Hard questions

Fiction writers, especially those who write science fiction and fantasy, are fond of asserting that the best of them ask the hard questions about life and the world. This is, by and large, a good thing in general. The problem comes when it gets down to specifics.

Specifically, writers tend not to ask themselves the hard questions.

Even when we do, we tend to start with a glib, dismissive answer, rather than digging down to the root of the matter.

This is especially true when it comes to questions about the writing process itself. Because a lot of the really hard questions involve decisions about what to write, how to write it, and why or why not to write it. Much of the time, the glib answer is some variation on “You shouldn’t do that,” and if the speaker is pressed, they go on to “It’s Bad Writing.”

I’ve heard this logic applied to everything from writing in a particular type of viewpoint (usually either first person or omniscient) to writing about any place the author has not been or experience they have not had, to (most often and most loudly) any fiction that attempts to take a moral or ethical position (especially about anything controversial).

Hardly anyone asks the obvious follow-up question: “Why?” What, exactly, makes this a bad thing to do? Why would it always result in Bad Writing?

The obvious answer (obvious to me, anyway) is that the automatically forbidden thing is hard to do well. (By which I mean, in a way that is interesting, entertaining, and readable to enough readers. Note the deliberate vagueness inherent in the term “enough readers”…)

“It’ll be hard” is not, in my opinion, a good reason to avoid writing something. It also rather strongly implies that the writer who asked for the advice has neither the skill to pull off the Hard Thing, or the patience and determination to acquire said skill. Since very few people want to insult someone by saying that straight out, they fall back on “You shouldn’t do that; it’s bad writing.”

There’s also the fact that anyone who has been around the writing field for a while knows that people are likely to take seriously the pronouncement that “It’s Bad Writing”. Beginners worry that they’ll make obvious newbie mistakes. Seasoned professionals, on the other hand, are more likely to recognize, at least subconsciously, that the thing they want to do will be hard to get right. The corollary to this is that it will be easy to get wrong, and thus to commit Bad Writing right there in front of everybody. They know what their skill set is, and they’re afraid of the possible consequences of getting too far away from it. Or they once, as a beginner, went against the prevailing wisdom, didn’t have the chops to pull it off, and ended up with an embarrassing piece of work that now hides in a box in the attic, and they’re unwilling to go through that again. (Especially if the current prevailing wisdom is “It won’t sell.” For anyone trying to make a living by writing fiction, that’s an enormously persuasive argument, and quite often a deal-breaker.)

And both novices and veterans occasionally avoid a story because they know it will dig up a bunch of old memories and emotions that they just don’t want to deal with. That’s a different kind of “too hard,” but it’s even more difficult for many people to overcome than the lack of skills sort.

In all cases, the result is that the writers often decide not to try.

The trouble is that writing is as much a craft and a skill as it is an art. And skill and craft are, like exercise, things one has to actually do, repeatedly, in order to improve. (Hence the proverbial “million words of crap.”) To avoid attempting all difficult techniques or types of story simply because they’re hard is to avoid the fastest way of growing one’s skills.

There are a number of practical reasons why a particular author might choose the slow, steady improvement that comes from working steadily to refine skills they’re already very good at. Continuing to sell, or continuing an immensely popular series, come to mind. The golden handcuffs that kept Frank Herbert chained to the “Dune” series are a case in point. Few writers are strong-minded enough to walk away from both the money and the fans that come withe producing something that popular.

Other writers simply find what they are currently doing to be enormously satisfying. They like ringing subtle changes on similar characters or plots, or they’ve tried writing from other viewpoints and found it frustrating and unpleasant. Just as “It’s really hard to do well” is not a particularly good reason for avoiding writing something, “I just really like writing this way” is not a particularly bad reason for writing what you love. Similarly, “This will be a real challenge” is, by itself, not a good reason to write a story or use a technique that you already know you hate, and “This will be too easy” is not a good reason to avoid a story you think you’ll have fun with (especially since it’s almost never true).

The two really important questions, when one is faced with a story idea that anyone else (including your Internal Editor) dismisses as something “nobody does,” or “that’s bad writing,” or even the more honest “it won’t sell” or “it’ll be really hard” are:

1. If it’s so obviously a bad idea, why are you still thinking about it? What keeps drawing you toward it in spite of all those negatives you think you know?
2. If you’re obsessing about it so much, why are you really resisting writing it? Fear of failure, reluctance to leave one’s comfort zone, worry about reader/editorial reactions, practicalities like income or current contractual obligations, something else?

Ask the hard questions, and answer them honestly. Then think about this: ultimately, for at least 99% of writers, the best and truest answer we can give to the question “Why do you write fiction?” is “Why not?”