Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hi everyone!

Over in another topic we were discussing things to do with dialogue tags, which led to a wider discussion about dissecting and analyzing elements which make books appealing/successful, which led me here.

Back on point. I'm not sure what others think, but it got me thinking about whether or not we live in a cynical/skeptical time? Have we become so focussed on critical analysis and structured thought that our imaginations pay the price?

Anyway, I would be hugely interested to hear peoples thoughts on the following:

a) Can being too harsh a critic lessen our ability to just enjoy books over time? Can we become jaded?

b) Does the filter of critical examination - perhaps sinking to a subconscious level directly in proportion with our level of skill/knowledge/experience - take us just that tiny step away from creativity/appreciation? Or does it enhance it? Allow us to see avenues, bends, nuances we may otherwise have missed?

When I first set upon a dedicated course of unraveling the deeper mysteries of literature, I started an unforeseen train of events barreling along out of control. I made my first independent breakthrough with Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. But I was crushed by a brutal realization. A comment I made to online classmates, "I am ruined. I'll never again be able to simply enjoy a story."

I became hyperacute in uncovering the superficial and deeper levels of a narrative's meaning. A shelf full of dictionaries, access to university libraries' in-depth collections and literature journals, the whole World Wide Web at my beck and call, I looked up everything I was even slightly unclear about.

As a critiquer, I became a victim of the twin traps of overtreatment and indifference. Overtreatment of narratives I saw promise in. Indifference toward ones that held little promise in my opinion. I was solely a fault finder.

After four years of drilling into the arcana of literature and storytelling terminology, my writer's progress hit a dead end. I was devastated. For this bitterness I'd sacrificed my passion for reading?

Casting about for a solution, I turned back to novels that previously had enthralled me. Why? Because they didn't disengage me from my immersion trance. How did they not? That was an incorrect question for me. I stopped finding fault and sought instead virtues.

The question then became how are these virtues crafted? Applying the same hyperacute attention to detail, I found the same tools I'd used to find vices now found virtues. Virtues were harder to dissect and evaluate, even harder to share my insights. However, praising virtues encouraged writers who'd previously only suffered my harsh criticisms. We made more effort to reach a mutual understanding. We progressed. I learned more. My writer's progress resumed.

In the end, after seven years of torturing myself, reading again became a joy, although I was worried I'd no longer be able to enjoy simpler stories. Instead, they became more vital, more entertaining, more personally meaningful. Stories that at one time had been entirely inaccessible to me now were open books, or intriguing puzzles to solve. My lifelong passion was restored and became even more enjoyable than before.

I'll second polymath, though that wasn't my experience. I have known a couple people like that. One of the other students (when I was getting my Masters) was like that. He couldn't really read anymore. He was just trying to break things down for his own writing. Hardly ever finished reading anything. Which kind of blew me away. I'd be much less enthralled with writing if it ruined reading for me. The writing, I think, springs out of the reading in many ways.

But for me it was never a problem. There were times when I consciously broke things apart, but most of the time I could do a split-brain sort of thing. The mind's a wonderful little grey sponge. So the major part was simply experiencing and living the story. But another part, at the same time, was sort of tinkering around, poking and prodding and pulling things apart. Even in the background you can absorb a lot. Structure, language, flow, style, voice... your brain is processing all these things. With a little effort the unconscious process can be viewed. Sometimes the key comes after you've finished reading, in that time where reflection is possible. You can feel the story... but you can then work out how it was done. How did they get you to experience and feel these particular things?

But the real key is simply experience. I think learning most tasks is fairly similar. It's about familiarity, about the unconscious and the conscious. I'll use basketball as an example. You start learning to play, your skills get better... but then you get in a game, and a coach has a system, plays you have to run, spots you have to be in at the right time. It's a complex interaction. At the beginning you'll be thinking your way through it. A very conscious process. "Oh, John's coming off a screen here. I have to pass him the ball over there. And then I cut over there. Okay. I can do that. Here goes." It's slow. Complex tasks have to be thought through. It can feel unnatural. You're behind the game. Mistakes happen, your'e not in the flow, everything seems chaotic, particularly when something happens that's not according to the plan.

But after awhile, after you keep playing and playing... the physical actions become entrenched in muscle memory, and the mental aspects do something quite similar. The complex series of adjustsments are assimilated. They become a matter of instinct rather than thought. You react rather than act. Instead of thinking "Oh, John's coming off a screen..." you just see a flash of movement and the ball's already out of your hands.

It's the same for writing (and reading). It's a complex task. And it can be easy, particularly early on, to overthink it, to be caught up in the specifics, in the techniques, the nuts and bolts. But the more you break down the parts, the more you understand, and the more you try to apply all this by writing, writing, writing... the more this process becomes internalized. Skills and techniques are assimilated. You no longer think them but feel them. They are instinctual, part of the fluid and shifting net of personal knowledge and experience each writer operates out of.

Everything becomes integrated. It's like having a tool chest. At first you might be like "How the hell do I use this lathe? Bloody awkward." But after a few years and a few dozen houses... you won't even think. The lathe will simply be in your hands when you need it. The same goes for all those tools.

Integration. There's an old saying..."The first million words are the hardest". A number of writers have suggested it takes that many words to really find your voice. Now, the actual number might be irrelevant (and different for everybody anyway), but I do think there's something to it. It takes awhile to integrate that knowledge. It takes awhile to learn that whole tool chest. And shying away from that effort because you fear that risk, fear that potential loss... I don't think that helps.

But that's just me. We're all weirdly different. My wife puts mustard on everything. A puzzlement, I tell you, a puzzlement.

Best,
Ink

Ink wrote: It's the same for writing (and reading). It's a complex task. And it can be easy, particularly early on, to overthink it, to be caught up in the specifics, in the techniques, the nuts and bolts. But the more you break down the parts, the more you understand, and the more you try to apply all this by writing, writing, writing... the more this process becomes internalized. Skills and techniques are assimilated. You no longer think them but feel them. They are instinctual, part of the fluid and shifting net of personal knowledge and experience each writer operates out of.

Integration. There's an old saying..."The first million words are the hardest". A number of writers have suggested it takes that many words to really find your voice. Now, the actual number might be irrelevant (and different for everybody anyway), but I do think there's something to it. It takes awhile to integrate that knowledge. It takes awhile to learn that whole tool chest. And shying away from that effort because you fear that risk, fear that potential loss... I don't think that helps.

I finished two full MS's before I started editing them. I used to read several books a week. I loved to read and I loved to write. But what happened once I got the editing phase? A nightmare, I tell ya'. Everything stopped. The reading and the writing. My first 80,000 words were the easiest.

I'm not an english major - business is my thing. I've never taken a creative writing class and I didn't even read a romance novel before I wrote my first one (go ahead and laugh...I know you want to). For me, everything I needed was already there - the creativeness and the story was just there. I had a story to tell, in my way. So I did. After that, it just kept coming.

Now I've joined blogs and critique groups and forums and learned more than I ever thought I would. But with that new knowledge comes the second guessing. I find it difficult to write now because I'm trying for that perfection I learned about. I find it difficult to read because the things I read don't follow the rules that are pounded into my head.

I honestly think I was better off before "learning about the craft". Don't get me wrong. I still love to write. I just find it more difficult. And since it's more difficult, I don't spend near as much time doing it. I'm still stuck in the ghastly editing phase. Do I think my writing is getting be better the more I write? Yes, but it's not because I have went out and learned a bunch about writing. Most of the stuff I have learned, I have since blocked out. It doesn't work for me. I can't function thinking about all that technical stuff.

So, yeah...being too critical (and technical) has made me both a jaded reader and writer. Oh, I've got a plan though. I always persevere.

~JD

Justine,

That's kind of funny about the 80,000 words being easiest. But I think it's not so much about those first words being difficult to actually write (in a phsical/emotional sense), but more about how difficult it is to write really well. It's hard to get really good stuff right away. I know my first novel attempt wasn't that hard to write in the sense of simply getting the words down. But, you know, it was a 400,000 word manuscript. Um... yeah. 400K. It needed a wee bit of revision, probably. :)

And I think the rest of your experience goes with what I was saying. I think it was difficult because you were learning all this different stuff. But it was all very conscious still. You were thinking it, and maybe overthinking it since it was so distracting. But I'm guessing now you're moving past that. I bet a lot of what you've learned is being incorporated now. Not all of it, of course. We don't take to everything. But in pushing it away, in a conscious sense, I wouldn't be surprised if you were unconsciously making use of much of it. Things will come out instinctively in your writing. It's like the background when you're operating in the foreground. And I think that will only continue. I'm guessing if you keep it up the writing and analysis will both become more fluid, more instinctive.

Studies have showed interesting things about learning. The young learn much easier than the old, their brains sucking things up as they form pattersn and neural schematics. But there's an exception. In areas of expertise, older people pick up things extremely fast. Experience, training, hours spent in application... these are hugely important. The more you do, the more expertise is gained. And the more expertise you gain, the easier you acquire further knowledge and skills in that area. For example, a surgeon who tries to learn Chinese at age 56... will probably find it harder than many six year olds would. But they will absorb a new surgical stitching technique very quickly indeed. Same goes for writing, I think.


Best,
Ink
Of course, you know, I could be talking out of my ass here. :) So feel free to ignore.

I can't laugh about a writer who's never cracked the first code of writing and writes well regardless of educational writing experience. Writing is all of life conflated into one process. What I learned about chemistry bears on writing. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, marine biology, natural history, political geography, business, math, car repair, I was a busy little bee in college and am in life.

When proving the algebraic distance formula using the quadriatic equation unfolds like a beautifully well-constructed story plot, I'm convinced every discipline of knowledge and experience comes to bear in writing. Proofreading a drearily dull deposition transcript of a medical malpractice lawsuit, whoa! it has a plot. Dry as it is, I'm enthralled. The legal discovery process is a passionate personalities' clash in a convivial yet adversarial setting that invariably involves human suffering. Yikes! that's rich. Discovery is the counterpart of reversal in every twist and turn of a plot, and in every facet of criminal/civil justice. A ten-second commercial television spot has a plot. A postcard has a plot. They all do the one rudimentary thing a plot must do, stimulate emotion. The good ones stimulate passions strongly.

I went through a phase of second-guessing in my writing process and the paralysis thereof. I drilled in deeper and found the answers that liberated my writing me. I'm still second-guessing, just my tool kit is equipped with skills for choosing a best possible choice. It's becoming second nature.

I spent an immense amount of time reviewing the young adult fiction that was directed at me by friends, online communities, and everything and anyone interested in targeting my age group. As a result, I avoid the YA section of Borders like the plague and scoff at suggested reading lists. Either I've already read what's "appropriate" for my age group of I've read beyond it. For me, it was an excellent transition because for the first time I became exposed to real adult literature. While wading through a library of classics, I came to love both heavy 19th century writing as well as appreciate the thinner prose of today all the same. Becoming more critical makes me respect myself as a reader, but like what Polymath alluded to, it makes you all the more eager to sniff out higher quality writing, the reads worthwhile anyway. I suppose it wouldn't be unlike being a professional conductor, composer, or any music connoisseur--how any of them can listen to the radio today, I'm not sure, but they don't stop loving music.

Ink wrote:Justine,

That's kind of funny about the 80,000 words being easiest. But I think it's not so much about those first words being difficult to actually write (in a phsical/emotional sense), but more about how difficult it is to write really well. It's hard to get really good stuff right away.

Ignore? Nah...

But I thought it was funny how you worded this. You could have just said, "Ya' know, Justine...that first 80k might have come easy - but it's probably not that great."

That would have made me laugh ;-) Because, your right.

~JD

polymath wrote:When I first set upon a dedicated course of unraveling the deeper mysteries of literature, I started an unforeseen train of events barreling along out of control. I made my first independent breakthrough with Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. But I was crushed by a brutal realization. A comment I made to online classmates, "I am ruined. I'll never again be able to simply enjoy a story."

I became hyperacute in uncovering the superficial and deeper levels of a narrative's meaning. A shelf full of dictionaries, access to university libraries' in-depth collections and literature journals, the whole World Wide Web at my beck and call, I looked up everything I was even slightly unclear about.

As a critiquer, I became a victim of the twin traps of overtreatment and indifference. Overtreatment of narratives I saw promise in. Indifference toward ones that held little promise in my opinion. I was solely a fault finder.

After four years of drilling into the arcana of literature and storytelling terminology, my writer's progress hit a dead end. I was devastated. For this bitterness I'd sacrificed my passion for reading?

Casting about for a solution, I turned back to novels that previously had enthralled me. Why? Because they didn't disengage me from my immersion trance. How did they not? That was an incorrect question for me. I stopped finding fault and sought instead virtues.

The question then became how are these virtues crafted? Applying the same hyperacute attention to detail, I found the same tools I'd used to find vices now found virtues. Virtues were harder to dissect and evaluate, even harder to share my insights. However, praising virtues encouraged writers who'd previously only suffered my harsh criticisms. We made more effort to reach a mutual understanding. We progressed. I learned more. My writer's progress resumed.

In the end, after seven years of torturing myself, reading again became a joy, although I was worried I'd no longer be able to enjoy simpler stories. Instead, they became more vital, more entertaining, more personally meaningful. Stories that at one time had been entirely inaccessible to me now were open books, or intriguing puzzles to solve. My lifelong passion was restored and became even more enjoyable than before.

Polymath, you have amazing self preservation and persevernce to continue on in spite of what sounds like a tremendously challenging journey along the way. What a diverse range of experiences you have lived just up until now!

It's really nice to hear that you have 'come full circle', so to speak, and can now use all the learning gained (negative and positive experiences alike) along they way to enhance your reading experience.

Thanks very much for sharing.

Regards

Leila

Ink wrote:I'll second polymath, though that wasn't my experience. I have known a couple people like that. One of the other students (when I was getting my Masters) was like that. He couldn't really read anymore. He was just trying to break things down for his own writing. Hardly ever finished reading anything. Which kind of blew me away. I'd be much less enthralled with writing if it ruined reading for me. The writing, I think, springs out of the reading in many ways.

But for me it was never a problem. There were times when I consciously broke things apart, but most of the time I could do a split-brain sort of thing. The mind's a wonderful little grey sponge. So the major part was simply experiencing and living the story. But another part, at the same time, was sort of tinkering around, poking and prodding and pulling things apart. Even in the background you can absorb a lot. Structure, language, flow, style, voice... your brain is processing all these things. With a little effort the unconscious process can be viewed. Sometimes the key comes after you've finished reading, in that time where reflection is possible. You can feel the story... but you can then work out how it was done. How did they get you to experience and feel these particular things?

But the real key is simply experience. I think learning most tasks is fairly similar. It's about familiarity, about the unconscious and the conscious. I'll use basketball as an example. You start learning to play, your skills get better... but then you get in a game, and a coach has a system, plays you have to run, spots you have to be in at the right time. It's a complex interaction. At the beginning you'll be thinking your way through it. A very conscious process. "Oh, John's coming off a screen here. I have to pass him the ball over there. And then I cut over there. Okay. I can do that. Here goes." It's slow. Complex tasks have to be thought through. It can feel unnatural. You're behind the game. Mistakes happen, your'e not in the flow, everything seems chaotic, particularly when something happens that's not according to the plan.

But after awhile, after you keep playing and playing... the physical actions become entrenched in muscle memory, and the mental aspects do something quite similar. The complex series of adjustsments are assimilated. They become a matter of instinct rather than thought. You react rather than act. Instead of thinking "Oh, John's coming off a screen..." you just see a flash of movement and the ball's already out of your hands.

It's the same for writing (and reading). It's a complex task. And it can be easy, particularly early on, to overthink it, to be caught up in the specifics, in the techniques, the nuts and bolts. But the more you break down the parts, the more you understand, and the more you try to apply all this by writing, writing, writing... the more this process becomes internalized. Skills and techniques are assimilated. You no longer think them but feel them. They are instinctual, part of the fluid and shifting net of personal knowledge and experience each writer operates out of.

Everything becomes integrated. It's like having a tool chest. At first you might be like "How the hell do I use this lathe? Bloody awkward." But after a few years and a few dozen houses... you won't even think. The lathe will simply be in your hands when you need it. The same goes for all those tools.

Integration. There's an old saying..."The first million words are the hardest". A number of writers have suggested it takes that many words to really find your voice. Now, the actual number might be irrelevant (and different for everybody anyway), but I do think there's something to it. It takes awhile to integrate that knowledge. It takes awhile to learn that whole tool chest. And shying away from that effort because you fear that risk, fear that potential loss... I don't think that helps.

But that's just me. We're all weirdly different. My wife puts mustard on everything. A puzzlement, I tell you, a puzzlement.

Best,
Ink

Thanks, Ink,

Agreed - to everything! (Not that you needed me to agree with you, but the process of learning, the what, why, how etc always has levels of consciousness and unconsciousness about it, so what you said makes sense and aligns with adult learning theory.)

In my experience, much in life is about learning, (in whatever context) integrating learning and putting it to best and most enjoyable/appropriate use along the way. I guess the balance, as such, also depends on: us, as people, our life's journey and where that takes us, our attitudes, support mechanisms, opportunities (financial and otherwise) and our base natures. There, now that was succinct wasn't it! Ahem.

I'm a bit like you re the split brain thing. Connecting that to reading, I don't deliberately read in any particular frame of mind. I'm usually so enthused about whatever book I have ready to devour I just dive right in and leave conscious reflection for later. I like to experience the story in the moment, so whatever analysis my brain wants to contribute to help me process the story as I read it, so be it.

I think critical analysis is a great thing. But, like everythng, it has it's place and I would hate to think that something like reading can become so clinical as to not be enjoyable anymore because of it.

So again, it's great to hear that reading is a happy space for you. I hope that it is the case for others as well.

JustineDell wrote:
So, yeah...being too critical (and technical) has made me both a jaded reader and writer. Oh, I've got a plan though. I always persevere.

~JD

Good for you! Does your plan involve lots of chocolate? I can highly recommend that as a good support mechanism. Lol.

lightelement94 wrote:I spent an immense amount of time reviewing the young adult fiction that was directed at me by friends, online communities, and everything and anyone interested in targeting my age group. As a result, I avoid the YA section of Borders like the plague and scoff at suggested reading lists. Either I've already read what's "appropriate" for my age group of I've read beyond it. For me, it was an excellent transition because for the first time I became exposed to real adult literature. While wading through a library of classics, I came to love both heavy 19th century writing as well as appreciate the thinner prose of today all the same. Becoming more critical makes me respect myself as a reader, but like what Polymath alluded to, it makes you all the more eager to sniff out higher quality writing, the reads worthwhile anyway. I suppose it wouldn't be unlike being a professional conductor, composer, or any music connoisseur--how any of them can listen to the radio today, I'm not sure, but they don't stop loving music.

That's a very interesting perspective. Just out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking, what sort of books rate amongst your current favorites?

Bruce Lee said about martial arts training: at first, a punch is just a punch, then a punch is more than just a punch, but then a punch is just a punch. So at first you're writing naturally, then you're learning and thinking and it's all confusing, but then, you cross that mysterious threshold and you're just writing again.

But as for reading, I just developed a disinterest in books that I felt like I'd read before. The Ancient Evil of ---- is going to attack the magical kingdom of ------ but only the main character can stop them because of her/his magical gift of ----.

That character or prose had better be damn good if I'm going to read a book with such a plot, because otherwise this book has nothing to teach me. I don't object to a writer writing a formulaic book, because they do sell well, but I do think I should read books by writers who are better than I am, since I can learn from them, but that has the side effect of leaving me feeling unworthy.

Leila wrote:Polymath, you have amazing self preservation and persevernce to continue on in spite of what sounds like a tremendously challenging journey along the way. What a diverse range of experiences you have lived just up until now!

It's really nice to hear that you have 'come full circle', so to speak, and can now use all the learning gained (negative and positive experiences alike) along they way to enhance your reading experience.

Thanks very much for sharing.

Regards

Leila

Thank you, Leila. The journey of life is a plot. Of course, with that statement I've put the cart before the horse. Plot is an imitation of real life, not the other way around. Yet it's crucial to put a cart in front of a horse when going down a steep hill in case the cart breaks loose.

Anyway, in hindsight, the frustrations I've faced are the problematic antagonisms compelling me forward through greater efforts to overcome daunting obstacles. Inciting crisis, life gave me an important message to share with the world. Tragic crisis, learning how best to convey the message against insuperable odds caused a great loss. Resolving crisis, an unequivocable transformation of how I perceive narratives' vices and virtues broke the log jam and restored equilibrium.

Again, in hindsight, the journey was worth the agony. In fact, when all is said and done, the journey is the reward. Opposition makes a meaningful journey more rewarding. Money is ephemeral at best. Acclaim and approval are as fleeting as audience attention spans. The end of a journey is the payoff of an enduring legacy, but what then? It's the journey I remember most vividly. I say to the cosmos, "Life is more enjoyable from all the negotiable frustrations. Bring it on!"