“Your Writing SUCKS, You’re Too Much!” Ever Hear This?

Ever get feedback that your writing sucks? That you’re too intense? That you’re going to scare away your readers? Or your friends? Or your strangers? I heard feedback like this the other day,

“You’re brilliant, but your writing sucks! It’s like Invader Zim used your ideas to convert a colony of Smurfs into Vikings. Don’t you get tired of being extra?”

So your writing sucks? Good!

Your story-sucking is the first step to getting better

If you hear things like the quote above, I applaud you. You are engaging to most creative-chaos types, and you’re in great company, but… without tempering, you may not relate to a massive audience. I’ve found two methods to do this. Let’s say you want to write a story from the following idea.

“A comical slapstick fight between two ogres swinging clubs screaming like walruses at each other.”

The idea is spontaneous, vibrant, and funny. It immediately paints a picture in your mind. What do the ogres look like? Are they screaming obscenities or bellowing with rage? What color are they? Do they have multiple or single eyes? Is one bigger than the other? Is it night or daytime? Your mind fills these gaps instantly and runs with it; it’s polarizing! But the emphasis, energy, and application of the concept are chaotic. It’s too much to spring on a reader, leading to the first method.

Your writing sucks? No, it doesn’t; it just needs some love

Try the first method; it’s quite pragmatic

Tone the “cartoon” energies down and look at the scene from the audience’s perspective. Then take another step back and make the scene more relatable; this is easily done, but with some sacrifices. To make this engaging, I advise you to break the idea down to its most winning concepts:

• Huge ugly monsters
• Stupid combatants
• Unusual weapons
• Bellowing
• Silly insults

Sit and think about these concepts. Daydream for a few minutes (I kid not) and ponder how the deconstructed scene could be more approachable. Using this technique creates a more approachable scene. Reconstructed, what does that scene look like? For me, it was,

“A calculated fight between two powerful duelists who banter witty insults at each other.”

So WHAT if your writing sucks!?

USE daydreaming (a powerful trance state)

This is not the original idea that made us smile, but it had to evolve, and I like this evolution. We can still put formidable wit, humor, and drama into this. Let your daydream move forward, prune branches that get lost, and stay with core thoughts. Visualize this story moving forward:

• The duel is to the death. The weapon of choice is the rapier.
• The first combatant is a King’s bodyguard, a somber and skilled fellow.
• The second is a foppish dandy who’s surprisingly hilarious, effeminate, boisterous… and deadly.
• The insults are cunning, vulgar, other times sophisticated, and all have humor. These occur primarily before the fight begins while the fight is in play.
• The dandy wins the duel and is SHOCKED that he won; he planned to die with style, yet, he took only minor wounds.
• The King’s bodyguard, while no angel, was a source of stability for the small kingdom.
• They fought over a lady’s honor, a lady he’d rather not be beholden. She’s a cruel lover.
• The dandy has many debts and a flighty reputation. Where waters were high, now he’s over his head.
• The bodyguard’s death creates waves of political strife, and the dandy can expect reprisals.
• The King makes plans to have the dandy killed.
• The lady-love makes plans to have him saved.
• The Queen plans to humiliate the King and rule the world.
• Much is at stake, and the dandy started it all.
• An ogre bellows faintly in the distance resounding through the hills.

Fun, a few minutes of daydreaming can turn an odd idea into a decent (rough) outline.

Your writing does NOT suck

Try method two, slowly build up to your original idea, and let it POP!

That was satisfying! But… I’m still in love with the original idea, and I must use it. Who says the emphasis, energy, and application of the concept are too chaotic? What do they know? We shall be true to our intuition, but we must proceed carefully. Our scene shall be a pivotal moment that we hit hard, and when we do, the audience will be awestruck! Or, at minimum, moved to some emotional degree.

This method requires a high-energy moment at the end of the story (or chapter), and it must be VIBRANT. A conservative scene would be a waste and let the audience down. When used correctly, this method produces funny, pivotal, romantic, possibly violent, and fulfilling scenes.

You’re a rockstar, and you know it
Use the tools at your disposal; you are a veritable swiss army knife of genius

Look at the original idea again, and daydream. Exercise the daydream/trance state regularly, and you’ll rarely run out of ideas:

• A goat herder living in the mountains argues with his wife.
• She screams that he is unfaithful and pitches pans, ax handles, piglets, and crockery at him.
• He endures this abuse stoically, with his face growing redder and redder.
• The Shepard stomps sullenly away, bringing the goats to the high pastures to graze.
• He thinks about leaving, about staying, about the piglets and dishes she threw so mercilessly at him.
• He obliviously sends the herd to pasture.
• There were warning signs, but he ignored them; now, he’s between two enormous ogres honking threats.
• The Ogre’s ears waggle, their rotten teeth champ, their words go a-gaggle, and their feet stamp.
• Goats go flying; teeth are broken out, and the shepherd is racing between their feet.
• He is swatted back and forth as he lands on their faces, arms, and legs. He goes racing upon and between them. To and fro, he jumps, fighting back, tossed and pummeled.
• As quickly as it began, it ends with both ogres dead and half his flock flung off the mountain.
• Breathless, he stands in shock, holding an ogre tooth in one hand and an ogre’s eye in the other.
• His wife appears with his lunch and venomous words prepared, only to witness the end of the fight. She is in awe.
• He is the Ogre Slayer, and an invisible mantle falls upon him. They look at each other in shock.
• She throws herself into his arms, plants her plump breasts upon him, and gives him SUCH a kiss…
• Then she tells him to find the lost goats and walks away seductively, winking.

 

Pragmatic or True to Form?

Use both methods; write the story as it should be written

Either outline could produce a solid story. Both stories sprang from the same idea yet created different scenes. The stories are for different readerships, but both are relatable. Cartoonish ideas can either be toned and tamed or fed and revealed. What will you do with your ideas? Are you brave enough to let them live? Write them out and make them breathe! Write with me, write something GREAT!