As someone who mainly writes stories that I personally want to see even if I don't plan to share them. Indulging yourself on ideas you want to write can be good, but (nearly) anything can be good in moderation. That's the key word, 'moderation' If you find an idea you like, write it, or at least take notes on it. Try to find a balance between what you 'want' to happen and what 'should' happen and chances are you'll find at least someone else who likes it. As an example, I had a novel idea that I wanted to write that combined two different ideas and got burnt out by the third chapter. After a LONG time away, I decided to tackle it again. I found out that both ideas were much better as their own unique stories. So that's what I did, the two ideas kind of split off into their own thing and fared much better from it.
Years ago, I read all the installments in the Outlander series. I remember one chapter in particular (I can't remember which book) entitled "A Trip Through the Heart" or something like that. In it, Diana Gabaldon imagined a trip through the human heart, atria and ventricles. A nice piece of florid writing, but it had nothing to do with the story. And I remember thinking at the time, that was a very self-indulgent piece of writing. If it serves only the writer and not the story, it is self-indulgent.
Oh, I don't know. As a reader I could take a lot out of both of those. It's when the character goes on from the cat-baptising anecdote to other tales about how cute her cat is (because all cats are cute, right?), when the point is that the character has done imaginative but dumb things from childhood--- that's where it gets self-indulgent. If it's important to the story, a good writer will make the reader get it.
If there is no self-indulgence you’re probably doing it wrong. If you want to write generic stories, that’s another matter.
I mean, the thing about stories is that the content is actually less important than the way it's written. A lot of great writers can write even apparently unrelated asides and segues and make them good. Writing is fundamentally an act of self-indulgence in the first place, so the only question that matters is whether you're good or not. Imagine something more self-indulgent than writing poetry. It's impossible. That's the most self-indulgent thing on the planet. Fiction is slightly more sensible, but not by very much. Edit: ah, I see my point has already been made
It seems to me self-indulgence is often integral to great literature. Think about great writers known for their distinctive style or the distinctive structure of their work--what is that, but self-indulgence when the stories they wrote could have been told in a more generic fashion? Sometimes the deviation from the norm is subtle, sometimes quite pronounced. If you want to have a unique voice, you're going to have to engage in self-indulgence. Much of the advice in books on writing, and indeed feedback from other readers, seems bent on driving writers to the most generic, interchangeable output possible. I suppose it is not a surprise or even unique to literature, given the increasing commodification of art over the decades. You don't have to be interchangeable with the next writer, though. You can develop a distinctive voice, stake out territory in unusual structures--it just takes some self-indulgence. I believe if you write for yourself, following your own vision for your art, and do it well, there will be an audience for you.
Developing you own unique voice is not what is usually meant by self-indulgence. Self-indulgent writing is anything that doesn't serve the story. Self-indulgent writing is made up of all the darlings that the writer is always told to kill. You might like the stuff as a writer, but a good writer writes for the reader, not the writer. Self-indulgence is poor editing. The old advice: The first draft is for the writer. The second draft is for the reader. Read more (including the 7 signs of self-indulgent writing) at How to Spot and Avoid Self-Indulgent Writing
"Anything that doesn't serve the story" is so vague as to be meaningless. Consider certain works by Joyce or Woolf. Was what they were doing, pushing the bounds of modernist literature, 'serving the story?' Arguably, they could have told the same story using conventional writing, so in not doing so they departed from merely serving the story. Alternatively, you can define the 'story' broadly enough to say their chosen style serves it. Did Melville's whaling chapters serve the story? You can eliminate them without affecting the story per se. Does non-standard punctuation around dialogue by Faulkner, McCarthy, etc. serve the story? You'd have to define things fairly broadly to say that it does. The list at the link is a poor one, in my view. Length? We could create an entire thread on novels, especially classics but not limited to those, where the same story could be told with large chunks of the books hacked out. Same goes for POV (including what is said about teacher's pet characters). But the wordiness of the author is part of the voice and style and makes the work unique. Unnecessary philosophy? The Brothers Karamazov? World-building that doesn't move plot? Tolkien is the most obvious example, but if you read a lot of fantasy (and to a lesser degree SF) you'll see this. It's often what readers of those genres greatly enjoy. Agreed on the last two points: 1) Poor plot twists are bad writing. 2) If what you write isn't effective (i.e. it doesn't work) then there's a problem. That should be the guiding star. All of the above things called 'self-indulgent' can and have been done well. I realize a lot of modern writers like the sort of advice presented in articles like that, and there's nothing wrong with that if it contributes to the type of work you want to create, but is extremely poor advice insofar as it is meant to be prescriptive for writers generally. The tests provided are bollocks, imo.
People on this thread seem to be using very different understandings of the term self-indulgent. Here are the bullet points from that K M Weiland blog post @Louanne Learning linked to just above: The first draft is for the writer. The second draft is for the reader. The Two Major Problems With Self-Indulgent Writing: 1. Your Story Won’t Live Up to Its Potential 2. You’re Being Disrespectful to Readers 7 Signs of Self-Indulgent Writing: 1. Extra Length 2. Extra POVs 3. Unnecessary Philosophical Discussions 4. Worldbuilding That Doesn’t Move the Plot 5. “Teacher’s Pet” Characters 6. Experiments That Don’t Work 7. Jerking Readers Around With Poor Plot Twists And this needs to be posted here as well: There’s only one rule in writing: Follow all the rules—unless you can break them brilliantly. Then break them. What a lot of people here are calling self-indulgent is what I would call being true to yourself, which is a very different thing. The term self-indulgent carries a strong negative connotation, but many people are using it as a positive.
We will have to agree to disagree on that article. For reasons stated above, among others, I don't find it compelling or even good advice on the whole.
She's talking about length that doesn't contribute to the character's arc or to the story in an important way. Quoted from the blog post: "But there’s a huge difference between books that need to be long and books that do not. Most books do not." She definitely isn't talking about just pruning everything down mercilessly for the sake of minimalism, but about removing extra length that's extraneous to the soul of the story. I haven't read it, but I'm somewhat familiar with it. I would assume from what I've heard that the philosophy is intrinsic to the story, and in fact is the main point of it. Therefore it wouldn't qualify as unnecessary—quite the opposite. She didn't say not to include any philosophy at all. I'd say the same about Moby Dick, which many people consider unforgiveably self-indulgent because of the lengthy asides into the accoutrements and lifestyle of the whaling industry. Personally I think they're absolutely the soul of the story, or at least contribute significantly to it.
At the risk of further diffusing the term, my personal least favorite author indulgence is showing off your research. Jean Auel comes to mind. I liked the Earth's Children books, but every so often my reaction is; "we get it, you did research, move on!" On the other hand in Sarum, the author can go on and on to explain the geology of a particular spot and I'm quite content. Maybe because the Michener-esque size of the physical book and the fact it's subtitled The Novel of England prepared me for it? Bill Bryson can work in the tragic history of the American Chestnut tree in a story about a hike and I love it. Reinforcing the idea that it depends on how you weave it in, and that one readers "self indulgent" is another's "interesting perspective".
Yes, but I think this gets to my point about how you define the 'story,' when it comes to an individual work. I feel what it will ultimately come down to is self-indulgences that one likes are viewed as integral to (or at least contributing to) the story whereas self-indulgences one does not like are not. It's so subjective that is isn't very helpful in terms of prescriptive writing advice.
I read the unexpurgated version of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, and I thought certain parts of it were extremely self-indulgent on the author's part. In particular the very lengthy philosophy contributed by Jubal Harshaw, and also the insertion of long asides about the benefits of nudism and communal group sex. I believe these were the parts edited out by the publisher in the original print run. They were restored many years later from the original manuscript, making the story extremely long and to me much of it felt self-indulgent. My bet is that the edited version is not only tighter, but much better. Like all those deleted scenes you see in DVDs, where they say it didn't contribute to the story in any meaningful way, so it had to go. Can you define it more precisely? At the very least I'd say she's on the right track, and that it would be extremely difficult to explain it any better. Some things in the arts come down to a matter of taste and hard-to-define judgment. Often the best we can do is to 'dance about architecture' as the saying goes, because we just can't pin down art and define it in a prescriptive way. You have to play some things by feel, and articles like this one go a long way toward helping beginning writers develop that feel. It seems to me the difference is that you want writing advice to be prescriptive and precise, and I don't think it can be, at least in certain murky areas like this one. I'm thinking it's the lawyer in you that wants precision and iron-clad wording (arent you a lawyer, or in some way associated with the legal system?)
I expect that there's a lot of difference over this question. I'm not really into genre fiction for this reason.
