Write what you love. Place what you love.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2024
- A deep dive into writing what makes you happy, while still finding external success. Not a writing tips and tricks video, but an in-depth exploration of one veteran fiction author's experience.
It's easy when you write Christian fiction. No complications there.
I'm loving your videos. Stay true to you, because you are so refreshing.
I like Joe Abecrombie's approach, where he builds his world and tells stories of multiple different genres in it. Like, he's known for his grimdark fantasy, but he's written a western (Red Country), a military fic (The Heroes), even a female-rage revenge story (Best Served Cold) set in the same world. Seems to me like more authors could benefit from thinking about their worlds from the perspective of different genres
I hadn't heard of this. That's awesome. I'm definitely noting this down as a path forward for genre jumpers. Thanks!
thats also my idea, but its really hard to pull of
"Get your syrup ready, cuz there's gonna be a lot of waffling."
What a delicious turn of phrase!
I think my biggest issue is being patient with myself as a writer. I'm working on it. I understand I'm having a "slow" year, but I've also had a lot going on. I think I'm writing this out more for myself than anyone else LOL.
I'd say my main project is an experimentation of genres. I cannot stand clichéd fantasy-- it's why I could never get into World of Warcraft, yet have kept a Final Fantasy XIV account up for almost 2 years.
Yeah, you have to be patient with yourself (which I just heard myself say as adding another layer of demand and guilt... Sorry about that!). It's a long journey, and I think it's one we're more likely to stay on when we don't add a bunch of stress. There's enough coming in from the world around us.
If it helps, word count can be a bad way to track progress for many types of writers. I had to take a break from writing actively for personal reasons (fallout with my now ex-writing group). But I'm still thinking about building the story and writing down those ideas. I think that our brains are still chewing on the story even if we're not actively writing. Keep a way to write those ideas down when you have them, because I've found they'll pop out at random times and I just need to catch them so I can use them later. Good luck, and hang in there!
@@domenceuspriest I agree. You have to get to the keyboard sometime, but it can take a lot of figuring things out first, and that's writing, or at least an essential part of the writing process. Some people seem to be able to do that entirely while their fingers are moving on the keyboard, but I spend a lot of time with a laptop in my lap staring out with unfocused eyes.
I haven’t and probably won’t pin down a genre, but all my books have action/adventure. I’m so glad Amazon added these categories, allowing me to partially define something that doesn’t seem to exist in the trad sphere
Amazon has gotten deep into niches, and what I like is that those niches can have some really loyal readers
I resisted genre for a long time. I thought that tropes were boring and constrained my creativity. Then one day I sat down and had an honest conversation with myself about the fact that 90% of the media I consume is romance. I'm picky with novels because I'm the type of reader who cares more about prose than plot, but with any other form of media if there's a decent romance arc I'm immediately hooked. That's definitely the cud I chew on.
I dipped my toe in writing sapphic romance and never looked back. Plotting is super restrictive - you're right that sad endings are the cardinal sin of romance, but even beyond that if you don't hit all of the beats readers expect they will be annoyed - but I still have the freedom to be creative with other aspects of writing. Plotting was never my main interest anyway. If anything, one of the things that makes me most excited about writing is building deep and interesting relationship webs to explore family and community. That's a killer skill for writing romance because getting readers invested in side characters is the best way to sell a series.
The advice that really changed my perspective on this was to forget about finding the perfect genre that you feel called to write in, and instead look for something that's decently marketable and that you can see yourself being happy to write across multiple books.
That's great advice
It sounds like your interests in writing are similar to mine. As long as what you care about doesn't interfere, taking on a prescribed structure can be a boon, if it takes care of the aspects you don't care much about. Thanks for the interesting viewpoint!
I've only written one novel, so I'm still testing the waters with other genres. I'm attempting a post apocolyptic magic sci fi for nanowrimo. I wrote the first draft for my first book when I was like nine? So I don't really remember by process for development and plotting, so I'm struggling a bit with the whole preptober business. I found this video very helpful though. I'm so glad you've found success!
Oh wow! That's so interesting, first that you wrote the initial draft at age 9, and second that you've picked it up again long after. I hope it turns out!
Great insights - and you're hitting on a lot of concerns I've had (such as romance genre readers glomming on to my story just because there is a relationship in it, then being disappointed because I have no intention of fitting the genre tropes). I also am realizing that while I don't read horror (and generally am not into it, except for two video games that I love for the existential horror aspects), my writing wants to incorporate a lot of horror elements. Appreciate your desire to bring meta-interactions to the reader - it's something I picked up from running tabletop RPGs that I want to bring to writing too. Even though I still have questions, this video really helped me think through things with you - thanks!
Thanks for the kind words! I'm sure that you've also experienced that often, your questions get answered on the page. I write half to find out what I actually think
Very happy to have discovered your channel. I write contemporary romance so this really resonated. Subbed.
Thank you! I'm going to check out your channel, too. Just at a glance I saw several with interesting-sounding topics
Very interesting video. I'm an extreme pantser, so I just let the story flow without knowing anything about anything, and surprisingly it works beautifully. From the outset my ambition was to write in the genre of hard science ficiton, because that's what I love to read, but somehow the words on the page turned out to be speculative fiction instead, because that's apparently the kind of music I have inside. By writing without a plan one quickly writes oneself into a corner, and that becomes the restriction that unleashes the creativity that's needed to get out from that corner. I deliberately set my first story in a desert landscape to force myself to be creative, and it turned out to be a good strategy. The thing I do to escape the duties of my life is to write, so when you play Doom 2, I write.
God, I love this! I never saw it that way with the ‘writing yourself into a corner ‘ thing. ❤ Best of luck and clarity of mind to you!
"By writing without a plan one quickly writes oneself into a corner, and that becomes the restriction that unleashes the creativity that's needed to get out from that corner." That's fantastic! What an interesting strategy
I have written 10 books but none of them published... I hope someday someone can read them at have at least one person appreciate them
what g-word do you write in? literary or non-literay? tell us how to find them!
Hey, that's awesome! I saw some helpful advice to think about that one type of reader that you would want to read that book. And that's helped me a lot -- it's not about appealing to a lot of people generically, but about being THE BOOK that will make someone's day, or even change their life. And so you should be bold and make those books available so that person can find and read them.
@@domenceuspriest ☝️
It sounds like you've really put in the work. Maybe consider taking the best and putting it out there. I don't think you have to worry about jumping the gun 10 books in.
dude, publish it then. how could someone appreciate your unpublished works???
I don't think I can even turn my brain of and consume anything just for entertainment. But I concur with your views on genre, even though my medium of choice is role-playing, which is very much dominated by fantasy and I feel weird that if find that often too cartoonish and want more thematic depth and character arcs that have been done to death already. Which leads to me also creating scenarios that are more literary in nature and have various genre elements mostly as flavour. Luckily, I think there is some interest in universal systems, even though they usually go for world simulation and not really for thematic exploration or character expression. So, I still wonder how I will eventually market my system and the playbooks for it.
ahhh that's really interesting! I'm just getting back into ttrpg after decades, but solo (on my board game channel), and am going to focus on first learning some universal systems. I'm doing OSR right now (I left off at ad&d 2nd ed, so I've only known old-school, I guess), which, though dominated by the usual kind of fantasy, has most other genres present in one book or another. I'm also wanting to learn SWADE and Forged in the Dark.
It strikes me as being very difficult to decide what to do in the ttrpg world with d&d having such a stranglehold, but at least the 10% that isn't can get pretty experimental. And I've heard some people predicting a fall off for d&d
Honestly, I"m interested to hear how it goes for you
@@JAlanRyker Oh yeah, D&D the system/brand has been cracking for the past couple years now because of corporate misconduct. It's a very good time to get into other systems, which frankly do different things much better (and aren't going to do microtransactions or subscriptions). Lots of OSR out there, along with non-d20 games that are much simpler and more thematic.
Ever since I was young I always had these wicket nightmeres, and they are what compelled me to sit down and write. I wanted to see the world my mind created while i slept in full viwe.
But what i am currently writing was only meant to peak the intrest of the younger genaration, hench the name of the series. I enjoyed writing the first 2 books, but ending a 3rd one in a trio has proven difficult for me since I long to start writing about piles of bodies stacking up on the streets, and the terror parents may experience when their kid dissapears.
That's really interesting. My initial writing stemmed from my night terrors, where I hallucinated eyes-open nightmares
@@JAlanRyker well, it appears that some aspects of inspiration can be similar between people. Perhaps its symply genetics, or some other form of natural heratage that makes a story teller, could explain why some authours have similar experiences.
I'm in a weird place on reading books - I am a recovering academic, so I dip into nonfiction a fair amount, especially to research for the fiction writing I'm doing. And I teach, so I get to read a lot of books for younger reader to pre-screen them as class materials. Part of this involves looking for fresh content, especially by underrepresented writers, so I see a lot of works across genres (but I stick to speculative, fantasy/fantastical, science fiction, etc).
And I realized the other day that the marketing of genres kind of left me behind - I don't actually look for specific genres anymore, and what I thought I liked isn't enjoyable to me. A lot of genres and subgenre labels are so overhyped and overdone/repetitive - that "fun junk reading" appeal, I guess. So I'm not even sure how to describe the books I personally like anymore (they are kind of a grab bag, tbh). But I do know that a lot of the "popular" books and genres now are NOT to my taste, and it's become harder to sift through to find books that I am likely to enjoy. My most reliable method has been to see what authors of books I like are enjoying - and that tends to get me to better places than the algorithms or genre hype. (Romantasy is one of the big land mines I have to work too hard to avoid lately)
To your question about what my "fun media" is - video games are definitely that for me. I used to love strategy games, but they take more time and mental investment than I often have, so I've been taking to chill survival games where I wander, gather, build stuff, and occasionally fight off bad guys on my own terms. I'll occasionally pick up amateur writing for fun (my partner is big into LitRPG). And I watch/rewatch good TV shows with character development and worldbuilding across multiple seasons (ex. Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Babylon 5), which are both fun but also inspire my brain as I think about character arcs and worldbuilding in my own writing.
Apologies for the novel. I really appreciate the conversations and ideas you spark with your videos and deep thoughts. Also, your tough love approach is super helpful. I'm trying not to tell myself lies, but also trying not to psych myself out as I go through the writing process. I never thought I could write fiction, coming from academia, but I'm excited to give it a shot, and your videos help me calibrate)
I have no doubt that you can translate into fiction, and that your background as an academic will be useful. I'm glad if what I say helps!
It's also kind of hard for me to categorize what I read. I kind of wish it was like when I was a kid and every book seemed created by someone so far beyond me. Now I feel the writer in almost everything. I kind of just say that I like interesting things, but what that is can really vary. My wife just decided to really increase her reading to get away from screens, and she has very good taste, so I guess my genre is my wife's suggestions!
@@JAlanRyker " Now I feel the writer in almost everything." - oh, that's very relatable. I've started noticing patterns in some authors I follow. But I like that more than some books where they just feel like a rehash of other popular books (see: booktok stuff) that are that "junk food fun reading" for people.
I think that getting recs from people who know you well is a much more reliable method. Having someone who does the scouting and filtering is also really handy. And thank you for the encouragement - I think that the academic background helps with the discipline and planning, and the TTRPG skills help with the worldbuilding and messing with the reader's head.
@@domenceuspriest great point about feeling the writer. If it's someone masterful, you're right, I like finding their fingerprints
I used to write spicy fanfiction and got some great attention. So I'm trying to convert my stories into full novels. So far I'm not doing great but I'm also not doing a lot of marketing. I very rarely write "Happily Ever After" my romances just don't always end up there... so I do "Happy for Now" endings. I want to explore more of the Horror genre, sadly I lost my big manuscript that falls into this category in a hard drive crash before I had started using a good backup space. I play video games to escape reality.. mostly Fallout 76 and 7 days to die.. I'm a big fan of zombies..
Oh god, a lost manuscript is THE nightmare. Do you think you'll ever go back to horror?
My brother used to play 7 days to die a ton
@@JAlanRyker It was a huge loss for me, but yeah I think I'll try to rewrite the story and I've also got other horror ideas rolling around in my brain.
I love reading literary fiction and the classics. I’m a sucker for beautiful prose that’s not too purple. But when I write I find myself going for something that resembles horror. It can’t neatly be categorized under horror, though, and I’m not really a fan of genres. Mind you, I’ve never even read a single Stephen King novel yet I write about twisted, blood curdling stuff.
Horror is such a broad umbrella, and you really only have to be partially under it. If it contains twisted and blood curdling, the rest can be whatever you like. The longer a work of horror gets, the more it has to be grafted to another type of structure, like action, drama...anything, really. Probably only a short story can be pure horror without being a pile of mush.
@@JAlanRyker so true. Thanks!
that waffling joke😂🍯🐝
I'm really regretting not adding a visual!
I'm currently writing in response to events. The society around me has fallen into unbelievable levels of bloodthirst and moral depravity, and I want the world to see, to notice, and to carefully diagnose early signs of the same disease in the society around _them._ So the genre has to be very mimetic. It follows from the nature of the theme.
I have no idea whether to even try traditional publishing. There will be strong political pressures...
I can see that there definitely would be political pressure. It might be tough to work with someone who wants to control your message at all.
I'm not at all disagreeing with your approach, but thinking of options you might have that you haven't considered. genres like sci-fi can be a good medium for secretly transmitting messages. And satire can be fun for bashing people over the head with it. I find that my inclination is toward the absurd when I get really frustrated, and I naturally go into reductio ad absurdum
@@JAlanRyker On a broader level, there's lots you can do with satire and with allegory (which is what sci-fi would be in this case), but not this story and not in these circumstances. Satire and allegory won't work with an audience that has vested interests in not making the (very inconvenient) connections between the story and the reality it is about. This novel (or novella; it's on the shorter side, at least for now) is going to be pretty explicit, close to documentary.
Best of luck, my friend. This novel might not be published now but I’m sure there will come a convenient time for it in the future. It will teach the next generation to do better than the former. Meanwhile, don’t be disheartened by that and keep writing other stuff that might be subtle enough to communicate your message. I live in an unstable political environment so I understand.
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 yeah, I can see that there are some situations where you have to be straightforward
Hey mate, I have a problem. I'm 60% of the way through my first draft. But I can't bring myself to write at the moment. I'm supposed to be doing 500 words a day but I've fallen off.
It's my first ever attempt at writing and I feel like I've stalled at 55,000 words. I even know the direction of the story and what's about to happen, but mid scene I've just stalled... Been about 2 months now.
Wow! 55,000 words is amazing! I’m sure if you’ve reached this far , you’ll finish it. Maybe something has changed in your internal environment? Have you had a substantial change in your beliefs or values? I’m saying this cause I find that having doubts or ambivalent worldviews keep a writer from wrapping up a story.
I got stuck around the same mark and it turned out my subconscious was trying to pull the story in a different direction. It helped to write side scenes that didn’t connect to my expected plot and sometimes just make up a character and followed them around the world to see what happened. May be worth a try if you stay stuck. It takes the pressure off “producing” and it actually led to some new favorite characters. Good luck!
I agree with the previous commenters that trying to understand what's causing you to stall out could help. It might just be that the middle of a story can be boring to write. You know that the protagonist's attempts aren't going to succeed, so it feels futile. I made a video about this, in which I can't remember at all what I advised, but maybe it'll help?😂 ruclips.net/video/NP2kHS84QbY/видео.html
I like the idea of merrindel1776 to try writing from the POV of a new character. Or, if you have some scenes you're looking forward to writing, just skip to them. It might feel like cheating, but the important thing is to get going again. You might discover that you don't need whatever scenes are blocking you, or you might find them easier to go back and write once they're the last bits.
@@JAlanRyker Turn out I just needed to eat more candy to boost my willpower 😀😀
All joking aside, I have to be very deliberate in my writing habit otherwise I find endless sources of procrastination
I'm currently struggling because I want to write speculative fiction that is a tragedy. And that has relationships. And maybe freaky Eldritch sex cults. I constantly worry that the venn diagram of readers for such a story is so narrow I shouldn't bother.
I know what you're saying. There are people out there who want weird and challenging, but they can be a bit difficult to find. I don't know the tone of your novel, but maybe New Weird? Maybe bizarro, though that audience is very small? I like the sound of it
@@JAlanRyker Thanks man. I'm still figuring out the tone... I was thinking more platoon and less starship troopers, I guess.
Your videos would get a lot more views if you saved the viewers time and got your message out within 5-10 minutes. This can be done by properly outlining before filming. I do however understand you’re just making sure you show up for both your videos and audience and are allowing yourself to “do it badly” so to say. So, if this stresses you out, then don’t 🤷♂️ but just food for thought. Maybe toss a 5 or 10 min out there see how it does. Me personally, I want to watch your videos but each time I see 20+ minutes I don’t click. In that time range it’s safe to assume the viewer must sift through some sludge to find the gems. Smaller/focused topics also help with shorter minute spans 🤙
unburdened by what was kansas
I'm writing a cosmic horror zombie comedy, and I do not consider it literary.
_gasps_ Not the G-word!
So, "my genre" is... kind of all of them? My WIPS in no particular order are:
- reconstructed future/steampunk with giant robots
- contemporary superhero story w/ eldritch cosmic horror
- epic fantasy martial arts wasteland w/ anthropomorphic creatures
- 1930s dieselpunk alternate history hard-boiled detective story w/ magic demons
- An _Alien_ Universe fan novel
- floating island & magic airship fantasy w/ overt anticapitalist vibes
- anarchic weird fantasy romance w/ submarines and drugs and psychics
- and a whole bunch of short stories that probably fall under 'horror'.
I tend to start with an outer layer of visuals and then drag various ideas into them until they fit together and support it. And even then, the GENRES are a loose fit.
I love it! Write what you love, then revise them all into erotica jkjkjkjk
@@JAlanRyker Not to out myself TOO much, but I made not bad money writing erotica for a few years, and I found I had good luck writing genre erotica (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) and then editing the naughty stuff OUT of it XD
@@toppersundquist Oh, that's really interesting! I've been wrestling with the balance of sex in my story because I think there needs to be honest depictions of intimacy as part of relationships (which includes sex) but don't want it to be seen as just erotica. Have you found it pretty workable to tone things down rather than heat things up then?
@@domenceuspriest Honestly yes. My 'garbage drafts' are just whatever occurs to me, that makes sense "in the moment", and obviously a lot of it doesn't make sense or doesn't fit (or is repetitive or confusing) when you come back with fresh eyes. It's also a little galling what my brain defaults to on freewriting mode, but it's good to be self-aware! :D
So I cannot be a writer. I don't love anything.
that sounds like your path
Don’t you love writing?
The last thing I would do is convince someone who doesn't love writing to be a writer. It's not worth it
i haven't decided on genre - im just in research phase - started off as ya fantasy/fairy tale - now it's about why the entire history of humanity is the way it is 🤣🕰️🧚🏼♂💀
am i happy sticking to expectations? i have none - im only in it for the creative challenge to myself and the experience - if i do finish it, i want to publish it in many mediums (bury in stone tablets, placing it in libraries, make an ARG, etc.)
it does feel necessary for me to do this for my own sake though - i can't ignore my creative urge - when i do, it hurts my soul
what do i consume? vgs! zelda, dragon quest, borderlands
for zen: learning and playing solo boardgames, also designing bgs
For me, it's also a lot about the challenge.
And solo board games are there for me in the evenings when my words have dried up!