Learn to Write for Yourself...And Everyone Else

In honor of paradox, I’d like to consider another bit of possibly contradictory writing advice:

1.       Know what’s going on in the market

2.       Write for yourself

Unlike this paradox, which is OMG

This is essentially saying that we should simultaneously write for ourselves, and for everyone else. Be completely selfish/be completely selfless. Write with your eyes closed/never close your eyes. Read every published work you can find/find your own voice. 

And people talking about absolutes. Anyone who deals
in absolutes is stupid. 

I can kind of make sense of this conundrum when I remember my first exposure to band. My brother was in middle school band, a trombone player. I was a fifth grader, coming with my mother to pick him up after school, and she brought me inside to see the band room and see an experience I might be able to share in, in a few years. After school, the band room was noisy. Students were practicing at random, in small clusters or solo, somehow able to concentrate on their own sheet of music while amongst the tumult bouncing between the sound-cushioned walls.

“How do they do that?” I asked my brother. “How do they hear themselves?”

“They don’t,” he answered. “Well…they do. It’s complicated. While everyone is playing, you have to ignore everyone else and completely concentrate on what you’re doing, otherwise you’ll get distracted and lose your place. But you also have to listen in to be sure you’re matching what the others are playing around you—not too loud, not too fast."

I feel that it's a good illustration of listening--but not too much. If you concentrate too hard on what other people are doing, you'll only succeed in copying them. But if we write in a vacuum, we're sure to produce works that are only appealing to us, that lack an appeal to the other human beings that are sure to make up your audience. 

Unless you have successfully cornered the "reading puppy" market. 

I feel that the "write for yourself" bit of advice most often comes from well-meaning mentors trying to keep their manatees from freaking out too much. 

Reference

For a beginning writer, trying to figure out "what the industry is doing" can be terrifying. And it makes "the industry" sound like an Orwellian force set on blocking our every move towards a successful publishing career. Thus, "write for yourself" is really a way of saying, "Chill out. Stop spending all your time trying to chart the themes in the current best-sellers list, and just write." For we learn by doing, instead of thinking about learning by doing. 

Yes...I see...

Things Only Stephen King Can Get Away With

I have a terrible commute.

Even Google Maps is like "This might take you an hour. Or not.
Not really sure. Have fun."

Because of this, I have listened to an unsual amount of audio books. I highly suggest this as a way of life for anyone else out there with a terrible commute. Go to your public library and investigate all those books you always meant to read but never had the chance. With an hour commute, you can finish a book a month just in the time you usually lose to Radiohead and Ke$ha.

On these commutes, I've been "reading" through Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I cannot really express how incredible this has been, as it is one of those stories that transitions very well to an oral telling. I'm going to wait to gush about this series until I've finished it (NO-NO SPOILERS. I know it's been out for years and I could just Google it. That's not the point).

I must be careful. 

But in the course of this series, I have discovered that, believe it or not, Stephen King does not follow the same rules as you or I. Stephen King does what Stephen King wants. And it doesn't matter what creative writing courses might be forgotten, what rules undone. But today, I heard him break a big one.

Don't hide information from your readers. Hide information from your characters, yes, but never from your readers. 

I'm in Wolves of the Calla, Book 5 of the Dark Tower series.*

I'm not going to go into annoying detail here, but in essence, Eddie Dean learns something from another character, right at the end of a chapter. King does the classic "fade-away" technique, drawing away from the conversation just as Eddie learns the advice about their enemies that TOTALLY changes everything about the story. Instead of letting us overhear every word that the characters have been saying, like he has for the entire chapter, King decides to cut right here, and leave us hanging.

You know, ok. It's his story. Let's let him do his thing. I guess we're not supposed to know yet. But then...THEN- Eddie Dean tells this new, incredible information to Roland Deschain, the main charcter (Cowboy/Jedi/Superhero), and yet again, we aren't allowed to hear it. Instead, King concentrates his writing on Roland's face while Eddie tells him this vital information, and yet again we are forced to wait around for the story to get around to the truth.

Stephen King can do this incredibly annoying writing technique, because we trust him. Honestly, I'm in Book 5 of this series, and I know that I'm gong to stick it out till the end. He could introduce literally anything at this point, and I would still read it. (Also, because of the relative insanity of this series, he could happy Miss Piggy leading a communist revolt against the citizens of Fraggle Rock, and it would still somehow make sense).

Inevitable. 

I tried this technique once, in a creative writing class with Judy Troy at Auburn University. I wrote this perfectly mediocre story about a boy and his divorced mothing dealing with his going off to college and leaving her all alone. I was really trying to tap into real emtional human stuff, really the kind of thing I try to avoid nowadays. But here's the weird thing. I had this whole story wrapped up in the main character's brother, a few years younger than him, who also didn't want to see him go. And we saw this little brother misbehave, act out, and through the whole story we just think he's young and growing up in a hard situation. But then at the end, I revealed that the brother was actually a 17 year old mentally handicapped person this whole time! 

And doesn't that just change everything? Wasn't it clever of me to fool you all into thinking this was just a little boy, that all the emotions I was trying to express here were really just a ploy, a distraction from the overall reveal of a side character's...true age?

Yeah. It was terrible. 

I was scolded incessantly by Judy until I realized that I am not allowed to play this game. If my characters know something, I need to let the readers know it too, instead of creating false tension by holding information behind. This seems like a very natural and easy trap to fall in to, but I know, at the end of the day, my story will be better for it. After all, if my story is good enough, there should be enough tension to keep readers interested without cheating.




*Let me here acknowledge that this is a little weird because I've been listening to this on audiobook, so I can't actually cite any lines here. I could go buy the book, or get it from the library, or find that one particular disk and listen to it enough times so I can write the word exactly, but that sounds terrible.

Try A New Perspective

I've never been comfortable writing in the 1st person. Whenever I have a story idea, I see it in my head as happening to someone else. The film in my head plays out like...a film, with discernable 3rd person characters, because Hollywood hasn't come up with a good equivalent of a "Write Your Own Adventure" novel.

This and "Blair Witch" are the closest we've come.
Plus, Jason Bourne's shaky cam. 

I'm not sure why I envision my storylines this way. I think part of it is because I was trained as a Medievalist, always envisioning a glorious past. People have been writing about the Trojan War since long after Troy even had the possibility of existing. And it is hard to write about something that happened so long ago as if I was a part of it. Other people were. I'm trying to tell their story.

Perhaps it's because I think less of where I am, and more of where other people are.* That I've always imagined that characters are doing something more exciting than I've ever done.

When really, I should accept that few ever will. 

This flips me into an interesting conundrum. I've never felt hampered by the 3rd person before. In fact, I believe that most of my favorite stories were written in the 3rd person. 

        Here are the first three stories to come to my mind:

1. Harry Potter- J.K. Rowling's epic explanation of why people can be terrible while they're young, and can still turn into great people. Give them a chance. (Seriously though, every adult in his life was a terrible kid. But the important ones got over it).
2. The Once and Future King- a guys finds a sword, another finds a cup. There's a lot of excitement in-between, though. You should really give it a look. 
3. Back in Action- a children's book by Elvira Woodruff which was a favorite of mine, concerning the adventures of 10 year old Noah and a magic powder which shrunk him and his friend to the size of his action figures, who also happened to come to life. This was an important tale to young me, who, with no shortage of real friends, always imagined having more.   

But let there not be equal representation here. After all, if there were not a conundrum, I would not be writing a blog post about this. 

Star Wars is the answer. I miss when Video Games allowed you to choose between the two pov's.

It makes a difference. 

Because sometimes you need to feel the stormtroopers burn as you swing. And sometimes you don't. 

Here's the flipside, that "outsider's pov."

      Books which are fantastic in the 1st person:

1. Gulliver's Travels- the story of a man learning what it is like to have ultimate power, ultimate weakness, and terrible ignorance. There are also horses, if you like that kind of thing.
2. The Historian- a book that will make you think vampires are really, historically real, and will also anger you because of the unbelievable, unmimicable effort that Elizabeth Kostova put into her world building. 
3. The Hunger Games- about the kids from children's television shows like Clarissa Explains it All and Clifford, all pitted against each other in a ring of death. [Seriously though- Suzanne Collins is a super genius, fantastic writer, and someone I'd be uneasy asking to babysit).  

So, here's my own experience. I've been writing on this book off-and-on for a few years (yes, my projects always run in the years because I have trouble commiting and I have always had to have 'real person jobs.' Annoying). I had it in 3rd person until just recently, when I decided to try shifting, and I've really enjoyed the result. 

Original 3rd person perspective:

Highway 280 was a lonely road from Sylacauga. It was only an hour and a half drive, past Alex City, past Dadeville…and then nothing but trees, which can make an hour pass in minutes with the right company, and minutes pass in hours with the wrong. Although they drove at a steady pace, there was the illusion of being motionless. Not even the leaves waved as they passed, the wind giving way to an August heat. They called it Fall Semester, but true fall, seasonal fall, wouldn’t come till late October, and two months of rising heat and scarce rain had scorched the Alabama landscape. The endless asphalt grey road radiated heat waves, only disturbed by the occasional pothole and the more than occasional patch of roadkill brown. 

New, first-person perspective, which I believe is an improvement:

"My name is Ryan Aleman. This all started in August, when we drove down to Auburn for the beginning of the semester. Highway 280 is a lonely road from Sylacauga. In the hour and a half drive, past Alex City, past Dadeville…there’s nothing but trees, which can make an hour pass in minutes with the right company, and minutes pass in hours with the wrong. We drove at a steady pace, but there was the illusion of being motionless. Not even the leaves waved as we passed, the wind giving way to an August heat. Yeah, they called it Fall Semester, but true fall, seasonal fall, wouldn’t come till late October, and two months of rising heat and scarce rain had scorched the Alabama landscape. The endless asphalt grey radiated heat waves, only disturbed by the occasional pothole and the more than occasional patch of roadkill brown."

It's a subtle change, but one I'm growing more and more confident with. I think it provides more imediacy, more insight into the character. I don't feel so bad dwelling on Ryan's thoughts, or describing what he sees. I guess, for some reason, this is just a story that I needed to tell from behind a set of eyes, instead of from the sky.

I just had to open myself up to the possibility. 

*(Although, I do believe that this often happens when authors try writing in the opposite gender, when it feels most natural to say, "she's doing this," or "he's throwing this," or "that person over there who feels different from me is having experiences." All I'm saying, in the relative safety of these parentheses, is that authors who are afraid of showing gender bias are probably more likely to write in 3rd person.)