Is our Current Climate stifling literature? (And does it matter?)

Those parentheses are there for a reason. On the other hand there is absolutely no reason for me not to call them brackets.. momentary sneeze of pretension. Excuse me..

I’m not a political person. At least not judging by my Facebook feed. And I’ve tried very hard to avoid politics on here. Time and again subjects have raised their heads – diversity is a hot button in most writing forums – and it’s not like I don’t think about them. A lot. But every time I thought about writing an article something always held me back. Something is still holding me back. I guess I’m hoping I’ll know whether or not I’ll be posting this by the time I finish writing it.

Regardless of my own attitude, there is no doubt we are living in a political age. The internet seems to exist solely to provide a platform for the aggrieved and righteous, the offensive and the offended. I’m treated to an almost endless list of stuff I should be pissed off about every time I log into any of my social media accounts. Which may explain why I’ve forgotten most of my passwords.

• I was read sexist propaganda as a child (because all girls were only ever read Cinderella)
• My clothes are chains (probably why all the feminists are stripping off in magazines)
• The only reason I’m not published is because I don’t have a penis. (Drawing one on a post-it doesn’t count. Apparently)

I have to admit even as I write this I find myself very loath to step beyond the gender related statements and touch upon topics such as the colour of my skin, my sexuality, my religion. I’m not sure how they all intersect as regards this strange notion of privilege. I feel often when I happen upon these discussions that the most relevant part of my identity is simply that I’m not American.

Samuel L Jackson recently came under fire for wondering what an American would have made of a role given to a British actor. As Brits who have sat through too many Dick Van Dykes 😀 we’re probably not that hugely sympathetic, but his comments arose from his observation that the history of race relations in America and Britain are distinctly different, and that, that difference, matters.

It raises the interesting idea that we aren’t merely trying to retrofit a one size fits all solution, but a one-size fits all problem. As culture becomes increasingly globalised, as eyes turn from across the world to fix inward at the same few points, is it shrinking? Are our points of references being reduced to the most common denominators, accessible by all, shaped by a few?

There’s been a flavour of this for a while, much of our entertainment transcends boundaries. Through travelling I’ve encountered a pervasive Western mentality that defines so many of my generation across Europe, a mentality that wasn’t shaped by our parentage but our shared culture mined through art and entertainment.

And whenever I had the privilege to witness culture smacking against culture, it always fascinated rather than aggrieved. I’ve never believed that conflict requires resolution, that opposing forces can not co-exist and be equally valuable.

That might sound a little naive, but here’s the reality; they do co-exist. It’s that last part that trips folk up. It is in pursuit of resolution, our need for some sense of certainty that conflict becomes problematic. Something some believe drives story and our love of it.

It’s very easy to get locked in your own perspective to the extent that you can’t see the picture clearly. And two recent shocks in international politics have shown that what seems the majority in the insular world of the internet isn’t necessarily reflecting the majority out there in the real world.

It doesn’t however mean that we aren’t all exposed to it; that it isn’t driving our decision making and our expectations.

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed ~ Mark Twain

What begins in an internet chatroom, on an obscure individuals personal page can trickle, insidiously cross mediums, borders, demographics. It becomes fact through repetition, when questioned is defended and reinforced by this defence, if attacked, spread wider.

The internet may be the new cultural normal, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t guided by old rules. When dealing with what’s popular we seem always to return to the notion of the lowest common denominator. Make it simple, make it clear, make it easy.

But some things aren’t simple. Ever heard of a wicked problem? It’s something that is near to, if not totally, impossible to solve due to interlocked and ever-shifting components, which often means that when you solve one part another then becomes unglued.

A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behaviour is likely to be a wicked problem. – Wiki

Two parts of the full definition, I’ve always found most interesting, is the acknowledgement that each problem, and each resulting facet of any solution, is unique and that, in consequence, we can’t learn through trial and error. Every time we implement an idea, a possible solution, the game doesn’t reset if it fails, or if it succeeds, it evolves.

It feels as thought every problem we have and every ingredient we add to the mix is being sifted through the filter of the Internet – of, for, by the lowest common denominator – and the resulting cookie disseminated far and wide, not just geographically but temporally, because unlike conversations or newspapers, nothing ever dies on the net, no matter how much it stinks. Of course books, you might cry, books last, they don’t become fish and chip papers, but books are big and long and long and big…

Perhaps one of the most pervasive examples of a book being reduced to a single annoying neat-as-a-tweet point is the manner in which George Orwell has evolved into an adjective. How many of the people who talk of living in an Orwellian world, do you reckon have read the book?… lets just repeat that for any who missed it.. PEOPLE IN INDETERMINABLE NUMBERS POST WHENEVER THEY WISH ON PUBLIC SITES ACCESSIBLE AROUND THE WORLD.. Now the rallying cry is that I am being too literal, its about influence. Having never been too literal – and usually barely literal – I’ll reply that I’m not offering a rebuttal, I’m asking for greater depth. The illusion of free will might just be as good as free will, in terms of happiness, productivity and opportunity – thousands of years of philosophy haven’t come to a conclusion on that yet, but a couple of guys with 280 characters between them think they can.

Much of this was inspired by quite a few recent rehashes. I’m not just talking Hollywood’s sacrilegious attack on classics such as Ghostbusters but in fiction we are seeing reworks of fairytales – the Lunar Chronicles – norse mythology, Chinese Legend, Greek gods – Percy Jackson – even Shakespeare. And it all has a very familiar taint.

There’s an oft cited notion that there are only a few stories in literature and everything, however diverse it might seem, is derivative of those. Right now, it doesn’t seem diverse at all. There’s only one story. It involves a plucky, special sort of hero(ine), the fate of the world, some bad (ass) dialogue and tortured romance. Take the recent Hollywoodisation of Alice in Wonderland. Is Alice wandering around listening to riddles and getting cross? No, she’s strapping on armour and finding her inner She-ra. Is the mad hatter jumping about on tables, and confusing the hell out of her? No, he’s now her bestest friend in the world that she is willing to die and risk sexist old men for, as that’s how it works when you bump into a weirdo having tea once.

But that’s teenage fiction, adults surely require something a little more sophisticated? They’ve read so many books the same old story on rinse and repeat won’t wash. Station Eleven, an Arthur C Clarke award winner, might seem like this on the surface. On the surface its hard to see any story at all, but once you remove the weird vignettes about a washed up film star you have a villain who is evil just cause he read the bible once too often, whose only visible sin is to marry off young girls, and an mc who happens to be a young woman with killer knife skills..

She stood and the handles of the knives in her belt glinted in the half light. This wire of a woman, polite but lethal, who walked armed with knives through all the days of her life. He’d heard stories from other Symphony members about her knife throwing ability. She was supposedly able to hit the centre of targets blindfolded – Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

And when we do see her strike it is almost superhuman. She’s tough and self contained, but will kill for her friends. She sleeps around and breaks her lovers heart, but while regretful for his pain, shows little guilt. Just like a man; just not like a real one.

A recent Nebula, Hugo and Arthur C Clarke award winner, Ancillary Justice, puts gender issues front and centre by using a machine intelligence as its main pov, which addresses all lifeforms as female. An experiment in how we perceive gender or simply a tiresome gimmick that prevented the reader from engaging fully with the text? Most of the negative reviewers felt the latter.

Compare it with The Turbulent term of Tyke Tiler, a children’s book from the 1980’s about an incorrigible troublemaker named Tyke. It cleverly avoided ever naming its protagonist’s gender – cleverly because the reader read blithely unaware until the last scene when finally it was revealed her real name was Theodora. Nowadays I’ve been earnestly informed that such deception would anger a reader, much better your agenda be clear from page one and unmistakable in its intent.

The issue here I should stress isn’t that woman are presented as strong. Its the fact that I feel the need to say I have no issue with strong women, to preface anything I might say regarding this or any other political hot button with some sort of defence. It’s the way the fear, the demands and the blanket simplicity of prevailing opinion is squeezing and shaping everything. The way it strips away nuance and closes down discussion in favour of a nuke ’em if they disagree approach.

And it seems utterly unable to recognise its own inbuilt prejudices that still shine through.

One of the recent big successes, one which has spawned a thousand imitators, is The Hunger Games. Katniss has been lauded as a feminist role model for teenage girls everywhere. I’m guessing because she has a bow and arrow. No one seems to acknowledge that she is in fact the very model of the Mother. A vessel, a nurturer, she seems defined by sacrifice, fuelled by the desires and needs of others, a puppet for the rebellion, striking only when others demand she does. Collins has claimed the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur as her inspiration. Yet Theseus takes action not reactively but proactively, out of a desire to change the status quo. Katniss never harbours such hope, desiring only to protect her sister. Or Rue. Or Peeta. Returning us yet again to the idea that women themselves, their ‘selfish’ desires aren’t important only their biological role. The very thing that Atwood famously took aim at a few decades before, in The Handmaids Tale.

Twilight author Meyer was attacked for writing an end battle that was revealed only to be a vision of what might be, allowing all characters to walk away, alive and wiser for it. Given the fans and the legacy – an entire new genre of paranormal romance – it seems the fighting was at best an attempt to retrofit a series to fit an audience that didn’t actually exist, a demand made by vapours of ‘shoulds’ rising from the internet and the current zeitgeist.

Of course there is life beyond the tentacled heart of Western storytelling; the magical realism of South America, the fantastical physicality of Hong Kong cinema or the alternative – totally mainstream alternative – manga. Such is the popularity of the form the New York Times has had a bestselling Manga list since 2009, and while Patterson – dear lord man! – managed to wiggle his way on there most are actually not born and raised near the Mason Dixon line. ie they are Japanese.

However when you start to take a closer look at some of those best sellers, like One Piece or Sailor Moon, there are some very familiar faces. Heroes with unique gifts that set them apart, a crew of diverse archetypes including the loyal confidant and fiesty love interest, and of course the fate of the world. Daily.

A recent live action attempt to bring the beloved Ghost in the Shell franchise to a wider audience was bogged down in controversy over white-washing the main characters. Principally by casting Scarlett Johannssen as the lead. Few critics had much negative to say about her performance however, and many felt the true issue was the Hollywoodisation of the storyline and its handling of the deeper themes which characterise the original.

Somebody misjudged how poorly American superhero movie tropes would map onto Ghost in the Shell….the final scene tried to do that ‘satisfying our need for closure’ thing American directors think is kind, but is actually condescending. ~  Kotaku, Cecilia D’Anastasio

I may have rambled on more than usual. I don’t have answers, just questions, that always seems to take up more space. Or it should. Which is rather the point. Modern fiction seems intent on giving us the answers, almost in a manner that is beginning to feel like propaganda. Nothing feels new, in base idea or depth of exploration. We’re offered the same answer over and over, we’re interpreting every issue as if it were identical, as if we were identical, because we’re not writing ideas, but stripes, identifying our tribe. The good, the enlightened, the righteous – and if you’re not on board with lesbian alien-lizard sex then dude move to the next section of the library while the rest of us pretend that we didn’t just get put into a coma by the lamest lesbian lizard ever written, because you know, we’re liberal…

This particular ‘humane tour de force’ only made it onto the Arthur C Clarke Shortlist. I’m going to start using that as a must-not read list. It’s a lot like Sesame Street in space. No disrespect to Sesame Street, which is probably a lot more fun, but I feel like I’m a little past caring that Bert and Ernie share a bed. So what am I looking for? Not preaching not the answer to sex, religion and everything else being throw yourself into a burning pit of fire (as recommended by all 21st century authors as they sip their mocha-choca-chinos on their ergonomic lazy boys..) Maybe I miss when the answer was 42. It made more sense. Mostly I miss reading those books that make you feel like the world was just cracked open a little wider.

 

The Only Writing Myth You Need to Worry About

It’s not particular to writing; it’s particular to life. And it comes in many forms, the first, most obvious, that some of us are simply born good. Good at writing, good at maths, good at music, talent not so much a seed as a forest, in full flower, with all the sunlight, water, everything it might need, unearned, untended, just there.

Einstein was doing Pythagoras while the rest of us were still mesmerised by the clickety-clack of the beads on the abacus.

In some cases it becomes modified to passion, to obsession that cannot be sated. King states, ‘ You can’t choose it any more than you can choose to be right or left handed’, and psychologist Ellen Winner defines the gifted as having ‘a rage to master’, being ‘intrinsically motivated to make sense of the domain in which they are precocious’. Neither believes that you can ‘make’ talent.

How about define it?

Winner gives it a fair try. She divides it into three categories:

One, an early mastery. Back to Einstein in the crib. But if a child is not exposed to badminton, or read bedtime stories 0r given the opportunity to play chess until out of nappies?

Two, creativity. Which seems somewhat circular. Can you measure creative talent by measuring creative talent? She specifies they have their own approach, ideas that set them apart, but this still throws up the question of ‘how can we determine this?’ Certainly every writer I have known has their own slightly peculiar sense of the so called rules.

The third, as detailed above, the obsession. Do we define obsession by output? By pursuit against odds?

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, they would not think it so wonderful – Michaelangelo (supposedly)

Mozart crippled himself. Van Gogh gave an ear for his two thousand some scribbles.

But how then do we reconcile the work of JD Salinger, whose great first novel was to be his last? Or Harper Lee, famous for one novel only but whose power and influence is still reverberating through time? Patterson writes daily, and publishes hourly.. Amanda Hocking apparently wrote seventeen novels in her spare time.

But even Mozart, Beethoven and countless other greats, no matter how prolific, are known by the vast majority for only a few works. Many today couldn’t even name a Beethoven composition, although they’d likely recognise one or two.

Many believe output is still fundamentally about quality, the rest the steps towards mastering it.

How do we measure quality?

Our attempts often lead to another oft quoted form of the myth: Cream always rises to the top.

In 1984 Leonard Cohen penned a little ditty about the vulnerability of love, a little ditty the record company wasn’t too charmed by.

Couple of decades, a big green ogre and tv talent contest later and over 300 artists have covered it and it’s been so frequently used across most media even its creator thinks its time to give it a rest.

I was just reading a review of a movie called Watchmen that uses it and the reviewer said – “Can we please have a moratorium on ‘Hallelujah’ in movies and television shows?” And I kind of feel the same way…I think it’s a good song, but I think too many people sing it

Is that example of cream rising to the top? Or how easy it is for it to be overlooked, unrecognised for what it is? For the sheer power of familiarity? Doris Lessing certainly thought so, claiming after her publisher rejected her anonymously penned novel, that ‘nothing succeeds like success’.

When Stephen King was given a lifetime achievement for contributions to literature it moved Harold Bloom to say

He is a man who writes what used to be called Penny Dreadfuls. That they could believe that there is any sign of literary value there.. or inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy.

Do you know who Harold Bloom is?

No, me neither, though he sounds in every way like a character from a Truman Capote novel.

Barbara Baig, who apparently spent an entire book disproving this myth called talent, believes it to be,

..the assumptions we make about other people’s ability that stop us from developing our own…

Why must you then concern yourself with it? It might seem a little like thinking about elephants when someone tells you not to think about elephants. But it will come at you in many forms, a true writer must write, luck is for the lazy; they’ll contradict each other, if its hard work maybe it’s not meant to be; it often involves the words, good, writer and must. It can seem to be about talent but just as often about luck, hard work or rules, of grammar, of convention, of story. It’s been present in this blog, I can’t deny it. At its heart it’s our innate desire to find our place on the hierarchy, to know before we poke our heads above the parapet if we’re going to get shot down, and where that shot might come from.

You can believe in innate talent, or not, but if you do, and you work in insurance, are you finding the days a little too grey and long? Does old age feel too far away? Maybe it isn’t about talent, or meeting someone else’s criteria of creamy goodness, maybe its just about happiness.

 

 

Story Genius: Can A Book Tell You How to Write?

Lord that’s a dull title. I’m getting a little serious here.

I’ve been reading my first ever ‘craft book’, Story Genius by Lisa Cron. It was leant to me by an aficionado of her method and neatly coinciding as it did with my decision to write a piece on pantsing vs plotting, the different approaches writers take, it felt fortuitous… or at least indicative of many minds – the great and slightly bonkers  – thinking alike.

Structure, plotting, outlining, formula.. lots of different words all amounting to the same thing. A concern with shaping your story before you actually write, or even conceive your basic idea. The difference in words is to my mind nothing to do with their meaning, or their result, and everything to do with how writers wish their work to be perceived. Structure has integrity while formula is derided as the approach of hacks. And there could be some merit to that – structure does matter – but in every discussion I see on it, it’s reduced to a formula, in all but name.

The questions being asked aren’t, is this working structurally? Why is this bit falling flat? Why does interest flag by this point? (And even these I write with caveats) But rather, how do I structure my novel? Who has a good blueprint I can apply? By what page must I perform this plot point in order to comply with this model? As if structure were something to be welded on to an existing story or a pre-existing scaffold you must then wrap your story around. In short that it is something distinctly separate.

When I first started reading Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, I was really, I have to admit, incredibly curious. I’ve never read a book like this and while I have read snippets of others, I really wanted to see honestly, fairly, whether there was any merit to such a book. Any real craft lessons that could be applied and help a writer grow. I’m about three quarters of the way through and flagging. Initially I wasn’t completely dismissive, although every time I’d think she’s making some sense, she’d say something that would make me pull back and look around, as if to the shocked spectators, thinking ‘dude? Really?’

The foundation of her premise is that readers read with their emotions. Which I agree with. How you engage those emotions however is tricky and will vary reader to reader. There doesn’t seem to be any attempt to acknowledge that on her part or that you’ll never appeal to everyone. She cites big selling examples, including Fifty Shades of Grey, The Little Engine That Could and Die Hard, showing a distinct lack of (taste) and appreciation of how the medium influences your approach, using them as indicators that there is one universal truth – the only truth we need concern ourselves with  – to how story works. Since at least one of those failed to work for me, that’s straight away problematic. Further, despite her claim, she doesn’t demonstrate how any of these fit into her blueprint, even loosely. Instead she uses them mostly to push her claim that all the other concerns we have over what makes a story great are irrelevant.

It’s true that Fifty Shades is horribly written – by beautiful writing standards, that is… And yet, the year Random House acquired the trilogy it catapulted them into the black. In fact, they gave every employee in the United States.. a five thousand dollar holiday bonus. Clearly something is going on here, something that has absolutely nothing to do with the “quality” of the writing. That something is story. – Lisa Cron

Much as I would like to, I can’t dismiss this out of hand. I do think it’s overly simplistic, no evaluation of Fifty Shades can be credible if it refuses to take into account that it was a/ fanfiction that piggy backed on the fame of another best seller and b/porn. Without knowing the exact figures I do know the entire genre of romance/erotica exploded (in a non-sticky sort of way..) around the time of its publication.

Great writing fails time and time again to prove its selling mettle to the public – The Da Vinci Code, Twilight, The Stud – and sadly far too many self published success stories seem to uphold this. As Fifty Shades does. Rejected by publishers, snaffled up by readers, books rushed out in a month or two, building sales and audiences, seeming to deliver exactly what a large percentage of the book buying public want at a fraction of the cost and some would say, quality.

The major issue I would have with all the cited examples (barring Die Hard, obviously) isn’t their lack of beautiful prose but their lack of interesting story, the very thing she claims helped them sell. I may be more sophisticated than the average reader – obviously darling.. but for all I have problems with many of the best sellers I equally take issue, the same issue, with the award winners. While they are full of elegant, unconventional and complex prose, they often sacrifice story in order to maintain this style, because the truth of the matter is the two are never separate. I would go further, nothing is ever separate, including your approach.

This is the fundamental flaw with Story Genius. It continually separates things that are inseparable, creating a sort of hierarchy of consideration with her one concern obliterating all others.  One wise reviewer pointed out that its done in the name of flogging her wares. The oft touted belief that without the surety of the seller, you’d never make a buck. It’s the same thing that stops a PM from shrugging and saying, mate I can’t predict the future, but we’re hopeful.  Instead we lie  – but in order to uphold that lie we twist everything and render it useless.

Take her approach to pantsting and plotting, both of which she cites as myths. She debunks the myth of pantsing by first admitting many great writers do it, (but you know not you.. ) and second by claiming that it persists only because it’s the easy option.

But if pantsing leads to failure, why is it so damn seductive?.. Simple: we’re hardwired to do what’s easy. – Lisa Cron

I can’t believe any writer would ever write that sentence.

And okay, she isn’t a writer, she is an agent, a story consultant, which explains the emphasis on flogging and wares. Yet she wrote this book, she created her ‘method’ surely she has some understanding? All I can say is I may be a rubbish planner, but I would still chose it and housework and treating a crocodile with gonorrhoea over writing. It is the writer’s eternal paradox

I hate writing. I love having written

Plotting she dismisses as surely each and every plotter ever, didn’t consider character.. em… She also takes aim at other well known methods, for the very same reason. None  – not even the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell consider the internal struggle of the character, concerning themselves solely with plotting the external.

..these guides zero in on the sequencing of events in and of themselves as if each “hero” gets tossed into a one-size-fits-all gauntlet. So something “big” happens by page 20, something “dangerous” by page 50.. and so on. Successful stories often do follow the external patterns these guides set forth, so its deceptively easy to believe that all you have to do is ape the shape.. – Lisa Cron

All of which echoes my own concerns. Story follows a certain organic path, by its nature it’s an exploration of a problem, a moment of change and all that entails. It’s easy, like horoscopes, to apply generalities to almost every successful one out there, if you are flexible enough about what ‘big’ means, just as easy to ignore that something equally ‘dangerous’ happens three pages later, and then again four pages on. The more problematic issue is when we try to change the story to fit the model, shifting that dangerous moment to an earlier scene so it’s at the right place. When in essence we separate form and content.

I recently had a discussion about Remember the Titans with a writer who believed it failed as an example of the Hero’s Journey, because there were multiple protagonists and there was no wise mentor. In actuality most of the characters have stories that function more like obstacles standing in the way of the Coach’s goal – to harmonize his team and make them successful. While the Coach works in the role of both hero and mentor. He must guide the young players to be better than their peers, their parents and their fears, in doing so he also points the way to himself. The other writer had applied such a literal interpretation of Campbell’s model that he couldn’t tolerate even these slight variations.

Cron’s desire to marry character with plot and structure very much meshes with my own view, yet despite this claim, in reality she seems to be effectively separating them at every step; identifying one aspect then moulding and adjusting the other to fit in. The example she uses throughout, a story her friend is writing, and I presume she is guiding, doesn’t appear to be an actual novel. And I can understand why. We start with a dog and a woman who doesn’t like dogs and end up with a writer with a partner on life support, a rabid stalker-stroke-fan, an alternate time lime with a girl breaking down on a football pitch, a studio deadline, and a famous actors dog…

Apparently it’s all about how our Protag is afraid to love – which leads to her kidnapping a dog which she doesn’t love and will never love, because she doesn’t love dogs but it will help her write a script all about the power of love…

I know, I know. It’s just as easy to make a story sound ridiculous as it is to make it fit the three act structure. But my eyebrows were disappearing further into my hairline with every plot  – sorry, character motivation, we explored. It felt disjointed and painfully contrived. Cron’s blueprint is hinged around identifying your characters inner struggle – something she designates the third rail, in the belief that like the third rail on a subway train, it’s what drives your story and by default your plot. The problem is that despite understanding there is an influence between the internal and external, they are still two distinct things in her head. And they are created as such. Then she simply searches, or directs her writer to search, for anything that might tie them together, no matter how tenuous they feel, no matter how often they have to rely on coincidence and convenience.

She has decided she is going to have to save Ruby from herself by removing her from her house and sweeping her off to wherever Nora lives (I know, I know, people will wonder how in the world one adult would have the power to do that to another. I’ll figure something out… ) – Jennie Nash in Story Genius by Lisa Cron

In pursuit of her one universal truth she has cast aside all other considerations, including plausibility and bizarrely for a character-based approach, character. There is never any question of who Ruby is. Her entire personality is distilled into one belief, the one which is her third rail. Again I find myself not entirely in disagreement. I’ve never particularly ascribed to the theory that your character must be fully worked out, in the sense that much of who your character is will never be revealed in your story. Sherlock Holmes and the Prostrate Exam is none of any readers concern. However, I’m not sure that her method has anything to do with character at all, and that she hasn’t in fact just switched terms on us. There is so much simplicity in this approach that I cannot see the character’s desire as anything other than the character’s goal by another name. Her internal struggle or ‘misbelief’ is just more obstacles. Her origin scene is just another inciting incident. Because we aren’t shaped that easily by one event. If changing our belief system where that easy we’d all be psychotic. We’ve taken the external plot structure and dressed it up in ‘character-y’ sounding words.

For all the talk of brain science, which again by any other name is simply psychology or rather the neurological underpinnings of our understanding of it, there is very little scientific rigour in evidence. Even the Myers-Brigg test is more sophisticated and that only measures four out of the agreed upon five personality factors, which determine much of our behaviour and how we will respond to external events. Take Sherlock again – while I haven’t given a great deal of thought to his prostrate, should I chose to I could well imagine how it might go. Why? Not as the third rail suggests because I have some notion of his one defining belief, but rather because I know what kind of man he is. Sanguine about matters that others find squeamish, arrogant to the point he always presumes he knows best, plain speaking as he believes efficacy trumps (others) ego’s, yet finds it difficult to deal with his own shortcomings, physical vulnerabilities as much as any other.

Knowing the who and what of your story, knowing that one does not exist without the other, character always driving plot, the external always impacting on the internal, is the best guide to writing I can think of. But Cron isn’t interested in guiding. Guiding is for those who believe in the myth of ‘the shitty first draft.’ To letting it all pour out. Forget guiding principles when you can tick boxes. Yet in that lovely contrary way that writing has, the more she limits us the more the story meanders. Her tightness of focus in character and worldview leading to an external plot that escalates in ever increasingly ridiculous events –  sister-napping, dog napping, coma’s, deranged fans –  inexplicable behaviour.. again dognapping? – and disconnect from the core message – love is worth it.. again dognapping?? You know those Hollywood films you watch where you spend the entire thing thinking, but why didn’t they just *insert obvious sensible action*?

According to Cron actually making sense is irrelevant. Cause brain science. I suspect brain scientists might want to disagree. She poo-poos the notion of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ claiming we have no control over it, that we are in fact hard wired to believe, that it is an evolutionary tool, a means of figuring out ‘what if’.

We don’t turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.  – Lisa Cron

Noticed the problem? I’m fairly sure I’ll never find myself with a writing partner I never married lying in a coma, a sister who kidnaps me for my own good, a studio boss who wants to replace me with a fanfiction/stalker and the deep seated belief that kidnapping a dog will solve all this. That’s not a ‘what if’ I’m ever going to ask, nor am I even sure what I would be asking. Credibility matters. Plot matters.

I’m a character writer, I’m supposed to say it doesn’t.

But ..

PLOT MATTERS

Cron is absolutely determined that our internal struggle is the only thing that really matters; that external events need only work like switches on a railway track triggering our emotions, but beyond their ability to connect, the shape and form they take are utterly without meaning.

Yet if I say to you there was a pile up on the motorway your husband drives everyday.. I don’t need to tell you about your fear of abandonment because your mum always missed parents night, or that time you lost your pet turtle when you were five, you can in fact have lived a life without any bereavement at all and you’ll still have a pretty good idea of how gut wrenching such an announcement would be, how potentially life altering even those few minutes of uncertainty would feel. The external matters because it’s the world we have to navigate. It’s the world that smacks us down, lifts us up, terrifies, bewilders and excites. If we’re using story to figure out how to predict and survive what might be coming, it matters who we are, but it also matters what we face. Even the seemingly fantastical are often grounded in real day present fears, an apocalypse by another name is disaster. War, famine, plague – these are realities people through time and in the present day have had to deal with. Dystopia’s tend to speak to our fear of political control and to the need to conform, the consequences of not belonging, and again they draw from world’s we know have existed, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Iron Curtain to the incredible tales of North Korea.

Connection isn’t enough, story works best when plot and character are so interwoven you cannot separate one from the other. Its why Batman only works in Gotham, while Superman just makes it look dirty. It’s why hi-concept sells despite all that poor prose and idiotic characters. Ever heard of how the team behind Alien got the green light?

Jaws in Space

It’s the most famous tagline that’s never been used. Because all the emotion you need is in those three words, that one simple idea, event, what if, is what everything else flows out from. And sometimes that what if can be internal, or character based. Lolita. Animal Farm. Forrest Gump. Edward Scissorhands. We should be careful not to confuse complicated with complex. One has depth, but can usually be distilled down quite easily to a simple idea, event, individual. The other just meanders wildly and leaves the reader bewildered.

Cron’s story has no what if. Her very base premise, detailed in the blurb, the introduction and the opening chapters, is ignored. Ruby’s dilemma is convoluted, her fear of losing someone she loves natural and identifiable, but it’s disconnected from the story that is being told, from the initial idea dreamt up:

I kept thinking about a story with a woman at the centre who doesn’t like dogs. That’s all I had – this woman with this strange and somewhat unpopular characteristic – Jennie Nash in Story Genius by Lisa Cron

became..

what if a woman who’s spent her whole life believing she’s successfully hedged her bets against love (of people, of things, of dogs) is on the verge of losing everything – the one person she’s felt close to, her lifelong career and her grasp on reality? Mad with grief she has one chance to set things right but first she must convince those around her that she’s not suicidal so she devises a scheme to steal a dog… – Jennie Nash in Story Genius by Lisa Cron

It goes on…

..but when she can’t get rid of the dog..

And on..

..is what makes the inevitable grief of loss endurable.

Then ends with Cron’s applause…

Bingo!

Me – I’d say go back. There is one word in that initial idea, one word that resonates: Unpopular. And it seems oddly potent that it’s the one idea she’s refused to address in favour of a much more popular theme: better to have loved and lost..

Many writers and critics of writing would say that in the end we’re all writing about the same few things. Some might even go as far as saying we’re all writing about death: dying unloved, dying alone, dying unremembered, dying too soon… But themes, however powerful, aren’t what we write. They are what emerge from what we write. They are the dark shadows that lie beneath and the more you try to address them directly the more they slip through your fingers. It is the concrete world that allows us to grasp them. Cron’s basic premise, the what if’s, the power of emotion, is undeniable, it’s her failure to connect that successfully with the surface, the concrete form of story, that illustrates how much the two work together and fall, apart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Do You Do It?: Plotting, pantsing and gardening.

As someone who doesn’t regard The Rules as great dictates chipped into stone and then dissolved into binary ether and sent forth to confound us all (or even something deserving a capital), I feel like I should begin with an apology. There’s a possibility this might get a little biased…

I’m a pantser – which is an odd word for a Brit and always makes me want to assure folk I’m not just wandering around the house in my knickers.

It’s never felt like a choice as much as a compunction. Something’s are bone deep. This is the way I write. I love the idea of organising my head. I periodically attempt it, before, during, after – more during and after. I like the surety, the systematic certainty of it whispers to me and I have often tried to whisper back, but for me when I create, I must create. That’s simply how it works. Only in the act do I find my inspiration.

Don’t get me wrong, for all I talk of feeling the lure of the planner, I know well how alluring the pantser (ye know without that name sullying it) can seem. They are the epitome of the romantic writer, ink smudged across their pensive faces, caught in the mania of creation, the passionate scribbles of the possessed. We’re all a little in love with that image of ourselves, mostly because we know the reality and yeah, pants might be a better description..

This debate goes right to the top. King calls himself a ‘discovery writer’, believing he doesn’t create anything, just keeps chipping away, one word at a time until he uncovers the story.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses. ~  On Writing, Stephen King

George RR Martin believes in Gardeners and Architects.

There are some writers who are architects, and they plan everything, they blueprint everything, and they know before the drive the first nail into the first board what the house is going to look like… And then there are gardeners who dig a little hole and drop a seed in and water it with their blood and see what comes up.. they don’t how big it’s going to be, or what shape it’s going to take. I am much more a gardener than an architect.  ~ GRR Martin

As for the plotters, it would be so tempting to go with Patterson, whose entire writing is an outline. However there are a few others who have come out in favour of the planned approach. Grisham has claimed the more time dedicated to preparation the better the final work while JK Rowling imagines this is a basic outline…

Beyond them are the middle-grounders, the ones who believe we’re all on a sliding scale that tends to tip us towards the middle where we’re all slightly pantsing and slightly plotting. Oddly in this instance I think the dichotomy has merit. There are inherent differences between the two that I believe matter and will show in the end.

That’s not to fully sway you towards one when you’re naturally drawn to another. Part of the reason I think the distinction is relevant is that how we write is such a personal issue that trying to force ourselves to fit to someone else’s style can be crippling. Lisa Cron, in Story Genius states that she believes only one percent of writers are capable of holding all their story in their head – nice to know I’m finally a one-percenter even if I can’t afford a car. Of course she also believes that both plotting and pantsing are flawed and instead preaches her blueprint, somehow magically different from your bog standard outline as it focuses on your character and their internal struggle rather than external events. Which in turn brings me to my second concern, something created almost entirely by the misdirection of semantics.

A blueprint is an outline. Which is also a plan. Which is something we plot. This is the heart of a plotter. It’s not someone who has an idea, or a scene playing in their head. It’s not someone who only writes events, it doesn’t preclude those who don’t delineate chapters, or call characters A,B and C. As we can see from JK’s outline, her concern isn’t simply plotting action, certainly not in detail, but takes a big picture approach, laying out the underlying thematic arcs, ‘prophecy’, key relationships, ‘Hagrid & Grawp’ as well as important scenes, such as ‘Ron and other w’s told about fathers injury’. Whether you snowflake from thematic logline to intricate outline, or research everything to do with police procedure before killing off your first victim, the point is you are amassing a body of material so you will know what to write.

Many pantser’s have an idea of something when we sit down to write. What that something is will vary considerably, not just person to person but work to work. I free write many shorts, I usually have a story idea in mind when I write a novel, not much when I started my first three, but as time has gone on, the list of what I would like to write just keeps growing, giving me plenty of time to ruminate on them – although I rarely get much past  a series of vague images in my head. Sometimes a scene or a unique character as well. Like I said it varies. Saying that adds up to a plan is like getting in the car to go on holiday and remembering to pack underwear. I may even have some sense of the destination, but it’s a long way away and I have no idea how I’m getting there or even if I will. I’m prepared for that but I haven’t planned for it. And that to my mind makes a difference.

Where you put the emphasis will guide where you put the emphasis in your story. If I’ve packed sunscreen, I’m going to be looking for the sun. I’ll drive south, to the coast. If I know how much money I have I’ll plan ahead to make sure I can stretch it out, know where the cheap petrol stations are, good camping or luxury hotels.. The more I know before hand the more it will inform the decisions I make, no matter how much I believe I am open to change.

But as I said, I’m not sure it’s a choice. Lisa Cron wants us to put the emphasis on characters. I’ve yet to read a story where the characters, their wants and needs, behaviour and personality weren’t a defining factor. Not necessarily to the benefit of the work, and that probably comes down to things you’re not even aware of. If you naturally incline towards a fascination with character it will show in your work; you’re always looking for interesting attitudes, unusual relationships. If you like battles and magic systems, rich playboys or sexy werewolves, it will show not by lack of characters but in how they come across – and not everyone will have a problem with that. Recycled tropes are as popular as ever. Lisa herself cites 50 Shades of Grey as an example of how her method works, but there are some of us character writers who think its an example of how it doesn’t work, sales be damned.  Planning or pantsing will not change this, but it might indicate slightly which you are more likely to benefit from.

As a character driven writer I need to let the characters lead. A plot driven writer is more likely to stunt the development of her characters and I wonder if it’s because they’ve boxed themselves in with a plan? Take JK for instance, a planner. It was evident early on in the books that Harry and Ginny would end up together, yet by the time it happens, I wouldn’t have shipped them for all the gold in Gringotts.  She hadn’t given Ginny time to breathe or room to grow into an interesting character in her own right. It felt like ticking a box.

I can’t help but feel the approach we take is knitted into our mental makeup – the very reason I know many dislike thinking of it as a dichotomy. Yet I can’t dissuade myself from this idea that our attitude defines our work in myriad nuanced, even unseen, yet important ways. I don’t know what is going to happen until its happening, til I’m there living, breathing, fighting.

No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader ~ Robert Frost

Science has identified something known as the incubation effect, where creativity is fostered by a wandering mind. Ever get great ideas in the shower? Or taking the dog for a walk? These rote mechanical tasks free up our higher minds to make incredible leaps. Conversely when we try to force our focus we tend to follow well laid plans, the road already known. To take planning and pantsing to their absolute, I create as I write – or to be more specific as I type. This is my rote mechanical aid. While when I plan I sit thumbs twiddling, waiting for inspiration before I write a single word. Even there the attitude of the planner is defining, the emphasis always on the before. Before we write we must have something tangible, concrete in hand, fuelled by a belief that we cannot spin nothing into gold, cannot discover something that doesn’t already exist.

Maybe all writers need to believe enough to take that leap. Maybe that’s why every time, every story I think I got nothing.. until I start. I keep hoping it’ll get easier to trust I will always be able to unearth something, but thus far.. And sometimes I think that is the true lure of the plan. Writing is hard. Planning is naming spaceships and thinking about how much I really love my eccentric new android – he’s got a thing for cockroaches, so cute! – planning can very easily fall into procrastination. No matter how much stuff you accumulate the only thing that’s truly tangible is the writing. Until then you’re still in the before, facing a blank page.

I promised myself this wouldn’t turn into a plea to pants and its worth reminding myself that I love Harry Potter and never really liked King. And who can ever remember how his stories end?

As I said it’s a matter of listening to your bones. In my first ever drafts I got consumed with research to the point it was crippling and it distracted me from what I really wanted to write, what I believe is my strength: character dynamics. Likewise when you consider Tolkien it’s that world which has blueprinted an entire genre, the history, languages, geography and breath-taking scope that works. How much of this lies in planning and plotting? Martin is six books and thousands of words in and does anyone feel closer to a resolution? He, like King, has always struck me as a man who is exploring the nature of the darkness within us.

It’s easy to read that as me condemning all plotters to the formula or action-heavy genres – which in itself isn’t a condemnation unless you’re not overly fond of reading it – but Joss Whedon, a man who puts huge emphasis on structure, can deliver larger than life personalities better than almost any screenwriter working today. He does however fall victim to trope-holes more than I suspect a man less inclined to plan would. I suspect it happens most when he is hemmed in not by his own creativity, however it comes to him, but other’s expectations.

I wrote down everything that I thought would be useful–what we hadn’t had enough of, what I thought had clicked, what we could improve–and also things that excited me about the second season. Once I had that memo out to the writers I felt like I was ready for anything. I wasn’t, but it was cute that I thought so ~ Joss Whedon

And that’s really how I’d like to leave it. The most important thing to remember when it comes time to try and figure out the best approach is to shake yourself free of any expectations, romantic notions of a real writer, wannabe’s selling you their latest four pronged, ten-horned, thrice guaranteed formula. Listen to you. There is room for every kind of writer, even bad ones. Thank god 😀

 

 

 

 

Humble apologies, mein readers.. reader? Anyone..?

Tis been a bleak long hard winters end.. the internets been barely visible for the hard layer of frost, all but impenetrable..

yeah, so, I have no real excuse for absence or even a well thought through fake one. Have this lovely piece of self reflexive joy as an apology. Ah isn’t it lovely when you can sit back with a wee chuckle and shake your head affectionately as you think, what a funny business this writing is..

The hidden side to character: relationships (aka a blatant excuse to talk about Star Wars)

As with so many things, this might seem a little obvious, but before you snort and think ‘she’s at it again’ sometimes it’s worth taking a second look at the obvious. Sometimes things are so obvious they get overlooked and then, when the misinterpretations and abuses crop up, we don’t recognise them for what they are.

Character too often comes at us like a laundry list of traits, a static and unengaging wishlist; relationships are the sharp, working end, where what you want can be brought to life and cliché and stereotype shaken off. Or at least they offer that opportunity, if we pay attention to them.

The hidden part isn’t so much what they can do to reveal character, it’s that a good writer knows that character often exists in service to relationships. Because relationships aren’t merely the who, but the what, serving to not only further the plot but very often they can and do become subplots of their own. Many times they are the reason your reader is still with you, the true driving force of your story.

Take one of the most despised films of recent times; take a trilogy of them: The Star Wars prequels. People – not just sci-fi freaks like me – loved the original trilogy. When the prequels were finally announced as going ahead they’d been nineteen years in the making and anticipation was high. But even so there were already stirrings, how could they live up to the originals?

But what was it precisely that made the originals so good, so good that our love has only grown not faded?

Not the special effects. We’ve kinda beat those. Advancements in technology were always cited as the principle reason Lucas started half way through his story with episode 4, fearing he couldn’t bring his vision of the first three to life until the special effects caught up with his imagination.

Not the acting

Despite the late great Alec Guinness’ best efforts.

The recent episode, The Force Awakens, clearly believes it was all about the world, as it offers us substandard acting and mediocre special effects all bundled up in a story free nostalgia fest of OT memorabilia: canteenas, the Millenium Falcon and sand. A lot of sand.

I’m standing with Lucas on this one. I think the world building was one of the few things that he got right, along with far superior battles, for the most part. Where he got it wrong was his relationships.

I don’t merely mean the romance, although obviously the time put in to try and erase the image of a grown up Natalie Portman tucking wee Anakin in just served to bog the pace, leaving a bad soap-y taste in the mouth and damaging the entire trilogy timeline.

I mean the relationship at the heart of our intrigue: Obi-wan and Darth Vader, master and pupil, battling to the death. The most iconic and intriguing scene from the OT.

Lucas did show at least an inkling of an awareness of this by the last film, Return of the Sith, which is centred around the showdown of Obi-wan and Anakin, completing his transformation to Darth Vadar. The anticipation for this battle, I think, is why so many want to count it as the best of the three, as it finally gave them what they had been waiting for.

However, the ground work had never been laid. Our investment in their relationship was still best encapsulated by that original scene. In the first film not only are we stuck with cute kiddie Anakin, trash talking insect racers and eyeing up Padme – ewww – but the relationship being built is between him and Qui-gon-jinn. Obi-wan is stuck in the ship and doesn’t even meet him until a good way through the film, where their sole interactions consist of talking about each other to others. It is Qui-gon who risks everything for the boy, Qui-gon who has Obi-wan’s devotion. The boy is an obligation and not even one that risks anything. As relationship set ups go that’s about as interesting… as.. well… any other risk free obligation. A teenage/young adult Anakin stealing his master’s admiration and trust, an almost equal, always threatening to usurp, yet still needing him, bound together in their admiration of the lost Qui-gon, now that might have held our interest.

And the fact that yet again in the second and third films they spend most of the time apart, wouldn’t have mattered.

All those vital elements that we aspiring storytellers are beaten over the head with, tension, conflict, agency, rise and fall, all of these exist organically within relationship. It is by definition what happens between two or more characters, it cannot be told, it must be realised by what unfolds, what is said and done. It is where story and character meet.

What is character but determination of incident? And what is incident but the illustration of character? – Henry James

Romance is predictably where most minds will go whenever you mention relationship, but as with Anakin and Obi-wan, they are often not the one we invest in. An interesting side-note on this can be found in fan fiction, a place rather interestingly were relationship has become a verb. The sheer volume of shipping that goes on between characters whose base relationship is antagonistic, troubled, platonic or any thing other than what the writer intended, shows that we invest in far more than what we are told to. I’m not sure that is always a credit to the writer. Relationships exist like an undercurrent, opposing riptides pushing and pulling at our emotions. However often I feel that the gap between what the writer seems to presume we want to read and what the reader actually plucks from the pages, is indicative of a rather rote and formulaic approach to relationships which relies, as does character, far too heavily on tell.

Just as Obi-wan tells us – you were like a brother to me!  – while we’re left to presume the bickering, rivalry, one-up-man-ship, and intimacy of a true sibling relationship, too many authors just tell us what our characters feel for one another. We’re told of their great passion – actually we’re told ad nauseum. Emphasis on the nauseum. It’s become de rigueur to build entire scenes around two characters telling us of their passion/love/devotion, and then through these endlessly repetitive scenes build entire relationships, build entire stories.

I can just about forgive this in romance. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t read the genre. I couldn’t stomach talking about my own relationships to that degree let alone reading about someone elses. However if it is something readers of the genre do enjoy, who am I to suggest another approach. In other genres, as the shipping fan fiction shows, many, many readers are far from satisfied with what is presented. Insta-love has become like Mary Sue, a put down of a very particular type of story, usually young adult and usually with paranormal elements, wherein story and plot and character are all side-lined in favour of what is called relationship but isn’t. Rather than show an interesting dynamic playing out between two interesting characters, we’re told about how interesting, nay amazing, these characters are and that alone apparently suffices.

Plot is a vital side to relationships. What happens shapes, guides, reflects back on who they are, who they might be, connecting and binding them. Too often these things seem to be kept distinct, or reduced to points of such base simplicity that story can only be the victim. Love is proven in acts of self sacrifice, but it’s never developed through acts of self. To return to Star Wars (cause why not) the love story that worked was Han and Leia. It draws on an abundance of well established tropes, which you are quite within your rights to call clichés, love/hate, opposites attract, even that initial latent hint of a love triangle (perhaps I saw them when I was too young, that never seemed too convincing to me) but interestingly, the one who rushes to her rescue is never Han. Luke is forever coming to save her, throwing off his training, abandoning his family, facing Darth unprepared, all recklessly for her (and later Han too). It becomes part of his personality, a hint at the recklessness we know undid his father. While Han is forever reluctant – a volunteer for Luke’s respect in the first film; a helpless patsy in the second; and the rescued in the last, by Leia herself, who like Luke has already shown her willingness to take risks and suffer for her beliefs. Perhaps that has categorised her life, all of it that we have known. Her actions don’t prove her love, they’re a natural part of story and character as we’ve already seen, it’s their cute bickering that we invest in, their innate differences, his arrogant ‘I know’, the way she echoes it back to him, the dynamic that’s peculiarly theirs, however stereotypical.

But romance is such a limited perspective. It doesn’t even have to involve two characters. Sometimes the most important relationship is between a character and society in general. The strict code and layers of bureaucracy that surround and bind the Jedi’s, create an interesting dynamic when juxtaposed with a boy raised in slavery, both shackles that deny him, both threaten to take what he loves. A dynamic yet again that the prequels squandered. In part because Anakin spends more time as Jedi than slave, and as a young boy he is presented as angelic and hopeful. Plus, ya know, he pod races in his spare time, instead of doing his homework which makes it difficult to sympathise.

Sometimes it is with different conflicting forces within themselves; light and dark, past and present. Beyond even Obi-wan, perhaps the most anticipated aspect of the prequels was the relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, beautifully illustrated by this image.

Yet you cannot help but feel that image became part of the issue. The contrast between innocence and evil would not have been nearly as stark if we’d replaced the young slave boy with a sneering (although quite sexy) Hayden Christiansen. What works in one medium doesn’t always translate. Even here that decision to cast the younger Anakin throws its shadow over everything that follows, as if the extreme actions of the last film, the slaughter of the young padawans, were yet again driven by the desire to wipe our memories of his saccharine sweetness. The beginning and the end weren’t ever in doubt, it was Lucas’ job to show us the journey, the decisions that led him to the dark side, and convince us. Because the most important relationship of all is that between writer and reader.

The Never-ending Struggle for Balance: In Writing and in Life

This is something I’ve been obsessed with for a long time, but I’ve struggled to even attempt to write it. It seems to encompass so much, so much that is difficult to verbalise that my thoughts are scattered and disjointed; but its now reached that point where I have to at least try, or it’ll drive me insane.

Balance seems to be something none of us get right. I remember studying Lenin and the lead up to the October Revolution at school and being quite fired up. Equality! Brotherhood! Fairness… after all why shouldn’t we strive to make life fair? Why simply settle back with a shrug and accept that it isn’t? I struggled through the actual Revolution, the slaughter of the Royal family, but by the time we reached the Red Terror, I was disillusioned and bewildered. How could such noble intent go so horribly, savagely wrong?

But it’s far from a rare example. In fact it seems in some degree or another, it’s kinda the norm. It’s surprising how some of the most terrible figures and times in history began with a few men walking the right path, or to put it another way, they didn’t all begin on a different path to you or I, nor in some ways, does it seem that they ever truly left it. We’re seeing exactly this play out on social media. I don’t want to get drawn into the political hotbed – I’m not armed enough for that 😀 – however it goes beyond what we’re saying, into considerations of how we’re choosing to express ourselves, in words, in degrees and in mediums. We’ve been presented by a useful tool, to connect, communicate and inform, yet we’re facing issues such as cyberbully driven suicide, hacking on a global scale, stalking, identity theft, internet addiction, the breakdown of the English language and as some would have it, the rise of the alternative truth. We’ve even seen the first death due to a certain online game. We might personally see these as isolated stories, to be found universally as examples of bad luck, bad judgement and bad people, yet how often have you gone out with friends only for them to spend the whole time checking their phone? How many do you know who’ve suddenly developed an obsessive interest in politics convinced they know the answer to all societies ills, despite previously asking who Margaret Thatcher is? It’s impossible to deny its presence, even if we’re still uncertain on its influence.

It might seem from the above that balance is simply another word for moderation or compromise, and as I move this into the writing sphere, this being a writing site, ya know, I want to make it clear that though it may result in such things, to view it as such is to mislead. In fact this might be the crux of the problem.

Balance mistaken for moderation or compromise has a PR issue. Passion doesn’t compromise, and again perhaps more than ever, passion is bringing it on the interwebs. Passion is exciting, full blooded, it takes courage and determination and it changes the world. Compromise is a grey suit and nine to five sentence, a dull middle road from cradle to grave. An obit that no one reads.

The fact that all that is bollocks is precisely what balance is all about, and why we really need to talk about it.

I’m far from the first to develop this obsession. Buddhism is often referred to as the Middle Way, described as

a path that transcends and reconciles the duality that characterises most thinking… the path between two extremes, close to Aristotle’s idea of the “golden mean” whereby “every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice. – Sokai Gakkai International

I like the choice of the word transcends as honestly I believe when it comes to true balance we must start to think beyond the notion of duality. Even those that acknowledge a spectrum or shades of grey are still looking along a line with two poles and in reality that’s like thinking there is a right side up in space. We might easily miss a vital component (Romulan) coming at us from a completely different direction.

Balance isn’t so much an an axis, as it is a fulcrum. Every moment, every person, every endeavour is subject to countless forces and we’ll probably never fully know all the forces in play at any given moment, even in hindsight. We’re just not that smart. I’m not. But the more we can fill in, the more we can understand where to put our lever in order to achieve our desired outcome. That’s balance. Don’t mistake it for the literal middle, I doubt we could measure that anyway. The very first force in play, that we must get our head around, is effect. The perfectly balanced see saw is different depending on your aim..

This is my main issue with ‘the rules.’ Rules presume objective truths, a single desired outcome, and homogenise both vision and path. They ignore so many forces in play, they render themselves virtually useless. Taken in isolation, they can seem either idiotic or quite reasonable and yet put into play in the world of writing sites and they can shift radically from one to the other.

Lets look at adverbs. At first it might have seemed a little ridiculous.

The path to hell is paved with adverbs – Stephen King

To use an adverb in this way – any way – is a mortal sin  – Elmore Leonard

But it caught on and became a mantra. Then a backlash – a compromise. They mustn’t be avoided entirely, not wholly, but treated with caution, tested, prodded to ensure no weakness in accompanying verb, or redundancy in meaning. Like kicking tyres.

A reasonable compromise surely, a balanced approach?

Except in reality its just a shift down a line. The Romulans are attacking from above and we’ve got our heads down kicking our tyres. For many many reasons I’ve probably already bored everyone to tears with, but perhaps most importantly it ignores the entire question of whether its useful for a novice writer developing their voice and effective storytelling techniques, to put their attention on adverbs. And the answer is no. It’s a distraction. It’s easy to fix, easy to remove and easy therefore to master. Meanwhile there is a risk they aren’t growing or learning anything useful.

Where we put our focus matters. Another common writer ‘don’t’ is the mirror trope. This one is so common it frequently crops up in scathing reviews. The answer if followed with any consistency, is photos or selfies 😀 and will surely swiftly become a trope itself. The problem has never been that a character looks in the mirror and relates what they see, its how its done. The description itself too often tended towards, ‘raven tresses flowing about a perfect ivory oval.’. The issue isn’t solved by taking a natural part of life out of your characters story. Do you know we spend on average the equivalent of 2 weeks every year in front of the mirror? That’s more than most of us exercise. Or have sex.

Another way the writer loses their balance is with the over-correct. This can play out in various different ways, the kick-back against the ‘rules’ or prevailing style, but one of the worst is the attempt to please. The reasonable author, who values others input and is set on success, won’t kick out, they’ll attempt to adjust to fit. But whether its a kick out or an adjustment, the essential result is the same, its a push back. They went left, so now they’ll go right.

As for the kick out, this, simply put, is different for the sake of different. It’s a natural instinct, we get tired of being presented with the same thing, which in itself is a natural instinct, we mimic for success. Duality catches us in an eternal loop. Buddhists call it Samsara, the endless cycle of life and death. The enlightened middle way offers liberation from this suffering. Duality isn’t balance, its isolation from life, a question, a technique, a story, removed from context, from the world of conflicting influences.

Removing something from context is not merely about a sentence removed from a paragraph, a technique from its effect, it extends to the world beyond the fictional. Many writers bemoan the falling standards of the written word, asking whether publishers care about writing at all. They’ll cite the rise of Harry Potter forgetting it was a children’s book, aimed at nine year olds. The worst and most often cited is Fifty Shades of Grey. However what everyone seems to have forgotten is that it ignited the rise of what some refer to – derisively – as mummy porn. Basically some folk really like dirty books. Fan fiction sites are already rife with those who were aware of this, others needed to try and this book became the tester tube.. It shouldn’t impact with any force on those of us not writing erotica. Does the porn industry effect Hollywood? Will In and Out and In Again be lining up against Schindlers List in the greatest film category at the Oscars? Does Scarlet Goes Wild get compared alongside Gone with the Wind when we look at the all time best selling films?

And it’s not merely genre that effects us. Take a real life situation wherein advice was offered, good advice (well by my measure) and advice was ignored because others didn’t agree and the writer didn’t seem to understand what he was being told. It felt contradictory to other advice he had encountered. But the advice given, was given by an editor, a real life working editor, whose job is to read, and decide if something is worth publication. The advice it seemed to conflict with came from the ether. The general mutterings of writers, who’d heard, who’d been told, who talked to a friend of a friend of a friend.

The tragedy is it was potentially a great book. The story was there, the voice was there, humour, but the storytelling was weak. Not insurmountable by any means. This concerns me, it concerns me, because I suspect that book is about to be self-published. I’m as loath as ever to call this laziness. Nor will it be some POS that rightfully gets dumped to the bottom of the amazon ranks. As so many will be quick to suggest. The lazy get washed out is the assumed answer whenever we question the quality of self-published books, so why are you making it an issue? It’s become standard for anyone raising a query about self-publishing to be quickly assigned a side, and the actual concern to be glossed over.

It’s become, as so many things have, a two sided monster. How can we improve a system if we cannot even discuss it? The question of whether you are for or against it is no longer relevant. It’s here and shows no signs of falling away. The question now is how do we make it work? For some individuals it already has, that doesn’t however mean the system as a whole does. As ever it comes down to what you want from it and that includes us readers, those who should surely be benefiting most.

At the moment regardless of the opportunity, undeniably tempting to the writer, I’m not convinced literature is benefiting. And one of my fears comes from books like Fifty Shades of Grey. It shouldn’t impact on us, but that gulf between literary and commercial, between formula and invention, between pleasure and preaching, seems to be widening. We’re retreating to the poles rather than converging in the spaces we once loved to read in, because we’re perceiving it as a single variance. We’re seeing everything in isolation. A series of parallel lines, untouching, unrelated.

We think in terms of opposites. We cannot have a victim without a villain. We cannot have a hero without a dragon to be slain, a war to be fought. There is no good without evil, light without dark, angels without devils. This extreme duality is resulting in a simplicity that has no relevance, because it cannot touch the complex reality we live in. It’s an easier answer for a difficult world. There is an emotional satisfaction in this, because it is quantifiable. It’s the difference in many ways between shivering under the covers scared there might be a monster in the wardrobe and opening the door to see it there. We find it less frightening to face the beast than to live with the uncertainty. More than that we find it easier to put the monster in the cupboard than deal with the one inside us, with the truth that we can’t in fact ever see him, but he’s present, hidden, in everything.

I recently encountered a character who was morally ambiguous, or so it was claimed by countless professional reviewers. For the entirety of the book he was kind, considerate, acutely aware of the impact of his actions on his family and friends, of their feelings.. About as a nice as boy as I’ve never met. Then it’s revealed he slaughtered some folk in cold blood. For the record cold blooded murder isn’t morally ambiguous, it’s morally void.

It didn’t fit remotely with the character as presented, he was in essence hero and villain within the same body, given as one but never one, still polar opposites, at odds with one another. There was some attempt to suggest it was a difficult but necessary decision, but it was clearly written by someone who struggles to imagine a more difficult decision than firefox or chrome.

Here’s another duo: writer and reader. We need to stop separating those out. Balance is always harder, like standing on one foot, it requires awareness, effort, focus. It doesn’t let us drift into easy well worn ruts. I certainly haven’t mastered the art yet but we could start with a few simple tricks. Stop thinking villain, think human. Stop thinking literary, think story. Stop thinking light, think rainbows.

BOOK REVIEW: The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith

So I finally got around to reading Jk Rowlings new detective series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The first book ‘The Cuckoos Calling’ achieved a certain amount of notoriety when it was first revealed to be the work not of new unknown ex-soldier, Galbraith but the very well known best selling author of the last decade, Rowling. She released the book,  in her own words, seeking a fresh start ‘without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback’. As such it seems she is – or her book is – the perfect choice to review in order to uncover whether or not experts truly do seek out criticism and if so, what they do with it. Whether in fact it has any intrinsic value at all.

I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter series, just in case that isn’t clear. There’s no doubting the enormous impact the books had across the cultural sphere. From Taiwan to Torquay they are a universal meeting point for kids and adults, a bridge between different worlds. It seemed as though she plucked a story out of the ether that spoke to all of us, always there but never quite realised until she gave it form. That doesn’t, however, mean they were without fault. I personally struggled with some of the later books. The fifth in particular was weak yet bloated to the point you could only assume something deeply important had to be said within. One of the issues that niggled me about the later books was that I could not help but feel that criticism – the inevitable deluge of sour grapes – had struck home.

The criticism for the most part centred around two points; the first and most common, the style of Ms Rowling. Or rather the lack of it. Style is something that concerns literary fiction – which sells so much less than its commercial counterpoint, that its counterpoint is termed ‘commercial’. Occasionally critics like to take a few pokes at some of the heavy hitters. Brown gets lambasted for his flamboyance, Patterson for his volume – mostly volume of ‘co-authors’, and King earns grudging praise. Kids books rarely get this treatment; it seems here at least we approach the art of story by judging the story. But then adults aren’t queuing up at midnight to buy Julia Donaldson or Meg Cabot. The price of success is always going to be criticism and that certainly makes parsing the useful from the bitter tricky. When it was recently revealed that the books would be the subject of academic study, it raised a lot of eyebrows

“..the prose is too basic,” says author and literary critic Philip Womack. “It’s written awkwardly and is clumsy in places – although it does tell the story well. And it lacks subtlety. Even Professor Snape, who is meant to be complex, is so obvious.”

Which is fine as an objection to an adult study of literature, but does seem rather churlish when applied to a work aimed at 9-12 year olds. Yet it didn’t feel – to me – as if Rowling were able to dismiss such criticism as sour grapes.

People criticised her portrayal of the endlessly optimistic and kind Harry who never showed any signs of his abusive upbringing. Rowling responded with a whiny aggressively-aggrieved Harry in ‘Order of the Phoenix’, a personality turn that p’d of her fans and disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared in the next book.

She was accused of simplistic morality – all the bad guys so conveniently collected in the same house. She responds by showing Harry’s father and friends, including the kind professor Lupin, as bullies.

With the release of her first adult novel ‘The Casual Vacancy’, it seemed as though she was being haunted by those criticisms, but as with Harry Potter her response seemed to be concentrated entirely on the content rather than style. With an almost impenetrable host of unlikeable characters and unpalatable subjects she produced something both diametrically opposite her inviting magical universe and exactly the same in her straightforward, detail heavy prose.

I never had any interest in reading it. I have no interest in being preached to and subjected to the literary equivalent of an acid bath, just because someone somewhere decided it was worthy. I was hopeful with the release of ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’, that she might finally have shaken of those criticisms and returned to form. Cormoran Strike sounded suitably silly, PI’s might be the real world equivalent of the Loch Ness monster, none of us quite able to believe anyone really does that for a living and it was set in the suitably unrealistic world of models and celebrities. It seemed a recipe for all her strengths, larger than life characters, great twisty plots and fun settings.

And of course there was the front cover crawling with rave reviews..

‘The Cuckoos Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place. – Val Mcdermid

I don’t pay attention to these sort of things usually, but some do and I do really like Val McDermid. She seemed – seems? – like someone who would be honest. Of course, it could have reminded her by reawakening the desire to write something better…

Because it wasn’t good. I really wanted it to be, but it wasn’t good.

There will be spoilers ahead, so please if you haven’t read it and intend to, please don’t read on.

Spend too many years in the strange trenches of the wannabe masses, (which these days is the great published masses) and it changes your perception a little. I cannot for that reason perhaps, say the book was terrible. I did finish it, although there was a fair amount of skimming. My mum, for whom I actually bought the book, can’t remember if she did. She thinks she might have, but can’t remember much about it at all. That’s pretty unusual. She’s an avid reader of crime fiction – almost exclusively – never skims, always finishes but falls far from the snobby elitist so many of Rowlings detractors have been.

Let me put it this way, I have no intention of reading any more in the series. And I bought my mum ‘The Silkworm’ at the same time, so I wouldn’t even have to fork out another penny. That’s about as damning an indictment I can dole out as reader and would dread as an author.

It feels as though Rowling is still haunted by those voices of criticism. And in particular the ones taking aim at her prose. It’s very easy given the sheer length of the last four Harry Potter novels to assume that Rowling had gone the way of King and so many others, who it is unofficially acknowledged no longer have to adhere to the editors administrations. As Anne Rice put it (quite officially)..

“I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself,” she wrote. “I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me.” – NY Times.

Publishers after all have no reason to encourage length. It costs them more, and if you can make three out of one, a la Lord of the Rings? Muchos more mullas. Yet from the very start Rowling has defined herself with both her attention to detail and delivering works much longer than their counterparts. The average kids book is about half the length of ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’ and rumour has it the original was over 100 thousand words. If this is a battle fought and won, might I suggest it was the wrong one. The length was troublesome in the later HP books and becomes potentially insurmountable in ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’. There simply isn’t enough story here to justify the length, it drags, meanders and late at night, the sheer weight of it metaphorically and physically, induces the reader to surrender to sleep.

The detail that illuminated a magical world rich in complexity and wonder, is entirely unneeded in the drab reality of modern day London. Worse, much of her verbosity owes nothing to her eye for setting and everything to do with proving herself as a stylist.

A strange stray thought came to him now, as he looked up at that portrait: that this was the reason it had been painted, so that one day, its large hazel-green eyes would watch him leave. Had Charlotte known what it would feel like, to prowl the empty flat under the eyes of her stunning eighteen-year old self? Had she realised that the painting would do the work better than her physical self? – The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

We are constantly treated to the musings of the main character as he nurses his broken heart, not merely short paragraphs such as above, it felt at times like entire chapters. The prose is – odd. Not bad. Some is quite pretty, but quite pretty isn’t quite enough to justify it. Great prose is just that – great. And even then it consistently loses out to great story. A few – for my mind, truly great – authors figure this out and limit themselves to storytelling. The prose is still great, it just doesn’t advertise itself as such. You have to appreciate it through its functionality. Which actually makes it even greater. The art of the weave is the mark of the master storyteller.

The issue however, isn’t its greatness or otherwise, its that we don’t actually care. It’s revealed almost like a sub-story – well exactly like a sub story – explaining who our man is and how he ended up where he is. But this isn’t a story. It’s ordinary, everyday, there’s no deep secret, no intriguing detail, much as she might try, its just a man who fell in love with a beautiful spoilt woman and finally decided he’d had enough.

And further – and you can shoot me, I don’t care – in pursuit of that beautiful prose, she abandoned show and succumbed to the dark side to tell. We don’t see this relationship unfold in the past, the traumatic scenes, the fights, the manipulations. We don’t meet or hear this woman, get to judge her actions, we’re simply told as he sulks about it. In fact i’m surmising what she actually did(either faked a pregnancy, faked a miscarriage or had an abortion) with no idea why, except ‘thats what shes like..’ so we’re told.

This tendency is rampant throughout, both in terms of creating subplots which aren’t really plots and which fail mostly due to being reduced entirely to tell. Robin – the co narrator of the story – has a doubting boyfriend who dislikes her temp job as the PI’s secretary. We don’t really meet him, but we hear about him a lot. You get the impression building a triangle or rectangle of sexual entanglements might be on the agenda, but any tension is negated by the lack of a visible third wheel.

Likewise the mother, and family dynamic in general, of the victim is continually referenced by all other characters yet we never meet her until the solution has already come to Strike. The uncle, also barely makes an appearance, albeit slightly earlier. Given this story is really truly the story of a young adopted girl and her troubled family, this impacts on a much deeper level than Robin’s boyfriend. It doesn’t merely obfuscate any hope of figuring out the truth – which might have in part been the thinking behind it – it pushes everything of real interest to the background. We spend most of our time chasing neighbours, IT girls and celebrities none of whom appear to have any reason to hurt the victim, or indeed much of a story to uncover. As such we never feel as though we are chasing anything of substance.

And perhaps strangely given all of that, the ending isn’t a surprise. I thought it several times, yet dismissed it because of one insurmountable obstacle that just couldn’t be got around. The killer was the man who hired Strike to prove that his sisters death – months beforehand – was not the suicide it was believed to be – and officially declared to be. There’s some attempts to work around this, but they just don’t pan out. No man who is free and clear would reopen an investigation into a murder he committed.

The second accusation that gets levelled repeatedly at JK Rowling is that of unoriginality. Not merely in her copious use of existing mythology and obvious nods to the forefathers of the fantasy genre, like Tolkien – mostly Tolkien –  but also in the stereotypical nature of her characters. Brave orphan Harry, wise mentor Dumbledore, evil bully Draco… and so forth.

I’ve defended Rowling – and will – against most of those claims. They weren’t incorrect, it was merely that for the vast majority they were used well, the sheer scale of her vision and world, the history it came with and again her audience were all tricky yet important factors and she managed to balance all of these considerations and still managed to surprise, delight and innovate.

She seems to have approached ‘The Cuckoos Calling’ in much the same way, carefully plucking elements, a character here, a plot device there, from existing fiction and re-crafting them to suit herself. Unfortunately I’m not sure she pulled it off with the same aplomb. Potterverse has its own unique flavour. Strike’s feels like a rather tepid mishmash. Despite the modern setting there was an old fashioned quality: The thirty five year old detective who felt more like a fifty five year old from the 1940’s due in part to sentences such as, ‘(he) held out a hairy backed hand and attempted to counter his visitors sartorial superiority by projecting the air of a man too busy to worry about laundry,’ creating a stiff voice at odds with the image of the man and thus cancelling out the image of the man. Part of me was expecting a ‘gee golly’ to pop out of young go getter Robin, and the picture in my head of unseen fiance Matthew was circa 1950 Coronation Street, replete with gray slacks and patterned knit vest. I’d lay good odds she’s a big fan of Christie.

The modern elements, perhaps most notably the celebrity culture, something which should have been her hidden ace in the pack, felt utterly at odds with what really longed to be an old fashioned family melodrama with shades of the classics. With first-hand insight into this world, it’s slightly worrying that all she could offer up was a slew of the most base stereotypes: The gay designer, the gossipy blackmailing make up artist, the rich society girls who marry old men for money and prestige, the boyfriend with his frequent stops in rehab and his deep need to be seen as.. deep.. the list goes on. And on. Which again might be part of the problem.

Harry Potter was epic world building. It needed to be to convince. In this she has again assembled a considerable cast, but here it dilutes. Everything and everyone feels like they’re just passing through. Checkmarks on a list. Both they and the victim never root in our imaginations, owing in no small part to being at best marginally helpful, but never central to the story we’re supposed to be reading about. Yet the focus remains here for most of the book. In Potter we may have a huge cast, but we’re always with our trio of young heroes, their friends, ensconced in the daily rhythms of life within the walls of Hogwarts, which is perhaps the greatest character of all and whose peculiarities tint everything we see. There is no corresponding filter here, and yet this type of story is one that could benefit from a claustrophobic limiting of scope and cast, an intensively skewered worldview to give it shape and flavour. The overall effect is generic and distancing, not aided at all by her tepid – dare I say it – politically correct approach?

Every author who writes fantasy seems to have to fight to prove their merit, or simply defend their choice. The presumption, I suppose, that fantasy is a bit silly. Boy wizards and possessed cars and epic journeys of small men with hairy feet.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” – Tolkein.

Rowling is credited with changing the face of literature, certainly children’s literature and getting an entire generation to read at a time when it was believed to be falling out of favour. For some giving that much credit to a woman who wrote about flying cars and whomping willows is just not acceptable and I’m sure she’s felt that ‘tone of scorn and pity’.

It certainly reads like it in ‘The Cuckoos Calling’. Her cast may be stereotypes but her tone is always striving for gravitas. Her musing detective and his odd mix of fifty dollar words (about thirty quid) and expletives, the throwaway comments on the political issues of the day, the jabs at the celebrity culture, mostly though its harder to pin down that, a lack of humour, and a fear perhaps of committing to something, anything, with any vigour.

Rowling with the release of ‘The Casual Vacancy’ and her recent embrace of Twitter has shown herself an … ardent? Liberal. In that thoroughly middle class sort of way. The victim at the centre of this all is a mixed race young woman, adopted daughter of rich white aristocrats, searching for her true roots. But really she’s dead and it’s about two white folks trying to figure out why… 😀 I’m not berating her for that – but I sorta feel like if she ever read this she would berate herself. She’s not only a known supporter of the Labour Party but good friends with the Browns, yet she openly makes disparaging remarks about Gordon Brown in the book. They are presented as neutral background, the beliefs prevalent at the time, rather than belonging to any of our heroes. Our two narrators are never so foolish as to brave a political opinion. Although they manage a bit of righteous indignation and get along with the ones who you know are ‘good sorts’..

This deliberate neutrality is something I want to applaud, but I can’t lie and say it works. It doesn’t because its artificial rather than honest. Its pandering to a mindset, a popular, vocal one and its tainted every character and choice she’s made, consciously or not.

This story would have worked if the focus was on the rich white aristocrats. It suits her voice, her plot and theme. They were, despite being ruthlessly sidelined, where the interest lay, where a world could have been built, one we would have been happy to escape to for a while.

Big SPOILERS now. The brother, another adopted waif, killed his sister, as he had once killed his brother many years ago. Out of jealousy, spite and greed. The mother always preferred the others, smothering them in a claustrophobic love, overly permissive with one child, then upon his death overly protective with the other. The uncle, employer of the brother and partner at the prestigious family law firm, had always suspected the death of the first son had not been an accident, suggesting as much to his sister, and causing them to be estranged for many years. All of which is explained to us in about two scenes at the end of the 536 page book.

It’s hinted he reopened the investigation because he feared a claim might be put on her fortune by her real half brother, whom she had planned to meet that night for the first time – unbeknownst to anyone but him. The idea being if he could successfully put the blame on the brother – by repeatedly saying ooh it must be that fuzzy faceless dude seen on the cctv – he’d have no grounds for an appeal. I don’t know the legalities, but I don’t believe a man who had gotten away with murder would take a risk on something that had about 1 chance in a million of happening.

What would have been believable was if he was acting on behalf of – seemingly in agreement with – his mother, on her deathbed and unwilling to go believing her beloved daughter had taken her own life. An hysterical, obsessive woman who still controlled the family purse strings. But it would only have worked if the focus had hinged on them, their constant interference, their privileged archaic and dysfunctional world, with the other characters in the periphery. We would have felt the suffocating influence of the mother, understood the desire to grasp some freedom by her daughter. We would see the constant desperate attempts to steer the investigation by the brother, even feel sympathy for him under the sneering presence of his Uncle. And we’d have done it all in a world we are rarely given insight into, a world very far from most of ours. (unless you polo on the weekends..)

The second potentially interesting aspect of this book was the two main characters. Ask Agatha Christie, better yet, ask Tommy and Tuppence, how important your main character/s are in a detective novel. This was handled bewilderingly, initially set up with a modicum of bite, two seemingly opposite characters, who very quickly seem to blend into sameness. When they do fight, you kinda don’t understand why. Strike’s incredibly considerate – unbelievably so, sorry guys. Her editor might have been convinced it was written by a man, I’d qualify that with ‘delusional man’. Robin’s apparently the best damned secretary in the whole world. In a manner reminiscent of Hermione, in too many ways, she organises his life, magicks chocolate biscuits out of thin air and weaves spells round judgemental sisters. Unfortunately beyond her filing skills I’m not sure what point she serves. Okay the biscuits are a plus, but still not enough. Again there’s that tepid tiptoeing. The initial set up begs for a classic clash of opposites, but what’s delivered is the single most pointless, boring relationship I’ve encountered in a long time. And two individuals who simply cannot sustain my interest.

Wow that reads rather harsh.. I might have to go watch Toy Story to cheer myself up. Sorry JK! I still think you’re great. It is however, as I said, a perfect book, given her background, its initial release under the pseudonym, and the very public criticism she’s received, the perfect book to look at the influence of outside feedback on a writer. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been given such an opportunity to measure the response of an ‘expert’ before, which is perhaps why it always feels as though to a one, they are utterly unresponsive. In fact, to reference Ms Rice again, that responsiveness and success have an inverse relationship.. (always wanted to use that in a sentence. Makes me sound like I know maths stuff…) Back to normal language, the more famous they get the less they care about anyone’s opinion.

JK may be the odd woman out, but she does seem to be listening. And I wish she hadn’t. She’s fixed all the wrong things, she’s abandoned all the things that once made her great. Things that she could been focused on strengthening and building. Of course, she says she hasn’t, that ‘The Casual Vacancy’ was not literary revenge, but for god sake, she even capitulated on the adverbs! King may admire Hemingway and Leonard, and his advice may seem like he is trying to craft us all into little minimalist clones, but his writing tells a different story, (a really long one..) He’s a man who knows who he is when pen hits page. JK hasn’t reached that yet, too much success, too much criticism too fast, for all the wrong reasons?

I’m just one opinion. No opinion is definitive, not even my wise, enlightened one.. The book did well, even under its pseudonym, although I would factor in that it was a hardback launch by a major publisher and endorsed by most of the big reviewers. You can make up your own mind. But for me it reinforces something I’ve been thinking for a long time, ever since I hit the writing circuit, we – beginners – may have lost something incredibly valuable, the chance to write just for us, just with us in our heads. I certainly would say that if you intend to publish, until you find that great feedback you can trust, the best approach is know yourself, know why you write, what you’re striving to write. And never read reviews.

Feedback: The New Writers Debate

Anyone who has ever belonged to a writers group has probably bumped up against this one. How to critique: What’s worth mentioning, how to deliver it, how much is too much, when to praise, if to praise. That last might seem a little odd if you are not a veteran of such sites, but the current mantra is simple: Be brutal. And thats not coming from those seeking to give feedback but those seeking to get it. Hit me baby, hard.

A new survey released concerning this topic in the commercial sphere states that: novices seek praise, while experts seek criticism. I can’t argue their conclusion as I can’t access their data – not without paying and I aint paying! This is the link so feel free to do so yourself. However it immediately raises questions – what constitutes an expert vs a novice? Is this a distinction between amateur and professional? Does it correlate with success? Length of time? And how might it be relevant to writers?

Put critics and writers into google and it’ll spit out pages that read much like this:

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” Kurt Vonnegut

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.” John Osborne

And all of that was back when the only feedback anyone ever got apart from friends and family was perhaps an old English teacher and some folk in a leaky town hall who spent too much time debating whether the Last Stand or War and Peace was a better door stop.

The claim is that novices need reassurance in order to continue on the path. This seems at odds with so much of what I have been told on writer’s sites, from writers themselves, the same writers who seem to agree with the novice/expert divide this study cites and the conundrum bothers me.

I am assured repeatedly that each and every writer comes fresh to the slaughter writers group believing they have written a great masterpiece. That such radiant self belief is intrinsic to our process. The novice in this instance – the first time novelist – isn’t so much crossing their fingers and hoping for praise but rather expecting confirmation. The criticism which they then receive in its place is claimed as enlightening. And from then on, they claim to embrace the experts approach and demand the harshest of critiques.

When Jack Canfield (American self help guru) conceived the book Chicken Soup for the Soul he went to 123 publishers, each one of whom rejected him. Experts. Knowledgable, currently working in the field, the top of the field, gave him feedback, the kind of feedback surely only an idiot would ignore. And this is a man who says get feedback, whatever else you do, GET FEEDBACK. These people all told him that they could not sell it. And he ignored them. He says everyone else he talked to said they’d love to read a book like that. They – people not putting their livelihood, reputation and just plain old money where their mouth was – told him what he wanted to hear and they are the ones he listened to. He chose the praise, regardless of what he sought.

To return to the matter of the writers process, there again I find myself on the outside. My first novel I threw out. Not a word remains – I mean I was 14, but that was my novice period and I wouldn’t let anyone read it. I can’t remember feeling remotely positive about it. About anything I wrote back then, I remember only deep disappointment even despair that my bright shining ideas stuttered so utterly when I tried to capture them in words. I liked the ideas, the characters, the stories in my head. Even now and again I liked a line, a verse in a poem, even almost a whole poem. But it wasn’t that I believed them great in any objective way, I never considered myself a competent poet, but rather that I liked them. Purely subjective. Sometimes I think that was when I stopped trying to fit my writing to someone else’s ideas of good and simply sought to please myself. It was certainly my selfish, teenage angst phase. Self expression, cigarettes, too much vodka and a lot of unrequited love. Basically, that first conclusion of the study, the belief that the distinction between the expert and novice may owe more to needing encouragement not to give up early on, meets my own experience perfectly. I still need it. But what class does that put every other writer into if they never needed this?How does that divide us?

Chicken Soup for the Soul became a major bestseller and has since had around 200 sequels! I didn’t think it was possible to have 200 sequels.

Is the truth that the real distinction between expert and novice is that we are always one or the other? Will I always be a novice because I can’t take the leap of faith on my own work? While the Jack Canfields never doubt themselves and criticism can be left, picked and chosen from as they see fit? Is it not feedback but confidence we have truly measured?

His success might suggestthe feedback he got wasn’t just smoke up his ass. That’s another phrase they like in writer’s groups. We live to look down smugly upon those who need sunshine blown up their skirts or kilt (being all gender neutral as we are). The article cited above looks at the type of feedback given, the how and what rather than the who, yet the distinctive difference (beyond the obvious) between the feedback Jack Canfield chose to listen to and those he chose to ignore was their point of view. As I said, one set were working in the field, experts at the top of their game, their entire career built on finding books that the public wanted to read. The others had no expertise, no investment, no insight, but they were potentially the people who would ultimately be his audience.

The writer vs the reader feedback is frequently, endlessly, tediously debated. The problem of course is that most of us don’t have any access to reader feedback until we publish. Writers trying to be readers usually fail. Like the expert publisher, they can’t switch off their professional brains. And their professional brains are filled with rules of what should be, what has been, what was. If you present them with anything new, they don’t have any data to draw on. It can be argued this type of feedback is the type that leads to rip-offs of rip-offs of rip-offs and the ever decreasing sales that are still enough positive feedback to keep us wading in them.

Those who value writer feedback point out that readers cannot articulate why something doesn’t work for them. They can say they don’t like it, but that doesn’t necessarily help you fix it and if you put yourself into the field too early – say by self publishing – it can destroy your career before it even begins. Resounding silence might be the harshest critique of all.

There is a world of difference between someone learning and how we go about helping that process and the feedback that tells us whether a particular product on the market is working, or even if there is a market for such a product. Growing as a writer is not the same as succeeding within a professional sphere, one should precede the other and the needs and aims of any feedback must surely be very different. Yet self publishing has blurred those lines.

The biggest issue is whether writers are any more able to help than readers. I don’t believe that teachers are those that can’t. Like anything else its a skill, and the issue isn’t decided by whether or not you are a writer, but rather whether you have this rare, valuable ability to read and guide, encourage and evoke – perhaps even provoke – the best out of your student/critique of the day.

Neil Gaiman famously said (well famously to writers): If someone tells you something is wrong, they are almost always right. If they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Many writers, for good or ill, have bypassed the apprentice stage and gone straight to print. They’ll be the ones who are blissfully sure of their brilliance -but then apparently that’s everyone. In the Amazonian new age there is nothing stopping anyone from being an author, putting the highlight not on learning, but on selling. And I just don’t think they can be approached as the same.

When I first joined a writers site I was fascinated by the process of critique. What would other writers – like me, yes?… no? – have to say? How would they phrase it? Boldly, cruelly, delicately? Would we agree? I remain actually – bewilderingly – interested in other people’s opinions. It helps me figure out how people think and not just on the article in question. The interesting thing about reviews, is the problematic thing about feedback: what it really tells you, isn’t what its telling you.

At the first site, the overwhelming majority of reader-writers were positive to the point of mad enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that makes you suspicious of a review on amazon. This didn’t tell me that the books were all bestsellers and booker prize winners – it told me a game was afoot. And it was. The aim of it being praise others so they vote for you, get enough votes and you get to place your book before a big time editor. A big time editor who seemed more inclined to see the book the way I did, although they still did the sandwich – praise, criticism, praise – before they rejected it.

I read a lot of reviews on amazon. There’s either far too many writers in the world, or the terminology/process isn’t quite as esoteric as we imagine. Certain phrases are getting as overused as literally is. Things like, one dimensional characters, gives us nothing to invest in, poor pacing, conventional plotting, far too much tell not enough show are rampant. And i’m not the only one reading. There is plenty of back and forth in the comments section and most of it is far from pleasant. I have seen fights break out between author and reviewer, between ‘friends’ of the author and reviewer. Maybe they aren’t experts? Is Anne Rice? According to the NY Times

Many authors are upset by the snide tone of some Amazon reviews; Ms. Rice decided to do something about it. She posted a blistering 1,200-word defense of her book on the site, laying in to those critics who, she said, were “interrogating this text from the wrong perspective

The article suggests that specificity is more useful than general advice. It goes further to suggest actionable advice, which seems like an addendum to the previous point, eg don’t say, I don’t like it, or be more humorous, rather suggest, focus more on his clumsiness, like you did in the first chapter. Aim to introduce it every time he comes on page. It cites the process followed by Pixar. A company, with many interlocking movable parts, focused on group work. Few writers have this kind of dynamic, and the structure makes a huge difference to both approach and result. A company has a product to sell, a writer has an ego to stroke. Even those of us who feel adequate can’t deny our very personal investment, however professional we may desire to be however much we value the idea of producing, mastering, quality. The author is his own boss, but the boss is rarely the creator in any other business. The architect is employed, the designer answers to a paying client, the journalist an editor. Feedback in such a situation is immediate, clear and not particularly negotiable.

I have a fantasy – I had it before I ever joined that first writers site. It involves me, a laptop and an editor.. There’s tears, there’s tantrums, there’s really fucking great advice.. Maybe everyone would secretly like a mentor.

Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together – Neil Gaiman

The Bloomsbury lot, the lost generation, Lewis and the inklings. Van Gogh dreamed of an artiste’s circle he named the Studio of the South, preparing the Yellow House for both himself and a fellow artist to work in. Paul Gauguin was its first and last guest, a visit which ended with Van Gogh one ear down. Tolkein may have converted Lewis to Christianity but Lewis failed to convert Tolkein to Narnia. In fact the inklings may have spent more time making fun of Amanda McKitterick Ross than giving one another useful feedback.

So what am I saying? – avoid all feedback? Only get it if you plan on selling your soul for a high amazon rank? Ignore everything this article says?

I’m saying I don’t know. I’m saying I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve given feedback and seen it do more harm than good. I’ve given feedback, had it accepted, yet the author has failed to continue with the work in question and I don’t fully understand why as it was potentially a great work. A best seller even, yes I liked it that much. I have even received feedback I suspected was on the money, yet I to failed to follow it through. The work has sat unopened for over a year now on my hard drive.

I tread very lightly – fearfully even – when it comes to giving my opinion on others works. I don’t review books on amazon, I don’t give much feedback to other writers any more, I don’t even do reviews of films that often, not even to friends, and when I do I tend towards kindness rather than truth. As for here where I do speak out, much of what I say isn’t built on anything except my deep belief in freedom and exploration, that commitment and vision cannot be substituted bysomebody else’s notion of rules. If I offer advice its to encourage examination and rethinking rather than build a formula to apply. Mostly I don’t speak up, not because I think who am I – although it frequently crosses my mind – but because I suspect the author is thinking, who am I?

Can feedback be useful? Some clearly believe its a very firm, essential yes, but for me, as a writer, the question must remain where, when and what kind? Was Jack Canfield successful because he listened to feedback, or because he persevered despite the feedback?

In light of this, I’m going to write a review, filled with spoilers, so be warned, one which will allow me to explore many of the issues raised in the article and maybe get a little closer to an answer. Or maybe not..

WinterBow

They call them fog bows, apparently or sometimes white rainbows. I’ve never seen nor heard of them, but they are utterly beautiful, like something from the Snow Queen. Rather than rain, they form in the mists, the smaller droplets creating the icy palette.

This image was captured on Rannoch Moor, by Melvin Nicholson.