kind of creativity.

Fiction writers use numerous tools that would convergently evolve anyway. The aspiring writer is merely saving himself time by studying them. He is standing on hefty shoulders and progressing the craft even further than if he started at the pre-wheel era.

One-half is missing there. My grocery list may have a lot of meaning imparted, but none comes back out if I can't read the handwriting. The audience is always a factor in the work's value, even if the audience is one person. That's the painful concession that our illiterate or self-taught author will have to make.

 

The audience are insane and illiterate at the same time! Look at how they've dumped the novel for those 256-character things that always come with a picture of someone's dinner-plate.

I don't find that authors stand on each others' shoulders - even when they directly adapt an idea it ends up being more different than similar. Evidence though... if we could stand on each other's shoulders, with the ease of acrobats, given sufficient training and practice - we'd be able pick up unfinished book series from the past and seamlessly carry them on. The reason that's rare surely isn't that the style changes superficially and it irritates people - it's that if a series' author changes, that changes everything. Because the new author can't really stand on the previous one's shoulders in any sense that matters.

 

1. If our hypothetical aspiring author does indeed write for chronic Twitterers, then his content should be presented accordingly. Haha, he might have to put a meal pic every other page. At any rate, he's probably not writing for the people who don't read books. It is pretty sad how illiterate the majority seems to be these days in both maths and writing. (For maths I usually hear: "I never use this stuff in day-to-day life!" and "Umm, how do I scale up this recipe?" from the same person).

2. I don't personally see that as evidence. Shamefully, I'll reach into music for analogy: could learning how to play Smoke on the Water allow you to continue Deep Purple's career? No. Have they advanced music in general? Yes. Aspiring musicians either study them or the people that studied them.

2.5: I appreciate your reverence for the artistic aspect of writing. That's a good fire in the belly to have.

 

Great podcast, IronWriter, thanks for the link. Some of her other podcasts look interesting as well, I'll be spending some time listening to them.

 

I write not thinking about rules, not that there are not any of importance, but trust that what rules I have learned, in class and with reading a lot, and then already writing for a long while, is already in me and the practice allows the creativity that needs to be expressed out more feeely.

 

I just found this thread and bogged down at splitting infinitives. Dangerous. Very dangerous. One could split a single infinitive and start a chain reaction that explodes into mushroom shaped clouds of dangling participles and double negatives. Then what?

 

I would say don't start with weather, unless it is some how relevant to the scene.
It was a dark and stormy night, is relevant if what follows is a character running through the pouring rain. Trying to hide in the deeper darkness of doorways. Listening to the splashing steps of those in pursuit.

 

Ooooo. Deep. (Much snapping of fingers throughout the soiree.)

 

Do tell Mr. Oppenheimer