Exploiting Writers’ Yearning

All of us who write want to be read.

Even those who write technical manuals and advertising copy or other completely prosaic scribing want that (or at least need it to keep a job).

For those of us who struggle with words to express ourselves creatively as best we can, the thought of being read, of moving others as we have been moved, helps spur us on. We yearn to be published in some form.

Of course that opens us, in this age of scams, to all kinds of exploitation by those who promise to answer that yearning. They promise surefire methods of varying sophistication which always involve money moving in their direction. Many are internet based, naturally.

The exploitation can take many forms, from the nuanced (combining useful information with the come-ons) to out-and-out flimflam.

A lot of books about writing

Take the writing craft book industry. I have been a purchaser of books on plot, character and structure for a long time, and I have received a lot of benefit from those I found worthy of study. (I am most interested in writing novels.) But to get to the point of recognizing when a craft book author has something genuine to impart, and not just some glib rehash, takes effort.

There are many craft books which try to sell you on their formula for success. If you really want to write the story that will live for you, and for others, there is no such formula. Unless you want to give up on your own creative potential.

However, in the mechanical method world that the writer is invited to enter, you have to divide your book into three or four acts, have the exact number of beats (important plot points) that occur at exactly the right percentage of the novel length, and know from the start what theme you’re going to beat the potential reader with.

Here, I’m thinking of craft books like Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat (on screenwriting) and Save the Cat Writes a Novel. The following type of advice is common to both:

“The numbers in parentheses [on the Beat Sheet] are the page numbers where the beats take place. …I want my act breaks, midpoints, and All is Lost moments to hit their marks. And I insist they do. …Break into Two happens on 25. I have been in many arguments. Why not page 28? What’s wrong with 30? Don’t. Please.”

In the application of his method to the novel, Snyder prescribes that, for instance, the inciting incident must occur at 10% of the way through. Not 12% or 8%. And so on. (It depresses me to describe further.)

Three acts or bust

Then there are all the craft books which insist that a novel must have three acts. They like to cite Aristotle on this, as if this makes it mandatory to transfer an ancient convention from play writing to novels.

Every story can be divided into a beginning, a middle, and an end. Pretending that elaborating this truth into complicated procedures is a complete writing solution borders on the laughable.

As just one example, from one of the many craft books I’ve got around me, there is The Story Template by Amy Deardon. Her variation on the three-act theme, not uncommon, is to divide the second act, the middle, into two. This is right after she quotes Aristotle and cites Blake Snyder’s works.

So many of these books, to my mind, have got the whole process of creative writing backwards. They prescribe an analytical methodology as the secret to a person’s creative output, and nothing is more likely to kill that process.

I’m not saying that chaotic, completely unstructured writing is the way to go. Even this post has a structure to it that comes out of the writing, rather than somebody else’s beat scheme.

The discovery method

The “method” I advocate for myself is one of discovery. Would-be fiction writers are far better off to follow Robert Olen Butler’s flexible process in his book From Where You Dream, or how Jane Vandenburgh approaches novel writing in Architecture of the Novel. Another book that examines the over-structured advice writers often receive is Story Trumps Structure by Steven James.

Many of the self-anointed story gurus, after writing a craft book or novel, set themselves up on the web as experts.

The problem for them is that to maintain engagement and a stream of cash for their spin-off publications, they must continually throw out new and improved craft techniques, or re-spin somebody else’s ideas, in hopes that the yearning writer will continue to follow them.

I think of author K.M. Weiland in this regard who has written books on her three-act method and now is off on a tear about archetypes. And then she will quote from Butler’s advice while ignoring the intent of what he was getting at: that we must escape from analysis and find a way to let our unconscious influence and guide our writing, or it won’t mean squat.

This is not so easy to put into a scheme to be sold to others. The unconscious is wary of analytical thought, and will go into hiding immediately upon smelling its hounds. (Keen sense of smell, the unconscious.)

I’m always surprised, in my so far unsuccessful efforts to get literary agents interested in my novel writing, to find so many other would-be authors pursuing the same goal. Trading on this congestion, especially with the present state of the publishing industry, a variety of businesses are eager to take advantage.

Low, low prices

I subscribe to posts from Reedsy, as one of these, which is basically a self-publishing promotion enterprise. They are organized and high-pressure about you the writer giving them money for their many services. Although I have gotten useful information out of them that is not completely self-promoting, such as lists of literary agents.

Look for them in a search engine, and they’ve got SEO under control – many, many links tied directly to Reedsy on the top of the results page, invariably positive of course.

But read about them on Reddit for unvarnished opinions and it’s not so flattering.

For an example illustrating my misgivings about them, there’s the offer Reedsy keeps pushing for a novel writing course. I’m not in the market for that, but I was curious.

It is offered by one Tom Bromley for the low, low price of $1249 with a required deposit of $250.

Really? Save your dollars and read a few good books about the craft of writing (like The Anatomy of Story by John Truby or others noted above). And then write every day.

And finally for this discussion, although I’ve only scratched the surface of the exploitative landscape, there is the rabbit hole offered by the Dramatica theory of writing. Now deepened by an AI application called Subtxt.

In Dramatica you can try to apply everything there is to know about the Four Throughlines, the Guardian and Contagonist, Split Archetypes in Quads, The 16 Motivation Elements, The 64 Element Question, Story Encoding, Benchmarks, The Co-Dynamic Pair, The Domain Act Order, and on and on. One can only imagine a poor writer sinking out of sight, immobile in consternation, into the quicksand of all this jargon.

AI of course

And then AI gets into the act. I’ve used ChatGPT for brainstorming purposes, to try to amplify ideas that don’t seem quite enough. The results are mostly banal and bland.

But the purpose of Subtxt is to actively help write the stories for you following Dramatica theory, which could be a relief for anyone trying to jump through the hoops of Dramatica in their writing.

You can get the use of the AI for only $250 a month, with an annual plan for the low, low price of $2500.

In a way, these prices, at both Reedsy and for Subtxt, illustrate that these businesses believe in the desperation of their writing clients.

The yearning makes us easy marks.

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Note: The image above is from The Writers Alliance. That specific page has a review of Dorothea Brande’s book about writing and quotes her as saying:

“The first step toward being a writer is to hitch your unconscious mind to your writing arm.”

How to do that is the challenge.

A Return to Middle Earth

I realized the other day that it is just over 20 years ago that the last of Peter Jackson’s trilogy of the Lord of the Rings was in theatres.

My wife and I went to watch each of the three as they came out one year apart.

Times have changed. We don’t go to the movies any more and haven’t for a long time.

Another sign of the times is that I bought the Super Long Highly Extended Versions on DVD, which enables me to go back to them every few years as I have done several times. DVDs are almost an archaic medium now, but there is the benefit, with worthy shows, of having a physical form to hold on to.

I felt the need to revisit the trilogy, not so much to mark their timelessness, but as a salve for the woundedness of observing current world events, with witless greed and cruelty in every corner. Why do people tolerate the worst of human beings as their leaders? Of course these matters are amplified by the news and social media, so we should recognize that, but the desperate state of human affairs in almost every quarter is still dismayingly evident.

I wanted to relive the trials of Middle Earth as a balm for the heart. A place to go where nobility, sincerity and honesty truly matter and make a difference. Despite the wars and battles and conflicts in the trilogy, the monsters and evil-doers meet their match in humble hobbits. The quest to destroy the ring of power is something no real-life politician, it seems, would ever countenance, but it is the propelling current of the story, which overcomes all obstacles, even orcs as ugly as Putin’s soul.

So this is fantasy, but the intimate suffering of the characters fighting to survive makes it come to life in a way not even Tolkien’s books quite manage on the page.

It may even help to look at the story as something that goes on in each of us. Deep within us Sauron-like forces may want to dominate, while Gandalf and the elves of our heart struggle for something more and better.

The inspiring part of the books and the films is that it allows that light to shine if only a little.

I first read the Tolkien books as an impressionable university student. Even now in my eighth decade, I can recall reading the trilogy in an upper bunk bed where two students from northern BC rented a room from a Victoria family.

But the films, as some have observed, even out-do their source material. They are truly a work of art, by a filmmaker who changed the entire industry with the risks he and his collaborators dared to make. Just keeping all facets of the story and characters firing through three long films is a remarkable achievement. And New Zealand! The mix of digital and real sets even now strikes wonder in me after having watched the movies a number of times over the years.

The question is: do I feel any better after watching these long movies, after spending over 12 hours with them? I have to say that I do.

For a good look at the making of the films, there is this article from Variety, “Lord of the Rings at 20.”

For detail on the differences between the books and the films, The Lord of the Rings Wiki has an in-depth look: “Tolkien vs. Jackson: Differences Between Story and Screenplay.”

Paste has an article on what the film trilogy does better than Tolkien’s books.

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Using Obsidian in Novel Development

Working on a novel doesn’t just mean the writing of it. At least for me, there is all the preliminary: the assemblage of ideas, notes about possible characters, scene glimpses, the main points of the story, and much more.

I’ve learned for myself after writing two science-fiction novels and preparing to start on the third, that I need to do this development work to have a topography for my imagination to explore as I write the thing. Not an outline (horrors!) but an overview that perhaps serves more as a comfort blanket than as a prescription.

(The first two novels are so far unpublished. Darn literary agents.)

This third novel is part of what I’m calling The Three Eras Trilogy. A few centuries ahead, a recently promoted detective with a secret that can kill him must solve several murders occurring around the completion of the Earth’s first space elevator. It has taken several generations to come close to finishing the structure. The human race, especially the tiny lunar colony, depends on what the space elevator can mean for the future.

The Earth has suffered from genetic engineering and artificial intelligence gone rampant and only recently restrained. Humans aren’t as plentiful as they once were.

The detective must solve these rare crimes in a society, and an organization, where the so-called genetically pure exploit and oppress the so-called mixed.

It can be difficult to keep track of all the different aspects of such a story. There’s the background research and notes necessary about genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (which by the way I’ve renamed “pseudo intelligence”), space elevators, being a detective, plot ideas, character possibilities, nature of the villains and a lot more.

In past projects I settled on some helpful software which I’ve chronicled in a post or two.

However, I ran across Obsidian at the same time as I started working on this novel, and it’s turned out to be very useful.

What is Obsidian?

Obsidian is an application available mostly free as a note-taking and knowledge database program. I use it on my desktop PC and everything goes on one of my hard drives. I back it up every day. It uses Markdown files which if the program and availability dies, can still be accessed by any text editor.

It has attracted many who are keen about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) systems or Zettelkasten analytics, whatever those are. There are plug-ins available which can tailor the functionality in a lot of directions.

I’m more disorganized, and perhaps intuitive, about putting all my notes together. For me, what makes Obsidian useful are the internal linkages and the graphical representation, in the template I use, of those connections.

Obsidian also has a mind-mapping function known as Canvas, which I’ve just started to use. I already can see its creative utility, if you’re at all visually oriented.

I’ve looked up how some writers use the program. I’ve been impressed by how methodical and systematic they are. But that’s not how I work, on the whole. It’s like the difference between novelists called “pantsers” who start writing into the dark by the seat of their pants without an outline, and those who obsessively delineate the entire work before they start writing. I’m somewhere in the broad middle, but definitely lean towards the more anarchic, randomly organized, exploratory end.

How I use it

Here’s how I use it. I have set up a specific “vault” for the novel. It’s divided into three parts, usually, a folder/file listing similar to Windows Explorer on one side, the specific note created or added to in the middle, and on the right, a simple graphical display which shows what other notes are connected to the one I’m working on.

When I create the note, I link it to at least one other factoid or concept. That seems to keep all the information swimming about accessibly in the ocean of information that begins to form. Often one note will end up linking to a dozen or more related notes. At the same time, any note is also available in the rough folder categories I’ve set up on the side.

Webpages, documents, photos – all can be entered into a note.

Of course one can accumulate almost too much stuff, and begin to suffer from data overload. This is a point a recent Verge article makes: “Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter.”

The author goes on from that to complain about such apps, including Obsidian:

“When I had an interesting conversation with a person, I would add notes to a personal page I had created for them. A few times a week, I would revisit those notes.

“I waited for the insights to come.

“And waited. And waited.”

Unrealistic expectations

Unfortunately, the author seems to suffer from a combination of unrealistic expectations and impatience. Attention spans are getting shorter.

My experience with Obsidian has been the opposite. As the connections develop, new ideas can form from being knocked against by other ones in unexpected ways.

As I gear up to actually start writing this novel, I am going through all my Obsidian notes. I get reminded again of the good idea I wrote down long ago and where its flint sparks fresh ideas. I make new connections I didn’t see before. The mere juxtaposition of two disparate notes can lead to interesting places.

The Verge writer wants to incorporate something like the current versions of AI into note-taking applications. He thinks that might help, if only to summarize and brief him on his own notes(!). I have my doubts, from what I’ve seen of the current generation of AI.

I prefer to sort through my own ideas in Obsidian, and find what kernels of insight and imagination I might have inadvertently dropped along the way, or discover new ones.

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Note: A couple of interesting resources about Obsidian:

1) How I Use Obsidian As A Creative

2) Best Examples of How to Use Obsidian Notes in 2023

Pity the Poor Literary Agent

I now have two science-fiction novels completed, one a thousand years in the future, and the other set several decades away.

I’ve begun the routine of sending out queries to literary agents. 

Writing the novels has been such an effort, although rewarding, that it is difficult for me to imagine many people taking up that pursuit.  I don’t know of any people personally that have opted for this strenuous creative endeavour, even if expanded to the network of all my friends and acquaintances.

I think back to my well-educated work place, where many struggled to put together a coherent sentence, and hope I can be forgiven for thinking that novel writing is rare.

Yet when I read about the publishing industry, look at all the literary agents (there are so many), go to craft-of-writing websites and pay attention to the online critique association I’m in, it is clear a blizzard of would-be authors and novels sifts down non-stop.

This is revealed in the form-like rejections (I’ve gotten a lot) from literary agents. I get the feeling that the reason very, very few of them offer any explanation for a rejection is because they are quite overwhelmed by the volume of queries.

And this even given the popularity of the self-publishing route, which must draw off plenty of frustrated would-be authors to compete in the trials of e-book promotion and putting their work on Amazon.

I haven’t chosen to go that route, since I want to put my limited energy into writing, rather than worrying about search engine optimization.  I might end up going the self-publishing route eventually, but first I want to try the old-fashioned way of getting a literary agent to represent me to publishers.

Big Changes in Publishing

The publishing industry has changed dramatically, though, in the last decade or two.  The digital revolution has had a huge impact.  Especially with the rise of self-publishing and e-books, it was thought at one time that hard-copy books would go the way of vinyl LPs in music.  (With the revival of vinyl we can see how complicated these cultural forces can be.)

It hasn’t worked out that way.  Traditional publishers still have considerable marketing clout, and for many they remain the preferred route for getting one’s book to a wider public.  But the publishers aren’t very interested in dealing constructively with authors.  In the good old days, if a publisher thought a writer was promising and worth the effort, an editor might be assigned to help shepherd the novice to a more acceptable product.  From what I’ve read, such editors are no more.  Publishers expect a more finished product from the get-go. 

This means that a literary agent has to appeal to publishers with novels that they think will get an immediate positive reaction, including how trendy it is in subject matter or author.  Their livelihood is dependent on getting such positive reactions.

But it must be difficult to evaluate, decide to take on and then promote to publishers from the flurry of queries, and then manuscripts literary agents receive.  And coordinate all the work that goes with that.

This struck me hard recently as a result of exchanging novel critiques with others in the online group (Critters) I’ve joined.  These are drafts we trade with each other, in order to benefit from another set of critical eyes that (tragically!) may be of the very few to ever read these novels.

Of the three that I have gone over (or “beta read” as the jargon goes), all have been well written at the level of sentences, and spelling, and grammar.  Of course there are a few missteps here and there, but nothing terribly serious.

But as I read the works of these other would-be authors, it slowly becomes evident that there are structural issues, or characters really hard to understand, or emotional cul-de-sacs peculiar to the writer.  These problems don’t jump out immediately, but take considerable time and a close reading to become apparent.

In one case, the author has composed a story with wonderful characters, but it lacks an identifiable protagonist.  In another, it took reading most of the novel to understand that the writer wanted to recreate some kind of family emotional situation that kept the science fiction from making sense, at least to me.

I’m probably prone to the same faults. They reveal the difficulty of making a novel come to life in the reader’s mind.  And the difficulty for literary agents is to find by dint of their hard work, or by guess or by gosh, a work to stand behind. Pity the poor literary agent!

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Halls of Sun, Corridors of Rain

Over the years, as a would-be writer, I jotted words into notebooks which I stashed away for decades.

There are freewriting efforts, poetry, observations, quotations and many abortive attempts at stories and novels in there.  Many more than I remember.

Nearing 72, I feel the need to perform archaeology on the life hinted at in those notebooks. They run from the early 1970s until today.  It is difficult to gauge their interest, if any, to others, but I still hope that a stray insight or quote resonates with the occasional reader. 

I only seek to make more sense to myself.

*    *    *

Good title – Halls of Sun, Corridors of Rain. (1986)

*    *    *

To the adequate expression of our truest and deepest feelings.  These are the solid things. (1977)

*    *    *

This is ridiculous.  Here I am a grown man at 26, and with a few words of criticism, I’m about to cry. (1977)

*    *    *

Mad as a bag of cats. (2018)

*    *    *

See people’s characters relative to the deals they attempt to make with the essential emptiness of human life.  The terrifying emptiness.  The fecund emptiness. (1987)

*    *    *

Is this a real thing?  In bug-ridden country, tie dragonflies to shoulders to chase away the bugs.  Catching them must be a trick. (1987)

*    *    *

“Reason – by which I mean the ability to grasp the moral sense, not just the ‘facts’ of reality….” — Erazim Kohak  (1987)

*    *    *

The true sacred life doesn’t lend itself to institutionalization.  (1970s)

*    *    *

The task of culture is to provide the individual with the conviction that he is an object of primary value in a world of meaningful action. (1970s)

*    *    *

So much is expressed by the spirit with which people move their bodies as they walk.  (Early 1980s)

*    *    *

Confucius: “Look closely into a man’s aims, observe the means by which he pursues them, and discover what brings him contentment.  How can a man hide his character?”  Also useful for writing.  (Early 1980s)

*    *    *

Having a notebook and being a ‘writer’ gives you permission to be anywhere, watching anything.  (Late 1980s)

*    *    *

At a café, an older woman eating cake, sipping coffee with a kind of desperation.  Her lower face, when she looks at people talking is mute, stiff; only her eyes show feeling.  She’s slightly buck-toothed, and keeps her mouth closed as if to hide. (Late 1980s)

*    *    *

“Three things are to be considered: a man’s estimation of himself, the face he presents to the world, and the estimate of that man made by other men.  Combined they form an aspect of truth.” — Paul Scott (1980s)

*    *    *

“A reader should want to know the character infinitely.” — Arturo Vivante (1980s)

*    *    *

Colin Turnbull studied the Mbuti in Central Africa and found they don’t have a specific word for ‘god’. “The closest is the word ndura which can be translated as ‘forest’. … Ultimately, ndura does mean the forest, but more than that it means forestness. And this is the quality of life by which they measure everything that is good in their lives. All that is positive is related to ndura, this life-giving quality.” (1984)

*    *    *

“We no longer recognize spiritual pain, the distressed soul, although we suffer from that disease more than any other.” — Michael Shallis (1985)

*    *    *

When my brothers and I were kids, whenever we tasted something good, we wanted to make it into a sandwich.  “Hey, Ma, I want a peach sandwich….” (late 1970s)

*    *    *

Sun sinks low

Cloud shadows ride
      the mountains

Purple and yellow flowers                                        (1988)

 

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Note: To be continued, probably.