Beginners' Four Faults

[MWagner]

The problem with reading talented writers deliberately to improve your style is there's dramatically different notions out there of what constitutes talented or masterful writing. And if you're writing for a commercial genre market, you have to be wary not to stray too far from whatever stylistic norms are currently popular.

For example, is Stephen King a masterful writer? Millions of fans think so. The literary crowd thinks he's a prolific hack. Is Beryl Bainbridge a masterful writer? She has five Booker nominations to prove she is. But I expect most readers of urban fantasy would set them aside as dreary and difficult. Unwavering psychological realism and a clinically detached POV are hallmarks of many of the most acclaimed novels off the 20th century. That approach will repel the readers of modern fantasy. A modern author could learn much about characterization from Dickens. But internalize his prose style itself, or his pacing and digressions, and you are learning habits that you will need to unlearn if you want to appeal to a modern audience.

I'm not suggesting authors avoid the best authors and prose, or confine themselves to genre. You can learn from any masterful writer, even if you don't imitate their style. But I do think a governing principle of any writing is know your audience. And I think that principle is neglected in the advice I come across to aspiring fiction authors. Audience tastes in commercial genre fiction are typically quite specific. The pacing and emotional proximity of a historical novel from the 80s is not at all suitable for the fantasy market today. I'm struggling with that very problem, as maybe 10 per cent or less of what I read is fantasy published in the last 10 years, and yet I'm writing for an audience that has read mostly (if not exclusively) fantasy written in the last 10 years. Many of the stylistic norms I've internalized from my own reading are regarded as faulty or off-putting in modern commercial fantasy. I'm deliberately reading popular modern fantasy novels, even ones that aren't up my alley, in order to understand and try to internalize modern stylistic norms.

 

[Brian G Turner]

But I do think a governing principle of any writing is know your audience. And I think that principle is neglected in the advice I come across to aspiring fiction authors.

Absolutely! I see it so often recommended that someone writes only for themselves. But IMO this can be a huge mistake, and leave aspiring writers excusing their own flaws. The bottom line is that storytellers require and audience, and you ignore that audience at your peril.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

But I do think a governing principle of any writing is know your audience.

That could be an error. Fashions and fads in the mass market can change faster than time to go from idea to published.
Surely the best thing, unless you are working for a franchise / syndicate / ghost writing is to write what you would like to read, or at least what you want to write.

he bottom line is that storytellers require and audience, and you ignore that audience at your peril.

But WHICH audience?

 

[Phyrebrat]

Red sky at night shepherds delight,
Red sky in the morning shepherds warning,
Mince beef and mash crust shepherds pie.

I like to add another one you've missed out but it must be said in a deep Daarzet accent: Red sky in the morn, dead afore dawn.

To be fair, very few writers, even the greatest have 'mastered their craft'.

Of course. I suppose this is a philosophical point inasmuch as we don't have an absolutist view on what constitutes perfection in art. How funny if we did and we could apply it to authors and all sorts of other artists and say 'Hmm... he/she hasn't quite got there yet; just three more learning objectives to go and they'll have mastered their craft'.

But he did have to master various technical skills, like drawing, grinding up the minerals to make the paints, etc. He had to learn the basics before he could go on to create art.

It is the same for all the arts. Every so often someone like Mozart comes along who was performing and composing music practically from the time he crawled out of the cradle, but most musicians, even the best, begin by taking lessons where they learn the most basic basics first and then go on from there. A ballet dancer begins with exercises, learning certain positions, certain moves.

Agreed, learning the nuts and bolts of your pursuit is crucial to making life easier for yourself (and the reader) in terms of comprehension and narrative, but this is the difference between technique and creativity. Over the years I have taught many technically sublime dancers but when they have to create their own piece, it is pedestrian, unoriginal and unimaginative. Conversely I have worked with the sloppiest dancers who have creative genius when choreographing. Those who are creative geniuses can be helped to facilitate an outstanding work, but those who are technically excellent cannot; how do you teach someone to 'have a good idea'.

I think it's important to be honest with ourself/peers when it comes to assessing skill. You have to have both things.

I know my dialogue is much weaker than my stories, so that is important. But perhaps I just need to write more dialogue? I do recognise good or bad dialogue when I see it.

I am always saying this to new members, Ray, but I don't think we've ever discussed the challenges; if you want to improve your dialogue - anything for that matter - I can't recommend entering the writing challenges enough. It may not be your thing (it wasn't mine, and I suspect nor many others') but the strictures placed on you as a writer in those challenges are immeasurably helpful . The benefits are multiple:

• Developing a voice and an accomplished style of switching voice styles between challenges
• Making you much more mindful as a writer; every word counts
• Improves your narrative comprehension (writing clearly, choosing the best words)
  
• Improves your emotional comprehension (generating an emotional response or connection in your reader)
• Self assessment (How many votes? How many mentions? Am I improving?)
• Learning about writing outside your genre which will deepen your characters in your own genre
• Being part of the monthly clan!
• This final one, may be particular to me, but I have developed a much stronger sense of myself/creative identity as an author through these challenges.

Sorry to go all hard-sell on you, but I notice you're a prolific Chron member but I don't think you ever post/vote in the challenges.

Particularly since that's about the only place you see vicars these days.

Challenge accepted...

pH

 

[HareBrain]

I see it so often recommended that someone writes only for themselves. But IMO this can be a huge mistake

Can be, but I think sometimes leads to greatness. Many of my favourite books were written (from what I can tell) with little consideration for the commercial: The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion among them. (Though admittedly, others, like David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, didn't do well in terms of sales.)

I've just started re-reading the Malazan series by Steven Erikson, and have been trying to think why it feels so different to any other fantasy I've read. It came to me today that it feels like it was written with zero consideration for the reader. The story exists; the reader can cope with its complexities or give up; the story itself doesn't give a toss. I was going to say that it almost disdains the reader, but that's not true. Neither positive nor negative, it seems to treat the audience as an irrelevance. It might be that this is part of Erikson's art, and that he did in fact write it with an audience very much in mind, but I suspect not.

I'd be interested to see some testimony by a successful author that said they owed their success to tailoring their work to what they thought an audience wanted when this wasn't their natural way of writing anyway. My guess is that most successful authors write what they want, and this happens to converge with tastes at the time.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

I'm somewhat with Ray:if you're pretensions are artistic,don't cater to the fickle taste of a mass audience

 

[Hex]

My guess is that most successful authors write what they want, and this happens to converge with tastes at the time.

I've seen both Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix say that this is exactly what they do.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

Prose is probably the hardest thing to nail, because i think its the hardest thing for a writer to see/analysis, because you are writing from your own voice your own style, and you can either trust in your voice or try and duplicate another.

I also agree that you should write to your audience. The original idea should be written for you, but once you have done it. You need to adjust it to others when editing and doing revisions.

Sure if you want to write to your own audience then maybe you can try roll the dice and get lucky, some great writers do this because their mindset/idea is shared by many or you tweak what you have so it fits a wider audience. Your book is a product, and without a target market for your product, its going to fail.

Someone mentioned that trends and fads move so quickly, this is exactly true and the same with any products. Companies will push out duplicate products to take of an existing cilentelle, which does work but shifts very fast, that product being often forgotten and dumped after the trend is over. However that is not the same as writing for a target market, you just need to find a market that is not oversaturated, less competition. In fantasy terms this would not be, orcs and elves, magic schools, dragons.

 

[MAJE Mike]

As a new(old) writer, I have to rein myself back all the time, from going to fast, rather than worrying about the accuracy of the content. It can always be examined the second time around.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I don't think you ever post/vote in the challenges

I wondered when someone would notice and urge me.
It's unlikely that I ever will, but you never know. I do know about it

Over the years I have taught many technically sublime dancers but when they have to create their own piece, it is pedestrian, unoriginal and unimaginative. Conversely I have worked with the sloppiest dancers who have creative genius when choreographing. Those who are creative geniuses can be helped to facilitate an outstanding work, but those who are technically excellent cannot; how do you teach someone to 'have a good idea'.

It's like there are people that can get really good marks in Electronics or Computer science, and I KNOW they will never be good at design.

Sometimes you need to pair the fantastic dancer (who hasn't an original idea to save life) with the inspired choreographer (that teachers wondered why they were bothering to learn dance at all). But without the urge to dance and "wasting" all those years learning to dance, the inspired choreographer would hardly likely been able to work with a technically brilliant dancer.

Of course some people that employed good writers probably could write too.

Some people might need an editor a lot more than others too. Anthony Trollop comes to mind. His wife edited some and others were not really edited at all, IMO it shows too!

 

[Brian G Turner]

That could be an error. Fashions and fads in the mass market can change faster than time to go from idea to published.
Surely the best thing, unless you are working for a franchise / syndicate / ghost writing is to write what you would like to read, or at least what you want to write.

I'd be interested to see some testimony by a successful author that said they owed their success to tailoring their work to what they thought an audience wanted when this wasn't their natural way of writing anyway.

I'm not suggesting to write for a particular fashion - I'm talking specifically getting to grips with technical points. Such as POV use, plot structure, etc. IMO getting to grips with these first is the best way to reach out to an audience.

It's not foolproof - but it's not uncommon to see even basic technicalities dismissed as "commercial" interests that will cheapen a work, and violate it's artistic integrity. Heck, I was like that, once.

And yet, those basics are really challenging to get to grips with in the first place.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm talking specifically getting to grips with technical points.

But that's an integral part of writing.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

I don't know if it's a beginner's mistake,but i have characters, dialogue,

and NO PLOT!!!

 

[Toby Frost]

I think you've definitely got to know your audience, and not to cheat them out of what they expect as a baseline for that sort of story. An action adventure has to include action and adventure, or else it fails. The Space Captain Smith books had to be funny. And you really do have to understand what is expected in that area, now. You can't cheat yourself that a story is epic fantasy just because someone mentions a dragon, once. But once you've ticked off those essentials, you've got a lot of room within a genre, and at that point you're really writing for yourself.

If you have a knight on an epic quest, you can approach that from many angles. One author might stress duty, another lonliness, another the landscape, another the ferocity of the battles the knight has and so on. While the necessity of the plot is determined by writing for an audience, the tone and details are really choices of the author. I think in making the choice of the sort of people that he's going to write about, and the way that he's going to do it, the author is writing for himself, although what ends up being made may be entirely commercial as well. It's a balancing act.

 

[Brian G Turner]

But that's an integral part of writing.

So you'd think, but it's surprising how often modern writing conventions are overlooked.

Those writers who understand those can "write for themselves" because they know how to make their story accessible.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

"write for themselves"

I think there are two senses of that phrase, you are using one and I was using the other.
You seem to mean in sense of simply something to do, a private amusement, I mean in sense of the professional book you'd like to pay good money for, but rather than searching the shelves, writing it for yourself. Like an artist that is professional but paints a landscape for themselves, because no-one else has painted that view yet. Of course they can sell prints of it, or do twelve for a calendar.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

My husband is reading Abendau's Heir at the mo - he helps with brainstorming and some scenes, but isn't a beta - and, since it was hanging around I picked it up. It was interesting reading it, and I picked up some bits and pieces around pacing to muse on for future books but, about half way through, it occurred to me that it's exactly the kind of book I'd buy. So I wrote for myself - which I knew - but! Also worked hard to make sure it had a definable market and fitted with genre expectations, partly because it made a stronger book, partly to make it easier to sell.

 

[Toby Frost]

You seem to mean in sense of simply something to do, a private amusement, I mean in sense of the professional book you'd like to pay good money for, but rather than searching the shelves, writing it for yourself.

Yes, I think you are using the term in a different way. My understanding was that the issue was whether you should write with a close awareness of what the target audience wants to read, or whether you should write based purely on what you yourself want to read. I assumed that either example would be written to a publishable standard.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I think there are two senses of that phrase, you are using one and I was using the other.
You seem to mean in sense of simply something to do, a private amusement, I mean in sense of the professional book you'd like to pay good money for, but rather than searching the shelves, writing it for yourself. Like an artist that is professional but paints a landscape for themselves, because no-one else has painted that view yet. Of course they can sell prints of it, or do twelve for a calendar.

Yes, most people who say they "write for themselves" mean the professional things that would make it the best it could be are not necessary because their particular work is noble art, not one of those soulless things for the mass market. And since they "aren't interested" in changing their writing for anyone else, even though they are publishing it on Amazon, they don't have to bother with technical or professional stuff.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm going to hit the other side of the fence on this issue. Write for yourself. Don't give a tinker's damn about the audience. Write what you like and what you want to read. The reader should not even be in your head when you go through plot, characters or prose etc. When you're drafting. This gives you the best chance of writing a great book. One that will completely enthrall you and motivate you to write more. One you will love. It may not be particularly commercial - but are you a writer because you want to make oodles of money or because you want to write? To my mind those who write for an audience, writing what they think they want to see, are sacrificing their own artistic vision for commercial success. And the one thing I think would be terrible for any author would be to reach a point where they look back over their work and think - that's not the book I wanted to write.

However I will add to that. Once the books done, once it's at the final draft, that is the time to think about the readers as you go through the beta readers and editors. Yes if all has gone well the book should be everything you are proud of and adore. But because you need to sell a book and get feedback etc, to interact with the audience to be a complete writer / author, now is when you need to start thinking about things like accessibility.

This isn't selling out though. This is actually defining your artisitic vision. Paring it back to it's essential nature. And making it accessible to others. That's why your first beta reads and edits should be brutal. They should be a conversation - or a screaming argument if that works better - between the author and others. A time when as an author you start to think is this part of my aritistic vision, my creation, my voice or is it a mistake, can it be worded better?

So my philosophy would be "Write for yourself, publish for others."

Cheers, Greg.