Back to Basics
A post about fundamentals and wandering away from them
So, for the past few months I’ve been working on a historical thriller. It was my agent’s suggestion, but I think it was a good one given the sort of book I write and where the market is at these days. It’s a sort of cold war heist/farce/cross-country chase, and while it features the usual parade of idiots with which I typically like to populate my novels, there are no speculative elements, which is a bit of a departure for me. What’s more, due to the vagueries of the English education system, I last took a history class when I was fourteen years old. So, the research is also… more than I’m used to, let’s say.
Which perhaps is why I have found myself getting wrapped around the axle with this book more than with most I write. There have been several existential crises along the way, and I spent over a month rewriting about half of the books opening 40% because I wasn’t happy with the character arcs, etc, etc. I think because I’m on unfamiliar territory I let the doubt in a couple of times, which is exactly what I admonished against doing last week, so… now you know where some of that came from, at least.
Also, while I’ve been working on this book, I have also been doing a sort-of in-depth career analysis. If you ever go to the “My Stories” tab of this site you will notice that I last had a novel out in 2021. That’s longer ago than I’d like. And it’s not because that was the last time I wrote a novel. I current have three novels sitting in my files which I have quite simply not been able to sell.
Now, there’s a lot of reasons for that and some of them are out of my control, and some of it is just pure dumb luck, but the thing I can control (or at least try to control) is the quality of the story. The better I write something—or at least so the theory goes in my head—surely the more likely it is to sell.
Except… what is good? That’s a very subjective term. And I think my personal definition has been evolving over time. I’m about to use a term I don’t really love, but in the absence of better language, I think I have been becoming a SLIGHTLY more “literary” writer over time.
Now, do I still write silly genre nonsense? Well, let’s see, did I just write a story for this site called “Eight Interviews Regarding the Murder of a Wizard?” Yes, I appear to have done precisely that. But in addition to that being a story about the characters from my No Hero series looking into the murder of the titular wizard, it’s also a formal experiment in which I attempted to write a story using just seven sentences, each of a hundred words or more.
To be fair, my “literary” instincts have been there since before…
Actually, wait. Let’s unpack this word “literary” because it comes freighted with baggage, much of which I don’t like. Generally I think it is perceived as opposed to “genre.” In this dichotomy, you have “genre fiction” on one side which is obsessed with plot and narrative motion, and which is dumb and stupid and escapist. And then on the other side you have “literary fiction” which is obsessed with character and plumbing the depths of the human soul, and which is slow, and overly erudite, and boring as hell.
First of all, I think this positioning of the two terms as opposed is false. There are plenty of stories out there that are interested in both telling a ripping yarn and in exploring the depths of the human soul.
Second… well, ok, this is a complicated issue that I’m not going to solve in a few paragraphs of a half-baked internet post. But I guess the short version is: in my head a novel is a bag of about 100,000 words. When you’re writing it you can choose how many of those words you want to spend on character exploration and how many of pushing your plot forward.
But wait, you cry inside my head, that’s a dichotomy again.
But wait, I reply, and then I briefly pause to thank you for being as keen on the word “dichotomy” as I am, because that makes me feel a lot less pretentious about using it so much.
Anyway, the thing is, you can do both plot things and human soul things at the same time. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s certainly possible. So your 100,000 words can theoretically be all of things all at once.
I think this topic is also complicated by the fact we tend to stereotype certain fictional tropes. Because is a wizard exploding things with her mind inherently less literary than a professor having an affair with her student. I feel like the world wants to tell us that it is, but I don’t know why. There is no reason why the wizard example couldn’t be replete with metaphors and insights into the sources of power that are tied into a character’s rich childhood memories, while the professor example could just be the words “and then they bonked.”
So yes, “literary” is a complicated and messy term, that I don’t like. Perhaps what I am trying to talk about is how straightforward and direct the prose is. The Hero books have very straightforward prose. The sentences set out to do a thing and they do it, and then they go away. I think it helps make those books a quick read, which is intentional. They are designed to be big summer blockbuster books. But it also means that they are sometimes rather lacking when it comes to subtext and beautiful language.
But that was a choice. What I was trying to say before I sidelined myself, was that wasn’t always the type of book I was trying to write. Back before I sold No Hero, a lot of my writing was trying to be a little less straightforward. Except, back then, I don’t think my skill level was up the challenge, which is why when my first novel sale came, it was for something more basic.
And while I would never categorize my evolving published work as particularly erudite fiction, I think there has been a slow move towards the text doing more things, and doing more interesting things. And where I have been going with all this is that I think—I hope—that journey has continued with the unpublished novels.
But they are unpublished. And a lot of that is out of my control. But not all of it.
Look, maybe there’s a chance that my skill level is still not up to the challenge, but I’ve seen the rejection letters and that’s not seemed to be the feedback.
A tangent: on Monday, I went to see a talk by Frank Miller, the creator of such iconic comics as Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and 300. He has an autobiography out, which he was promoting. And as part of the talk, he was asked what advice he would give his younger self. And Frank hummed and hawed, and just when it seemed like he didn’t have anything he said: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep it simple. Just focus on telling a good story.”
A good story.
Except… what is good?
Except… I think perhaps we all know what a good story is. It’s one that hooks us in early. It’s one with characters we invest in. It’s one where we yearn for those characters to succeed as they struggle against the odds. In some ways it really is simple.
And I wonder if perhaps I have missed some of that in my attempts to evolve. In attempting to be less straightforward and more interesting, that I have forgotten how much fun being straightforward can be. And sometimes I have forgotten that being fun is kind of the point. I have forgotten that things can be both.
As always we seem to have ended up at the point where I should have some sort of conclusion. So if there’s anything to conclude out of all this swirl, maybe it’s this: evolution is inevitable. We age and we change. We learn things. We discover new ways of doing things. Weaknesses evolve into strengths. But as that happens, it’s worth remembering that when you were young, you weren’t always foolish. There are things worth holding onto. Basics and fundamentals that shouldn’t be abandoned. When we write we can be old and young.
We can be both.
Thank you for reading Something’s a Little Off. Fun fact: I have a novella coming out on September 15th. You can pre-order it today.