Twenty-some years ago, I was observing a break-out session at a writer’s conference (there were four scheduled during the day, following the keynote speaker; those of us who’d been brought in to do the break-out sessions were asked to do three, and had the option to sit in on someone else’s as the fourth. Being insatiably curious about how everybody else works, I chose to visit a session rather than head home early.)
During the session, one of the participants wrinkled her nose at a specific bit of advice the presenter was giving. (I don’t recall the exact bit, but it was something involving general worldbuilding—food, fashion, holidays, celebrations.) Noticing this, the presenter stopped and asked for the writer’s opinion. “Nobody cares about that stuff,” the would-be writer said. “So I’m not going to write about it.”
I don’t recall the presenter’s response (it’s been over twenty years), but I’ve met a lot of writers over the years who have a similar attitude about some aspect of writing. It gets phrased different ways—“Nobody cares about theme/syntax except English professors.” “Nobody wants a slow opening.” “Nobody wants to read about imaginary creatures like vampires.” “Everybody skips descriptions so there’s no point in writing them.” “Nobody wants to read about somebody else’s lousy childhood.” “The most important thing is…[keeping the plot moving, digging into the characters, “showing” everything, keeping it short]…so it doesn’t matter if other things get left out.”
After hearing this kind of thing repeated, off and on for decades, I have come to the conclusion that all of these assertions boil down to “I don’t want to write that.”
The reasons why writers don’t want to write something tend to be some combination of the following:
- The writer doesn’t see or doesn’t care about it in the things they read. This is a double whammy; first off, if you can’t see it, you can’t fix it. Not caring about it (or actively disliking whatever-it-is) is almost as bad, because it means that even people who can see it don’t want to fix it, because it’s an aspect of fiction they’ve developed a distaste for. Over time, some writers learn to see the problem and accept that even if they don’t like writing about food or holidays or descriptions, there are readers for whom these things are important, or at least add value to stories. It’s usually worth paying at least a minimal amount of attention to whatever-it-is to keep from annoying and/or alienating those readers, even if it’s not something the writer particularly cares about. Some writers, however, feel strongly enough about whatever-it-is that they simply refuse to pay attention to it, which is their choice and is fine with me as long as they don’t turn around and complain about readers not liking their books. If you have been warned that some things annoy/alienate some readers, and you do them anyway, that’s on you.
- The writer doesn’t have a clue about how to do whatever–it-is. This often goes hand-in-hand with not being able to see a particular aspect of writing, like describing characters emotional state, describing their surroundings, or realizing that some readers “hear” what they read as they read it (and are therefore very sensitive to the sound and phrasing of sentences), while other readers “see” what they read as if it were a movie (and are therefore not at all concerned with “pretty sentences,” only with the images evoked and the pacing of the story). It also goes along with things that a particular writer doesn’t enjoy reading, and, of course, with things that writers avoid writing because the particular writer dislikes writing them and/or thinks they’re bad at them, and thus has little or no actual practice writing action, internal characterization, transitions, etc. There are really only two approaches to this: either learn to do (or fake) whatever-it-is, or figure out how to write stories that avoid the necessity of doing it. Practice writing whatever-it-is until you can do it reasonably effectively, or write the kind of books where you can avoid writing whatever-it-is and play to your strengths instead. Some writers use a combination approach, avoiding most but not all of whatever-it-is and playing to their other strengths most of the time, which allows them to get a little practice and/or fake it until they gradually figure out how to do it.
- The writer finds whatever-it-is disruptive to their process. For example, if I try to consciously think about the theme of whatever I am writing, everything stops working for me. At least one other writer I know has to know their theme first. I know writers for whom consciously thinking about their sentences or syntax slows them down so much that they lose the thread of their scene, writers who get paralyzed when they pay too much conscious attention to their characterization or their plot, and writers who have to limit their pre-writing plotting or worldbuilding to a bare minimum or risk losing all motivation and interest in their stories. In this case, one can either rely on one’s intuition (which works pretty well for some things, like theme), or one can work on whatever-it-is as a specific part of the revision process, which is usually not as susceptible to disruption as the first draft is (though this can still be tough for writers whose work sets up like concrete moments after setting it down on the page).
For all of the above situations, I’ve met would-be writers who just wanted an excuse to avoid working at something they saw as “the hard part.” I’ve also met would-be writers who frowned when someone told them these things, then went off and did the work of figuring out why they didn’t want to implement some bit of advice, whether it was worth it to them to continue not-implementing it, and what strategy to use to cope with learning or doing it…and then did it.
“Over time, some writers learn to see the problem and accept that even if they don’t like writing about food or holidays or descriptions, there are readers for whom these things are important, or at least add value to stories.”
Hey, I put a holiday in my latest one! I did!! 😀
I will say, though, I find food a much touchier subject. (Maybe there’s an idea for a future entry here?) If I have characters eating something cholesterol-laden, might I be encouraging some readers in unhealthy eating? Should I present protagonists, at least, as avoiding sugar, caffeine, alcohol, carbs…or what?
What consists of a healthy diet keeps changing…
You’re right that food is a touchy subject. Making sure that one’s writing is what people in the past called “morally uplifting” is also a touchy subject.
Maybe the future entry should be about the advantages and drawbacks of deliberately being didactic in one’s writing.
On the subject of healthy eating, I am sorry to hear that you are putting so much pressure on yourself!
One thing with food is that whether it is healthy or not depends a lot on other circumstances. My mom grew up on a farm, and they would eat huge breakfasts -but they needed to, because they worked the calories off, and didn’t snack between meals. It had to be enough food to hold them over.
Also, a lot of what makes modern American food unhealthy isn’t the food itself- it’s the preservatives that are used to extend the shelf life, or the pesticides, or the hormones given to a lot of animals that are sold for meat. I am not sure those are things that any amount of care in writing your character’s diet will protect your readers from.
Just a note: High-cholestrol foods do not result in high cholesterol in the body. That comes about through consumption of carbohydrates, particularly simple carbs that spike your glucose levels. Food does not maintain the same form it had when consumed; it all gets converted.
To me, the notion of focusing on being didactic in (for example) choosing what foods your characters eat probably only works if your target audience is small children and you are consciously writing to, say, encourage them to eat more fruit, or whatever.
More generally, to me it makes sense to let characters eat what they want. I’m a vegan, personally; but I wouldn’t dream of making a character vegan if it didn’t make sense for the story and for their particular way of being.
My heroes have been eating, let’s see, soup, bread and meat pies cooked by sentient foxes (such nice people), wild strawberries, oranges from an abandoned greenhouse, and (once they return to civilization’s outposts) more soup and bread. it’s the Early Middle Ages.
Oh yes, and a few Church festivals; it’s Eastertide.
When you lose interest in writing works, take a pile of the unfinished works one day and re-read them all. It can be — startling.
Let me just say up front that the primary reason I’m writing this comment is that I hope to give our hostess ideas for future entries. This blog is a must-read for me, and I like to give back.
When I joined the military all those years ago, once I finished training, I was a bit nonplussed to find myself working Thanksgiving…and Christmas…and New Year’s. That’s just the way the schedule worked out. The military tries to give people holidays off, but someone’s always on duty somewhere.
As I said, nonplussed. If I’d thought about it, I’d have known the armed forces never shut completely down. But I hadn’t thought about it. My world view got expanded.
So the reason including holidays is a “don’t want to” for me (most of the time) is partly because they aren’t prominent in my world view anymore, and I forget them when writing. But the other reason is because I want to expand my readers’ world view too.
(Note: Didacticism isn’t yes/no, on/off, it’s a spectrum. We all have something to say.)
So, to get to the point finally, when there’s something any of us “don’t want to” in our writing, it’s important to know why not. “I don’t like it” isn’t much of a reason, but “because it would interfere with my goal in writing this” is. Just because we set a story in something medieval doesn’t mean we have to include plagues and child mortality. Something far future doesn’t have to acknowledge current understanding of FTL as impossible.
Tell the story you want to tell, include what you need to, and leave out what doesn’t fit or even interferes.
And, to paraphrase our hostess, be aware that our choices—all of them—affect our readership.
The thing that I don’wanna write is battle scenes. This is awkward, because my WIP pretty much requires a couple of them. I really like the WIP and don’t want to abandon it.
I don’t know much about the subject, and that’s because, although I love history, I tend to skim the mechanics of battles because they just don’t interest me. People’s reactions and feelings do; I think I can use that.
Somebody (I forget who, and I will be grateful if anyone can identify it) said that non-writers think writers stress about great truths, when what we really stress about is how to get someone from one side of the room to the other. That’s me! And there is such a lot of that in battles…
I’ve gone to a couple of workshops at conventions on writing combat when you’ve never been there. I emerged glad that it’s evidently extremely confused at the time. I know I can use that.
This got me thinking of the first time the squad in Band of Brothers engaged in a skirmish. It was a small fight, but it looked like total chaos. How the hell did anyone know what to do and how to break the German defenses?
H. Beam Piper’s parallel worlds novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen has a lot of battles in it. There’s one late in the book where fog rolls in just after the battle’s started, and everyone is completely confused, no one knows where the right wing or left is, and it’s just a mess.
You might be able to do something similar?
Oh, I can definitely do confusion! Just to add complications, the battles take place at sea, in a world based on our 18th century one. (First book was set at court, but I had more story that I wanted to tell after Marguerite escapes murder charges.) I am getting well-acquainted with the “Master and Commander” film. It’s said to be historically accurate, for the most part, and lets me see the scenes.
I haven’t read Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. (Not a big fan of battle scenes normally.)
Must get hold of a copy. Ooh, 99 cents for a Kindle copy.
Maybe a heavy squall…?
I love Piper, he came up with some amazing ideas. Hope you like Kalvan – it does have a lot more battles than most of his stuff. At least the price is right. (Most of Piper’s output is out of copyright now, and you can get it free, by the way.)
For more seafaring background, there’s always Hornblower. Or see if you can find Two Years Before the Mast, written by a man who sailed as an ordinary seaman for a couple years. (He describes southern California back when it was *much* less populated.)
I can also recommend the Master and Commander books. The entire giant series 🙂 Although note that the sailing technology and naval etiquette depicted is early-19th century, so depending on how accurate you want to be, you will need to make some adjustments.
Oops, hit submit before I meant to.
From my limited knowledge, the Royal Navy didn’t have enough volunteers to fight the Napoleonic Wars, so the Navy started press-ganging people on a large scale. That meant much harsher discipline to keep the pressed men in line, plus significant issues with captains trying to train up unskilled crews in a hurry. Hornblower (the books) depicts these more than Master and Commander. So if you’re writing a pre-Napoleonic history, you should have less flogging, an all-volunteer crew likely to be personally loyal to the captain (and probably born in the same local area as the captain’s family mansion), and generally friendlier relations between officers and crew.
Also see the end notes to the Master and Commander books (Patrick O’Brien did *a lot* of research and it shows) for more comments on things like a semi-formal tradition of non-violent mutiny (generally refusing to sail) as a way for sailors to get serious grievances addressed, and how the pressures of the Napoleonic Wars meant the Admiralty became much less tolerant of any sort of disobedience, and much more scared that the press-ganged sailors would rise up violently.
Some of us actively seek out authors who manage to achieve “plot” in SF/fantasy without bloodshed, so avoiding battle scenes isn’t always a bad thing.
I put wars and battles into the background, usually the deep background. For smaller fights, it varies.
For the setting of my first novel (and its sequels) I wanted a swashbuckling sort of fantasy world with lots of sword-duels. So lots of bloodshed from that, along with really really easy healing to justify characters getting into sword duels at the drop of a hat.
That “human woman goes shopping on an alien planet” story did have a space war in the deep background, but the closest thing to a fight scene was people splashing each other with small plastic buckets of water in an alien version of a water park.
My most recent fight scene was a cat-fight between a goblin slavegirl and a demoness disguised as an elf-woman. (And that’s the only fight scene so far in multiple stories in that setting.) On the one hand, slavegirls are immune to demon magic, so the demoness couldn’t use spells or her supernatural strength. On the other hand, elves are bigger than goblins, so the goblin slavegirl was fighting out of her weight class and would have lost if the demoness hadn’t been banished during the fight – and the goblin-maid did get scratched up some, so ‘bloodshed.’