Conversation

This year I’ve done a decent amount of fiction experiments that will never see the light of day because they’re either sketches/studies or bad, or both, but I’ve learned a lot about myself if not about storytelling.
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One thing I’ve learned is that I don’t like manufacturing surprise out of a god-view of a story through staging and sequencing of information reveal. It feels like bad stage magic or fiction equivalent of clickbait.
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I’d rather just straight up tell the reader whatever I know the minute I know it, as efficiently and compactly as possible. If there is surprise it us because I actually surprised myself while plotting the story. Nor because I played tricks with words.
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Certainly there are genres where perhaps the stage magic approach is both justified and leads to good results. Like cozy mysteries. But I don’t enjoy writing it and it shows. The prose feels phoned-in.
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Another thing I hate is labored substitutes for exposition. Like stilted dialogue where a knowledgeable character plays games with an ignorant viewpoint character to get the info out. I actually like writing straight-up compact exposition, and it reads fresh to me.
Replying to
Bits that I’ve enjoyed writing and in some cases drawing as visuals that I’ve liked get straight to the point. If there’s no actual reason to be coy with information it is annoying to write and I suspect to read.
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Example: “In 2047, an engineer at Acme corporation accidentally invented a time machine” instead of several pages describing how and why, with the “time machine” outcome bring a surprise after 500 words.
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If there’s nothing special or interesting about the time machine and the fun begins only when characters start messing with it, screw advice to “show-don’t-tell” or “avoid exposition.” Give it the 1 line it deserves, make the 1 line fun, move on.
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The big surprise for me is that the main rule I learned with nonfiction works for fiction too — if I’m not having fun writing it, it definitely won’t be fun for others to read. If I do have fun it *may* be fun for others to read,
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You’ll see a lot of professional writing advice about “laying pipe” that’s like the grinder part. I’m sure they’re right for the pro stuff. But for me, where possible, I’d rather say, “this happened and then 2 miles of pipe yada yada later that happened.”
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Solving strictly for having fun produces texts that don’t always look like proper stories but are fun to write and read. I’m fine with that. I think when I go get the confidence to post more publicly a lot of it will be kinda not stories at all.
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As an extremely verbal person but a really mediocre artist, I actually found my storytelling was stronger if I let visuals serve as the load-bearing part. My writing experience was getting in the way of story.
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In general I’ve decided: if the choice is between having fun vs checking off items on a checklist about what counts as a real story, I’m going with fun. Ie just don’t do the non-fun part unless the thing unravels into incoherence without it. Yada yada past it.
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If the result is a coherent not-quite-story, that’s good enough for me. I’m not looking to win nobels or movie deals here. I doubt any fiction I write will be as successful as my nonfiction. So do what’s fun, worry about what it is later.
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Feels like all forms of story are Industrial Age anyway. Maybe stuff I manage to write will be narrative fragment nfts to put into metaverses.
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Maybe I can call these things — the 4 examples I linked are the 2021 crop so far — something else. Storycules? Like molecules. Set expectations low enough that I can produce more. Targeting 8-10 storycules for 2022. Maybe 1 more this year 😎
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I guess I’ve learned what I don’t like: languid, luxuriant prose, richly textured descriptions, subtle details… photorealistic stuff. I think I like stick-figure storytelling. Get as close to a 3-panel comic strip as possible. Say what needs saying or is fun to say. Cut the rest
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