A Majority of Making Art Is Boring and Tedious (And You Need To Get Used To That)

We've all experience that New Relationship Energy. You know, when everything is fresh, and new, and every day is full of discovery and excitement? Sometimes that energy lasts for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it sticks around for a few months, or in some cases for a year or so. However, that heady sensation eventually passes. When it does we face a choice; seek out that same high somewhere else, or commit to where we are right now, and work on actively building the relationship we're already part of.

A lot of people talk about how it feels like the spark died. About how the color went out of things. They pine for the days when everything was new, and exciting... but they overlook an important truth. A majority of what makes relationships work isn't extreme chemical reactions, and potent attraction; it's commitment. It's adjusting your life to one another's eccentricities, it's doing chores when they need done, it's finding solutions to problems so you can both live easier lives. It isn't sexy, and it often isn't fun, but it's the thing you need to do in order to build a life.

Now use this as a metaphor for art, and how it's made.

Most of it is blood, sweat, and tears, instead of glitter and rainbows.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Results Are Sexy (The Process Isn't)

Making art in all its forms, whether it's plotting a story, conceptualizing a podcast, painting a painting, getting ready to animate something, and so on, and so forth, often have a New Relationship Energy phase as well. After all, when the idea or concept is fresh it's got a power and pull that can be compelling and exciting. You're going through the early stages building a world, or sketching out a rough idea, figuring out how you're going to turn it into a reality, all of that.

But the longer the process goes on, the less of that initial excitement there's going to be. Oh you'll still have moments where you come up with a really great turn of phrase that you're proud of, or you figure out a solution to a sound effect that was giving you problems, but between that whirlwind of Initial Excitement and Project Completion you just have a long stretch of Execution.

And Execution isn't fun. It isn't sexy. It isn't glamorous. It's the artistic equivalent of doing the dishes, throwing in the laundry, putting the baby down for a nap, walking the dog, and all the other necessary chores you have to do. It's boring... but if you don't do it, the art doesn't get made.

Consider this video essay I made for the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should go subscribe to if you haven't yet). Now, when I first had the idea of how to fix the evil corporate antagonist that is Pentex, it really set my brain on fire. It merged with all the knowledge I had of history, and I immediately thought of several really fun things that could be done with it. Even writing the script for the video essay was pretty fun, since it was only about 4,000 words and change, and I got to dive down several historical rabbit holes throughout the process.

You know the part that wasn't fun, though? Sitting in front of my screen for something like 16 hours to assemble all the disparate parts of this video essay. Because I had to find all the video clips, make all the title screens, assemble everything to transition at just the right times, and add in all the effects I wanted, while trying to make it all look seamless.

And that is the part where so many people give up.

Whether it's picking up the brush and making the thousands of strokes to bring a painting to completion, or taking a certain space of time to add a few hundred (or a few thousand) words to a document every day, or editing a little more of a big video on your days off, so many people give up when they reach the actual art stage of making art. Some of them do it for a while, but then they miss the spark when it was new. They miss that excitement, and the rush they had when they were playing in a sandbox, or handling a steaming hot, completely fresh idea that captivated them.

Too many people out there think that making art is all frenetic energy and manic excitement, with furious typing or being seized in the grip of the muse for hours or days on-end. And that really isn't how a majority of the process happens for most people who make art. There's some of that in the beginning, absolutely, and little fits of it here and there as we hit different snags or challenges, or we get to pieces of the project we were really looking forward to. But most of the time, making art is just a boring ass grind where we put one word, one brush stroke, or one more sound effect in front of the other until the job's done.

To return to my favorite metaphor, it's like following an exercise routine. Nobody gets absolutely shredded, completely built, or able to lift hundreds of pounds overnight. But no matter how impressive the results are (whether in terms of power, endurance, or just aesthetic), everyone who achieves their fitness goals had to put in the hours to get them there. And some of those days might have been fun. Some of those workouts might have given them an endorphin rush. Most of it, though? It's just putting the fuel into the machine, and getting in the reps and steps until you're that much closer to the goal.

The end result is amazing! But getting there? It's just grind.

And I'm saying this because so many people think art is supposed to be this inspired thing that just flows through you, just like how so many people think that love (or at least relationships) are supposed to be effortless, that things should just come naturally, and if you have to work at it that's a sign that your relationship is dying. In truth, that's just the way all of these things happen.

Being able to work through that grind, and to find meaning and purpose in it, and to find the discipline to watch the end result take shape... that's what separates artists in any field from people who are just pissing about. So remember that when you start getting bored, and wondering why this feels like work.

Because the simple reason is art is work. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how hot your creativity burns, forcing something to transition from an electrical impulse in your mind into a completed, finished thing is work. Period.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Don't Put The Whole World On The Chopping Block

Think about the last time you were reading a book, and just as the third act really got going it was revealed that the villain's actions are going to destroy the entire world if they aren't stopped. Maybe it will actually destroy the whole planet, or maybe it will just result in the total collapse of all things that make life worth living in that world (the "but what if Sauron wins?" scenario), but the point is that the protagonist, everyone they know, and everyone they care for will be dead (or worse) if they don't succeed in their chosen course of action.

Can you remember a time where you were more bored?

After all, who would smash up that pristine real estate?

It seems counter-intuitive, but stay with me on this one. The idea behind raising the stakes is to ratchet up the tension in your story. You want your audience to be unable to look away while they contemplate everything that's riding on the protagonist's shoulders. Which is why if there's a bank robbery, they take hostages. It's why our love interest always gets a new partner just as our lead is working up the guts to say how they feel. You get the idea.

The problem with ending the world is that it's too big to contemplate, and thus it loses its impact.

That probably doesn't make much sense, but think of it this way. If someone offered you $10,000 to do something shady, that would be a sum of money most of us could understand in concrete terms. You may not have had that much money all at once before, but you know what you could buy with it, and about how far it would get you. Now say someone was going to pay you $10 million. Unless you move in some very specific circles, you don't have any idea what that's actually like. The sum might as well be $100 million, or $100 billion, because the numbers would have the same meaning to you. Because they got too big for you to have a concrete sense of what it all really means.

That's the reason why people who are dirt poor that win the lottery are back to being dirt poor in a handful of years, and it's the reason why threatening to blow up the entire world has no impact. The stakes are big, but we cannot honestly get a sense of them because they're too big.

Make It Smaller, And More Intimate

The key to making your stakes feel bigger is to give the audience something concrete. Something our mammalian brain can comprehend, and actually be shocked by. It's not a coincidence that in James Bond-style stories the villain always captures Bond's most recent love interest. Because sure, we get that every agent in the secret list will be compromised if Bond fails, but by putting this other character in the villain's clutches we've made things personal. Our audience has seen the budding romance, and in the books (as opposed to the movies) we know that if she dies, then a part of what makes Bond a person will die with her.

That isn't to say you can't make the stakes bigger; you just have to stop before it gets to that too-big moment. For instance, you could take what was a hunt between a detective and a terrorist cell, and turn it into a gas attack that could kill an entire neighborhood. Maybe even wipe out a small city. You could also take a cult that had threatened a region, and make their victory something that would allow them to overthrow an entire government. Will this effect the rest of the world? Absolutely. Will our protagonist die? Most likely. But there will be events that happen after their failure, and the fact that someone else could pick up the ball that they dropped makes the stakes feel more concrete.

I'll let Trope Talk hammer the point home.

So, to wrap up, there's nothing wrong with raising your stakes. And, if there are multiple worlds in your story, you could even pick off one or two of them as a consequence of failure. However, it's important not to go over that line if you want to keep your audience from losing their firm understanding of what's at risk. Because when you threaten to end it all if your protagonist fails, that almost guarantees their success. Especially if  you're planning out a series. You can't blow up the world if there are six books after this one, and that's not a statement you can walk back once you've said it out loud.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing piece. Hopefully it was helpful, and it got the wheels turning in your heads. If you'd like to see more of my work, consider checking out my Vocal archive. To keep up on all my latest updates, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support me, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Or just Buy Me A Coffee! Either way, there's a free book in it for you as thanks for your help.

Repeated Phrases Are The Bane of Good Stories

Have you ever told a really good joke? The kind that left everyone at the table in stitches, or that made a dinner guest snort wine halfway across the room? That kind of cutting wit is a skill, and it takes practice to deliver it just so. However, if you try to tell that joke to the same group of people, chances are good the reaction won't be as over-the-top as the first time you delivered it. And if you tell it a third time? Well, a third time might not even get a polite titter. A fourth time, and you'll actively start to strain your audience's patience as all the good will you established drains away.

One more time, and we start throwing things.

Writing a book is like this, but even worse. Because when you use a great turn of phrase, or come up with the perfect way to describe a character, or an action, you only get one. Check the box, and strip it from your mental record, because it better not show up again in the story if you want to keep your audience rolling.

Cool-Down Time

To be clear, this particular problem is not something that happens all that often in dialogue. Because, as anyone who's had a real-world conversation knows, people from a given area or culture tend to use the same turns of phrase or local colloquialisms. However, if you get repetitive in your prose, your reader is going to notice it. And once they notice, it's going to start eating into their goodwill regarding your book.

It was unnameable... and... ugh... indescribable?

As a quick example, take a fight scene. You've got two guys in a fist fight. It's supposed to be pulse-pounding, brutal, and harsh. But how many times can you say they slammed their fists into each other before it gets boring? How often can someone spit blood, and grin through a predator's smile before the reader starts rolling their eyes? Or, phrased another way, how many times can the bottom fall out of your protagonist's stomach before we begin to wonder if the trap door in their guts has a lock on it at all?

The difficulty with writing stories, and particularly with writing books, is that you don't write it all at once. Nor do you edit it all at once. So you might have used a particularly cool metaphor in chapter one, then you clicked save, and went to bed. Problem is that, a few months later, you used the same description while you were wrist-deep in the re-write for chapter seven. Then you put it in chapter twelve without thinking.

So, at a minimum, you've told the same joke three times now, and you're hoping your audience has forgotten it since the last time you threw it out there.

Sometimes this isn't that big of a deal. You can use similar (or even the same) description if they're on opposite ends of your book. Because your reader will probably have forgotten they read it by the time a few hundred pages have passed. But your prose is kind of like special powers in an online RPG. You fired the power once, and it was really impressive, but now you need to hold off on using it again until enough time (or in this case, word count) has passed. Otherwise you're in danger of actually distracting your reader from the story by the way you're telling it. Sort of like how you stop paying attention to the tale of an epic shootout between drug dealers and the vice squad because the guy telling you the story keeps getting his mustache caught in his mouth, and it makes him slur.

Make Notes When You Check Back

When the editing process starts, make sure you keep an eye out for favored phrases or descriptions. Ask your beta readers to do the same. And, most importantly, try not to carry your tics from one project to another. Because that is exactly the wrong kind of thing for readers to remember you by.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing update. Hopefully folks out there found it helpful, and some are going back to check over their manuscripts one more time. To stay up-to-date on all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. If you want to help me keep this blog going, then why not head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to drop a little love in my jar? As little as $1 a month can make a big difference, and it gets you a free book as a thank you!