Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Thoughts on Writing

  • The Awesomeness Score: A Rubric for Measuring a Story’s Power

    I’m constantly trying to assess the value of story ideas and completed stories. As an editor, I want to pick stories that are the most inviting and enjoyable. As an author, I need a way to guess the story’s power and value before I write it — and after I write it.

    I can talk about aspects or values that a great story should have. Truthfully though a great story doesn’t need to have all of these aspects. Also prose and story structure are tightly integrated. You can’t just make something better unless you change everything. Sometimes that just isn’t possible. A story can succeed spectacularly well in one aspect and still be a mediocre story. You can have a great premise or a great character or a great plot twist, but the rest of the story can be so-so. Sometimes wit and eloquence makes a bad story great — or at least worth reading. Even a story may be lacking in some of the fundamentals (great style, succinct writing, memorable character, etc.) but still be a compelling read.

    A story could have great ideas or insights into humanity and still be dull. Conversely, a story can be fun to read or entertaining, and be utterly forgettable. Novelty — do you really need it? Some stories can be amazing and yet be predictable or unoriginal. A plot could be fascinating, but the protagonist could be wooden or speak in cliches.

    In education rubrics have taken over grades, especially in a subject as wishy washy as writing. You can’t really assign a numerical value to a work of art, but it’s nice to set criteria and assign relative importance to them. I prepared a literary rubric for evaluating stories by myself and others as a nice way to rank and compare. It’s possible that self-evaluations may be inherently flawed. Writers may be too close to their own work to be properly able to assign it a value. Even if I am scoring other people’s stories, I may appreciate certain story aspects that most readers don’t care about.

    I have spent a day or two coming up with a rubric or scale which I can live with.

    Awesomeness Score =3 X (SUM OF PRIMARY QUALITIES) + (SUM OF BONUS QUALITIES) – (SUM OF UNDESIRABLE QUALITIES)

    Primary Qualities: 1-5 points each x 3 (5-15 points)

    I picked 5 important criteria for scoring a story. I’d like to think that these criteria are independent of one another, but that is not exactly true. Sometimes what makes a story excellent in one aspect will make another aspect excellent as well. Also, some of these criteria attempt to be about intrinsic qualities, while others are more about the response they provoke in a reader. Let me list these quickly.

    I put primary qualities on a 5 point scale (with 5 being best). Then I multiplied the total by 3 (so a 4 would really be a 12, etc. ) Another thing. It’s often possible for a great story to be totally deficient in one criterion, so there’s nothing wrong with ranking such a story low on that quality. The point of this whole exercise is to provide a scoring system that allows unusual works to be rated highly. But no story can be everything.

    • Ease of Reading. A story published in 2024 needs to be inviting for the contemporary reader. The reader can’t be expected to work hard to get immersed in a story. Contemporary readers are impatient and lazy. They could be watching a movie or playing a video game. An ornate or unusual style (say something like Faulkner) can be appreciated for what it is, and maybe a reader can warm up to it, but the first duty for a story is to be read. Frankly, if you need to be a grad student with a free weekend to get into something, that is asking a lot. This involves a simple style, unambiguous meanings, brevity, apparent structure. So what about Proust? Faulkner? Joyce? Personally I’d rank most of Faulkner a 1, Proust a 2, Joyce a 1 or 2. On the other hand, Milan Kundera would be a 5; so would Stephen King and some of Kurt Vonnegut. On the other hand, I don’t think the stories of King or Vonnegut as inherently better, just different.
    • So what? Insights into the Human Condition? Why was a story worth the writer’s time to write (and the reader to read)? Ideally it should be clear what the reader learns about the human condition or the world after finishing the story. Often what the writer thinks may not be what the reader thinks, but isn’t it the writer’s job to justify the value of the story to the reader? By the end, the reader should be able to say, “This was important for me to read because …” Maybe there are uncertainties or no clear answers. Maybe the insight is that all insights are flawed or limited. Maybe the point of a story is simply to recognize that X is more important than Y. Underlying this is the sense that the story accurately conveyed some truth about the real world even though it’s just a story. It’s not always necessary for a story to convey truths about external reality. But it helps and certainly makes the reader feel that reading it was worth doing.
    • Insights into Character? It’s always great when a character or several characters strike you as life-life and memorable. The reader has to want to meet this character and see how and why he changed over time. Sure, a character may be a witch or a demon or a rat or a dead person, but the character should arouse some feeling in the reader (positive or negative), and the story should allow the reader to see how events change that character’s perspective. Sometimes an author can vary viewpoints in a longer story or novel and thus provide insights into more than one character. But it’s hard enough to portray just one character.
    • Enjoyment/Pleasure/Thrill. Basically a good story should have something amazing or sexy — something that makes the dreary act of reading worth it. It can be a fun plot point or an achievement by one of the characters. It can be a super power or revelation or a consummation of love. It can be a lovely fantasy or a sensual thrill or the unraveling of a mystery. I guess you could call it a “climax” or “resolution” or maybe just a transcendent moment. In truth though a number of stories don’t produce good feelings; they can be dark or sad or tragic. In those cases, the “pleasure of the text” can provide nothing more than a catharsis. Stories don’t need to bring some kind of literary high, but really it helps. If a story is grim or about a depressing subject like war, it can still be worth reading; it just won’t score high on this quality. Often this quality is delivered in a specific scene or chapter; it does not have to provide constant excitement or enjoyment.
    • Surprise/Suspense. A good story should offer something unexpected or disconcerting or shocking. It’s similar to suspense — not knowing what’s going to happen, but wanting to find out. The paradox is that you have to create expectations in order to subvert them. I could write a book loaded with surprises, but if I did that, nothing would be surprising. I have to create a baseline and a narrative pattern in order to subvert it. Are surprises or suspense always necessary? No, but they help the reader keep reading.

    So each primary quality has 1-5 points (all of which are multiplied by 3). Because you have 5 primary qualities, then the score range for all of them would be 25-75 points.

    Bonus: Nice to have qualities (0-4 points each)

    Below are some nice-to-have qualities for a story. They are not as crucial to making a story enjoyable. For this reason they can add from 0-4 bonus points to the overall score.

    • Style/Eloquence/Wit/Poetry/Verbal Pyrotechnics. Sometimes you can read something mediocre and yet still be wowed by the wit and eloquence. Sometimes it manifests as wit; sometimes it manifests as verbal ebullience or poetic descriptions. It is easy to recognize the wit in Oscar Wilde, or the ebullience of James Joyce or the careful language of Henry James. These qualities can sometimes make up for shortcomings in plot or character. As much as these qualities are a delight to find, they are not really required for a story (aside from a certain compactness). This was a lesson I learned late in my writing career. Not all sentences have to shine — especially if it’s a building block for a story or dramatic moment. Sometimes in fact this eloquence can be distracting or make a story hard to read. Proust and James and Joyce can be fun to read, but also strenuous.
    • Informative/Educational. Fiction can sometimes educate a reader about certain aspects of society or innovations or cultural habits that a reader wouldn’t normally come in contact with. A novel can bear witness or offer insight into how people turned out a certain way. Doctors can educate readers about diseases or what happens in a hospital; a computer expert can reveal the process to investigate a computer hacking. An erotic novel can reveal the strange kinks of certain couples. Sometimes this consciousness-raising has political significance. Sometimes the informational value of a literary work matters less than its aesthetic qualities. On the other hand, it can be fun to learn about new places and societies (real or imagined). A story can teach you about beauty pageants or prisons or Egyptology or skateboarding.
    • Worldbuilding — Sense of the World. Some fiction — especially science fiction or adventure novels — can present a world that is convincing and easy to imagine inhabiting. The ability to build a world within a novel can be a challenge. How do you describe a world and present the story simultaneously? Most readers don’t want to read a chapter that simply describes all the buildings and forests. The author typically doesn’t have that luxury. Instead the author must reveal things gradually while the plot is taking place. A good storyteller can do it in a way that doesn’t seem forced or slow. In movies worldbuilding has a lot to do with visuals and sound and special effects. But in fiction you have to mention just the right amount of detail that suggests a reality without drowning the reader in unnecessary detail.
    • Crazy Novelty. Sometimes a literary technique or story premise is so unusual that a reader will enjoy it as such (regardless of what it means or how well it is executed). Author Alberto Balengo wrote a story about a breakfast taco that takes over the world– maximum points for originality! But that does not make the story good or worth reading. Stories need to have a fresh perspective and relatable characters, but absolute novelty is not necessary (especially if it results in reader confusion). It’s a nice bonus, but that’s all.

    Subtractions: Undesirable qualities (0-3 Points)

    Here’s a list of qualities a story might possess that render them less interesting and beautiful and readable. This can be subjective, depending on the individual. I don’t know why I assigned 0-3 points for these qualities, except to mean that the presence of these qualities is not fatal for making a good story. But I think that most readers notice these shortcomings.

    • The Story Drags. There may be many reasons that a story may drag. There might be too much exposition, too much description, too much emphasis on minutia, too much dialogue, too much introspection. There’s a mismatch between what the author thinks is needed and what the reader thinks is needed. Sometimes in fact the reader’s laziness or inattention may be to blame. Often the underlying problem is that the reader is not sufficiently invested in the story or character to care about these details. Often this may be due to reader incompetence in constructing transitions. Sometimes a good story can have great parts and parts that drag. No story can maintain a high level of interest. Sometimes a little dullness is necessary to convey a sense of waiting and to throw out a number of details to distract from other important details. For example, a mystery needs to have enough red herrings to throw the reader off track. Perhaps the reader can truly gauge how much a story drags after finishing it. Maybe during the second read what seemed to drag now seems more interesting or important.
    • Cliched Emotions. Often a reader can anticipate what the emotional tone of a story will be. If the emotional stimulants or catharsis are too predictable, the reader can grow bored. Not every event or emotion needs to be a surprise, but if the emotional journey follows a predictable path, it becomes less important. Sometimes in fact a story needs to deliver exactly what is promised. Sometimes there is only a limited number of ways to express emotions in extreme situations. But the path to getting there needs to be interesting and insightful. If not, then the emotional reactions can seem forced and cliched.
    • Stereotyped Characters. Not every character needs to be unique and interesting. Secondary characters (flat characters) may have only one or two qualities which are revealed in a story. Sometimes an author has no choice but to include several characters which the reader will never need to know. Even the major characters can be predictable and easy to figure out. Some of this involves an author’s lack of effort or laziness; some of it may simply be that the character does not really need to be individualized. Think of a head cheerleader, an Arthurian knight, a janitor, an elderly Southern lady, an astronaut. I often hear that characters in sci fi novels are not memorable or individualized. Maybe so, but they do need to be for the story to work?

    Similar to the cliched emotions listed above, for the characters to come alive and be identifiable, they have to run counter to stereotype in some way. Think of who the head cheerleader at a high school who everyone wants to date. Did you think of her with the high school quarterback or some athlete? What about the head of the chess team? Or a lesbian? Or a dorky high musician in the high school jazz band? Maybe she doesn’t want to date at all? Maybe she wants to date a brooding poet? A protagonist can have simple or identifiable goals or desires, but the more that this character conforms to social expectations, the less likely the reader will find her to be complex and interesting.

    What this All Means

    So what is the point of this exercise?

    I recently edited a story collection by a distinguished author. I had to choose which stories would go into the anthology from dozens. I wanted to showcase the author’s best, yet many of the stories were uneven or even unpleasant. They were not bad stories per se, just not fun or enlightening to read. Some of the stories were maudlin or cruel or unimportant. (To be fair, some of these stories were written during the writer’s early years when he was still getting the hang of things). The scoring system provided a way for me to rank the stories among several criteria, and that was helpful. I ended up leaving a few low-ranked stories in the collection because they were so special and remarkable despite the low score. After I did this, I applied this scoring system to other story collections I edited (and to one I even wrote myself). I wanted to check whether the final score gibed with my impressions about the values of individual stories. Did some stories end up scoring higher than I would have thought? I thought I did a good job of creating criteria that could be considered independently. But sometimes a positive quality can be less important than one might think…or maybe it could even turn out to be a negative.

    This scoring system also gave me a way to evaluate or rank my own stories and story ideas. On another level, the scoring system and the formula —

    Total Score =3 X (SUM OF PRIMARY QUALITIES) + (SUM OF BONUS QUALITIES) – (SUM OF UNDESIRABLE QUALITIES)

    revealed my personal aesthetic and values for fiction. For example, I give more importance to Pleasure and Ease of Reading and less importance to Novelty and Eloquence and Information. I suspect that sci fi readers might reverse these things. Indeed, I’m not very sympathetic to genres like mystery (which is reflected mainly in how I designated the So What? criteria as a primary quality). A good detective story might entertain and inform, but it’s doubtful that it would reveal some deep existential truth.

    I could have changed the mathematical parts of this scoring formula. These are totally arbitrary things that reflect my intuition. Curiously, after scoring a group of stories one day, on another day I scored the same stories again — to see if a new day might have caused me to score them differently. Actually the way I scored seemed pretty consistent — although I feel pretty sure that another reader might assign a totally different score. This rubric is highly personal.

    Changing Literary Standards

    Over the last decade I have become aware of how literary standards have been changing. It has reached the point where I am no longer sure whether I know what a younger reader might consider good.

    Here are some things that seem to have changed.

    There’s a lot more overlap between “literary” and “genre” fiction. This is only a vague sense, but I feel like the typical genre story is much better written than it used to be. Also I find that a higher percent of stories are associated with a specific genre that not.

    Readers have become more female (in the USA). Silly me, I used to think that being an author was a masculine sport, but with more females going to college and studying the humanities and occupying prominent positions in the publishing world, the woman’s perspective is beginning to prevail. Who knows what that means? More family sagas, less swashbuckling, more fantasy over sci fi, less explicit sex. These are generalizations; perhaps I’m way offbase. I definitely am aware of how the feminization of the book world has changed how certain stories are received. It used to be that females would end up having to read a lot of male-centered fiction (especially before the 20th century) while male readers would generally ignore female authors. In that sense females would be more ambidextrous in being able to read both kinds of books. Now it seems that the tables have been turned; females no longer need to read traditionally male kinds of stories, and it is the male reader who needs to be more flexible about what he reads.

    More transmedia storytelling. (i.e., videogames, TV shows, movies). I guess I should be grateful that more studios are trying to adapt books to other mediums. In the 20th century it was probably true that authors adopted cinematic techniques in their narratives. But now it’s more than that. Books written today are not just incorporating cinematic storytelling effects, they are being written specifically to facilitate adaptation into another medium. Sure, when you’re adapting a novel, you need to rethink and even re-imagine a lot of things. But mainstream publishers gravitate towards works that are easy to adapt into other mediums. This is not a bad thing, but I think if a work has less drama and dialogue and more internal action, they are less likely to be touched by a big publisher. Conversely, I think there is more tolerance for literary works created for a specific shared universe (Marvel comics, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.)

    More rehash of magic and literary tropes. Let me pick two phenomena to illustrate: Zombies and Time Travel. I simply fail to understand why so many books and TV shows are made about zombies. (I even wrote a funny story about the phenomenon). And yet they do. Time Travel continues to be popular if only because it is fun and easy to write. (Here’s my rant about time travel movies). Sure, it is fun to imagine some character in the past being handed information about what will happen 10 or 20 years later. All an author really needs to do is hand-waving about the technology, then do research about the time period being described.

    Zombies continues to be popular on TV and movies because they are soulless and therefore not deserving of human compassion. (The same for Daleks, and robots and such). So you can kill them all you want and never have to grapple with ethical questions. That turns all zombie stories into videogames.

    Magic and fantasy have a place in literary works even (especially?) for adults. But somehow having a magic potion or superpower seems less disruptive than time travel themes — which disrupt the very nature of narrative. In a way, when someone edits and sequences a movie or story, they are already moving time around to decide upon the optimal sequence — in terms of flashbacks and foreshadowing. They don’t need to insert a new system for going through time. I mean, when Rip Van Winkle fell asleep and awoke again, he was essentially travelling through time — and the author didn’t need to subvert physical reality.

    Personal Preferences

    I’m a fussy reader. Sometimes I dismiss certain types of stories because of what they are or appear to be. Some of it is based upon past experience. Some of it has to do with my peculiar emotional and intellectual needs. Also, I’m kind of lazy. I don’t want to read the same kind of story more than once. When I think that a story by an unknown author is going to use a familiar recipe, I toss it aside.

    Better authors often write variants of the same story over and over. That’s probably okay. Previous experience with an author can make a reader more amenable to whatever the author writes about — regardless of genre or subject matter. If Raymond Carver were to write a piece of hard science fiction or an erotica story, I’d be happy to read it — if only for curiosity’s sake. At the same time, if I were asked to read a Western novel or a vampire story, chances are that I will read it with condescension (or even contempt). I bring a lot of biases with me as a reader1.

    These reading biases may affect the way I score stories. It could potentially color the score I give for enjoyment/pleasure/thrill. Also ease of reading and crazy/novelty can be subjective. Ultimately though, these criteria — while dependent on individual reading biases to some extent, nonetheless can be assessed — especially in comparison with other stories. I might belong to the rarefied few who find pleasure and even thrill from reading a Henry James story, but how would my score on this criteria compare to a story by Philip K Dick or Stephen King or Max Schulman? Chances are, stories by these 3 authors would receive a higher score on that criteria even from someone who loves Henry James.

    In a way though, scoring a story depends on these individual preferences. My scores may not align with those of other readers (even if they are internally consistent). Even though I have tried my best to identify discrete criteria, other readers can come up with other meaningful criteria. Here (off the top of my head) are some alternative criteria for assessing a story’s awesomeness:

    • Ability to raise relevant social questions
    • Ability to highlight overlooked aspects of society
    • Ability to emotionally involve the reader (to stir romantic feelings or sadness)
    • Ability to expose the individual to harsh realities
    • Ability to explore the repercussions of a new technology or social phenomenon
    • Ability to help make an older time period seem real or fresh
    • Ability to get into the mind of a well-known figure from the past
    • Ability to expose the reader to a variety of perspectives with different value systems
    • Ability to teach an important life lesson.
    • Ability to convey an overall sense of the world (as absurd, beautiful, horrifying, etc.)
    • Ability to illustrate a fundamental spiritual truth of the world
    • Ability to introduce a mystery and show how the secret behind this mystery is solved

    These are all valid criteria for assessing a story, but they are more thematic and maybe more about consciousness-raising.

    In contrast, the criteria I proposed originally are more about techniques and whether a story elicits an emotional response. There’s some overlap between my criteria and the thematic criteria. For example, the So What? Insights into the Human Condition criteria encompass a lot of the thematic issues about justice and morality and social consciousness. On the other hand, I can imagine stories that rank highly on my criteria not being particularly effective at engaging with the themes listed above.

    One limitation of using thematic criteria is that it seems to encourage the writing of stories which check as many boxes as possible. A single story can’t be expected to do everything for all people. In fact, some stories are only good at doing one or two things very well. That’s perfectly all right. (Indeed, it seems to argue against tabulating an overall score regardless of the criteria).

    Criteria for Longer Forms and Different Media

    A longer and more expansive form like the novel offers more possibilities than a short story. The novel can contain stories, verse, dialogue, digressions, essays. It can alternate between characters and show their interactions. A good novel can tackle lots of different themes and moods and characters and conflicts without devolving into chaos. The best novels can sequence events in a way that seem natural and effortless. Perhaps the longer sprawling novels from the 19th century might seem unwieldly to 21st century readers, but then again, the 19th century didn’t have movies and Netflix to distract them.

    The “awesomeness” score I have introduced might work for short stories, but what about novels or movies? What about serial storytelling — which keeps expanding to include more characters and places and plots?

    Consider two examples of serial (transmedia) storytelling: Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both began as very successful TV series, and then they branched out into other TV shows and episodes with different characters and plots. Now they have branched out into novels and graphic novels and by now probably audio plays and video games. Conversely, some classic literature has led to countless adaptations and serializations (King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes are two that come to mind).

    A novel is more self-contained (and easier to consider individually), but later novels in a series can benefit from having readymade characters and backstory from previous volumes. It’s no longer necessary to clutter a book with exposition. If everything is structured the right way, it becomes relatively easy to extend the storyverse indefinitely.

    Some criteria pertain mainly to the reading experience and a narrative’s textual qualities. Although movies and TV shows provide ample opportunity for witty dialogue and eloquence, written prose can also bring subjectivity, stream-of-consciousness and private thoughts. Diction and the very sequence of words can introduce mystery, ambiguity, attitude.

    On the other hand, some of these criteria apply equally well to the visual medium. Plot and character matter just as much in a movie as in a story or novel. So does pacing, novelty and the element of surprise.

    Similarly, if you wanted to invent an awesomeness score for visual storytelling, you can probably list some criteria specific to the genre — color, visual composition, production design, the flow of movement, the use of sound. You could also talk about the quality of acting and the overall ability to evoke a world.

    Conclusion: So what?!

    I already mentioned that I created this rubric for a very practical reason — trying to decide which stories to include in a story collection by Jack Matthews. (BTW, that ebook is called Boxes of Time — more information here). But I expanded on the idea purely as an intellectual exercise — and perhaps for my entertainment and edification.

    I used the word “rubric” from education terminology, but the analogy is not quite precise. When a teacher makes a rubric, it implies that these are the main ways to score an assignment or test — and indeed, that students need to know what the rubric is when doing the assignment.

    But you can’t really do that when writing a story. I can’t just decide, “Hey, I’m going to write a story that is easy to read and high in suspense and insight into characters.” It doesn’t really help the writer to know beforehand what criteria is important for making a good story; you need a good story first!

    The writer (and I guess the AI chatbot) will generate lots of premises or characters or conflicts; that requires a certain level of talent. But it’s also important to intuit which ideas have legs — and can quickly run on their own volition. It’s impossible to know these things with 100% certainty unless you actually do it. There have been times when I have been less than enthusiastic about a story idea, but as I try to write it out, I find a lot of interesting things underneath the premise. I have been pleasantly surprised when this happens — and discover that I have turned out to have written a wonderful story — almost by accident. Let me clear: this does not happen often. Sometimes I begin with a semi-decent idea, and it just putters away into insignificance — (and I feel the guilt and shame of not having turned it into something better).

    It can be challenging to know how much time and energy to devote to a single idea. Time is very limited. Maybe the commercially successful author has enough financial stability to flesh out many story ideas regardless of the rewards, but most writers don’t have that luxury. They can only pursue a small subset of their dreams. So they better damn be sure that these are the ideas they absolutely want to write about.

    It’s not just for creative projects. What about essays or blogposts? (It is true, several times during the writing of this essay, I asked myself, shouldn’t I be doing X or Y instead?) You would think that in the creative world it is generally better to finish everything you do. But I abandon projects all the time — but sometimes not voluntarily. It just happens. Life becomes busy, and then when things settle down, I lack the motivation to pick the old thing up and flesh it out and polish it.

    The awesomeness rubric also serves as a reality check for my ongoing ideas and help me to prioritize my time. A score is just a number. It’s something I assign arbitrarily. But it’s also a temperature check to let me know whether I still think an ongoing idea still feels awesome.

    Notes:

    1. Despite my judginess, it’s fun to cleanse the palate by reading something light-hearted and unchallenging — and yes, occasionally I stumble upon something far more brilliant than I could have imagined. ↩︎

  • Author Jack Matthews on the storytelling craft (Video)

    You might already know that my Personville Press publishes various fiction titles by Jack Matthews (1925-2013). A year before he died, I went to Ohio and interviewed him about various things. I shot some video footage as well as audio footage about his books and life as an author.

    Here’s one audio slideshow I put together of excerpts where he talks about a Worker’s Writebook . I recently published a second edition of it and even included a 2019 afterward.

    In the last 4 minutes, Jack Matthews reads a chapter from his ebook titled “The Pointedness of the Tale.”

    0:00 CAN A BOOK EVER TEACH A PERSON TO WRITE WELL?
    1:38 ARCHETYPAL THEMES IN LITERATURE
    4:04 HABITS OF GOOD WRITERS
    4:44 WHAT I READ AS A COLLEGE STUDENT
    5:33 MATTHEWS READ A CHAPTER FROM “A WORKER’S WRITEBOOK,” “POINTEDNESS OF THE TALE”

    I plan to produce several different slideshows/videos to accompany Jack Matthews ebooks. Some people are not into “video trailers,” but I generally enjoy hearing the author describe a book project in his own words. (I might produce a shorter version for Amazon, haven’t decided).

    As my last post indicates, the ebook is now free on Smashwords: Here is that information again: A worker’s Writebook by Jack Matthews. Ebook. (More about the ebook).

  • A lesson in humility

    I write online fiction I’m very proud of. (It’s under a pseudonym; sorry).

    Occasionally I will revisit old stories and reread them; sometimes to remember the beauty of a sentence or a sentiment – sometimes just to relive the story itself. A guilty pleasure, perhaps, but I confess that I enjoy being taken into a story again…

    Yet, there is an ulterior motive. One reason I  reread old things is paranoia that  literary flaws previously invisible  will now be breathtakingly obvious.  Indeed, I ended up revising both stories.  For one I just did some minor word changes for rhythm, but the second story I found a paragraph which just did not work. It wasn’t merely boring; it was  wrong-headed (and the amazing thing is that I used to think it was profound).

    I reread the offending paragraph several times. The rest of the story flowed well, but this paragraph just accomplished nothing – and we were precisely at a point in the story where it needed to accomplish a lot.  I was tempted to include the offending paragraph here, but I realized it would make it easy to link this blog to my pseudonym.

    I played around with it for a bit, gave up in frustration, took a nap and returned to it again. In an hour it was done, and the new version was uploaded. Thank god!  (To be fair, I could have played with it some more – and I surely will do so later), but the phrases just clicked with me.

    (Oops; I just went over the paragraph again and made a minor adjustment of one or two words; but the paragraph is basically in tiptop shape).

    I understand that revising is integral to writing; I even enjoy it. Sometimes I wonder if I tinker  too much.  Sometimes  I will make a change only to reverse it later. Yes, I obsess over words and phrases; that’s natural, but it can also be dangerous if it keeps you from progressing onto new things.

    Frankly though, I was shocked to find the story’s  paragraph  so defective. How could I ever have convinced myself it was ok? I had considered the short story in finished form (checking the wayback machine, I see 5 different versions of the same story – and that probably is an undercount).  This is one of my shorter and easier stories; I just reread the two sentences I axed.  They sounded nice,  but today’s eyes  revealed how empty and hackneyed these sentences really were. The new sentences that replaced them aren’t totally original or breathtaking, but they did their job;  it was naming an idea with more subtlety and artistry. It was  a bit heavier than  the previous version of the sentence, but I weighed the two versions carefully; I am happy with the heavier version (because it’s doing so much more).  Anyway, it’s not that heavy.  38 words in sentence one; 26 words in sentence two. Really, they are compound sentences and not that hard; once in a while you are allowed to go on – as long as you don’t do too much of it.  In general I hate heavy sentences; they are such a pain for readers, and a minor stylistic imperfection can make it seem insufferable. But once in a while the situation calls for one, especially after I try my best to avoid it.  I’ll try a number of times and occasionally I will hit upon the magical combination—voila!  It’s generally a good thing to avoid overlong sentences; a writer friend of mine can do it with relative ease in his criticism, but in creative writing, heavy sentences just piss people off.  They piss me off too – especially when I can’t get it to work right. A good percentage of time I will give up in frustration and go back to turning the original thought into two sentences. But once in a while I succeed, and that feeling is glorious.

    (Oops; rereading that paragraph in the story again, I notice that for the sake of parallel construction  I need to make something plural. A minor touch, but sounds better).

    I’m a better than average writer for  first drafts (btw, this  whole blog is a kind of first draft – watch out!)  Even when I revise, I don’t feel as though my editing skills are top-of-the-class. I sometimes get sloppy.   I certainly don’t have the benefit of an outside editor or a friend who can correct things over my shoulder. But I manage ok.

    I think about Chekhov. An insanely good writer, but he never had the benefit of being able to revise old stories via ftp or wordpress.  He just wrote, had his editor make a few changes, published it and  forgot about the story forever. Of course, he was making a bit of money at the time (those were the days where a few lucky  short story writers could actually make a living).

    image
    Chekhov and Tolstoy relaxing

    Though I hesitate to compare my writing to Chehkov’s  (certainly he had  a richer life),  my writing process is far superior to his. Partly it’s a result of modern technology, partly it’s a result of my having substantially fewer eggs in my basket  to deal with than Chekhov did (I take unusually good care of my eggs). It’s a myth to think that enough  time/effort/suffering equals a literary or artistic masterpiece. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Artistic success depends on a combination of factors – the ability to stay engaged in life and mentally healthy,  the ability to ignite enthusiasm in others, the ability to uncover new kinds of experiences and ideas, the accidents of biography and genetics (not to mention family and friends).  Chekhov stayed closely in touch with the common man, and that helped him a lot.  My life is not particularly exciting (it can even be dreary), but at least there are no famines or nuclear wars or schizophrenia to suck the wind out of me.   If I stayed in a room all of my life writing and perfecting my craft, I could develop  a flawless style and have nothing interesting to say.  (Wouldn’t it have been better to be a journalist who covered the local crime beat – and to hell with literary devices?)

    Chekov died at the age of 44 and 6 months. Kafka died at the age of 40 and 10 months. Camus died at 46 1/2. F. Scott Fitzgerald died at 44 and 6 months. I am 44 years and 2 months.  There is no reason to believe I won’t last another 40 years (although who knows – I could slip in the shower and break my head open and die the next morning; hey, if that happens, It’s been good knowing ya!)  I have a good friend my age who struggles with cancer; she faces questions of mortality  every single day.  It’s extremely sad, and my heart goes out to her. For me, death is still a kind of abstraction or maybe  a cool special effect in a monster  movie.  Let me revel in my sense of immortality for as long as I can.

    Update: Rereading the original version of the paragraph from the story, I am struck by how much nicer the original version  reads – despite adding no new insight.  The new version is much  wordier. Ok, I just spent 20 more minutes playing with alternatives. I threw out both versions, tossed out words, and experienced frustration again.  I re-added words, chopped things up and tried again from scratch. The result is much more satisfying! (5 minutes later: Oh, no, I changed something again; I have gone from using 1 adjective to 2 and to 1 again. One thing you notice in careful writing is how one phrase  will cancel out  the need to use the other word; (I can disclose that: I went from writing “provocative” to “provocative and edifying” back to “provocative” again).

    Update 2 . Try as I might, I have no idea what story I am referring to!
    Update 3 Oh, no I remember what it was. It is my I.L story . I read the paragraph again. I am happy to report that it doesn’t induce vomiting.

  • A good rough draft

    Yesterday I finished a good rough draft of a longish story. What a glorious feeling!

    I still have a lot of work remaining, but at least after the end of the rough draft, I know what kind of monster I’m dealing with. Before I write something, I know a story’s  general direction and choreography, but often I discover the awkwardness of certain transitions and dramatic moments which don’t turn out to be as dramatic as  expected.  Also, new details occur to me while writing that never would have occurred to me otherwise. These details are like gold found accidentally along the sidewalk.

    Often when I finish the rough draft I realize how the beginning ought to be written. When I start, I rarely have an idea about how long my story will be or what parts will end up being the longest. But once I finish the rough draft, I see which scenes the story is driving towards and which scenes are mirages. Often after the first draft, I see where there is too much introspection and where the emotions are too raw or melodramatic. In the second draft I tone things down and delete whole chunks of introspection. Good riddance! I like it when stories are introspective, but when you are first writing something, you don’t know the best time and place in the story to have this introspection. Often during the first draft, introspection will leak out at several places because I’m unsure where this introspection ought to take place.

    The hardest part about revising is not deleting entire scenes which are not holding their own. Once you write a scene from start to finish, you are unconsciously committing to every event in it. That is a dangerous tendency. Once you start with an idea of what dramatic action has happened, it is hard to bury  parts you know were  there. The hardest part about editing is not compression (that’s easy) but deleting three or four paragraphs at a time for the sake of pacing. When you finally realize that these three or four paragraphs are unnecessary and can be safely removed, it is like you have unlocked a new  secret to  the universe.

    Although this story is told in third person, I generally use 1st person (a dangerous tendency I know). With first person, I always mess up tense and  time and always overindulge the inner monologue. It’s awkward to move back and forth between inner monologue and “meanwhile back in the real world.” With third person, there is a tendency to give too much information for the sake of the completeness. “And then they got in the car and went to the airport (long description about being in the plane, etc). When they arrived in LA, they saw….” (Uggh, I get tired just writing this! pity the poor readers!)

    I spend a lot of time making a good first draft. A lot of people just rush through the first draft in hopes of getting to revisions. I understand that strategy (and occasionally I do that too), but for the most part a rough draft should be carefully written and you should especially be aware of narrative obstacles which are preventing the story from moving. Ok, if the obstacle is a simple verbal one (“how do I get them to the party from the house after the fight”?”) often I can put off decisions, but most of the time it helps to try to solve these problems in the first draft.

    Now here is a nonobvious writing trick. You can write a scene which readers find to be pointless or boring. You can take that same scene, remove a few details and brighten a few phrases and tighten a few transitions and  voila! the scene will no longer offend (even if doesn’t bring big payoffs).   If you compared the original version vs. the tight version, the differences would seem unremarkable; both passages can look more similar than different;  but cumulatively the minor corrections can do wonders and fool readers into thinking you’re some kind of genius. I once got stuck on one paragraph of a love scene in a story (called  “T.I.W.”)  I spent two or three weeks revising the paragraph. The funny thing is, the paragraph wasn’t particularly important, and even the scene wasn’t that important. But I knew (don’t ask why) that the scene needed to be there; I had to make it work, and it had to be brief enough not to get in the way of the scene immediately before or after it. More importantly, this paragraph wasn’t supposed to stand out or to be too emotional or lyrical; it was supposed to be functional and drop a detail so casually that it seemed to be an accident. I agonized over this paragraph, and I even toyed with the idea of removing it altogether; any paragraph which was causing that much pain must not want to be written properly; at least that’s what I told myself. In fact, I sometimes give up on sentences or paragraphs; as competent a writer as I am, there are some sentences which I am utterly incapable of making beautiful (and yes, I am man enough to admit it). Finally, I hit upon a version which didn’t offend me. But alas, a week later, I revisit it and start tinkering again. Later, I change a sentences one more time. I just reread it again; it does not seem perfect – there is something off about the sentence rhythm – but the typical reader would not notice or care about it (at least that’s what I tell myself).

    In an age of abundant prose and all sorts of artistic media, a writer can’t spend too much time polishing sentences (that luxury belongs to authors of a previous era). On the other hand, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make a paragraph work. Sometimes, you just have to stare at a screen until you fix it (and pray that inspiration comes). At other times, you have to revisit a sentences multiple times and even take a long break from it before retrying. Every time you revisit the painful passage, you increase your odds of randomly hitting upon a solution. It’s amazing how a sentence which seemed impossibly broken one day can be easy to fix a day later.

    Finally, I wish to tackle the question of literary greatness. Writerly competence is a  craft you can learn. I am confident enough about my talents that most of what spills from my pen will be good and readable (I’m not including blog posts, which is just rambling). But readers don’t really respond  to merely competent writing; it doesn’t make them gush with enthusiasm. Readers get excited at originality and amazing plot construction and memorable characters with compelling stories. I confess I have no idea to achieve these things. Either you have it or don’t. With regard to the story with the challenging paragraph I mentioned earlier, I like the story a lot; parts of it are great, and I do a really good job of executing the story. But is it great? I have no idea. I can’t really say whether the plot or characters will touch a nerve. I can’t really say whether readers would think the odd psychology of the story is compelling or corny.

    In my early 20s, I wrote  T.H.E, an amazing comic novella (still unpublished, but I will get around to it). It remains one of the freshest and funniest thing I have written. Anybody who reads it will love it (by the way, it almost won a prize, but alas, almost isn’t good enough).  It is absolutely original and the main character is memorable and fun. Even though the writing is competent and appropriate, the style is in fact, nothing special. The plot and character would be enough to entertain people (despite the occasional prolixity). In the year 2009 I have been trying to write a sequel to it. The idea of having a sequel is good, and I have a general idea of where the sequel should go – even though I have no idea about the specific incidents. The 44 year old writer is much more talented than the 24 year old writer. I’m sure that when I eventually get around to writing the sequel around some incidents,  it will be good and impeccably written. But will it compare favorably to the original novella? Probably not — but I’m hoping that people’s love for the original novella will make them tolerant of something less than brilliance in the sequel.

    I make it sound like writing stories is like rolling the dice. Perhaps it is. I’d like to think that the 44 year old version of myself can sort through ideas more quickly than the 24 year old version.  The difference is that the 44 year old knows that the 24 year old has already written a great novella and knows he must must equal it in brilliance. When a 24 year old writes something, he has no idea about such things  (In fact, the  24 year version of myself knew he was talented but still wondered sometimes whether this self-confidence was a sham). The 24 year old could write with absolutely no pressure.

    Can writing talent make a story great? I am repeating the question for emphasis; I wonder a lot about these things, and I still don’t know the answer. Some ideas seem great from the beginning; and if you are competent enough, you can usually help the story to realize its greatness. Occasionally,  I start a story not knowing if the dramatic action is interesting enough.  I wrote a yarn  (T.S.) two years ago with a far-fetched plot and an element of fantasy which might strike people as ridiculous. I  wrote it more as a lark.  But as I wrote it, I discovered new possibilities and new emotions. The story provided an outlet for  literary flourishes and dramatic action. (I’ve received  positive feedback from readers as well).  I hesitate to call this story “great” (who really knows?)  But there’s no doubt that my  original estimation of the story was way off base.  I never expected the final version to be as satisfying as it eventually was. I wonder: can a story be accidentally great?

    So I am happy to have finished a first draft; I am also excited. I write every story with high expectations. It is a sad fact that every writer believes his story a great one while writing it. Only later, with the passing of time does the writer eventually accept that the initial expectation was wildly optimistic, that the writer should just be content with the knowledge that the story has been written at all – great or otherwise.

  • Embarrassments of Obscurity (Part 23)

    I usually never let it get under my skin when I hear that some young hotshot has published a book or some celebrity has gotten invited onto a talk show to tout a book.  I don’t let it get to me because I convince myself that people like Bret Easton Ellis peak early and never are heard from again. At the same time,  it’s hard to explain to nonliterary people that because  commercial success offers  more financial support for future projects, these pseudo-authors appear to be massively more productive than writers like myself.

    While cleaning up my apartment, I was half-listening to a talk show where  a 23 year old actress/fashion star is bubbling with cute anecdotes and humor about general Hollywood stuff. Right before the show went to commercial, the talk show host plugged the woman’s new book. Ok, I could live with that. Star of a hit MTV show, ghost written book…these things happen. Then the host mentions casually that the woman had signed a 3 book deal with Harper Collins. A 3 book deal! Holy shmike! Do the two of us inhabit the same cultural universe?

    Naturally it would be easy to poke fun at Lauren Conrad’s book. But look. At the age of 22 (when she must have finished the rough draft), I was still a fledgling writer and probably couldn’t write a decent novel if my life depended on it. And this girl published a substantial novel (of 380 pages). Granted,  it was probably flabby and needed a lot of editorial massaging. But still it was a novel…and certainly not ghost written (as I had previously thought). She must have worked hard on it – even if she wasn’t well schooled in American literature or Shakespeare. The book has been out  for two days and already has received reviews (sort of) from People magazine and US Magazine . It helps of course that she’s been on the cover of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen and Entertainment Weekly and that she has 309,781 Myspace friends.  Of course, I’m jealous, but it’s more than that. Everyone is running a different race; everyone has  a different motive for writing and  brings a different set of talents and challenges to the table.  Lauren is basing her novel on her Hollywood life adventure. Even though that is an easy and obvious subject, there is certainly no shame in writing about  what you know. I have no idea what this TV show The Hills is about, but I’m sure the experience must have given her a sense of how to make a story and how to grab a viewer’s interest. Perhaps this kind of experience  sounds cheesy, but it’s  invaluable to have access to so much feedback from fans.

    At the age of 22, I had started a small literary magazine at my college and had gotten accepted into a graduate creative writing program. At the time, I thought my writing was outstanding (only to learn in grad school that this was not the case). I thought writing was everything (and I still do). Especially now, I think that writing is all I have – maybe the only thing I have.

    It would be nice to say that I am the “true writer,” but who am I to say?  The ability to write a good novel depends a little on god-given talent, but mainly on  perseverance and drive (and financial support). My prediction  is that she will fulfill her 3 book contract admirably (with the requisite decline in sales for each additional volume) but  later  focus on TV projects. For her a book is  a calling card for  TV interviews  between  TV gigs; I doubt it will make her enough money by itself, and that ultimately is why she will probably abandon the role of novelist.  On the other hand, think of the opportunity! If she wanted, she could use the time and money to perfect the  writer’s craft, maybe even to write scripts and screenplays.  Even if she ends up wasting this opportunity, it is still reassuring to know that such opportunities  exist (for those lucky to be caught in the right time and place). I wonder: should the writer devote himself to the craft of writing or to promoting past or future projects?  Fortunately for Ms. Conrad, her telegenic presence makes it easier to gain attention and visibility in a crowded media ecosystem. By now,  promoting creative projects (which actually  is an important skill to have) must seem like second nature to her.

    Young women have a builtin advantage of being able to attract public attention (and even adoration).  Let’s not dwell on the inequities; instead let’s focus on how people harness this  advantage to  pursue their personal dreams.  Conrad’s secret dream might actually be to become  the next Edith Wharton or Jane Austen… using MTV as a  stepping stone towards becoming a tenured academic in an MFA program.   I know;  this suggestion sounds  ludicrous, but if I  were in Ms. Conrad’s shoes,  I would certainly  have used my  celebritydom to pursue my dreams.

    Receiving extra attention used to happen only to females, but the Internet makes it easy for some young males to do something to attract a lot of attention. If a baseball star or CEO of Twitter wants to write a sci fi novel, by all means let them. Maybe something good will come of it.

    The real question: how much time and energy  should artsy types spend on self-promotion? Let’s say you’re fat and old and ugly; what do you do? Cultivate a charming persona?  Try even harder to promote yourself at book fairs?  Curry favor with literary bloggers in the hope of receiving positive coverage?  For the celebrity or athlete, fame already happened – writing a book was simply a way to capitalize on it. So they didn’t have to work really hard to acquire it. The unknown author has to work twice as hard to achieve 1/10 of the fame of these celebrity authors; why bother? Yes, there is a difference between avoiding the limelight and living like a hermit; some authors cultivate this isolation as a good in and of itself, but that is just silly.

    Many respectable authors spend time writing how-to pieces or rants about the publishing industry or copyright reform or political issues.  They are simply using pet issues as a way to get their name out there; no shame in that. Over the last few years I’ve written many a piece for TeleRead. I enjoy writing these pieces, but every time I finish one, I decide it’s a total waste of my writing time and energy. Even now, as I conclude this blogpost, I think,  I should be writing Story X; why am I instead blowing my energy on this blogpost instead? Time is a-wasting.

    I notice that Ms. Conrad’s book tour brings her to Houston on June 26. Amazingly, the bookstore where she will be speaking is only a few miles from my house. I could ride my bike there. I’m not inclined to attend, but I will extend an open invitation: if during her brief visit to Houston, Ms. Conrad wishes to meet at some cafe to discuss the craft of writing, I would consider it (she would have to contact me by  emailing me).   Ms. Conrad  could  tell me what she has learned about storytelling, and I could tell her what I’ve learned.  It would be fun and instructive. The old can teach the young, and the young can teach  the old.  The well-known can teach the unknown many things (and vice-versa).  A decent writer can learn something useful from everybody.

    If Ms. Conrad has other things to do with her time, I certainly will understand.  But I will leave June 26 open on my calendar.

    July 13 Update: Regrettably, this meeting never occurred.

    November 26, 2019 Update. As predicted, Ms. Conrad’s career has veered away from books and more toward motherhood. According to Wikipedia, she had two children in 2017 and 2019, so that’s probably keeping her busy. In 2017 she launched her own affordable swimwear brand. I’m not mocking her. If I had a chance to market my own swimwear, I would probably jump (dive?) at it. It occurred to me; I wrote a film script a few years ago about a teen actress on the run — maybe it was indirectly inspired by this blogpost … or perhaps the Amanda Bynes’ news reports? That said, Conrad is actively blogging on her website and doing all kinds of other social media things. We are both trying to promote a brand — though mine is more diffuse and more curmudgeonly… (When I was her age — 33 years old, I was teaching in Ukraine, falling in love with girls who were too young for me and feeling too cocky about my ability to figure out the world).

    November 5, 2021. Although I originally intended to write this as a light reflective piece, as I re-read, what stands out the most about this post was the date on it. At the time, I was struggling financially — and hadn’t been able to find a job — though I was still receiving unemployment insurance. In a few months that would run out too, and the financial hell would continue until Spring, 2011. Occasionally I found some assignments — but it was never enough; I was constantly running out of money, borrowing money, running up the credit card. So while I was amused at Ms. Conrad’s book deals, my ruminations also called attention to the inherent unfairness of the publishing world. Although I never would begrudge Ms. Conrad her success, certainly it hurts that Ms. Conrad was benefitting from a publishing system that had always beaten me down. Also, 2008-2010 were some of my best writing years — I had been writing and revising some incredible stories. 11 years later, these stories still have not been published, although I expect to publish them in the next 2-3 years. Maybe no one will appreciate these stories or read them when they are eventually published, but no matter; they are still great. The person who wrote this blogpost in 2009 had recently realized that he had mastered an art form and felt supremely confident that he could teach it to another. Perhaps I still feel that way — though I am more pessimistic about whether the tricks of writing would impress a population addicted to video games and celebrity gossip.

  • Blogging is a careless activity; storytelling is not

    I’ll admit it. This blog is something of a deception.  I’ve been blogging for nine years, but in truth, this blog is only an afterthought to my writing.   Keeping a blog  motivates  you to write semi-regularly.  It’s  a relaxing hobby (as long as I don’t scream too much about politics, that is). Sometimes it is therapeutic to do it again after a hiatus. So much of what passes for blogging (both here and elsewhere) is ephemeral. Ten years later, will anything I write here matter? I wonder.

    But as this blog has evolved, I’ve noticed a few things:

    1. The very act of keeping a blog prompts you to say something – anything –when something important affects my nation or my area of interest (literature).
    2. About 5% of what I blog about ends up in some other piece of writing. So a blog serves as a sounding board for thoughts which I later explore more deeply.
    3. Out of habit I usually return to posts I wrote earlier in the week and revise them. Sure,  I don’t need to, but as I said, it’s habit.
    4. It’s hard to organize your thoughts in preparation of a blog post. Instead, I just start writing and organize later.
    5. The subjects I care the most about (literature) also tends to be the subject I blog the least about. As strange as this sounds, I am  reluctant to write about literature without writing it carefully (and blogging is by nature a careless activity).

    Most of what appears on my blog seems loose…which is a sign of an amateurism. On the other hand, I definitely need to expose my writing to the world earlier and more often. The traditional formula of living in a cave for a decade until you come out with a complete novel in your hands no longer  works (did it ever?).

    For this reason, I’ve decided to commit to using this blog as an outlet for more creative forms like storytelling. Not fiction per se, but informal storytelling.

    Every month I’ve attended a story swap at my storytelling group. I almost never tell a story, but I often I am inspired to go home and write/tell a story. But I never do. Things come up; you know, the usual things (family, work, housework, sleep).

    One reason i don’t follow up has to do with the craft of storytelling itself.  I have occasionally performed at live events. Although I’m not much of a live performer, I do prepare beforehand. My process is usually to write the story, time it, edit it to death until it falls under the maximum time.Then I rehearse it to death.

    This sounds like a reasonable plan, but in fact this method is centered too much around writing things down beforehand. If you write the story down, you make the details too rich and the sentence structures too complex. Sure, it may not seem too ornate when you write it, but once you try breathing throughout it, suddenly you start chopping things down and eliminating details — not for quality reasons but simply because the phrases are too hard to say (and  to remember).

    We have two different aesthetics. Even when it tries to  be simple, literary writing  tries to convey complex thoughts with complex imagery. Oral storytelling has to eliminate as much of these embellishments as possible. Sure, maybe you can throw in one or two fancy things. But only if they can fit inside a sentence which is easy to remember. Part of the problem is that you have to gauge the listener’s tolerance levels.  You have to write the story for the bored listener (not the attentive one). The performer’s enemy nowadays is the iphone.

    So here is the big news. Despite my caveat about writing personal stories down, I  now feel comfortable with using my blog to do so.  So once ever two weeks or so, I will write an informal personal story on my blog. Generally based on truth, but not guaranteed to be 100% true. The first few stories I post will be already written, but after a month or two, I should be creating fresh stuff.

    The stories will be called “Booby Naked Stories.”  When I was young, people called me Bobby, and my enemies called me “Booby Naked.” Uggh! How I hated that nickname. Now, for the sake of coming up with an easy-to-remember and easy-to-google name, I am decided to resurrect this atrocious nickname.