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Bad at drama?

Incanus

Auror
What if it turns out that I’m just poor at inventing/developing/presenting drama? And that no matter how much I work at it, the best I’ll ever get is still below par (wherever or whatever that is)?

Does that mean I should not bother to write at all? Or does it mean I’m in the wrong genre, or using the wrong storytelling mode? Or, I write the stuff, but just don’t submit it anywhere?

I’m in the middle of exploring these questions and I’m attempting to see if I can’t make up a nice pitcher of lemonade out of the big pile of lemons I apparently have at my disposal.

So, I suck at drama and sympathetic characters, but what about satire? I’ve been messing around with it for about 2 weeks now, but I haven’t a clue yet. Well, maybe one clue: the brainstorming and the writing itself have happened at a quicker rate than for my other projects so far. Good or bad, it seems to be falling together a little faster.

And what am I to make of one of the biggest selling books of all time, Lord of the Rings? (The book, NOT the movie.) A few characters are mildly sympathetic at most, but this story is chiefly about the setting and ideas and a well-charted non-existent place. Going by what people say should be in stories, this book should be virtually unknown, and yet it still sells and sells and sells. I find that pretty confusing.
 

ddmealing

Dreamer
Lord of the Rings wouldn't be published today. Chuck Berry wouldn't get a record deal either.

Art evolves. It doesn't mean LOTR is bad. It's brilliant. A work of genius. But what's commercial now isn't what was commercial 50 years ago, and the same will be said 50 years from now about our bestsellers.

As to the first bit, I'm of the opinion almost anyone can learn to write publishable fiction in any genre. If you've hit the limit of the effort you're willing to expend, that's perfectly fine and understandable. But I don't buy an argument that says 'I just can't do it no matter how hard I try.' How could you possibly know that! All you have is where you are now, and what you're willing to do next.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
What everyone says is mostly diddly-squat. Nobody knows what will sell until it does... they are better at saying what won't sell, but still, it's not close to 100%. I disagree with your assessment of LoTR books, but that's me.

Fact is, when I read most modern big selling stuff, I wonder how it got published... if you look at the dos and don'ts so many babble about in publishing... egads. Hideousness to spare. I won't pick on Brandon Sanderson because I said I wouldn't do that anymore, but look at his sales and some of his use of language and flat out errors make me sputter and grin. Other #1 NYT bestsellers make gaffes and employ awful cliches and do innumerable no-nos.

Presenting drama is a B, but I haven't seen your work, so it's impossible to say what you're doing. And what's dramatic to some people isn't to others... I point to my complete lack of interest in Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, and such as Rothfuss who just bores me to death, plus drives me crazy with some lame writing. I do not promise to not pick on Rothfuss. I worry about drama all the time, emotion all the time... mainly my pacing, for years I paced too slow, so now, I may be pacing too fast... oh higgly piggly. I'm trying to embrace breakneck epic, and see if I can make it work. LOL. I don't like wasting time in reading or writing, probably a hangover from screenwriting.

But emotion, me? I'm not that emotional, I really have to dig and pound at emotion to (hopefully) bring it out in the characters and make the reader feel it.

Lord of the Rings would probably have a better chance at publication today than it did then, frankly. What market did it have then? How long did it take to really go? Would it be the mega hit? who knows, impossible to say. I wouldn't predict the sales of Potter books because I think they're crap. What do I know? LOL.
 

troynos

Minstrel
Art is subjective. What is good to one is not good to another, etc..

There is no right answer.

Don't try to force yourself into a type of writing (drama, satire, etc..). Just write and see where it ends up.
 
What everyone says is mostly diddly-squat. Nobody knows what will sell until it does... they are better at saying what won't sell, but still, it's not close to 100%. I disagree with your assessment of LoTR books, but that's me.

Fact is, when I read most modern big selling stuff, I wonder how it got published... if you look at the dos and don'ts so many babble about in publishing... egads. Hideousness to spare. I won't pick on Brandon Sanderson because I said I wouldn't do that anymore, but look at his sales and some of his use of language and flat out errors make me sputter and grin. Other #1 NYT bestsellers make gaffes and employ awful cliches and do innumerable no-nos.

Presenting drama is a B, but I haven't seen your work, so it's impossible to say what you're doing. And what's dramatic to some people isn't to others... I point to my complete lack of interest in Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, and such as Rothfuss who just bores me to death, plus drives me crazy with some lame writing. I do not promise to not pick on Rothfuss. I worry about drama all the time, emotion all the time... mainly my pacing, for years I paced too slow, so now, I may be pacing too fast... oh higgly piggly. I'm trying to embrace breakneck epic, and see if I can make it work. LOL. I don't like wasting time in reading or writing, probably a hangover from screenwriting.

But emotion, me? I'm not that emotional, I really have to dig and pound at emotion to (hopefully) bring it out in the characters and make the reader feel it.

Lord of the Rings would probably have a better chance at publication today than it did then, frankly. What market did it have then? How long did it take to really go? Would it be the mega hit? who knows, impossible to say. I wouldn't predict the sales of Potter books because I think they're crap. What do I know? LOL.

Take into account that LOTR helped create today's market for fantasy, which you assert it would work so well in...so if LOTR was released today instead of back then, the market would be totally different because LOTR had never existed in this alternate timeline...fantasy as we know it would be totally different. It's a paradox.
 
It's not impossible to get better. In fact it is very possible. It pains me to see this kind of hopeless attitude. If you work and study hard, you can improve your skills to your satisfaction.

I think all of us, to some degree, start out "just bad." I'm not negating the existence of talent, but skill comes from experience. You're not born with it. However....

Every writer has different strengths. Drama may never be one of your strengths. And that's okay! No writer is good at everything. Even successful writers, even my favorite writers, have things that they suck at. What makes up for it? They have other things they are very, very good at. So, work on improving your weaknesses, but focus on your strengths even more. Figure out what you are good at and get better.

And don't be so quick to assume you suck at something. Who told you this? Your readers/critiquers? That awful little voice in your head? We all come to a point where we believe in our hearts that we suck and we write anyway. After a while, either we don't suck anymore, or we realize we never sucked in the first place.
 
Personally, I find the LOTR characters compelling, and the writing is elegant. There's a lot to be said about taste. Opinions differ. Readers want different things. I, personally, love the Harry Potter series. Some people don't. Some people don't like LOTR. With ANY book there are people who love it and people who hate it. So, what is "good" is extremely objective.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
LOTR wouldn't get published in the year it actually did get published. There was absolutely zero market for that in the early 1950s. Fact is, agents and publishers did and do still take chances. Not many. Probably fewer now simply because there are fewer publishers. OTOH, there is now self-publishing and some unexpected successes have come from that quarter.

But the OP was about Incanus, not Tolkien.
>What if it turns out that I’m just poor at inventing/developing/presenting drama?

How do you know you are poor at this? Have you written *several* works, sent them to agents, and been told they are poor? Or are you discouraged and assuming they are poor and that's why you're discouraged? Those are two very different scenarios.

We writers, especially unpublished ones, are generally lousy at evaluating our own work.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
If I stopped doing everything I sucked at, I wouldn't be doing anything at all. EVER. Including breathing.

I learn, I do. I do, I learn. I do because I want to do. If I don't want to do, I don't.

Everything outside of that doesn't matter. I worry about what I can control. If I stink, I stink. If I'm never going to be good enough, fine. But it doesn't mean I won't stop trying because there's one person who wants to know what happens next in the story and that's me.

All I can do, all any of us can do, is try our best. Learn, try. Rinse and repeat until you die or get tied of doing it and find something else you'd rather do.
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
yeppers @ Penpilot.

I suck at so much about writing. I can't create good plots. Period. I can't organize things to a single theme. I have a hard time getting from point A to point D without taking a bunch of detours.

We all have things we aren't great at, and it can be really frustrating. I'm really frustrated right now, because I know where something is going, but I've lost my way in getting there. It's just a blank, and I can't fill it because nothing feels like the kind of "build" I want. If this was a first draft, I'd just plug something useless in there, probably a dinner with people talking, or a cute scene with someone doing something artistic for the sake of "deepening their character" but honestly, none of it serves the right purpose I need to achieve.

So...I have to broaden my search for solutions. That usually turns up the answers.

So far, I've written out outlines of several possibilities, but I don't like any of them. I'm getting my mind confused and I'm making myself very anxious as I continue to "try and fail" to get to a solution. I feel like it would be so much easier for someone smarter than I am, someone with a more rational mind. But I am who I am, and I need to rely on what I CAN do. I can read and I can research.

I have a book, "Make a Scene" and i plan to read today about different kinds of scenes, again. Maybe I'll be able to figure out what kind of scene will help move my story forward. And if I can just get a hint of what I'm missing, I know I can get over this hurdle.

Whatever your personal hurdles are, there are all kinds of ways to get over them. Friends, research, asking this forum, making lists like Donald Maass suggests, Googling "creating dramatic tension" or "writing tense relationships" or whatever, reading novels that capture what you are trying to capture, etc..

The thing is, we all have multiple "versions" of each of our stories. That's what the Caged Cat challenge was about. Okay, so my story is a gritty love story. What if I wrote it as a comedy? As erotic? As an epic? By exploring how we see genres and our own EXPECTATIONS, not only of a story but of ourselves, we can get a clearer picture of what we SHOULD do. And SHOULD, I must define as "the best possible outcome for this particular story. My story wouldn't be the same as an erotic novel, but perhaps it would be BETTER told as one, just not by me, personally, because that's not my strength, and I don't have the right process for developing THIS story into THAT, in a manner that would make it marketable. In short, it would be disappointing to readers of erotic novels.

Okay, so take your story, and decide what it is. Is it an epic journey like LOTR? If it is, then no one's going to argue. Push yourself to create the best LOTR-style epic you can write, and then ask readers who you trust and who enjoy that genre to offer you their insight. I've spent a lot of time asking my high fantasy-writer friends to read my cute romances, and I've never drummed up a ton of excitement for my work.

Taste is personal, and goals are, too. Consider your goals. Are you trying to overcome this drama deficiency, or are you more interested in exploring what other elements make stories great? Drama is great, sure, but many readers enjoy horror or Sci-fi that have little to no inter-personal character drama. What about murder-mysteries? No drama, just clues and red herrings. You might thrive in that sort of genre. Romance might be the top seller, but mystery and thriller are up there too. Perhaps combine your love for fantasy with mystery, where you can stick more to facts and descriptions, but still give a world details that make it special.

I love romance, but I can't stomach corny stories that all have the same plot development and same cheesy soap opera "I just don't want to lose you" messages. Barf. So I write romance my own way.

Write your stories to your own design, but be clear about your goal. You've got the ability, I've seen it. Don't sell yourself short.

Another thing I think happens in this journey, is that we all hit some of the same stumbling blocks along the way, and for some folks, they feel like hopeless-to-overcome obstacles, while others strategize and just sort of leap over. I envy that second group. When I get stuck just before what I like to think of as a "growth spurt", I get hopeless. I get tense, anxious, and my personality really suffers. But once I can find my way past the issue, learn a new skill, or just look at a problem from a new angle, the anxiety fades and I feel unburdened and fresh.

Sometimes when I feel stuck like that, I take a break for a few days or weeks. I don't think about my story, or writing, or even do research. I just cleanse my palate completely and start over with fresh eyes on the problem, doing my prep before I ever open the story back up. I read, learn, and analyze, then I look at the story, and most of the time, the problem isn't as bad as I think. A few things that felt monumental before and overwhelmed me. (Of course, I don't feel that way THIS time, because I'm still stuck on the problem, so of course, it feels monumental!)

This is a hurdle. A test. Writing exacts a toll on us all, and this is one of those. It will pass. You have the power to overcome it. You can get your answers, but they may not be the ones you wanted or expected. I'd never tell anyone to stop work on a project because it isn't worth their time, but I will confidently say that if a work is taking an emotional toll on a person (as it does on me, and is currently), that the solution is more important than the work. The goal is more important. So what is my goal? To ground myself and re-establish what I'm trying to do. Then, after I've stated that aloud or written it on my bathroom mirror, or whatever I do to give it weight, I can begin working on THAT goal alone. Not all my goals at once, because that makes me into a crazy person.

:) Best wishes!
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
@Penpilot, true ... but ... for some, it's the doing that is the most difficult part. This ranges from simple procrastination (of which I am a master) to paralyzing depression. It can be hard to disentangle writing challenges from other challenges, especially the internal ones. Heck, even "try your best" is problematic--how am I to tell whether I am trying my best? Especially for those plagued by self-doubt, there is always the suspicion (or conviction) they could have tried better. Or, as the OP said, that their best is going to turn out not to be good enough.

I'm good at analysis; I suck at recommendation. I don't even know what works for me, so I'm reluctant to suggest a course to others. Especially when I have never felt that self-doubt. I've always thought I was good enough. Not great, but good enough to get some readers. I'm good enough, I'm just not fast enough! (see "Procrastination" supra)
 
Study what you enjoy and try and wrap your head around what makes it enjoyable for you in terms of the craft of writing, techniques used, etc. Obviously we are inspired by what we enjoy, so having a better understanding of why is extremely helpful.

For a change of pace just watch a movie in the drama genre and dissect it as an educational exercise. I'm influenced far more by movies when it comes to writing than I am books. I get a lot of individual ideas from books but storytelling as a whole has been far more concentrated in film and to a lesser extent television. It's easier to picture things that are taking place in front of your eyes, obviously. I just have to work on translating that into what works in book form.

I always recommend the film L.A. Confidential when it comes to amazing storytelling. It's a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
@Penpilot, true.. but ... for some, it's the doing that is the most difficult part. This ranges from simple procrastination (of which I am a master) to paralyzing depression. It can be hard to disentangle writing challenges from other challenges, especially the internal ones.

Maybe this has something to do with a certain part of my personality. It can be described by the saying my eyes are bigger than my mouth. I generally tend to go big and when you do that you fail big. I'm used to failing, BIG. Heck, I expect to fail.

My first book was a 6 POV, 275k, epic fantasy. Ummm... yeah... I'd like to meet the first time author that could pull that off. It was a flaming mess.

Maybe it's because I've been involved with athletics all my life. I'm a hockey player, and hockey is a game of constant mistakes, big ones, little ones, and everything in between. Nobody ever plays a perfect game, so you learn to deal with it. Same for life in general. I fail in that a lot too.


Heck, even "try your best" is problematic--how am I to tell whether I am trying my best? Especially for those plagued by self-doubt, there is always the suspicion (or conviction) they could have tried better. Or, as the OP said, that their best is going to turn out not to be good enough.

Here's how I view giving your best. I got it from Hall of Fame hockey player Ted Lindsey. And I paraphrase. Every time I step on the ice I give everything I have. Some nights, that may be two left feet, tripping and falling on my face, but that will be everything I have that night.

Some days, all I can muster is a few crappy words that get erase the next day. Some days, the only two words that I can type are "This Sucks." But if that's all I have that day, then it's all I have. If I write something down and can't think of a better idea for it, then that's the best I got for that day. My best today is different from my best tomorrow. The only thing that matters is the honest effort.

As someone who's chapters sometimes have over twenty plus revisions/rewrites, I fail more than I succeed. (And not just in writing) To get to that final draft, I had twenty something failures to that one success. I have file folders full of failed stories. If the number of stories I deemed good enough to show others were a twinkie, the failures would be a Twinkie that was thirty-five feet long and weighing approximately six hundred pounds. :D

I know there are Brandon Sanderson detractors here, but you know one of the reasons he got to where he is? He wasn't afraid to fail. He wrote, I believe, thirteen novels before one got picked up. A one to twelve success to fail rate.

And if you think about it, most stories go through around two or three drafts, so before anyone succeeds at a story, they fail at least one or two times.
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
Yeppers again. You give what you have NOW. You can't write today based on what you think you'll be able to do tomorrow.

I wrote a long time without knowing anything about writing. Looking back, it was terrible. Twelve novels that weren't worth the trees that died to make their paper. Horrible.

Then, I learned some stuff.

Then I went off the deep end and changed everything about my natural style, hoping it made me "better" to be doing things in a way that made me feel more like how I view professional people...and I wasted two years writing vanilla, drab shit.

Now, I'm working on myself as I write, but that means my personality is more crucial to my stories. And on the days when my personality suffers...so does my writing progress.

We all have different abilities and goals, and no one else's goals are likely to be an exact fit for any one of us. I've seen quite a few friends publish before their stories were ready, and sorry to say it, but their stories are weak and I wouldn't have pushed them into print as they are, but for those people, "good enough" was good enough. For other people, nothing's ever good enough, and they'll ride a rollercoaster of emotions and stress as they conceptualize a great story, only to ruin it with execution that dried it up into a boring wasteland of infinite words that don't inspire readers to care.

Everyone's got their challenges. The trick to being a productive writer (in my own conclusion), is to find out what "your thing" is. What gets you fired up. What gets you motivated to write. What makes your passion burn out of control till you can't possibly consider putting it down. Use THAT thing, and then clearly set a goal. Is it a word count per day? Is the goal for 4 out of 5 critters in your group to give it a thumbs up? Is it to finish a whole novel? Is it to improve your ability to describe a world that you've had floating around in your head since you were seven and first drew a picture book about it?

YOUR goals are beyond judgement. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what you want to accomplish.

I'm a draft-writer, too. I write a first draft, where I get the skeletal form of my story down. It isn't good. It's the opposite of good. All "tells", meandering plots, descriptions that come from every angle ad go in every direction, and characters who could best be described as either cardboard or schizophrenic--overreacting or under-reacting at every turn. It's a mess.

But then I ask for help and get opinions. I have friends who have strengths that I simply don't possess. I can't be all things, and I'm aware of my limitations. SO I get help online, from friends on the phone, from people like Donald Maass. Lots of help. I go back to my goals and I consider what kind of help best aids the current work.

I mean, if I'm trying to write a hero's journey epic fantasy like LOTR, it doesn't help me to be using techniques for modern thriller writers. They're two different types of stories, presented two different ways, and the techniques don't simply "translate" over.

I pick certain skills and tools I want to use on THIS book. On THIS rewrite, for example. Maybe I'll abandon the technique after, when I'm working on other works that don't require the same strategy. Each book is like a war...you have to employ different tactics in each, depending on what it takes to win.

And after several drafts, each time honing in on my ultimate goal, I hope I'm getting close. I use other people's opinions to tell me whether I'm heading in the right direction, or whether I went off my rocker again and need to scrap portions of my project because my mind went off on its own and no one else thinks it's half as clever as I did when I wrote it.

Some people don't rewrite. Some people write once and go from page one to page three-hundred, and never look back.

Some people eternally rewrite because they have a self-imposed expectation or standard, and they believe they have failed repeatedly to meet it.

We all need to assess ourselves on these things. I personally think there are way too many writers out there who talk a big game, but don't know half of what I do, and I consider myself fairly competent but definitely an eager student. Some folks a decade younger than me can blow my socks off with their work. Is it fair? No, probably not, but nothing is. I've often read stories I thought were seriously dull, but other people really liked them. I've also raved about stories I thought were thrilling and deep, and other people hated them for so many reasons, I just silently balked at the reviews. It's the way of story-telling. But it's no reason to beat yourself up over it, or to give half an effort.

I sincerely don't feel well if I don't feel like I've given all I have, and that's my personal weakness/ flaw/ strength. But it can be a double-edged sword sometimes. It can make me feel like I'm not good enough, like I'm hopelessly inadequate.

Sometimes we all need encouragement and help to get back on our feet after we've had a hard time. I know I do. Probably more often than most.


BTW, Incanus...read my signature. There's a reason I put those words down there, and not just because I loved that scene in WiR. Yvette was at the end of her rope, and ready to kill herself. But I've really been at the end of my rope in this thing, too...not least of which was with that book ;)
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I won't pick on Brandon Sanderson, because I swore I would never do that again... He's a Cornhusker native, for crying outloud, LOL. I like Sanderson better than I like his writing, which is not bad, but I still (used to) pick on him. He comes out and says luck has something to do with success, there's no doubt about that. And you need the fortitude to get lucky, something a lot of folks don't have.

Part of the beauty of picking on really successful writers is to point out the lack of perfection in everyone's writing, rather to tear someone down. If Rothfuss gets accolades for his writing... And Sanderson with some of his iffy habits, hey! Why not anybody?

Keep on keeping on.
 

Peat

Sage
To riff on Demesnedenoir's point, there are no perfect authors. There are no authors who every single little thing of our trade to the height of human ability. Even at the top, they all have flaws and in some cases, really major flaws.

But by and large, people make it to the top based on what they do well, not what they suck at.

So Incanus, if you're bad at drama, then make it based on your interesting characters, make it based on your wit and on the nose satire, make it because of your fast paced action, because of your world building, your ideas, your dumb luck, your refusal to quit, your anything. There are many ways to skin this particular cat.

Also - as others have asked - how do you know you're bad at drama? Are you absolutely sure you'll never improve there?
 
Please tell us, who told you that you were bad at drama?

And every successful author has things they suck at. But everything else makes up for it. To be a good writer you don't even have to be "good at" anything, just really really stubborn...
 

Incanus

Auror
Thank you for the replies everyone. I plan on reading through all this again—great stuff here.

OK. So I had a really good talk with my best writing friend over the weekend, and she helped me conclude that it’s not that I’m necessarily bad with drama. It’s really just as simple as having a draft that just needs more work.

I’m in an early stage of revising my fist novel. Before starting this revision, I did another round of development notes that got me pretty excited about the upcoming re-write. (And just before that, I wrote a short story that my writing friend really liked, and that was a good shot in the arm.)

So, I worked on material that is now the first five chapters, and it just fell, way, way short of all the promise. But the thing is, this draft did improve upon the original, even if only a little. However, my expectation here was wildly off. I just had this sense that the new stuff I was bringing in to join with the original draft felt really, really good and right. I thought this new material would really up everything about the story. But the execution turned out very ‘meh’. Bland, un-engaging, utilitarian. (And yes, a critique of the first chapter basically agrees with this assessment, it’s not just me.)

I plan to re-work the first five chapters until they start to read more like I think it they’re supposed to. Since I’ve drafted the whole story, I no longer feel a need to just push ahead—I should be able to tackle this in damn near any order now.

Anyway, my OP was meant as an expression of frustration, and asking a few related questions—‘cause man, I’m in deep now. I think my little side project will provide me with some much needed relief while I tackle this thing. I’m still not really sure what I’m going to do with these five chapters, but I can accept that the gains I make with it are going to be more incremental, rather than in leaps and bounds.

The good news is that I can be quite stubborn.

Steady as she goes--
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Incanus, just to let you know, what you're going through right now is similar to what I go through with most of my stories. And I suspect it's what many others go through with theirs. I rarely solve my problems in one felled swoop. It's like you described. It's a little bit better today and it'll be a little bit better tomorrow.

The journey of a thousand miles and all that jazz.
 

Incanus

Auror
^^Yes, yes, yes^^ This is exactly what my friend said too. While the specifics of my issues may differ, this kind of frustration is not uncommon at all for many of us.

I'm often rational and reasonable, but a difficult project like this has a way of knocking me off that stride. It's good to know I can come here to find relatively sane objectivity during those times when I lose my perspective.
 
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