You Gotta Care
Why the simple question "are you writing the story you want to tell?" is so damn important
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!
A friend and I were talking about writing recently, as me and most of my friends do at some point. I expressed frustration with the development of a scene which didn't seem to be going anywhere.
As a discovery writer, this is not an unusual phenomenon for me, since I rarely know exactly where scenes are going in the first place.
But most of the time I at least have a bead on the through-line, a general idea of what's going to happen—a conflict, some introspection, a bit of romantic flirting, and so on. It might not be much more than a vibe but it’s something! This particular scene just felt out of whack, though, and I could not pin down why. So, in the grand tradition of writers eternal, I was complaining about it.
My friend asked me a very simple question: “Are you writing the story that you want to tell?”
It stopped me in my tracks, because I realized instantly that what I had been doing was worrying about what the reader would read, and if it would make sense to them, and if they would like it, and if it would be a compelling scene, and…and…
Those are valid questions! They are valid, even critical, at different stages along the path of writing and editing if you want anybody to actually read your story.
But as you travel along the creative journey of actually writing a story, they are sometimes not helpful questions.
The writing community at large tends to elevate the needs of the reader over the needs of the writer. This is acknowledged more in genre fiction circles than literary fiction, but I think they are thinking about it equally often, just from different directions.
While genre writers are concerned about genre expectations and writing to market, literary authors want to have readers understand the theme(s) or the writer’s vision. Their target demographic might be critics and agents and students of literature, but they do have a target demographic they are writing for (whether they admit it or not).
The result is that for all writers, the idea of writing the story we want to tell tends to get lost.
I don't think I am intrinsically a people pleaser, but I was trained to be one growing up in my highly dysfunctional family. The result is that I don't want to do things that upset people and I'm highly confrontation-avoidant. People who've seen me get in confrontations or even just set boundaries for myself are often shocked to hear this, but what they don't see is the literal decades of self-work which have gone into allowing me to stand up for myself in the face of other people's displeasure, disappointment or anger. It’s never easy, and even to this day, it carries over into my writing practice.
When I first dropped back into fanfiction, it was at a very low point in my life. I was suffering from cPTSD and a marriage that was going sour. I used fanfiction as a release valve and an escape hatch, and it was wonderful…mostly.
One of my early forays into “long-fic” (novel-length stories) featured an original female character. It was a fairly obvious self-insertion, but I tried to make her interesting and not a ridiculous trope. Retrospectively, I admit the story is not great, but I have no regrets about that character. Unfortunately, at the time, I naively, mistakenly looked up to one of the “Big Name Fans” who very condescendingly warned me against writing mary-sue fic. I was mortified. All interest I had in continuing the story simply disappeared. I became so worried about being labeled a “mary-sue writer” that I ran away from the story and, in short order, the fandom itself. Oh, the shame of it all!!!!!
What I realize in retrospect was that she was the one who was mortified. She was the one who cared more about appearances than the story I was trying to tell. She was the one throwing around the accusation of “mary-sue” at every single original female character anyone wrote into their fanfic, no matter how minor (as it turned out). But my insecurities meant I took her words to heart instead of listening to what was in my own heart. I never finished the story I wanted to tell because I was shamed by both her and myself into caring less about the story than about what other people would say about it (and me).
There is a time and a place for worrying about demographics, accuracy/believability, and even about reader reactions. But first, the story needs to be written.
When I was talking to (complaining at!) my friend about the scene I was having problems with, her question “Are you writing the story you want to tell?” put all my internal doubts and fears on hold, just for a moment. That pause allowed me to realize that I had jumped the tracks and was putting too much effort into thinking about externalities I have marginal control over at best: Would readers love the story? Would they care about my heroine? Would they get the jokes? Would they care?
Maybe. Maybe not! The incontrovertible fact is that no one is able to care until I write the story I want to tell.
As a writer, it is easy for me to get waylaid by internal nagging about reader expectations or genre conventions or style or beats etcetera and forget the most important part: I need to care about my story first.
Yes! Writing those stories we need to tell is the main reason any of us ought to write at all.