Does anyone else sometimes feel that writing is distinct from most other artistic pursuits or mediums? I know one should write for one's self, and this is what I've always done since I've never published anything--I write primarily for two friends and for myself--but compared with, say, art or music it's much more difficult to attain an audience. Outside of writing forums, not many people are willing to take the time to read a stranger's story. From my experience most people I've met don't even read recreationally. I have to admit sometimes I lose the joy of writing when I put so much effort into a story and it's read by maybe a handful of people. Art posted online in various hubs gets much more exposure. So does music in places like Youtube. It's almost as if, to me, writing requires an insane amount of patience and determination until the moment of highest exposure. Even then that's probably not going to be much at all. In order to get anywhere, writers have to be published. Not that the others don't require great skill and determination, but those are at least more palatable to people and they have much wider platforms that don't require serious investment. I do other hobbies as well sometimes and I once got about 130 views on a single sculpture I made in a day. That's more than any of my stories have ever gotten. I'm not looking for pity, of course, rather your thoughts on writing compared with other hobbies and your perception of the craft in terms of exposure, difficulty, etc.
Interesting post. Yes, this is true. It probably ties in with your comment below. Take what you can from the people that do read your stuff. Maybe try and find a critique group, locally or on line. And as you've said - write for yourself. It's so sad, isn't it? I've always been an avid reader. Lots of my friends were. But in those days there was far less choice of entertainment. Have people got lazy? Perhaps it's overwhelm? Comparatively speaking, maybe reading takes more effort than other forms of entertainment these days? Or more time? Or is it not 'interactive' enough? I'm not sure of the reasons. To me, a good book beats anything else, and is nearly always better than a film version.. Please don't. Sometimes, how many people read your work boils down to how good you are at marketing/advertising, or how much money you have to spend on these things. Don't base the worth of your writing on how many people you get to read it. Base it's worth on how good it is.
Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. I've heard that reading has never been more popular, but I'm not sure how that can be true. Maybe certain genres have large audiences, but I don't think it's a priority for people to read the classics or generally any fiction or non-fiction that takes a bit more of an effort. I was once in the company of someone who scoffed at a poster advertising creative writing lessons. Recently a colleague of mine admitted that he finds it difficult to read a book that's more than 100 pages. I don't know, I suppose there is just too much choice nowadays, too many flashy and seductive games and films and tv shows. The problem with me is that I write fairly niche fiction and I'm not the most outspoken of people, so I feel like I'm always on the first step of the staircase. Edit: I'm obliged to say I used to live near the New Forest. Lovely place.
I would sugest the main difrence in the arts is the medium . There are some advantages to writing . It is cheep . You can write almost anywhere at any time . Writers are largely someone that prefers working alone . To be successfully published in not every writers ambition , but it is a good thing to strive towards . Ambition if the motivation of self improvement and growth. Most would be writers ,reman would be writers . But it is good way to pass the time ,trying to be better than you are now.
That's all true, however I was just now thinking about the fact that writers are also deprived of an easy mode of sharing their work. We don't really have hubs where people can find us easily. We don't have "subscribers" or "patrons" that follow us, nor can we grow from word of mouth and random online searches. We aren't visually out there like other types of "creatives". I get the feeling that I may sound a little like I'm placing too much stock in popularity, but that's certainly not the case. Imagine a place like Artstation but for writers, a sort of centralised hub where we can build a profile of ourselves and have people easily see and appreciate our work.
Well part of the problem is that the written word has been largely eroded as entertainment, first by movies and TV, then by the triple assault of the internet, video games and cell phones. The heyday of story (not as the core of other entertainment I mean) was probably what's known as the golden age of the magazine. Plus I've heard there's a lot less emphasis in many schools now on reading skills, apparently they've accepted that textspeak is the new norm and people don't need to learn actual grammar and spelling etc. I don't know how accurate that is though. Reading takes a lot more effort from the audience than listening or watching passively, and isn 't as interactive and engaging as playing video games or surfing the net or interacting on a phone. I think most kids see it as old fashioned, part of a dying paradigm. So in a way, writing stories (unless it's for movies, TV or other types of modern entertainment) is largely seen as a passe occupation. But of course, effective writing is the basis of movies, TV, video games, and even the lyrics of songs. So it does remain a foundational skill that's necessary in creating all the flashier and more interactive entertainment. Maybe the end users themselves don't know or care that writers were involved, and don't appreciate the skills involved, but the creatives themselves do know that.
I agree. Your last point about the skill involved reminds me of something I've been considering for a while. The idea that good writing is harder to understand and appreciate than good animation, art or music (although this one is strangely more subjective). What I mean by this is that animation, for example, is instantly recognisable as good or bad. It works on mechanics alone. People will instantly be able to recognise if the physics of a character is incorrect. It's innate. Although art--traditional or digital--is more subjective it's still got fundamentals and people can appreciate it on many levels for what it is. An old master painting can receive praise as well as something of "lesser" quality because it's still immediately impactful. With writing it's nowhere near as simple as any of this. And I don't just mean on a surface level. Even when people critique a work of fiction or non-fiction, this is highly dependant on the experience and, dare I say it, the intelligence of the reader in question. A story might be incredible, but it's entirely up to the reader to understand it. They have to put in the work. So, if someone critiques a work of fiction and tells the author that they've done something wrong, the author may then tell them that, actually, if they simply read it again there's no problem at all. There are so many ways whereby writing can be misconstrued. It really comes down to the sentiment that one doesn't know what they don't know. For example, I love classical music, but only after listening to classical musicians talk about their music did I realise I have almost no idea what I should be looking for. What I'm trying to say is, harsh as it may sound, it's probably very difficult for most people to understand that Harry Potter might not be as good as Chekhov. And as I said before, even writers themselves judging another writer's work may get it wrong. I think this is simply because reading is internal and it's all on the reader. Someone could read a story and absolutely hate it, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It might mean they didn't put enough effort into it or didn't understand some of the references. Some of what I've said is probably contradictory in some way. I'm just rambling now, aren't I?
I think you just have a much deeper appreciation and understanding of how story works than how these other art forms work. I see what you're saying about the other media, but I don't really agree. Animation for example. The physics don't need to be realistic or even believable. Really engaging animation uses a lot of squash and stretch and certain other principles that aren't really 'realistic', but you could still say that there's good animation and bad animation and you'd be right. But then why is it that good animation, outside of the mega-expensive blockbuster movies, is pretty much dead, and yet deliberately bad animation seems to be the rage across television with all the 'sick and twisted' type work that started with things like Ren and Stimpy and Beavis & Butthead etc? Have you seen what's passing as animation on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon? One of them has a program called Adult Swim that seems dedicated to horribly bad animation as a hip, cool thing with every other aspect of good craft also being deliberately flouted. But this, along with what you said about Harry Potter and Chekov, really falls under the umbrella of changing tastes. Quality in entertainment seems to be something that moves into and out of favor at times. Of course part of that comes down to this weird fetish people have with 'deconstructing' the classics and the traditional in today's postmodern world (or whatever it is now, apparently postmodernism is over and something else has taken its place). What many of us understand, but doesn't seem to matter, is that the Classical (such as good solid story structure) is universal and timeless. The surface trappings of it change as we progress through decades and centuries, but the Modern, the New that defines itself by flouting the Classical or Traditional, is a fleeting fancy, a passing fad that must keep mutating as fast as it can because the whole idea is built on the concept that what's old-fashioned is somehow passe and needs to be gotten over now in our hip cool new age. This is because we move as a society through classical and decadent phases and currently we seem to be into the decadent, the erosion of those things that make a society strong and flourishing. This attitude by the way has always been with us. It sometimes rises into prominence and sometimes falls back and the classical emphasis on quality and structure comes back into focus. It's a cycling back and forth between the depths and the flashy surface. This seems to be at least a big part of what this thread is about. I think there's a lot wrapped up in it, and I think it would be helpful for you to unravel some of those threads and see that they're separate things. Seeing it all balled up inextricably the way you are can be overwhelming.
When I mentioned the physics of animation, I included squash and stretch within the good category. I didn't mean that the only good animation is realistic animation. I've done some of it myself. I meant that bad animation will be "floaty" or "tweened" (pseudo-animation) and thus instantly recognisable as being in the bad category. Someone watching a short clip from Pixar without ever having been exposed to Pixar films and Pixar's reputation will instantly tell you that their animation is better than that of a beginner or intermediate animator. With writing it's not immediately apparent whether the prose or verse is good because the onus is mostly on the reader to take the goodness out of the writing by reason of their own faculties, if that makes sense. Animation = visual/recognisable/external/direct whereas writing = descriptive/has to be deciphered/internal/indirect. As for your other point, you have good points, but I'm not sure how much I agree since I err on the side of objectiveness in good writing and I don't see Chekhov and Harry Potter as being equal. Those are dangerous waters to swim for me, I think, so I'll stop there.
It really depends on what you consider an "audience". I actively roleplay in a larger community thus I have a daily audience for 3000+ words I write. With that in mind, your statement about people reading is wholly untrue. It's just that they don't read e-book fantasy novels, or that they don't read from a shelf. They read video game dialogue, they read movie and video subtitles, they read instructions, they read chats and forums. The main difference is quality and perception of quality. Anyone can write; when you see a wall of text you can't immediately discern quality. Whereas from any piece of music you can pretty much ... well, notice quality. Straight up. The main challenge for writers is to create a way to immediately reveal quality, and to convince a reader as quick as possible that what they will be reading is worth it. The first sentence and the first paragraph serve the exact same purpose as the first guitar riff. This misconception is reflected here. Not all musicians have a label; not all writers have agents. Not all musicians sell records; not all writers publish. But what you write can be spread, can be read and can be shared. Just as a soundcloud piece can be, or a drawing on Deviantart. The real question is what you want. Audience, recognition or financial gain? These are different steps in the life of an artist and are hard to scale for any form.
Another example where I'd say your idea of other art forms is skewed is the visual. You mentioned art being seen a lot online and getting an audience. Yes, on forums like Deviantart etc (which is an equivalent for this forum), but did you realize that what's known as the Entertainment Art Industry has changed drastically such that today most of what was once done by drawing and painting is now done to a ridiculously fast standard by what's called Photobashing? Basically doing a cover for a book or video game etc used to be done through drawing or painting, but now you drop a few photos into Photoshop and work like a maniac, because what used to take a month now needs to be done in a few days, and you stitch the photos together and patch up around the seams, and the main criteria is usually to make it look as much as possible like the CGI of the video games or the movies. This isn't true across the entire spectrum of visual arts of course, but it is what's happened to one of the largest former venues for drawings and paintings. The industries themselves are changing fast. Music is also largely made on computers these days as opposed to real instruments, and then autotunes ridiculously. Again, not all of it, but a significant part of industry is done this way now.
Are you saying that reading video game dialogue and film subtitles is the same as reading whole works of fiction? I don't want to get into an argument about quality since this thread was mostly about the pursuit of writing, but that's a very strange concept. "Anyone can write; when you see a wall of text you can't immediately discern quality." That's the point I've been trying to get across throughout this thread. This was just one of the negative factors I sometimes think about in regard to the pursuit of writing. And it's quite a big one and a shame.
I never said that. Would you not define the above as "reading recreationally"? They often convey a story. They wield the same devices we do. I have seen some of the best writing & plots unfold in obscure / cult classic videogames. I would never degrade Brian Mitsoda's work as something "non-writing" or "non-literature" because the characters he breathed alive and the dialogues he's written are far better than most books I've read. Screenwriters and storywriters are writers too; the media differ. Thirty years ago most stories unfolded in our minds, sparked by lines in books. Now it's vastly different and I do reckon literature must keep up with the change. Video game writing, roleplaying and screenwriting each offer advantages over classic literature that are hard to compete against.. This only ever left me more appreciative of writers. Amidst the information overload they seek to stand out still and convince people that their writing is worth more than a click on getabstract.com. I understand it as a challenge.
Your last post didn't come up until after I started writing my last one, sorry. I see now that you seem to be talking about the time it takes to see the quality of a story compared to the other art forms. Yes, I would agree about that. Except movies maybe, if we're talking about seeing the structure or the subtleties. But that's really a difference between longform and shortform entertainment, plus the fact that reading is much more active and requires work on the part of the reader, where-as most other art forms are much more passive. You're also talking about seeing subtle deep things in a work of art, and the fact that that takes longer in a novel or maybe even a short story. True, but then most audience members don't know or understand that stuff, that's insider info that you only understand if you've studied the form. I think another aspect of what you're talking about, and this was hinted at by @Lazaares above, is that you're concentrating specifically on traditional publishing, and saying that it isn't as easy to get published traditionally as it once was. Well that's true, but largely because as I said, the written word is no longer the main way of getting information and entertainment. At one time it was the published story or radio. But once movies and television came in, that changed things across the entire spectrum of art. Painters went into freefall because the realistic painting they had worked so hard to learn and gotten so good at was now supplanted by the camera, so then were born the less realistic approaches like Impressionism, Expressionism etc. But also at the same time, painting as an art form took a huge hit and dropped from being one of the major arts to a much less popular one, and ran the risk of almost dying for a time. New technology changes things. Man, this thread is moving fast! I can't finish a post without seeing that others have been made while I was writing. Hope this one hasn't been made irrelevant by what's been said in between.
You've compacted so much together here that I want to separate it to make it easier to deal with. Stories take longer to understand and appreciate largely because they're a time-based medium. So are movies and music. They pass before the audience over a period of time and changes occur that they need to track. Drawing, painting and sculpture are fundamentally different because they aren't time-based. Yes, it does take some time to fully absorb them, but there are no changes they need to track. It's a still image. You also seem to flip-flop on whether you're writing for yourself or you want an audience. In the same sentence in your first post you start by saying you write for yourself, but then finish by saying it's hard to find an audience. You're conflating a lot of different things together here and yes, as you said yourself, contradicting yourself. I've learned that finding the solution to a problem begins with clearly stating the problem, and in fact often that's all that's required, Often the problem is so poorly stated in the first place that it's impossible to find a solution because it's actually several different problems or it's so poorly understood/stated. That's why my issue so far has been to unravel all the different threads you've tangled together here. Only then can the solution to each be seen. I'm also still a bit bothered by your statement that visual artists can easily find an audience. Yes they can, on sites like DeviantArt or other gallery sites, which as I said are the equivalent of this site. But those artists certainly don't have an easy time finding an audience aside from the critique sites or a personal blog, so they're in the same boat we are. Though their audience can see their work in its totality much faster than ours can, for sure. I think you're taking a very negative look at a lot of different things and getting discouraged. For my part, I'm developing my skills (at various art forms, though now I'm down to only drawing, painting and writing) and I;m not too worried about an eventual outlet for it. I'm doing it to my won standards and by my own principles, which do include a certain quality level, though quite possibly there's no professional outlet for my work where I can earn a living from any of them. I do it at this point more for my own peace of mind and inner contentment.But I also have seen that times they keep a-changin', and there's no telling when suddenly a new venue will open up and the kind of work I know how to do by then will be acceptable once again. It might never happen, but if not, then I've achieved a lot of joy and the sense of satisfaction that comes from developing as an artist and creating the kind of work I love. If I decide later to tailor my work to a certain outlet, I can do that and the main work of learning the basics will be behind me at that point (hopefully).
me and my siblings do 3 different forms of art: I'm the writer, my brother is the musician, and my sister is the artist (granted, she just graduated high school, but already had 2 paid commissions, one by the school, and another for an independent project for someone she met over the internet that liked her work). We all have our challenges. My brother is struggling to make his music a career. He has a degree in music performance but currently works in an office building for the government. He's was the lead saxophonist in a band in Canada while he was in college and played in a raggae and ska band for some side money. Now that he is back in the U.S., he gigs around. He plays for 2 band who liked him so much, they request him whenever they have gigs, and they pass his name around to other bands and musicians that need a woodwind player. He's since made business cards to pass around while he's doing gigs, and travels up and down the east coast on the weekends to play in clubs in New York, Philly, and even play in New Orleans for exposure, but he WILL NOT post anything online. He's afraid to, i think. No youtube, no Soundcloud. He thinks he's not good enough (yet) to be posted online. My sister draws and paints all the time and is on forums and chat groups. She's not on DeviantART. She shares her work with those people, and THEY share her work. She also shares her work with her art teacher. Me? I started on DeviantART when I was in middle school and posted a lot of my writing on there, even a full length 36 chapter fanfiction. I honestly liked the audience. Actually, I started releasing chapters to my fanfiction monthly because i actually had an audience and they would write me asking for more chapters or when i was going to do the next one. I really liked that and it kept me writing. When I ended the fanfiction, i got requests for a continuation. Never did it because I lost interest with fanfiction and also the new book that was released sucked and I lost interest in the series as a whole. When I got older, i jumped to another writing site and released chapters of my original work monthly on there. Got up to Chapter 18 i think on there before the site was deactivated (good thing I saved my chapters on my computer, because everything on that site was gone!). I had found an audience on that site too, and it was great because i wasnt writing fanfiction. It was something that was ME, that I had developed. The characters, the plot, etc. It was a dark drama. Maybe YA, or YA for older teens, but then again, I in highschool/college when I started it. Personally, I think the "writing for an audience" was a big confidence booster for me. people liked what i wrote and wanted to read more. I stopped writing for those sites, and started focusing on my own, novel length stuff in college. This was also the time where I started sending my short stories out for publication. So, my siblings and I got exposure in different ways, but its still hard. I never compare my art to their art. I actually rely on my brothers opinion on mine and ask him for advice, and sometimes he will ask for my advice on his own work.
One key difference I feel for writing vs other arts is the time it takes. Songs are in the range of 3 to 6 minutes for the most part. Movies, one and a half hours to three and a half. A novel on the other hand can last well into double digits of hours, possibly even triple depending on the reading speed of the audience and complexity/ length of the text, to get through. Yes, video games can take an equally long amount of time, but they are also a mix of artforms: often including writing, music, and visual art, alongside interactivity that helps keep the audience engaged. I would also like to say that I skew more on the art is subjective camp and so I have some issues with judging art on an objective level and by extension lamenting the fact that not everyone can understand the objective quality of certain pieces of art. To me that completely misses the point of art in the first place. Art's purpose (as I understand it) is to create an emotional reaction from the audience. Which is subjective. Yes it needs to pass a threshold of objectivity to appeal to the audience, but that threshold is not very high. Once past that threshold, objective talent loses its meaning. It really doesn't matter to most of the audience, which piece of art is better constructed than the other. What does matter is whether the art creates an emotional response for them. Maybe it's just that my own opinions tend to run counter to the popular/critical conclusions so I justify it by being all "there's no accounting for taste" about it. Yet I do think that subjectivity does a better job at explaining which art creates a lasting impact vs which pieces don't than objectivity does. Which makes it feel more logical to conclude that subjectivity is a better judge of an artwork's true quality.
I think whatever form of art you're trying to create and find success in will always seem like the hardest.
Well writing is the hardest I'd say... You do it completely alone. It is all so heady and mental. The lack of physicality is insanity inducing. At least with music you have the mind and body working together (unless you're composing beats or something) Then there's the insanely delayed gratification (indeed, often there is no gratification). Humans aren't really built for that especially in an age of instant gratification. It's amazing anything gets written. I love stories and story-telling, but most of the popular stories are on netflix now. I guess if you want to be a writer and have people read your stories, get into TV. I'm sure Shakespeare would have done that if he were living today. I think the cultural impact of the novel is pretty much out. It will soon be like classical music and opera, something with a devout and easy to parody intellectual audience. I think there is therapeutic value to writing and that's probably the main reason I do it. Yes, I have all sorts of delusions and pleasant fantasies but they've come to nothing so many times now that I am nothing if not realistic. Whether that's a better way to live is up for debate though.
Many of these other pursuits listed are or can be done alone also. Drawing and painting, sculpture, music. I did stopmotion animation, and I was a one-man production team, plus the entire cast. The only thing I didn't create myself was music and some of the sound effects. Going it alone is what I actually like about all of these, because you get full creative control, no studio watching over your shoulder and nobody to argue with over decisions. Final Cut as they say in the movie biz. Only the absolute top-rated directors ever got that, like Stanley Kubrick, maybe Hitchcock (I don't recall offhand). I don't know of any others. Oh, I guess the American Zoetrope directors did (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas pre-Star Wars, and a handful of others)—that's why they created it—their own private production company.
True. I've played in bands and done collaborative writing with scripts and stuff, and honestly with that stuff, the hours would just blow right by and it was actively fun. Writing has almost always been torture. Trying to come up with an idea worth writing is brutal. Then getting it down somehow with all the distractions feels like trying to lift a boulder. And then finally you have to read it again and again, your own failure slapped across your face like a wet fish. Usually that's demoralising enough to give up completely. But you have to power through that to get to the hardest part - editing. And even then the original idea might not have even been good enough to warrant all that needless struggle. But the feeling of accomplishment after is what it's all about. You need to fail - fail again. Fail better, to quote Mr. Beckett.
Nobody goes it alone with filmmaking. It's a collaborative medium. I would say that I probably like films more than books. They've had more impact on me and certainly more on the culture of the time I live in. But I'm not good with people, so I write the stories I would love to do as scripts as fiction. Probably this is why I'll never be great at it. I think you have to love the medium you work in. To be totally honest, I find reading novels to be very difficult. I probably prefer non-fiction. I like reading writer biographies more than their works. I'm in the wrong game!
In that 2nd paragraph I wasn't talking about going it alone, but about getting Final Cut, total creative freedom. However, animation is filmmaking, and as I said, I did it alone, aside from a little help needed from musicians and foley peeps, and for those I just dowloaded pre-made stuff. Many animators do. But I think that's the only kind of filmmaking that could conceivably be done alone, unless somebody wants to make a film featuring only one actor. Which could be done and doubtless has. In fact, I did a bunch of practice filmmaking stuff on digital video, and did all of it myself, as well as being the sole actor. It was just to teach myself blocking and staging and certain other directing techniques though, and to learn digital video editing. I used to want to be a director, and turned to writing, drawing etc partly because I'm also an introvert and not good at getting people to do what I want. Honestly it sounds like you might want to be working on a film production team or writing screenplays. That can be very collaborative—most scripts get passed around between many writers before getting produced. Alternately you could write the scripts for graphic novels. Those don't need to be polished and finished the way stories do, just raw information to be used by the artist.
