Be less creative, write stronger stories (Bite Sized Method)
Last week an old schoolmate of mine emailed me out of the blue. He mentioned he’d been searching his old emails for some other document and stumbled upon the novel I sent him nine years ago. As he was taking trains around Romania for a few weeks, he had time to read the entire thing.
Poor guy.
That was my first novel. My mum and my girlfriend are the only ones who had read it before he did. Like many people setting out to write their grand narrative, I threw plot aside and filled that thing with every opinion I had about the world at the time (which was a predictably wide but shallow spillage of bullshit). I added in twists that “defied genre” in an attempt to show the world my ground breaking mind. I treated structure like the rules set by an incompetent relief teacher who’d made the mistake of cracking the whip before earning the respect of her classroom of kids. It was a mess.
This is an obvious lesson. It’s likely one you’ve heard before and one I’d undoubtedly heard before I doubled down on writing that overstuffed novel. Because, while obvious, this is the type of advice that’s easier to give away than to consume for yourself.
Of course writers want to be original. Of course you want to be reaching for something that no one’s seen before. Unfortunately, if the thing you come up with really is that unique, it probably isn’t going to look much like a story.
People read stories because they recognise elements of themselves in the work.
If you’ve run so far up the coast that no one can follow you. Then no one is going to follow you.
This isn’t a case for writing cookie cutter plotlines. I love a story that goes outside of the status quo. Right now, I’m reading Roberto Bolano’s walking tangent of novel, 2666, I haven’t seen any signs of a hero’s journey beat in the last four hundred pages. But I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
Be creative by all means, but make sure you do it with the scaffolding of a recognizable tradition. That way, people might actually stick around long enough to see the twists of genius you managed to weave in there.