Bite Sized Method (Introduction)

Bite sized metaphors.

I throw around no shortage of hmming and haaing on this page, sorry about that, but in many ways, it’s the whole point of what I’m doing here.

The ethos of The Sudden Walk is one of “works in progress.” My development as a writer, my path to publication, progression of my portfolio.

The structure of the page itself is no exception.

With that in mind I’m going to try something new. Something called “Bite sized method.” As the name implies, these will be shorter posts, snippets of technique or quirks of the way I operate and approach my writing.

Where’s the value in this?

When I first joined Substack, I naturally went straight to the big names, George Saunders, Margaret Attwood, Chuck Palahniuk, excited by what I could learn from them.

But what I found initially disappointed me.

While I’ve revised that first impression via my own growing understanding of how the path to developing as a writer really works—honing an ear and an eye as a reader, understanding your own taste and recognizing the patterns in where readers lose interest—back then I was frustrated by the meandering style I found on all the above pages.

Forget the long game, delayed gratification and all that sensible shit, I was hungry for the gem of knowledge that made these names soar above their craft.

Get to the point. Get to the good bits.

Of course, this logic was missing the point in many ways because you’ll never get see success with the gems alone, however in other ways it wasn’t:

In the age of the internet all the information on how to make it to the top is accessible to practically anyone with the will to ignore the distraction mozzies that nip at you from every direction the moment you move your curser, but it’s not information alone that gets craft to sink in. It’s the way it’s delivered.

A big part of what hooks you into a particular author’s style is their unique voice, their particular way of looking at the world.

Back then I wished these writers had penned off a clear section of their Substack pages dedicated to technique alone. An easy to reference zone of the distilled elements that make their style unique, explained via that very style.

From my experience, this is where learning is at it’s most effective:

The right information, delivered by the right person at the right time, for you. The success of these writers is proof that their point of view contains hooks, so if they just applied that to teaching….

I know…it’s naive to assume art can be boiled down this way. And these people aren’t teachers after all. But I’m convinced it’s possible to do. George Saunders in particular does a great job of expressing his very specific approach. The only criticism I have of him is that he’s not good at coining easy to reference names for these things and they tend to rely on an already developed “eye” for good writing —this makes it hard to apply for someone who is a bit self conscious about their own taste.

Perhaps I’m not the right person to be taking up the mantle on this as it’s yet to be seen whether I can offer the right information…or how good my timing is.

If your town doesn’t have a decent pub, you don’t complain about it though do you? No you open up your own one.

But let’s circle back to the main sticking point that may stop people taking me seriously on this—

Who am I to do this?

It’s not lost on me that what I bring to the table here isn’t a paper backed authority. I’m yet to win that Booker prize, Nobel prize for literature, have my work made into a major motion picture—

Sure I’ve got that English Lit degree (if it doesn’t hold value here, then where else can I expect it to?) and am actively chasing this thing every day, but at the end of that day, I am largely a self taught learner.

And while it may not be immediately apparent, that’s the asset I bring to the table here.

Rather than deferring to the text book approach to writing, I come from another angle. There’s a reason sayings become platitudes. Even if they contain deep knowledge—when you’ve heard them a million times growing up, they lose their power, you barely hear them.

I will not explain things in the conventional manner.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read and internalized every craft book I could get my hands on. But I’ve only retained the gems of info that I found sticky, and of those, I don’t intend to regurgitate them verbatim.

Everything I include here has been through my filter, has been battle tested, and reframed through my lens. I’m channeling Bruce Lee a little bit here, as far as keeping the useful, discarding the rest.

Why should you assume my lens is an effective one?

I won’t assert at that it will be effective for everyone. But it’s effective for me and as far as I know I’m not an alien, so I can only assume there will be people out there who think the same way I do.

The power of my method comes from my tendency to think in metaphors. When I am describing my personal approach to a certain technique or principle, I typically find a story or image to attach it to to make it memorable in my mind. That’s the feature that makes these ideas “sticky” for me.

Some people find this approach useful, some don’t.

The Organic Element

Another element of these “Bite Sized Method” posts that I’ll do my best to maintain, is the avoidance of any “content” churning.

I’ll only write a Bite Sized Method post when I notice myself using the methods described in my own work.

I don’t have a list of these things written down after all, they’re born out of experience. In my eight years of deliberate focus on writing I’ve built up a mental blue print of common patterns I encounter when I reach different stages of a short or long form piece. I’ve given them my own names and filtered them through the metaphor factory to make them “sticky.” Referring back to them helps me avoid traps and rabbit holes that stilt the writing process and make certain sections difficult to get through.

This is an aspect that tends to be absent from Craft books, because these books don’t tend to be commissioned in a work-as-you-go format. it’s hard to sit down and recall every pattern of this kind. It’s only when you come across them organically that their texture and quirks come into full view.

That in itself is evidence of what my POV has to offer, but I’ll leave it there. Ironically this article has become anything but bite sized, but I wanted to give this new project the best introduction that I could.

Look out for my first post coming soon: The Open Heart Surgery phase.