Don’t Write What You Know

 

This cat is boring. Don’t write about it. No-one will care.

Image © Carlos Porto

To me, ‘write what you know’ must be the worst advice ever. Who comes up with this nonsense? Yet it sticks, presumably just because it can be expressed in a short, memorable sentence.

If I were to write purely about what I know, I’d either have to write a book about the tedious grind of being an entry-level chef, or a compendium of inane factoids about Doctor Who. Cynically, I’m going to suggest that most other writers probably have equally ‘understated’ lives. Did I euphemistically use the word ‘understated’ – I meant to say ‘shit-boring’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that writers as a group tend to lead boring lives – I’m saying that humans as a group tend to lead boring lives. I happen to know some of them personally, and they just won’t shut up about it – sometimes I wish I had the balls to just yawn in their faces and walk away.

Anyway, most of us wouldn’t want to read a book based on our own tedious lives and useless knowledge, so why should anyone else? Sadly, I get the impression that an army of failed-authors-in-waiting are even now slaving over their fifth, unpublished, semiautobiographical work, about an ordinary person who solves predictable crimes at the weekend with the help of their cat.

I think the problem arises because people take ‘write what you know’ literally – a much better piece of advice might be to write what you understand. There must be an almost infinite number of topics I can get to grips with, without having first-hand experience or a university degree in the subject area concerned.

So I suppose this is my advice to other writers, and to myself – for god’s sake, DON’T write about what you know. It bores the shit out of the rest of us. Research something fascinating, bizarre or implausible, understand it, and write about that instead.

Are you writing a novel about an ordinary person who solves predictable crimes at the weekend with the help of their cat? Please don’t e-mail me at pithytitle@live.co.uk or leave a comment below. Just stop writing.

What Are YOU Looking At?

 

Image © Salvatore Vuono

Here’s a shocker – a post on my personal writing blog that’s actually about my personal writing, actually. No rants about our broken society or meandering diatribes on spoon-licking aliens this week. Instead, I have an interesting question for you, the answer to which has a direct bearing on my unusual manuscript. The question is this;

Can accurate visual descriptions ever undermine, rather than reinforce, the strength of a written narrative?

My protagonist, Gwillum Hobnail (who is also the story’s narrator), is blind. Not only is he blind, but he is slightly dim-witted, very susceptible to suggestion, and has only the most basic understanding of the world around him. Gwillum makes up for this with an overactive imagination. He fills the gaps in his knowledge and understanding with invented explanations, locations, words, and even people.

Despite all this, Gwillum is ultimately unable to give visual descriptions of his world, real or imagined, due to the fact that he doesn’t know what seeing is. When a visual description cannot be avoided, both Gwillum and I turn to his companion, Crawly Steve, a mute worm who communicates by tapping on Gwillum’s toes in code.

What I wonder is, am I doing Gwillum a disservice by regularly resorting to the one sense that he can’t make use of himself? Should I have the courage to rely on Gwillum’s limited senses and wild imagination more often? Will the narrative be stronger if the reader is truly forced to experience the world from Gwillum’s perspective? Or will the reader feel alienated without the touchstone of the visual?

I’m finally approaching the end of my first draft, and as time has gone on I’ve resorted more and more often to visual descriptions, and I’m concerned that the story’s unique selling point has been diminished as a result.

My current plan is to use draft two to re-establish the more eclectic and eccentric tone present in the first half of the manuscript. After that I’ll be sending it out to others for feedback – if they feel it needs more conventional visual descriptions, so be it.

So, what do you think? Can accurate visual descriptions ever undermine, rather than reinforce, the strength of a written narrative? Comment below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk.

I Did It All For Science

 

Image © NASA

As regular readers may have noticed, it’s been a little while since my last post. The reason for this is simple – I have absolutely nothing to write about.

Even now this remains the case, making this post an experimental attempt to be both entertaining and informative, whilst simultaneously saying almost nothing at all. By reading, you are implicitly offering yourself up as a participant in this experiment – please ram the electrodes forcibly into your head when the red light flashes.

Are you sitting comfortably? No? Well of course you’re not – I’ve strapped you down and inserted an unnecessarily bulbous probe into your startled rectum. All in the name of science. In any case, we’ll begin with the informative section.

As you may be aware, NASA’s Kepler telescope project has recently announced the discovery of 54 Earth-like planets, far beyond the reaches of our solar system. This is incredibly exciting, and a great achievement, but it will be some time yet before they are able to establish whether any of these planets support life, let alone sentient species with the power of language.

This means that, of the 55 Earth-like planets now known to science (including Earth, which is about as Earth-like as you can get), the total known to have developed a word for the strange taste of a stainless-steel spoon currently stands at zero. I find this incredibly disappointing.

After all, scientists have finally conceded that noodles and pasties have a taste that is neither sweet, sour, bitter nor salt, and declared that this flavour shall henceforth be known as ‘umami’. I defy you to go to the kitchen, lick your cutlery with every inch of your tongue, and tell me that a word exists which accurately describes the flavour you’re experiencing. Only an advanced, sentient species, with millennia of spoon-licking under their belts, can help us now. NASA’s search continues.

Right, that’s it - I think I’ve provided quite enough value for money for one post. The entertaining bit is cancelled. Please remove the soiled scientific apparatus from your tender orifices, and form an orderly queue for the complimentary lollipops.

Are you an alien from a distant world? Do you lick spoons? What about a fish-slice? No? In that case, I won’t bother suggesting that you leave a comment below. And you certainly won’t be interested in e-mailing pithytitle@live.co.uk

Flash Fiction – 3 Sentence Template

 

Image © Ian Kahn

The great talent of Edgar Allan Poe has inspired me to work on some short stories of my own. It’s a welcome break from my novel, which is slowly but surely turning into a doubt-ridden grind. Also, there are lots of ways to get quality short stories in front of readers quickly, and it would be nice to receive some kind of feedback after nearly five months of going at this writing business in a serious way.

Since I’m essentially a dork, with an inherent love of systems and strategies, I quickly developed and implemented something I’m pompously calling the ‘3 Sentence Template’ for writing short stories and flash fiction. My theory is that I should be able to write three amazing sentences representing the beginning, middle and end of a story, then link them together as succinctly as possible, and hopefully end up with a quality piece of writing.

This is how it works:

Sentence 1 – Introduction

The very first sentence of the story should create an evocative setup that clearly indicates or implies the nature of the protagonist and setting, ideally in an unusual manner.

Example: Golden California sun crispened Eddy’s already dry skin, and warmed his blackened heart with the promise of hot, delicious, living brain.

Sentence 2 – Disaster

The second sentence, designed to appear somewhere in the middle of the story, should describe the most improbably gut-rending, heart-wrenching, hopeless scenario possible for the protagonist, again, as evocatively as possible.

Example: There was something almost restful about the hum of the motor, the purring of the blades gently displacing the air across his throat, and the joyful, expectant faces of the children.

Sentence 3 – Twist

This should be the very last sentence of the story. It should be punchy, ominous, and suitable for using as the punch-line to a shocking twist.

Example: Death was good.

Once I’ve written my three sentences, I proceed to fill in the gaps in whatever manner seems best. It’s a surprising amount of fun working out how you get from one to the next – sort of like a writing exercise, but you also get a finished piece of work at the end of it.

I’ve tried it with two stories so far, and I’m reasonably pleased with both. The first is called Two Heads Are Better Than One, and uses the example sentences above. The second is called The Good Boy, and actually has a complete, layered narrative, based on this method, using only three sentences!

As I’m hoping to get both stories featured on Every Day Fiction, I can’t publish them here just yet. I’ll have to wait to see whether they’re accepted but, one way or another, you’ll get to read them in the near future!

Do you write short stories or flash fiction? Do you have any quirky plotting techniques? Let the world know by leaving a comment below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk.

Rage Against The Myopic Classes

 

This is a picture of me looking intellectual and studious, so you know that everything which follows is 100% true and unbiased.

I like to write on the bus. It may seem like an unusual place to do anything that requires concentration, but provided Cardiff Bus Company has remembered to put on more than four buses, and I am therefore able to find a seat, I often manage to knock out a page or so. The bus is potentially a place free of distraction, where one can cocoon oneself in asocial productivity.

Potentially.

All too often, the cocoon is penetrated by the coarse, discordant racket of whatever disposable music the brainless arses of Britain have unquestioningly purchased this week at the behest of Radio 1, and now feel compelled to play to the rest of us through a zero-point-naught-watt phone speaker. When this happens, I stop writing, and instead spend the entire journey in a state of silent, coronary-inducing fury. Sometimes I quietly snap my biro over my knee and jam the two jagged ends into my ears in a desperate bid to block out Kanye West.

I loathe the sort of people that do this. I mean really loathe – and I know, in your heart, you do too. I’d go so far as to say that they need some kind of collective name, so that we can all direct our loathing more precisely. ‘Bastards’ would be good, but it’s a bit too broad.

The name should reflect the fact that these people are so dense, thoughtless and socially-unaware, that they either think it’s totally acceptable to pollute public spaces with their personal music preference, or they realise it’s unacceptable, but simply don’t care about anything other than the satisfaction of their own immediate desires.

I’d like to propose the name ‘The Myopic Classes’*.

The ‘Classes’ part is not something I’ve chosen carelessly. The class divide in Britain is alive and well, but it’s no longer based on wealth, status or breeding. The two-tier class system of today is based on education, empathy, social-awareness and civility. A stark divide exists between those who possess all of these faculties, and those who possess none of them. You can see it in some people’s eyes – two dispiriting windows into a mind devoid of all though and emotion, save for a burning sense of crass, hedonistic entitlement.

Sadly, I suspect that Britain probably doesn’t have the resources to educate every individual, and rehabilitate every community, to the level necessary for the eradication of the Myopic Classes. A psychotically optimistic Marxist might claim otherwise, but I’m a realist.

If anything, the situation is likely to get worse, not better. Already, for example, the government budget for free book programmes is being drastically reduced. This means that more undisciplined and culture-starved children will never get the opportunity to read for pleasure or enlightenment, as their feckless, Myopic parents squander the child benefit money on X-Factor phone-ins and Katie Price Signature Series Dignity Removers. It’s a cycle seemingly without end, and Britain is churning out vacuous morons at a frightening rate.

As you may be aware, I’m not a social historian. I couldn’t tell you how, why or when this divide occurred, but I trust the evidence of my eyes and my experience, and I can tell you without reservation that it exists. I’m sure you’ve noticed it yourself - unless you’re one of my mysterious readers in Malaysia, Brazil or Russia. In that case, I can only hope that you don’t have to deal with the knuckle-dragging zombies that most of us in Britain encounter on a daily basis. Who knows, perhaps Malaysia is a utopia of intellectualism and social enlightenment. Perhaps those lucky Malaysians have never even heard of N-Dubz.

The rest of us may not be able to relieve ourselves of the Myopic Classes, but perhaps we can relieve them of the tools with which they torture us. In a future post, I will bring together two seemingly unrelated subjects – social decline, and high-energy radio frequency weapons (HERF), with exciting implications for the future of noise pollution on public transport.

Yes, that’s right – I’m going to blow up some chav’s excrement-spewing phone with a homemade ray-gun.** Hurrah!

Has your writing schedule been affected by the Myopic Classes? Has some ignorant, foul-mouthed oik ever ruined your day in the pursuit of their own selfish agenda? Why not vent your entirely justified fury by leaving a comment?

 

* ‘Myopic’ essentially means short-sighted, unthinking and narrow-minded. Not knowing what ‘myopic’ means does not qualify you for membership of the Myopic Classes. Not caring probably does.

** ‘Chav’ is a piece of British slang, generally used in reference to exactly the kind of person I’ve spent this entire article describing. Feel free to borrow it for use in your country of origin. If you don’t have chavs in your country of origin, please tell me how you do it.

Book Review: The Neverending Story

 

Image © Alexandre Duret-Lutz

The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende, has ended. Furthermore, it has ended prematurely. This isn’t because the book caught fire or was whisked away by an albatross whilst I was reading it, but because the author has betrayed me, and I am giving both him and his much-loved novel the finger. How have I been betrayed? I’ll explain shortly.

First, in case you’ve been living in the centre of the Moon since the 1970’s, this is the basic premise of the plot; awkward kid steals a book and hides out in an attic, reading about the adventures of a not-awkward kid in a dying fantasy world. Awkward kid realises that only he can save the fantasy land, and enters the world of the book….

I gave up reading shortly after this.* Why? Because having spent a third of the book building up this fantasy world, introducing us to its rules and its characters, and inviting us to invest emotionally in its continued existence, Ende commits the bizarre act of ripping up his own story and effectively starting from scratch.

The entire world and everything in it is destroyed in an instant and made anew. The central characters are unceremoniously written out of the plot in a few throwaway sentences (and they don’t come back – I flicked through to check).

The one piece of continuity with everything that has happened up to this point is the continued existence of Awkward Kid, but within a single chapter, Ende changes not just his appearance, but also much of his personality, effectively making him an entirely new character, beginning an entirely new plotline, in a new world, with a new supporting cast.

Up to this point, I had already found the novel awkwardly written, and a bit of a slog (although it is a translation, which may be partially to blame). I’d found most of the characters to be simplistically-drawn ciphers, and the world itself to be an incoherent hodge-podge of fantasy miscellany.

The book had been very highly recommended to me by a friend, so I had been prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, but now I’ve actually reached a point where The Neverending Story is having a negative impact on my life. I just don’t want to pick it up and carry on reading. I can’t be bothered to go through the tedium of forced investment in ‘Mark 2’ of Ende’s plot. At the same time, it doesn’t feel right for me to have two books on the go at once, so I’ve read nothing for three weeks – a sad state of affairs for a writer. I need to get back on the horse.

To that end, I’m abandoning The Neverending Story. The hideous grind is over. Goodbye.

Have you read The Neverending Story? What did you think of it? Am I being unfair? Please leave a comment below, or e-mail me.

*My understanding is that the plot of the film version also draws to a close shortly after this. Coincidence? Or simply an indication that I have exactly the same attention span as a Hollywood executive?

Everybody Shut Up Please

© David Saunders

I’ve begun to doubt the merits of freedom of speech. The concept was developed in an age before social media, which is quickly making a mockery of this hard-won freedom. These days, it’s just too easy for any witless chump to pass the most inane of comments, and for it to be broadcast immediately to the world. If people had to work harder for their voice to be heard, perhaps they’d take more time to question the value of their words.

As an example, here’s what Albert Camus had to say on the broad topic of ‘freedom’.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Albert Camus lived in an era when to broadcast anything beyond your immediate vicinity required time, money and effort – only thoughts and words of self-evident value made it into the public domain. You may agree, you may disagree, but Mr Camus has, at the very least, given us something interesting to think about. He has made some contribution to our cultural understanding of a complex metaphysical subject.

In the interests of comparison, here’s a selection of what Twitter users have to say on the same subject.

“I've done all I had to do today. #freedom”

I’m pretty sure that not even my closest friends give two shits about whether I manage to achieve all of my goals today. That’s my business. This person has wasted their opportunity to use the unprecedented power that Twitter provides, by making a statement that need never have left the confines of their own skull.

“EARN UP TO $ 10 per 1000 views #money #earnings #visits #financial #freedom #paidtowrite #sites”

Twitter also provides the unprecedented power to take evocative words like ‘freedom’, stick a hashtag on the front, and twist them into a transparent attempt to scam the easily bewildered. Previously, some horrible little man would have had to actively waste his life knocking on doors and handing out flyers to ensnare people with the manipulative nonsense we now call ‘spam’. This is the toxic fallout that unchecked freedom spills into the twinkly ocean of knowledge.

“#anonymous Declaration - January 15 is the day to stand for #freedom http://t.co/natNjCW via @WhyWeProtest”

This is the biggest mockery of freedom of speech you’re likely to find. Thousands of anonymous keyboard-jockeys are now free to click the ‘retweet’ button, and instantly broadcast their profound support for ‘freedom’, without actually saying or doing anything that might cause them strain, either physically or mentally. These people are truly the kind of mindless, bleating sheep who should automatically forfeit all rights to a retweet button, and maybe buttons in general. I hope their trousers fall down.

It’s probably too late to backtrack on freedom of speech. Humanity as a culture is too convinced of its merits. Maybe we can’t remove people’s right to speak – but maybe, somehow, we can remove their right to be listened to.