How do you keep from writing a novel that is going to be the same old thing as everybody else writes?
Jonathan posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
Here’s a long winded statement/question: All my life, I think I have known that I wanted to create fiction, and have accordingly spent my time reading and writing, and watching movies, all in the hopes that I will learn how to create powerful emotional experiences for my future readers.
I have a problem, and I think that it is keeping me from being able to finish any of my story ideas. I have been thinking about it really hard, and recently, I think I have stumbled upon what it is that is causing my block: I don’t want my book to become a Kate Hudson Movie.
What I mean by that is that I don’t want my readers to read a few words of my book, and say “Ah-ha! It’s this story again! Boy meets Girl (Gasp! Sometimes boy already knew Girl!), Boy and Girl are thrust into an awkward/interesting situation, a moment of truth comes which breaks them apart, but at the last possible moment, they realize their love for each other and live happier ever after.”
How do I write without doing this? If fiction is really just a collection of archetypes tied together in such a way so as to make a cohesive story, how can I stand out or possibly ever be different from the next guy?
It seems like books that do break this mold- Infinite Jest, House of Leaves, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close do exist, but often times play games with so much stuff that it’s difficult to (with all do respect to these authors, extremely loud is a favorite book of mine) really call them classics of fiction.
How do I add cohesive structure to what I write without being just like the last guy who wrote about exactly what I plan to write about?
Randy sez: Jonathan, I hear you. Nobody wants to write a cliche novel. Nobody wants to be mediocre. Nobody wants to be an also-ran.
But believe me, writing a cliche novel is a whole heck of a lot harder than it looks. If that’s all you ever do, that’ll be an achievement.
Being “just another lineman in the NFL” is a whole heck of a lot harder than it looks too. So is being “just another astronaut on the Space Station.” So is being “just another member of the House of Representatives.”
It may look like all of the above are mediocre folks who don’t have what it takes. Baloney. These are all people who happen to be “average” in a crowd of incredibly high achievers.
Same deal with fiction writers who write yet another novel that gets published by a major publisher and gets made into a movie. If you do that, you’ll be somebody in the fiction world, whether or not you achieve J.K. Rowling or Stieg Larsson numbers. Yes, we all would love to be megabestselling authors, but just making it to the ranks of the published is a pretty darned remarkable feat.
Jonathan, go write your book and see what comes out. Maybe you’ll quit before you finish. Maybe you’ll try for years and years and never get it published. Maybe, (if you have talent and you work hard) you’ll become that thing you dread. Maybe, (if you’re one of the insanely lucky and talented few) you may achieve what you really want, which is to be utterly brilliant, mold-breaking, unique. Go ahead and aspire to that and use it to motivate yourself.
But if you wind up writing a novel that becomes a Kate Hudson movie, that ain’t failure, my friend. That’s success. And if you’d rather not chance yourself to that kind of fate, there are always easier professions where success is more assured.
Such as pro football, the astronaut corps, or national politics.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Forgive me, Randy – but I really disagree with your advice on this one. Striving for excellence, in whatever field, should not be scoffed off as a pipe dream that most sad sacks should never even hope to achieve.
I agree that writing a cliché novel (and getting it published) is incredibly difficult, for two reasons. (a) There are so many already out there, it really is difficult to get noticed if you don’t have personal charisma or incredible luck (or both). It’s an unsavory fact that publishing these days is just as much about the writer’s personality as it is about the quality of their work. (A friend of mine got turned down for one of those “X for Dummies” books because the publisher wanted a woman to write it, but was later offered a deal for another book, on a subject he was much less informed about, because he happened to be male and his personality “fit” the subject. Which of course leads me to be less inclined to trust “X for Dummies” authors as experts in their field, since I know one of them personally. ;))
It’s also hard to write that clichéd novel because (b) writing cliché is incredibly dull, boring work. If I had to sit down at a computer and write clichés day after day, tweaking my every sentence and scene to what I thought might hook this or that demographic or please this or that editor, I would find it incredibly hard going. In fact, I’d probably give up pretty quick.
But why would I want to write a book that I find boring to read?
My advice to Jonathan: write what fascinates you. Blow off all the advice you’ve ever read about structure and what sells, especially during the first draft stage. If you’re afraid that what you’re writing is cliché, then it probably is. If you’re disinterested in your characters or bored by the plot, then your readers will be, too. So set that aside and write about what it is that truly engages you in the world. What is it that you want to say? If you’re afraid of writing a Kate Hudson movie, then figure out what it is about Kate Hudson movies that bothers you, and give it a twist. Every time you feel like your characters might be towing a trite line, challenge them, grill them, force them into painful, humiliating and challenging situations and see how they react. (And love them, find them charming, care about what happens to them.)
And maybe you do all of this and what you end up writing still looks “cliché” on the surface, maybe it has some familiar archetypes or predictable moments. But people really do fall in love, or lose loved ones to disease and death, or change careers, or travel to new places…. and they don’t find it cliché or boring, because they’re living it. That’s what will keep your writing from being cliché: not what happens, but WHY it happens, and how deeply your readers connect to and care about your characters. What makes a work rise above cliché is not structure or hooks – it’s depth, detail and insight. People read great works of literature to learn about what it means to be human, and to learn what it’s like for others to be human, and why people do what they do. People read the latest best seller to turn their brains off for a little fun that lasts a few hours longer than television. Which do you want to write?
Personally, I’m a writer precisely because of the opportunity it gives me to be creative, to dive deep and explore the human psyche. I don’t want to be just one more person churning out mass-produced entertainment like a cog in the machine. I know plenty of writers who settle for that, and who probably think I’m naive. (Who would point to my lack of impressive publishing credentials as evidence that I don’t know what I’m talking about, though I’m still quite young and writing, happily, is something you can do even when you’re eighty and half-blind with nostalgia.) On the other hand, I know that my very favorite authors are the ones who refuse to compromise on their creative urge, who do not simply write “safe” and predictable novels that publishers scarf up precisely because they don’t take risks or challenge assumptions.
If you want some helpful, inspiring (and sometimes just funny and comforting) books on writing, I highly recommend Orson Scott Card’s Characters & Viewpoint, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. You won’t find much in those that helps you play the publishers’ game, but you will find tons of priceless insight into what it’s like to actually do the hard work of creative writing. And that kind of hard work always pays off.
Randy sez: Ali, I think you’ve misunderstood me. I have not told Jonathan to not strive for excellence. What I said is that even those novels that he considers mediocre are actually excellent — when compared to the vast majority of novels written (most of which never get published). I have seen kids at the National Spelling Bee crying because they finished 55th or 18th or 6th or 3rd. Those kids are all incredible spellers, compared to the rest of the world. They might appear to be mediocre in the exclusive company of the National Spelling Bee, but they’re all amazing kids. Anyone who gets published is a pretty darned good writer, and even if they aren’t #1 in the world, it’s ridiculous to call them mediocre. When you take this mentality to an extreme, you see the guy who finishes second in the Olympic 100 meter dash being called a “loser” — because on one particular day he was slower by .01 second than the guy who finished first. It’s fine to have high standards, but it’s ridiculous to have ridiculously high standards.
Jon, what if Boy and Girl know they love each other before they’re forced apart? What if they don’t know it until after they’re brought back together? What if they never get together at all?
There’s only a few options with a love story. Either they get together or they don’t. But since most people don’t end up with their first love, it’s still interesting. How do they feel about all the other people they dated before? How do they feel about this relationship after it’s gone?
There’s a lot of points you can come into and end the story on. I’d say find the part that speaks to you this time and write that.
I think you should realize that just because a Boy Meets Girl story is considered chiché, it doesn’t mean that every Boy Meets Girl story is the same. I’ve seen BMG movies that have surprised me and that I consider to be in my top 20 movies of all times.
Writing entertaining fiction involves a good plot and interesting characters, and BMG is a classic example of a plot (or part of a plot) that works. But it doesn’t end there. Your characters are unique, and different from any other BMG story out there. Details or story angles are different too. There will be different developments over the course of the plot. The way you tell the story will be different.
I think everyone has a voice. Hypothetically, if you gave the same outline to every single person in the world, no two people would write the same novel. What I’m getting at is that it’s okay to write about stuff that you think is cliché, you just have to realize it’s just a small part of an abundance of other stuff that makes a good novel. And the fact that you’re writing it, makes it different.
I agree with Randy. Write your story. If it’s Boy Meets Girl, then write it. You may end up reading it and surprising yourself. And if not, hey at least you finished it 🙂 And if you don’t like it, you can move on and write another novel. Just write! 🙂
Usually people read those novels because they like the particular cliche. People who like the whole “boy meets girl” theme will most probably read such a novel.
Your characterizations, your disasters, and your action scenes followed by intense sequels will be what is different than anyone else’s. Just don’t make them a cliche.
Don’t worry too much about being imitative. One school of thought is that there are only five plots(man against man, man against himself, man against nature, man against society, and man against God) and all novels are derivatives of these five. The literary agent Donald Maass says, ”There are certainly no new plots. Not a one. There are also no settings that have not been used, and no professions that have not been given to protagonists.” Kurt Vonnegut summarized most every story ever told: “Somebody gets into trouble, and then gets out again; somebody loses something and gets it back; somebody is wronged and gets revenge; Cinderella; somebody hits the skids and just goes down, down, down; people fall in love with each other, and a lot of other people get in the way; a virtuous person is falsely accused of sin; a sinful person is believed to be virtuous; a person faces a challenge bravely, and succeeds or fails; a person lies, a person steals, a person kills, a person commits fornication . . . . I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere.”
Jon,
You could say I am writing a BMG novel, because the main character meets the girl he will end up with in the first book. Okay maybe not a novel by a BMG Series. The only difference is for them to end up together, they just need to defeat all darkness and save two worlds in the process. You might not consider this at all a BMG story, but that is what mold breaking is. Look at Twilight, that is a huge BMG series but deals with Vimpires and People who turn into giant wolves.
You just have to think outside the box, also you will never know how well you’re doing until you write it an you let someone else read it.
Tim
What I’ve noticed when it comes to fiction in children is that they’ll watch the same darn movie over and over and over again and still like it and talk about what’s going to happen and are thrilled to already know what’s going to happen and it’s the same movie, same thing, same exact story, but kids will sit through it because they have control over the outcome unlike life.
Brings me to another point: Why do adults buy movies? An adult who has far better things to do then to sit for two hours should in all likeliness watch the movie once, should be it, then the adult should be bored of it, but people buy it because they want to watch it over and over and over again just like kids do.
People like the same darn thing, it’s comforting to know what’s going to happen because life’s not like that and so this entertainment is the escape people need, and it’s a comfortable escape because people know what’s going to happen next even when it has different characters and is set in another place.
There are those that can’t stand the same formulaic “cliche” plot lines and those people are the ones that don’t go to the movies and don’t watch TV unless it’s documentaries and other types of non-fiction; those are the ones that won’t read your or anyone else’s fiction, but don’t let them stop you.
One thing you can do is try to take the same old and present it in a new light by changing certain elements which will surprise the reader, but this could backfire if the reader wants the same story told just with different characters and in a different place.
It is risky to be original; one risk is that no one will like it. The other risk is that everyone likes it to the point that they copy off of your idea relentlessly and your original work then looks so “cliched” by the time everyone’s through with it that originality doesn’t really matter in the long run. Every idea was completely original once upon a time.
So just write and don’t worry about how your audience will react to it.
Great discussion here, and most encouraging. Jonathan, keep at the story you want to tell.
I think when we strive to “make it different” it inhibits the writing and makes it stilted. I’ve also found that some of the unique turns and twists in my own writing come either in the middle of the night, or when I’m writing scenes in the current WIP, and an “aha” moment pops up unplanned.
I definitely didn’t mean to say that anyone who wrote a story like that is somehow not as much an author as other people who write different types of stories. If that is how I come across, I humbly apologize. The truth is, their work wouldn’t be published (moviefied?) if there wasn’t some sort of marketable merit to it, and I know it took them tons of hard work to do what they have done.
I think what I was trying to say here and other times that I have posted questions/responses here is that when it comes right down to it, I want to push the limits of what fiction is, but in a way that is satisfying to my reader, and marketable.
I don’t think I really knew this until I started writing this, but I know it’s true.
Maybe the point is that for me, there isn’t a roadmap to the fiction that I will create. Maybe I’ve been trying to hard to “grok” the idea of creating fiction, instead of just doing it.
To all, I apologize if I came across in a negative way in that question. It came from an honest place in my heart, and I didn’t consider the ways that I compared myself to established authors.
Thanks for all of your feedback!
Randy sez: No need to apologize, Jonathan. You’ve got high standards for yourself, maybe impossibly high standards. I think you’re worrying so much about being the absolute best that it’s possible for any human to be that you may be keeping yourself from achieving the absolute best that it’s possible for YOU to be. Most of us are not going to be #1 in the world at anything, ever. But we can still, as they say in the Army, “Be all that you can be.”
A very wise man once said that there is nothing new under the sun. All of the best stories follow one of the classic templates that are as old as creation.
One of the points that I got from Randy and Swain was that people buy and read fiction to get a strong emotional experience, not to be educated, discover some new idea or genre of story. If we can deliver a good story that gives our readers what they want, we’ve performed our value-added-labor as writers.
If we also manage to educate as well as entertain, or introduce our readers to a different theme or worldview than they are accustomed to in the process, then we’ve gilded the Lilly. That is the goal of a master writer, but first we need to work at becoming good enough at our craft to get published. It is likely that when we achieve that milestone the other will take care of itself, since writing is the outflow of our life experience and character.
We all bring ourselves to the table and the message takes the imprint of the vessel that bears it. Your uniqueness will shine through your writing whatever happens, even if your write a formulaic novel.
So write on my friend, your place at the table can’t be filled by someone else.
Basically, if you have told they story you want to tell, in the way you want to tell it, and you are as happy as you can possibly be with the end result, man, you’ve made it.