Why study writing or art in the age of AI?

And I’m off… out of the door and down the path, tripping along with a staff and a pocket handkerchief (or some such) on a new adventure that will likely be rather uncomfortable, but may eventually make a good story.

My Master of Fine Arts program is truly underway with readings for a couple of weeks at the beginning of summer term and then two-weeks of intensive seminars and workshops from morning ‘til night in the Eastern Oregon mountains. This has my blood flowing again. It’s been a couple of decades since I was last exhilarated.

And while this is tame compared to some of the adventures I undertook “back in the day,” it is a strange time to be studying writing or any kind of art, even if my ostensibly sensible reason is that I can always teach online if the market remains recalcitrantly focused on celebrities. With AI writing and art surging across the internet, the future of creative professions is more in question than at any time in the past.

Over the centuries and millennia, art and literature have weathered technological limitations, economic depression, political repression, the malaise of unsatisfying debauchery, black holes of inspiration, market saturation, celebrity obsessions and even the lethargy of widespread prosperity in the 20th century. There have been many times when writers and artists have bemoaned the state of the field or even cried the end of art.

Image of a young girl in a white dress drawing in a notebook on grass - Creative commons image from fawke of flickr.com

Yet, somehow AI is a whole new level.

If a lay person sometimes can’t differentiate between AI writing and the work of a skilled human writer, isn’t it finally all over for us? Why on earth would I devote the time, not to mention the money, to study creative writing at the highest level? The market has already shown that only a tiny fraction of publishing will include new, non-celebrity authors. Self-publishing is dead in the water as a means of livelihood, though it may be fun for family or interest-group memoirists.

And yet…

I am embarking on this course of study most of all because it brings me joy and delight, a rare feeling in this of all years. The prospect of spending two years discussing word-craft and story with fellow writers feels to me like I am seven-years-old again, entering the old general store at the end of the long bike ride from Pumpkin Ridge, gazing at the racks upon racks of bright-colored candy laid out before me—pure delicious sweetness and a much needed reward for a lifetime of grindstones.

Yes, some of us just love writing or art so much that the hope of making a living at it is mostly a matter of wishing not to have to have a day. job. We aren’t looking for riches, just a way to scrape by and write all day. But let’s try to be sensible or reasonable here. Other than childish self-indulgence, is there still value in writing as a calling, a profession or a high art?

The modern world is so full of cynicism and cliche that when I first contemplated this post, I found myself balking. A little voice inside me cried out that it doesn’t matter if there is any reasonable reason. We NEED art! I NEED writing! Nothing else matters.

But after wading into some of the initial reading for my courses, including for a workshop by Oregon writer Kim Stafford, I did find “good reasons” that we need human writers. To list a few:

• Good fiction is one of the few times we truly absorb someone else’s perspective. This world is in sore need of empathy and AI, for all its uses, will never be a substitute for that.

• Writing in all its forms is communication, a way to bridge gaps and impart both emotions and sensations. Readers may not always know where or how, but we still need that call from one to another.

• We need, for instance, to raise the alarm of climate change and ecological destruction, a theme that has become prominent in my courses. AI could possibly mimic this kind of writing, except that most of it has not been done yet, the field of environmental writing is still young.

• AI writing uses a set number of words to say a specific thing. It does not know nuance or how to write between the lines. It doesn’t do emotional complexity. In a polarized, black-and-white society, the capacity of human writers to say things subtly and in shades of gray is essential.

• In a media culture where facts have become mutable, corruptible and expendable, story is a desperately needed antidote. Facts may be obscured and statistics manipulated by those with money and power, but one’s own true story still remains in the hands of each individual person. It can be faked, but there’s a zing to authenticity that is palpable and hard to manufacture. It’s the weapon of the human writer.

• While one can stand on a street corner and shout or even post a shouting YouTube video today, writing still remains a uniquely empowering means of expression. Once an individual has versatile writing skills, that person will never be as trapped or as vulnerable to exploitation as they would have been without it. Teaching writing then is the work of empowering others.

These are just a few of the things that have come to me as I dive into my first courses. Can you think of any more “good reasons” to pursue writing? Post them in the comments. <3

I don’t know how financially lucrative the writing profession will be over the next ten or twenty years. That is unpredictable and likely rather bleak. But if past experience with artisan skills that have faded in recent generations carries over, it may well be that within a few decades, solid word-smithing skills may become rare and precious.

Coaching kids in writing and story-telling

From the Lawrence University Writing Lab to ESL students, from talented teens to my own child with a learning disability, I’ve coached a wide variety of young students in writing. I was also once a child, experimenting in writing with a minimum of instruction and support.

My experience isn’t all-encompassing, but it has given me some tips I would like to share about how to coach children and young people in writing.

An old saying contends that you should not “teach” writing at all: “Teach children to read and they will write because they cannot help themselves.” And there is something to that.

If you assume writing is simply the paper equivalent of speaking, it makes perfect sense. Once a person has the building blocks, they will self express. But writing (and speaking for that matter) are to skilled story-telling, instruction or persuasion as a slouchy walk is to the skills of a professional athlete. Barring disability, everyone will learn to walk just by passively observing others walk. Almost no one will become a highly skilled athlete, if left on their own.

The actual writing mechanics are important, though there have been excellent authors and story-tellers who did not entirely master them. There are also skills beyond that must be developed and honed. A teacher or coach can be a help (or a hindrance) in this development. For some, a teacher may not be necessary at all, but for most some kind of coaching is helpful and development won’t progress as fast or as far without it.

Creative Commons image by odleywonderworks of Flickr.com

Writing can be taught.

Technical forms of writing can be taught in a fairly standard way, in which inner motivation and self-confidence is important but not all-encompassing. However, technical writing without the creative spark is only adequate, even in computer manuals. Skilled and versatile writing, which can be turned at will from concise, clear instruction to gripping, emotive narrative, can only be fostered and developed with practice and dedication.

Today’s media-saturated, hyper-verbal world needs endless numbers of skilled, versatile writers in every field from business to science, cottage industries to Hollywood. The ability to write clearly and with spirit, to direct written (or theoretically spoken) words with deft and precise intention and to employ style, voice and mood as easily as a pro basketball player pivots and shoots is among the most crucial skills for professional success in today’s world. It is also a source of intense personal satisfaction and happiness.

Yet this level of skill is unlikely to mature on its own. There have been cases of amazing, untaught writers, but they are rare and thus all rather famous people. For the most part, writing can and should be coached. But still the most important tips for any writing teacher, coach or parent hoping to foster the skill in a child are the pitfalls to avoid.

The main reason we question whether or not writing should be taught is that it is easy to botch the process and do more harm than good. Here is my list of DON’Ts:

1. Don’t look over a child’s shoulder while they are writing. Every stage of writing, from the first tracing of letter shapes, through the arduous decoding of plot and tension is a process. Teaching and appropriate materials help, but there is always an experimentation stage. That’s the part where teachers have a tendency to peek and stop the process on the inevitable mistakes. But the process is necessary. Self-correction is much more powerful than external correction. Wait for a result, before commenting and correcting. My most telling example of this comes from my own experience. When I was seventeen, a teacher looked over my shoulder while I was writing a short story in typing class after I had finished the regular assignment. The teacher, who I had a close relationship with, made a comment that was only mildly critical and no doubt was meant as respectful collegial advice. I don’t remember the content of the comment twenty-five years later, but I did not write another word of fiction for five years. I became highly proficient in non-fiction, but I harbored a deep-seated belief that I was not cut out for fiction. I have now published ten fiction books, but retrieving my confidence was a struggle. Silly? Yes. It was a silly teenage reaction. It was also a sadly typical example of the overreaction of young writers,, particularly to unexpected commentary in the midst of the process.

2. If you must look, don’t comment over their shoulder. I can hear my child’s teacher mutter, “Yes, but we have to watch in order to correct the way the child hold’s the pen. Letting them get away with a sloppy grip is setting them up for a lifetime of pain and frustration.” There may be medical reasons like this to observe. I suggest, either gently forming the child’s fingers on the pen or gently reminding the child from the other side of the room. The fact is that over-the-shoulder commenting is so destructive that it must be avoided at all cost.

3. Don’t insist on reading everything a child writes. Even a small child will do some experiments entirely on their own. I used to find little scraps of paper with notes to dolls and stuffed animals scribbled in atrocious handwriting and bizarre spelling by my bilingual, learning-disabled child scattered around the house. Older kids will write stories and journals that they will sometimes not want to share. Sometimes we do have to reinforce good spelling, but doing it wrong in a bit of private writing is not actually going to set them in bad habits for life. The language center of the brain is mercifully more flexible than most. Experimentation is crucial to the process and some of it must be done unobserved.

4. Don’t focus too much on mechanics. Writing mechanics are important—crucial even. This is the medium writers work in, but mastering mechanics can take a long time and it varies widely individual to individual. There are other crucial skills that need to be learned at the same time and too great a focus on mechanics can stunt development in other areas. Far too many children lose all interest in writing at a young age because the focus of instruction is exclusively on mechanics until they have been mastered. But I will never forget the day my dyslexic daughter with severe attention problems first sat at a table for 45 minutes writing without even being asked in third grade. I was shocked. She struggles in every aspect of school. But that day she wrote a story with a beginning, middle and end, including conflict and resolution, in some of the worst handwriting, grammar and spelling ever combined into coherent prose. Her classroom teacher agreed that few among her high-achieving classmates could structure a story like that, though they were far better at the mechanics. And I had never coached her on this. Had I stopped her over mechanics, we might never have discovered that she has this hidden strength.

5. Don’t criticize beyond the level achieved. By the same token, it is important to restrict criticism to the general level achieved by the student. Many of my students have English as a second language. If I were to criticize their descriptions or sentence structure on a professional level, there would never be anything positive to say. And even the most talented children rarely have a good grasp of plot structure or tension flow. Coaches and teachers must keep comments confined roughly to the level the child is at with a light push toward the next level.

6. Don’t over-praise. It is not just that over-praise is sickly sweet and children can smell it a mile away. Over-praise also cheapens the currency of praise, which is crucial to coaching. It is essential to find whatever is positive in every attempt, even if it is only effort and one well-chosen word. But comparing the writing to others or inflating the child’s expectations is rarely helpful.

7. Don’t make blanket statements. It should not need to be mentioned, but unfortunately over time some teachers become overconfident and believe they can make predictions about a child’s over all writing ability based on the work at hand and they feel a need to make broad statements of criticism, such as, “You have a poor grasp of story structure.” This is no doubt true of most students at various stages. However, the comment is unhelpful. It is not specific enough to give useful instruction and because of the sensitivity of young writers (and most adult writers), it can too easily be interpreted as an overall condemnation of their innate talent.

8. Don’t avoid comment altogether. All this warning about how easy it is to completely mess up the teaching of writing might make you shy about saying anything at all. While comments don’t need to be lengthy, some comment and especially highly specific comments are truly necessary. Simply not commenting at all can imply greater criticism than you might think, and even if you can only comment with your own personal reaction, be specific and as precise as possible.

Creative Commons image by Odleywonderworks of Flickr.com

Don’t let all the prohibitions get you down. There are useful things you can do as a writing teacher or coach. Keeping the DON’Ts in mind is simply a good safeguard. Now let’s get down to the DOs.

1. Do make sure the child is learning writing mechanics and reading, if not with you, than with someone else. While it is not the top priority at all stages of the process, a solid understanding of mechanics (if not necessarily perfect rendition of them) and copious amounts of absorbed verbiage (if not necessarily print to eyeball in reception) are indispensable for the mastery of writing. Reading is important not only because the child will learn by example the structures and possibilities of storytelling, but also because the more you read, the easier writing mechanics will be to learn. Children with text disabilities will struggle here. I was 90 percent blind as a child and have always read at about a tenth the speed of my peers. My dyslectic brother and I shared terrible handwriting and outrageous spelling—him because dyslexia plays havoc with the way the brain recalls and perceives letters in sequence and me because, although i absorbed vast numbers of books, I used an audio format and simply didn’t read enough words visually to drill the correct spellings into my memory. We both did learn mechanics eventually, but only after becoming pretty solid writers with the help of computer spellchecks.

2. Ensure quality and quantity of input. Do make sure the child has a lot of stories, non-fiction texts and other useful reading material in whatever format is appropriate. Regardless of the child’s ability to physically read, writing does share this with spoken language. The more a young child is exposed to diverse and skillful language, the more they will be able to express language flexibly and effectively. Read to the child, make sure there are audio books if the child is not physically reading with ease, and tell stories on the fly. Read letters, encyclopedia entries and anything else available. Not all of it needs to be high-quality and none of it needs to be in archaic, formal language, but a wide variety is desirable.

3. In the beginning, get the child forming sentences… any sentences. If you’re starting at the very beginning with a child or have an ESL student, the first major hurdle is forming sentences. This is NOT dependent on mastery of mechanics, although learning letters, handwriting, spelling and grammar is usually going on roughly in the same period. If forming sentences is a struggle, the surefire way to get it rolling is to provide a list of subjects (either as words—pronouns, names, etc.—or as pictures—a boy, a girl, a fairy, a cat, etc.), a list of verbs (again either as words or pictures), and a list of predicates (either objects in pictures or more complex sentence endings in words, depending on the student’s level). Then play with them together with your student. Mix them around on cards. Try different combinations. Point out how they have to go in a certain order and how that order changes if there is a question. Let the child draw lines connecting their choice of a subject to a verb and then to a predicate. Then gradually take away one list and then another to allow the child to choose freely. Emphasize that there are no wrong choices, as long as the correct type of word is used. Encourage silliness at this stage, e.g. “The elephant skates on the roof.”

4. Write out answers in other subjects only during the correct stage. When I was a kid in sixth grade science class I was irritated that my teachers always insisted that we write out answers in complete sentences, when a one- or two-word answer directly below the question would have sufficed for clarity. And at the same time, I could feel something very much like a muscle bulging and growing every time I was forced to write those sentences. Don’t give students useless busy work and if they are beyond the stage where good solid sentences are an issue, don’t require this, but for the vast majority of students through about 9th grade, this is good practice.

5. Write what is necessary. Get students writing letters to friends or family, shopping lists, notes to fellow students, calendars, logs of their hobbies, everything and anything. These things are not narrative writing and the mechanics don’t have to be perfect, but practice is still practice and the risks and emotional costs are lower in these tasks than if every time the child writes, it has to be laden with the significance of a creative writing project.

6. Do encourage independent attempts at writing. Some parents completely over- or under-react to their children’s writing experiments. Writing is much like drawing at this stage and the same reactions that encourage drawing will encourage writing. Comment warmly, make eye contact, smile and point out some well-executed detail. Praise effort and ask if you can display the child’s finished attempt without correcting it. Bad spelling here is the same as a drawing of a stick figure with only three fingers. Most of us know better than to criticize the drawing at this stage and the same goes for the writing. Instead say something like, “You put a lot of work into that. I see that robot really likes playing soccer. Is that right? Can we put it up on the refrigerator with your brother’s drawing?” Then you can lightly encourage other attempts when there is time and space. “I wonder if that robot from your story is having any other adventures that you could write about.”

7. Do encourage kids to keep journals, blogs and multi-media scrapbooks. I hesitate to make this a hard-and-fast requirement. Some students are reluctant writers and being forced to keep a journal may only demotivate them further. Others are already moving on to specific writing projects. There may also be structural reasons why journals don’t work in your coaching, such as irregular or infrequent meetings with your student. But if it is at all possible, journaling is a tried-and-true practice for the development of writing skills. Journals can be kept that simply record events, thoughts and feelings, or they can contain a series of writing prompts and reactions. Younger children may write one sentence per entry accompanied by a drawing. Even older children may use drawings, comic strips and artifacts pertaining to the text. These are all useful avenues. The world needs a wide variety of writers and writers of comics and ultra-short ad copy often make more money than long-form writers. If it is regular practice, it is almost guaranteed to be useful and skill-building.

8. Break stories down into basic parts. When you do get to the point of attempting a short story with a child, often in third or fourth grade, start by asking the child to identify the beginning, middle and end elements of a few short stories read aloud. Then introduce the idea that stories always involve a problem and someone who solves the problem. That “someone” is the main character. The problem and its solution form the “plot.” Whether or not you want to introduce those kinds of specialized terminology depends somewhat on the scope of your writing relationship.

9. Lead the child to story structure. Once the concepts are introduced, ask the child to try making up a story with you. Some will leap at the chance and want very little direction or involvement from you. That is your cue to withdraw and wait for a result the child is ready to show you. Many other children will be unsure and reticent at first. You can help by asking questions. “Who should solve the problem in the story?” Get a main character identified. Suggest a few ways to start by introducing the main character, such as “There once was a …. named …” Then ask, “Where is this character in the beginning?” Get another sentence worked out that introduces the setting. Then ask “What kind of problem does the character run into?” With some luck, your student will be able to form a few sentences more independently at this point. After one to three sentences about the problem have been recorded, ask the child. “How does the characters solve the problem?” And encourage him/her to wrap it up. This is a somewhat artificial starting point but after a few repetitions the child will be able to think of very short narratives. If the formation of sentences is still a problem, it may be necessary to continue with sentence-forming exercises of various types.

10. Decode non-fiction. The process for learning to write non-fiction differs mainly in the questions we ask. Ask the child to identify the main idea sentence in the beginning of short non-fiction texts for children, to list some details from the text and to identify a conclusion sentence. Then when a topic for non-fiction arises (a book report, a description of a nature scene, a log of a science project or similar), follow the same structure. Ask the child to start with a main idea sentence, list several details and conclude with a general statement again. These are building blocks a step beyond mechanics. They are also a frame on which the child will hang a variety. of other structures in the future.

11. Foster writing practice and discipline. Once the basics of mechanics and structure have been covered, if not perfectly mastered, you will find yourself in the tumultuous middle territory between beginnings and a basic skill level. Here the most important factor is practice, practice, practice. Make writing fun. Use creative writing prompts. Go interesting places to write. Set goals and make the sheer volume of words or pages a matter of pride and even competition.

12. Reward volume, rather than skill. This may seem counter intuitive but it is based on scientific evidence. You can set rewards but they should be focused on the completion of anything, rather than based on the merits of the writing. Studies have shown that rewards do not work well to motivate creativity or highly complex cognitive tasks. Praise primarily effort and the discipline of getting words onto paper. De-emphasize any sort of merit-based competition during this intermediate stage. Writing competitions are only helpful once older students start to demand them, and even then their usefulness can be questionable.

    (Note: This point is not supporting a soft-headed approach to writing that insists that all attempts are equal and students shouldn’t be steered toward excellence. It is simply strategic. While at very high levels of mastery, there may be subjective arguments about which author is better, there are also clear—even harsh—standards in writing as a craft. The goal is to teach kids real, versatile, skilled writing, and introducing creative competition to young writers too soon tends to stunt development, cause psychological stress and thus curtail the massive productivity that is crucial to practice.)

13. Discuss books, movies and stories in other forms that are important to their generation and culture. Dissect their plot, structure, characters, tension, mood, voice and style. Introducing these elements as something that can be discussed and decoded takes away a lot of the intimidating mystique they often carry. Even something as elusive as narrative voice can be discussed and understood.

14. Become a writing colleague. Once you have reached a level in which students are writing stories and/or non-fiction beyond a few pages, the teaching process resembles athletic coaching much more than academic instruction. Your role is that of mentor and role model as well as motivator. You provide direction, help to set goals and provide technical advice (i.e. correction and critique). However, there is a shift in the relationship to a less hierarchical teacher-student dynamic.

15. Present self doubt as normal and a long learning process as necessary to mastery. Some students may be impatient with their own progress at the intermediate and/or advanced stages and they are likely among the most promising writers for their age. They are self-critical and they absorb the false myth within the popular culture that writing, as well as acting and music, is mostly a matter of innate talent. Talent is helpful, but it is likely that students who are motivated enough to question it, have the prerequisites. The fact is, however, that writing, like any skilled craft requires huge amounts of practice, about ten thousand hours of practice in fact. This is a useful gauge that holds true for most creative and professional skills. Ten thousand hours roughly translates as ten years of working a full-time job. Below that limit of practice, even history’s most famous artists, writers and musicians were not skilled, even if they showed promise. Children and teenagers are pretty much guaranteed to be lacking in this area. Knowing that it is normal to need that level of practice can be both comforting and motivating to those who are committed to the craft.

16. Share struggles and frustrations. It may be helpful to share some of your own struggles along the path of writing. Students at this level find the fact that you had or may still have doubts or struggled with the discipline of writing to be encouraging and motivating. It is fine to admit that you don’t know everything and to show that there are things in writing, such as mechanics which are hard, cold laws, and there are things that are subjective matters of opinion. Eventually, you will even get to a point where you discuss the proposition that even those hard, cold laws should be broken by professionals at times, for specific reasons, such as using idiomatic grammar to portray dialect or general narrative voice.

17. Treat “writer’s block” as most likely rooted in anxiety. “Writer’s block” is a much discussed topic, but it is also largely perpetuated by myth. Many young writers may think they suffer from writer’s block. Certainly, a person’s mind can go blank from exhaustion, stress, anxiety or other problems, but it is not specific to writing. The most common issue behind complaints of “writer’s block” is anxiety and fear of failure. Part of a coach’s job is to instill an understanding that doubts and anxieties are normal, first drafts are easily edited and putting anything down is the first step on the road to writing success. If you have not had the teaching of this child from the beginning, there may be significant barriers of anxiety to work through. Creating sentences and even paragraphs according to prompts can be made into a game that results in a written narrative before the child realizes they have actually written something that works. This and other techniques can be used to crack open particularly hard cases of “writer’s block.”

18. Consider the possibility of exhaustion. With more advanced students who develop difficulties after a lot of writing, consider the possibility. of creative burn-out. Learning the discipline of taking breaks and returning to writing, incorporating exercise, food, water and proper breathing into the writing routine is every bit as important to developing writing skills as it is to a budding athlete. Writing saps a particular type of mental energy and either in the short-term—or worse over the long-term-this energy can be depleted. If a student was successful and highly motivated in the past, but is now flagging, this is a serious issue requiring significant breaks, physical activity and the development of healthy long-term habits.

19. Form a critique circle. Advanced coaching for teens can be done one-on-one and also in groups. A small group of two or three students at a roughly similar level may actually be preferable to individual coaching. Critiquing the work of others is excellent training and learning discernment while absorbing the criticisms of peers is crucial. That said, rules of critique need to be strictly enforced and shared by the coach or teacher. Criticism must be focused on a specific issue in a specific piece of writing. As mentioned earlier, it is not the place of a critique to make blanket statements about the abilities of the writer. At maximum, you may mention that a similar issue has come up before.

20. Question your own knowledge and assumptions. Coaches and teachers must also keep in mind that even on specific issues, we don’t always know better than our students, even if we have vastly more writing experience. For example, one of the best writing instructors I ever had was a professor at Lawrence University. I was consistently the student who produced the highest word count and other students were nervous about critiquing my work, so the professor was rightly a bit hard on me. My most advanced work at the university was a short story about Ukrainian border guards, using an experience I had while studying abroad in the former Soviet Union as research for the setting. The professor, who had never been in this strange and surreal locale, delivered harsh criticism of my use of setting and social norms. Fortunately for my shaky self-confidence as a writer, there was an Eastern European student in the class with the guts to tell the professor that he was wrong. I too have been wrong on topics my advanced students know more about than I do.

21. Require eventual sharing of some work. You may encounter students who appear to be writing, even writing large amounts of material, but never feel ready to share it. As you can see from other points, this is a tricky situation. Some solitary process is necessary and yet clearly there comes a point where not sharing one’s work becomes counterproductive to development. It is hard to know exactly where this line is with each individual student. But most of the time, a student who won’t share anything is suffering from extensive performance anxiety. Some students with significant ability will go so far as to fail writing courses that base the grade solely on pages filled, rather than turn in writing assignments. Try a variety of different methods to help students through this. Group critique sessions may be too intimidating at first, but a student may be open to sharing only with a teacher or only with a single peer. There are also peer, sharing websites today on the internet, where a student can choose an anonymous user name and share a sample of work to be critiqued by others. While this approach has it’s risks because some online critiques are intentionally harsh for sport, it can also alleviate anxiety as the student sees how reactions to his/her work compare to that of other beginning writers.

I hope these tips are helpful to teachers, coaches and interested parents. Writing, in the end, is a creative craft like all others. Practice is key and talent may manifest in unexpected ways.

Is a love of writing the mark of an amateur?

A long, unbroken, solitary afternoon before me; sunlight in my window or rain and a fire laid in the stove, as the case may be; a cup of tea at my elbow; and best of all, a blank screen in front of me—that’s what writing is on a good day.

There are few prospects I relish with more delight. But that isn’t something you want to admit lightly among writers.

It isn’t just that it’s fashionable to play the tortured writer persona. I’ve seen dozens of blog posts about the grueling nature of professional writing and the amateur nature of all enthusiasm. Writers forums are full of the self-important, who will tell you that the easiest way to tell an amateur from a professional is to ask if they really enjoy writing.

The typical explanation goes something like this, “When a small child first encounters a piano, they bang away at the keys in delight. It’s great fun and they think it sounds beautiful. They want everyone to be quiet and listen to their noise. But it is only painful, boring practice that can turn that banging into real music worth listening to. Writing is the same way.”

Creative Commons image by Richard Patterson

The proponents of this line of reasoning also like to insist that there is very little real artistic, musical or writing talent innate to anyone. Everything is learned and can be learned through practice, they insist. Writing at a professional level or playing music at a professional level must always be a carefully calculated task. and while some satisfaction in one’s skills is permitted, enthusiasm and passion is the mark of an amateur. And this holds some internal logic.

Except that it doesn’t fit my experience.

My daughter first got to sit at a piano when she was two. She’s a particularly active child and I was concerned that she would bang away at it. Instead she gently touched the keys, heard the sounds and began working her way up and down the keyboard. I have seen countless numbers of children pound on a keyboard, but not her. She immediately found that some notes go better together than others. Within a few minutes she was making cords.

I can’t do today what she could do at two. I can’t hear the sounds that way. Once in a while, I come across a writing student who is that way with words and story. The sense of it is there before any teacher. So, I don’t believe in the “talent doesn’t exist” theory.

At the same time, I know that talent isn’t everything. Talent won’t get you much of anywhere without practice. And for most people both solid musical skills and good writing proficiency are there for the learning. There are countless technical assists in writing, things that could almost allow a computer to generate infinite variations of entertaining stories using standard plots, characters, devices, dialogue norms and tension points.

A lot of modern fiction reads like that too. I could swear someone plugged in an algorithm and churned out a series of thrillers or romantic mystery novels with artificial intelligence. They all have perfect pacing, neat and tidy plots and snappy dialogue. But they also have predictable characters, transparent plot devices and lack-luster climaxes.

And yet. as the purveyors of writing as a miserable profession are eager to tell you, those cookie-cutter novels make money. Publishing houses recognize the same elements I do and readers are so accustomed to the standard fare that most of them, those who still read books at all, continue to read them.

There is a lot to be said for practice and the rules of the craft. Without a lot of practice my daughter will never have the full freedom and experience of music. And without a solid understanding of the rules, writers who break them do so badly. I have no quibble with that.

And there have been many times when i didn’t want to write and had to anyway. I would go so far as to say that that experience—writing under pressure when you are tired and disoriented—is probably a necessary step in honing the craft of writing, or at least a way to significantly speed up the process. I spent ten years as a journalist, forced to crank out endless “copy” on subjects that I usually found boring and almost always on too little sleep.

It was called “copy” but we never copied anything. Every sentence had to be crafted and polished. It took energy and determination and focus. Doing it while tired and bored ingrained the rules deep.

I learned the trade, so that I could sit down and write anything quickly and easily, conforming to whatever standard was required, short or long, technical or atmospheric, any structure, any voice. But that doesn’t mean that all writing must from then on be unpleasant or that all of the learning and practice was unpleasant. I still remember my days as a young reporter fondly. Despite the difficulty and tedious stories about small towns and the machinations of the ministry of transportation, I got to go to work every day in a room where I sat with other people furiously writing and I got to write all day long.

I grew up doing heavy chores. Then I spent years in academia, studying and taking tests. I worked at jobs that didn’t give me purpose or fulfill my intellectual needs. And the reality of writing every day, even if it wasn’t very exciting writing, was wonderful for several years.

Even today, while I prefer to write things closer to my interests, if offered a job at a cash register or a job writing technical manuals, I’d still take the technical manuals any day. But sitting down to an afternoon of writing on a subject I enjoy, or better yet fiction—that is pure pleasure.

Is it always easy? Certainly not. That is a good part of why it is fun. I don’t really go in for easy, even in my hobbies.

That feeling you get when you’ve been writing for two hours and you get three quarters of the way through a key chapter and the plan you had isn’t working and you feel a heavy drag on you because you ,know you’ve got to go back to the plotting board and probably rewrite several major scenes to make it work—yeah, that feeling—that’s when you know you’re in the thick of it. I do tend to go get another cup of tea but I eagerly plunge back in. It’s a challenge, a battle with word counts and plot holes, and victory is that sweet zing of a successful line of tension running through the story from beginning to end.

The preachers of the miserable writer theory probably believe what they are saying. It seems likely that they have followed a path of genre writing that leaves them burnt out and frustrated but in possession of certain skills. They assume that these two things must necessarily coincide. If someone comes along and argues that writing can be a lot of fun, even at a professional level, it is the easiest thing in the world to paint that writer as an amateur. No one wants to risk that, so few ever try to argue.

Getting past the beginning of a novel - Advanced writing tips

So you’ve got a bodacious idea and you’ve written the first 20,000 or 30,000 words! You’ve got the gumption to start and the grit to put your butt in the chair and write through the wee hours of the morning or on your coffee breaks or whenever it is you have manage to squeeze in your writing time.

Congratulations! You’ve already beat out 99.75 percent of the competition. A lot of expert writing coaches like to quote the “Five percent rule.” The five percent rule says that of all the potential novel writers with an idea only 5 percent of them will ever start on it. And only 5 percent of those who do anything with their idea will make the time and discipline themselves to sit down and write regularly.

Creative Commons image by Misticsartdesign via Pixabay.jpg

I’m not sure if the numbers are actually that exact. But if you’ve reached this point, the end of the beginning of a novel, you have fortitude and courage. That’s undeniable.

And you have also just run into the steepest and scariest writing hurdle yet. According to the five percent rule, getting past the beginning should only cull out another 95 percent of the prospective authors out there, but this one feels bigger to a lot of us somehow.

Maybe it is because the people who didn’t make the first five percent cut really weren’t serious at all, so there was no pain involved. They just had an idea and didn’t pursue it. And the people, who didn’t get around to making a real start and didn’t manage the discipline or time to put their butts in their chairs. didn’t really sacrifice anything beyond mental anguish and a fair amount of whining.

On the other hand, the writers—yes, now really anyone who got this far is a writer—who falter at around the 30,000 word mark have worked hard. They’ve disciplined themselves, made real sacrifices to get the time to write and faced down fear and shame. And still… only a few will make it.

Writing coaches are supposed to make it seem like all the others will fail but you personally are the star who will not. I’m not making that call. You’re one reader and the bitter reality is that if one hundred writers at this stage of a novel read my blog, only about five of you will actually finish that novel. Fewer yet will ever see it published.

BUT… (And this is a big but.)

These statistics are about the novel, not about you. Most writers—I might even say, “hopefully all writers”—will start at least one novel they toss before they finish their first book. If you don’t, how do you learn and become an awesome writer?

We need ten thousand hours of writing to make a master, just like every skilled craft or art. So, if your novel falls by the wayside, that doesn’t mean you fail as a writer—just that you need to succeed with a different novel.

But this post is for those who have an idea they are convinced is a winner, those who have reached the end of the beginning and have the proverbial genitalia to keep on.

Let’s face it. It’s heavy going. No one gets past this one without some sweat, tears and likely some blood, whether fictional or actual.

If you are an expert plotter and have spent years on world building and have a detailed storyboard, maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about and you’re sailing through your manuscript without any trouble. But then again, if that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading this post.

If you’re like me and most other intrepid wordsmiths, you know the dreaded 30,000 word marker. Very possibly you’ve been here before. Maybe several times. And it might as well be the grim reaper.

There is something about reaching this point in a manuscript that makes writers wilt like that houseplant you forgot to water since you started this novel. No, you didn’t just run out of gas. It happens to all of us.

You start with an exciting idea and all the enthusiasm that goes along with it. There is very likely at least one early scene and possibly an ending and several other scenes firmly in your head before you start. You have a character or characters you like, a great setting and a unique premise. That can get you through 10,000 words without breaking a sweat.

You’ve got the opening description, the initial action and the premise to describe. In short, you’ve got clear goals that anyone with a couple of years of dabbling in writing can handle.

But I hate to break it to you. That’s the easy stuff.

Beginnings are important and must be brilliant and all that, but you know you can go back and edit, so you probably didn’t sweat rivers over it. Now, however, things get hairy.

You get to a certain point in writing your novel (usually somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 words depending on the type of plot you’re using and how much plotting you did early on) and you suddenly feel like you’re slogging through thick mud while carrying a fifty-pound pack.

How did this happen? You didn’t start out carrying a pack. Did all that positive energy just evaporate? Are you just a wimp without staying power?

No and no.

There is some small comfort in knowing that your exhaustion is completely justified. And it isn’t just that you’ve been cooped up in your basement staring at a screen for too long, although if that’s the case, remember that pacing yourself applies to writing as much as it does to running a marathon.

The 30,000-word marker is a different sort of exhaustion though.

Here’s the first key to getting through it: That fifty-pound pack is real.

OK, you can’t actually weigh it on a scale. But you are carrying a massive load after writing 30,000 words. You are carrying around in your brain all the bits and pieces, character traits, setting details and subplots that you subconsciously or consciously know you are going to need to remember later on. Depending on how many notes you’ve been keeping and how organized you are, this mental burden can be enormous.

Hopefully, even if you’re a write-by-the-seat-of-your-pantser, you have written down some notes about your major characters and main plot, at least the basics up until now. Pantsers are more likely to collapse at this point than plotters. It is one of the places where plotters can be justified in a bit of their smugness.

But plotters will have a burden too. Even if you write everything down scrupulously, you will be memorizing where you wrote what and how to find each piece of information. And there are always details you didn’t put in your notes, which is why your notes are not actually the novel, though their word count may be pushing a close second.

So, the first thing to do when you feel the sluggish doldrums at the end of the beginning descend upon you is to update your notes. Even if you’re an avowed pantser, now is the time to do a bit of plotting. Write character sketches if you haven’t yet. Make an outline of your plot or a story board, if at all possible. As you put down some of these burdens on paper, you will feel lighter.

If you have extensive notes, look through them. Make sure they are organized and remind yourself where to find things. Think through any plot holes that may have cropped up. Untangle and discard what has turned out not to be useful. Lighten the load.

The end of the beginning is also a good time to take a break from writing if you’re an intensive writer, spending hours writing each day. Get out in nature, spend some time with people or sleep all the hours you want for once, whichever meets your needs.

But don’t let go entirely. Many a good book has died because the writer went on a break at this point and didn’t actually come back. The break may feel way too good.

Set a limit or a deadline to get back at it. And then sit down and get back into it, no matter what.

OK, not entirely “no matter what.” As I said before, some projects need to die. Every writer needs to leave a few unfinished novels on their creative compost pile. So, don’t break yourself on something you have realized wasn’t a keeper. But if you are still convinced this is a keeper, put your head down and power through.

That is the third thing—and possibly the most crucial—about the end of the beginning. To some extent, you just have to push through this difficult time. It is likely that your plot or your characters are more complicated than you thought. You’ve realized you need to go back and change some things. Or you’re worried because you still haven’t figured out some major plot points coming up.

Whatever the specifics, this is a tough stretch. It’s uphill and there is no second wind yet.

Remember again that you can edit later. Keep in mind that this is normal for writers. It’s a natural part of the process of writing a novel. Take your best shot at how the plot needs to go and write it.

When you get to the 50,000- or 60,000-word mark and those last few puzzle pieces drop into place in your plot conundrum, you can go back and fix whatever you’re messing up now.

Yes, puzzle pieces dropping seemingly of their own accord happens far more often than a purely rational view of the writing process would indicate. And yes, you are messing things up at this point. It’s pretty much impossible not to. Don’t fret about it.

Getting past the end of the beginning is almost always messy or rugged or both. But by putting down some of your mental burden, taking a carefully limited break and pushing through the urge to throw it all in the recycling bin, you can crawl over this hurdle.

How much is too much (or too little) description in fiction?

The echo of automatic gunfire bounced off the gray, cement buildings, making it impossible to pinpoint the direction of the threat. Trash scuttled along the gutter in a stiff jab of wind. Sand stung her eyes.

The girl crouched in a doorway, the stench of sour cabbage and old grease washing over her from inside. She gnawed on the nail of her little finger and tried to remember the map of streets between here and the old railroad yard. She couldn’t afford a mistake now.

The rapid cracking of more shots just a block back along the street forced the matter. She darted out, along the wall and away, slipping through the rubble like a little brown squirrel, lightning quick and nearly silent.

Some of the most common questions I get from students are on the issue of description in fiction—how much, when and where?

Creatove Commons image via Pixabay

Budding writers often receive lavish praise for description in school. Most general education teachers and even a distressing number of creative writing instructors, view almost all description favorably. It is creative, after all. It fills up assignment page quotas at a gallop and the students who use description are refreshingly motivated.

What isn’t there to love about it?

Well, lots actually.

Writing description is like playing the piano. Unlike most musical instruments, pianos make nice-sounding notes with the press of a key. All you have to do to feel like you are playing the piano and making nice sounds is to play the keys with a bit of grace and not bang on them. Once a small child learns to stop banging and to press individual keys, the sound is relatively pleasant and even pretty at times. It is motivating because it is easy and it garners praise.

But just as playing real music on a piano is a far cry from that gentle random tinkling, writing great description is complex, requires long practice and is immeasurably more rewarding than the initial experiments.

Here are the crucial questions to consider when writing description.

1. What is description and why do you need it?

After they discover that their initial descriptive prowess does not actually make regular people—who are neither their teachers nor their parents—want to read their writing, many beginning writers careen violently in the other direction. They strip all description out of their fiction and stick to action verbs and dialogue, like it’s a fundamentalist religion. Some very stereotypical fiction (and screenplays) can be done this way, but it has the staying power of popcorn.

Description is part of how we convey setting, character and mood to the reader. More importantly, it is the gateway through which the reader enters the world of your story. While a gripping plot and excellent dialogue are arguably more important on every page of a story, description opens the door for your reader.

We experience fiction primarily through our senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. It isn’t the actual page we see or even the movie screen. In order for a reader to fall deeply in love with a work of fiction, recommend it to their friends and make sure to read everything else by the same author, that reader must experience the story to some degree physically. It’s description that jump-starts that process.

The reason why narrow genre fiction needs less of it is that there are already a lot of description assumptions that readers come into each story with. The entire genre aids in developing the sensory experience. Even there, description plays its essential role, only in a different way.

2. What description is not

Description is not plot or story and it never can be. It can’t even be character, though it can try.

It’s like the old adage that children do what their parents do rather than what they say. Description is like a parent telling a child to do something. If done well, it may be memorable and valuable. But if it isn’t backed up with coherent actions and purpose it won’t matter for long.

Description may be enough for a newspaper article in the features section. There we describe characters, locations, scenes and social dilemmas and leave them for the reader to resolve. But despite the literary-term “character sketch” description does not make a story.

Problems and actions attempting to resolve problems make stories. Description may help. That’s all.

3. How do I know if I put in too much description?

The grip that a work of fiction has on the reader is like a kite string. When I edit a work of fiction it feels as if I am flying a kite. The kite is the reader and the taut string is the pull that keeps them reading. The first rush of the opening must be a powerful enough burst of speed to propel the kite up. But then if the kite is driven only by the pilot running around on the ground and there is no wind (metaphorically plot), the kite would sail up for awhile and then drift dully to earth, just as surely as it would if you let go of it and let the wind take it entirely.

Tension in fiction is much like the tension in that taut kite string. It is the pull between the wind of plot events and the striving of the characters. It is the only thing that won’t let the reader drift away from your story.

All this is to say that description plays only an indirect role in the basic physics of the relationship between plot, character and tension. Description is crucial to the reader’s experience of the events of the story, but it must not interfere too greatly.

Excess description has the tendency to slacken the tension of that kite string. Too much and the kite falls, the reader loses interest and abandons the story for something more engaging.

So, as you read over your work in editing, keep that kite string in mind. Judging when the string goes slack is somewhat subjective and it certainly varies with tone and genre, but you can develop an intuitive sense for it. If you feel the line of tension through a scene slacken, look to the descriptive phrases in the scene. Too much description is not the only problem that can cause slack tension, but it is the easiest such problem to solve.

If cutting excess description helps then you have likely resolved the problem. Professionally this trimming of wordy text is called “tightening up the prose” and that refers to tightening the tension, just like a kite string.

Some writers today complain that classical writers had it easier, that they were allowed lengthy descriptions of landscape, clothing and the faces of characters, while readers won’t give us the same chance to develop depth in a story today.

There is some truth in this lament. Fiction used to be much more difficult to come by and readers were less likely to put a book down due to a bit of slackened tension. Today’s readers have a lot of distractions and even more options.

It is true that sometimes depth of description is sacrificed today to the gods of reader attention in ways that do not actually make for better writing. But the conditions of entertainment-scarcity of old were not necessarily superior. They allowed for some wonderful depth in some of our classical works, but they also spawned some very long-winded, boring drivel written by privileged white men who only got to be published and even mildly famous because of their random fortune of birth.

The bottom line is that today’s conditions are what they are. They force you to write tight, if you want readers, and that can be a good thing if you focus on honing description to be as powerful and evocative as possible.

4. How much is too little description?

There are modern examples of fiction with too little description. The plot may be snappy but it feels hollow and the reader cannot experience the story sensually. Any trend can become too extreme.

The basic role of fiction still hasn’t changed since ancient times. People read fiction to relax. While fiction often competes with various multimedia entertainments today, many readers seek out reading specifically for the quiet relaxation it offers. That means that we do need some description and quite a lot in literary, fantasy and romance genres.

All description, even in a literary genre where you can theoretically be more relaxed, should strive for brevity and power. The key is to provide a few “evocative” details that open the door of sensory experience and lead the reader’s senses to take over the task of description.

A story must have enough description, given all the circumstances of genre and readership, to start the reader’s brain on the sensory experience. This can often be done with a single phrase or even a single word if that little detail is well-known enough to the readership that the writer can be reasonably sure it will jump-start sensory memory.

If a fantasy author mentions “the smell of leather and sage” it is very likely that most fantasy readers will instantly connect to a sensory memory of just those smells and a lot of other details can be left out and assumed. This is because fantasy readers tend to be the kind of people to own leather items and to have visited places or shops that smell of sage. Such readers will start to see muted greens and earth tones in the clothing of the characters without the writer mentioning color. They may envision natural landscapes or faces roughened by weather, even if they aren’t described.

If a crime or detective author mentions “the blood and vomit spattered on the floor of the interrogation room” their readers will likely construct an entire scene in their minds complete with unfriendly, windowless gray walls, a single lamp, a bare table and a hard chair, even if they have never personally been in such a place because they read a genre in which such descriptions are very common.

This is a bit like cheating, but it is legal and in many cases desirable. You pick just the right detail and thus skip whole paragraphs of description, if your detail evokes a similar scene for your readership.

There are two methods in this kind of cheating—1. banking on reader experience and 2. exploiting genre conventions. The more you know your readership and your genre the easier it is to use details that will evoke sensory experience for those readers and thus free you from the need to provide further descriptive details.

Unfortunately, we can’t always count on enough shared experience between readers to do away with most description. This is another reason why some old fiction feels uninspiring to modern readers. Simply put, the author’s assumptions about our experience and what will trigger our sensual responses are no longer valid due to changes in our society.

There are also plenty of things you may want to describe in fiction which you can be pretty sure most readers have not encountered in physical life. In fact, if you are describing mostly only things that are so common to the genre that they don’t need much description, your work isn’t going to be very original.

So, description isn’t going out of style. Get used to it and use it skillfully.

5. How can I make my descriptions better?

Better in description generally means more “power.”

Power? Like short, snappy sentences?

Well, sort of. Shorter and more varied sentence lengths help, but when we say “power” in description it means the power to evoke and thus bring the reader into the story physically.

Fortunately, there are some fairly easy ways to increase the power of your description. This goes right back to elementary school, where you learned the parts of speech—verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs.

Verbs are inherently the most powerful part of human language. It is likely they were the first actual words, given that pointing likely took care of initial nouns for prehistoric people. Nouns are the next most powerful part of language, followed by adjectives.

The weakest of the non-grammatical, substantive parts of speech are adverbs. This is why your writing instructors and how-to books tell you to avoid them.

It is much better to use a verb that describes the entire action, as in, “The officers pounded up the steps and charged into the apartment,” rather than common verbs with adverbs, such as “The officers ran forcefully up the stairs and came into the apartment fast and furious.”

The first example happens to be shorter, but even if it somehow wasn’t technically shorter, it would more easily draw the reader’s senses into the story for reasons that go deep into psychology.

The same goes for nouns. It is better to be more specific with your noun than to use a common noun and an adjective. It is better to write “poodle” than “small, white dog” unless your narrative absolutely requires the vagueness.

Adjectives are weak enough that it is better to avoid them, if it doesn’t cause other complications in the text. Adjectives ending in -ly are notoriously the weakest of all. Many writers do a search for “ly” during editing and specifically analyze each adjective with that ending to see if they can safely cut any. This isn’t to say that you should never use them, only that it is worth looking to see if there is a stronger alternative.

If a paragraph was a savory soup, verbs would be the broth, nouns the meat and veggies, adjectives the salt and spices and -ly words would be things like protein powder and vinegar that you add to some soups when it is really necessary but would not want in any significant amounts.

This advice comes with one very large caveat, Almost every writer who has learned this step has at some point realized the wonderful tool of the thesaurus and been put under its evil spell for a time. Don’t get me wrong, your thesaurus is not inherently evil. It is a good tool for reminding you of descriptive synonyms you may have forgotten.

But whatever you do in writing, resist that temptation to go window shopping through your thesaurus and pick out a nice-sounding word that you aren’t otherwise acquainted with and stick it into your sentence because it is more interesting than its common alternative.

A good rule of thumb is that you should not use a word from a thesaurus if you have never encountered it in speech or in a written work that was not intended to describe the word itself. Your thesaurus is for reminding yourself of words you knew already, not for coming up with new words. There is nothing that screams “amateur” at readers more than a writer who appears to be using unfamiliar descriptive words.

Putting it all together

Honing your descriptions to make them brief and powerful will help your current story and boost your overall writing skills. It is also fun and just as description brings readers into the world of the story, it can transport you there as well.

And that crucial for coordinating scenes and writing great dialogue, but those are issues for other posts. Check out my other advanced writing tips here.

Winning fans is more than just hooking readers

As a senior in college I bombed out of my first journalism job interview on the question, "What is the most important thing in a newspaper story?" posed by a small-town newspaper editor.

I had given up on figuring out the "right" answers because the editor had already told me he didn't think a legally blind person (or even just anyone who couldn't drive) could be a newspaper reporter. He only asked this question to confirm his biases, so I told him my actual opinion.

"Good research and real facts." 

And arguably for many readers that is the most important focus of a newspaper story. But of course, I was wrong in journalism orthodoxy.

Creative Commons image by Glenn Strong

The standard answer to that question is "the hook." The hook is technically part of the lead, the first paragraph. The hook is often, though not always, the last sentence or phrase in the lead, something surprising, snappy, intriguing or shocking enough to force a good portion of readers to keep reading for at least a few more paragraphs. 

Journalism theory has it that it doesn't really matter if readers finish the article. The important thing is that they read enough of it and other articles in the paper to A. see the ads that fund the paper and B. decide they actually need the paper and subscribe. At least that was the theory, back when print newspapers were the primary form of journalism. 

There is a similar theory in the book industry today. The cover art, the blurb on the back of the book and the first few paragraphs of chapter one play much the same role as the hook in the days of old. And we still talk about "hooking readers." 

The idea is to give the reader a little thrill of recognition—"Ah! This is a book I'll like"—a sense of tribe. You play into the desires of the given genre and provide enough momentum and adrenaline to keep them reading. If you want to catch today's readers, swimming around in a bookstore or at an onlilne shop, you need something with some punch because there are a lot of distractions. 

Both the old journalism version and the modern book-selling version are true as far as they go. The journalism lead and hook got readers who were just casually perusing a paper to actually read it. I did eventually go on to learn to write a pretty good hook as an international newspaper stringer. Thank you very much, Mr. Small-Town Editor. 

But there is something that the doctrine of the hook does not take into account—a crucial factor that is the deal breaker in today’s book industry.

Let me illustrate with another story from the trenches. In 2007, I landed a prestigious Manhattan agent for a memoir. The agent loved my book but didn’t love my hook. She insisted that I rewrite it to put the most suspenseful and violent scene first and then handle the rest of the book as one giant flashback. This is done a lot and it isn’t actually as bad as it sounds, if it is done well.

Most of my memoir was about being a blind kid from the back of beyond who got scholarships and somehow ended up in the high-pressure world of international journalism. I started it at a crucial point of no return, while the agent wanted me to start it almost at the end of the chronological story because there was an incident that involved me running from a machine-gun toting mob in the midst of an interethnic skirmish in the Balkans, which is sadly a good part of my journalistic claim to fame.

I love to read memoirs in general. It’s probably the genre I read most and I am not the kind of reader who looks for shock and awe in the hook. I look for character and an engaging narrative voice. But I’m probably not the norm. So my opening, which focused on drawing the reader in through character and voice, made the agent nervous.

I rewrote the hook and made the agent happy. But the book still isn’t published.

It was well written as far as it went, but it was a journalistic memoir by a journalist who was never famous. It should have been a memoir of self-discovery by a blind person with too much to prove, because that would have at least stood a chance in today’s book industry.

But that would have required a different kind of opening, less the traditional hook and more voice and character.

What the editors of 42 publishing houses told the agent, which both of us should have known from the beginning, was that as good as the book was, no one cares if they don’t know the author. If it’s a book about a journalist, that is even more true.

In newspaper journalism “back in the day,” you were assuming the reader already had the paper in their hands. And many readers had no real choice about which paper they were going to read. They read the local paper and possibly one national paper. They could choose among the national papers but they weren't likely to switch just because of less than snazzy hooks. They were much more likely to switch if a paper proved to be either boring overall or full of shoddy research. 

No, the purpose of the hook was first and foremost about the ads around the article. Get eyes on the article and you had eyes on the ads. That’s what advertisers wanted and because they funded the paper, their interests were paramount.

Reporters also wanted to hook readers into their particular story, so their interests coincided with those of the advertisers when it came to writing a good hook. It was more important to a writer that a reader start reading their article than that readers would love them specifically. Bylines were small and usually unnoticed.

Today writers have to contend with a very different landscape. Audiences are much less captive. The hook may get a reader to start reading but if they stop reading immediately afterward because the writing is bad, the content is non-existent or the voice is boring, nothing is gained.

No matter how good your hook is, readers can and do pick up ebooks and stop reading them within a few pages. In some ebook systems, this even means that they don't have to pay for the book. Similarly blogs are only really helpful to the writer if readers come back again and again to the same blog. Hooks are still part of the equation but they are no longer the defining skill of a writer. 

Some ad-dependent bloggers will still use hooks in much the way old-school newspaper reporters did. There are snazzy, intriguing hooks and often a sad lack of any substance or resolution of the mysteries raised.

That isn’t my blogging strategy. The reason for that--beyond the fact that I'd rather work my day job as an ESL teacher than write boring copy--is that things have changed. Today the focus is on readers rather than on advertisers, and that's a good thing for writers. Frankly, writing to the taste of readers is much more fun than writing to the taste of advertisers.

Today a writer's job is not so much to hook readers for a few seconds but to win fans for years to come. We want readers to finish the post or the book and then reach for another one and another one by the same author. That is what keeps the lights on so that writers can keep writing. 

Don't get me wrong. There are still gimmicks out there and people making money off of gimmicks but ultimately readers will figure out when something is a gimmick. There are people cranking out "ebooks" which consist of just a few pages of new material, while the majority of the pages in the book are stuffed with the author’s old material, old blog posts, promos of other work and so forth. The writing, even what new material there is, in these "books" is also not great. For some strange reason, the Amazon algorithms favor lots of releases by the same author in a short period of time, so there are people making some money that way until readers catch on. 

But what is it that will win real fans? What will grab the people who will remember an author's name and seek out the author's work or recommend it to their friends? 

Three things:

1. Good writing craft,

2. Consistent delivery of what a specific group of readers wants. 

3. And a distinct and addictive author voice.

Readers become fans when the book or other material they are reading holds them in a kind of spell that feels very comfortable and which calls to them enticingly when they are doing something else. The elements that go into this spell are voice, character and story, usually in that order.

It can be argued that grammar, punctuation and spelling, the nuts and bolts of writing are an inherent part of voice. If your work is littered with typos, it is like your voice is squeaking. It isn't pleasant and it breaks the spell, no matter how lovely your characters or story are. But of course there is much more to voice than nuts and bolts.

Essentially, "voice" refers to the tone, humor, cadence, dialect and closeness of your narration. People read for a kind of human contact. It's like being friends and as such winning a fan is like being a good friend.

I don't say It's like "making a friend" because it isn't. Writers aren't friends with every reader. But readers feel a bond of friendship with favorite authors nonetheless. And if you, as a writer, can provide the kind of voice that your readers need to hear from a friend, then you're halfway home.

Naturally not every reader needs the same kind of friend or even the same kind of friend at all times. I sometimes read straight forward thrillers, sometimes epic fantasy and sometimes humorous YA, even though I'm over forty. Each of these genres plays a different role, much like different kinds of friends. Sometimes I need a more humorous friend, sometimes a serious one who gets the heavy despair I'm feeling in the world right now and has resilient grit.

So the first thing to remember about voice is that you can't please them all and you shouldn't try. The worst thing you can do to your writing--other than litter it with typos and convoluted grammar--is try to make it for "everyone." Something that is for everyone is necessarily bland. And while some authors may get away with bland, you'll notice that they are already famous. Not-famous writers like me and you will have to stand out and that means deciding who we're talking to (our target audience) and what kind of friend we're going to be (wry, dark, gritty, whimsical, etc.). 

Beyond that, voice is about making the reader comfortable. You don't want to be too long-winded but neither is this a contest to see who can use the least number of words, the way it often was in newspaper journalism. Readers today read to relax more than anything else. So your voice should be one that matches what your specific readers need and makes them feel good.

You want to have a clear and identifiable voice, so that a reader can pick up an unlabeled page of your writing and be able to name the author. That would be the ideal.

Just as the nuts and bolts of writing are a prerequisite in voice, understanding the specific needs and expectations of readers in your genre is crucial. It is possible to write in the gray areas between genres, though finding your readership will take longer. Genres need not be restrictive boundaries, but be aware that readers will latch onto you for something specific and the more you can consistently provide their the fix they need, the longer you’ll keep readers and the more they’ll turn into actual fans.

An old axiom says beginnings hook readers and endings create fans. My last post told you my low opinion of endings. I don't agree with the axiom anyway. It's a cliche that may have been true in another would where reading had a different position in our entertainment industry. Today, when you can access just about anything, anywhere, right this second, you need quite a lot of good stuff between the beginning and the ending.

On the bright side, what is hard for you is also hard for other writers. You don’t need all the fans, you just need your own tribe.