Authors, Don't Take Yourself So Seriously

If you've ever sat down to talk marketing with a romance author, then you know just how serious professionals in the trade can be when it comes down to the bottom line on book sales. Everything from which sales pitch works best, to cold-reading someone at a convention, to which social media platforms are most effective for moving product, what goes on once the manuscript hits the market is definitely serious business.

But before that? Let's all just take a moment to be honest with each other... we're making up stories. They might be heartfelt stories with moments of great pathos. They may have a lot of meaning to you, and hopefully to your readers. But they're also about wish fulfillment, Vikings riding dinosaurs, impossibly good looking secret agents, vampire princes, and zombie love triangles.

We should be serious about our work, but our work itself is rarely serious... and if we take it too seriously, the work suffers. Badly.

But what is the true meaning of this work? Do you understand?

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Most Great Work Wasn't Written To Be Such

You've heard of Frankenstein I'm assuming? That book which is one of the great entries in the canon of horror, and which one could argue was the seed that created the entire science fiction genre? A work of important literature, no doubt, as I'm sure most of us acknowledge.

What we sometimes forget, though, is that it was also written by one of the OG teen goths during a long weekend full of sex and drugs with one of the more infamous party animals of the day. A book that was created on a bet during a stormy night as Mary, her husband, and their host were taking a break between threesomes.

Mary knew how to party, is what I'm saying.

Example of this are everywhere in so-called literature. Shakespeare might be considered high-brow these days, but it's just a collection of dick and fart jokes where characters get progressively gayer and more outlandish. Also, it was written as popular entertainment for the masses. The whole basis of The Lord of The Rings is because Tolkien was telling tales to his kids, and one of them was very concerned with canonical consistency. This led to The Hobbit, and demand for more of those tales led to one of the more influential works that created the genre of high fantasy. Jane Austen's work is arguably one, big eyeroll from the author about the tedium of social nicety, wrapped up in flowery language and with a story a lot of readers can identify with.

This list goes on.

The point of all of this is that most of what we think of as "serious" books (and even a lot of films) were not made with the intention of being great, foundational works of art, or redefining the way we look at stories. They were written on a whim, on a bet, or as an example of crass commercialism to get butts in seats, or books in hands. And while the authors arguably took the work seriously (constructing good narratives, creating engaging characters, telling a good tale, etc.) they didn't take themselves and their task seriously. Because while good books will often stand the test of time, it's the story they tell, and the way they engage the audience that matters.

So lighten up already! Just embrace that, at its core, what we do is a silly kind of magic. It can touch people's lives, brighten their dark days, and stab them through the heart, but the more seriously we take ourselves the more it's going to take our focus off of telling a good story.

Looking For Additional Reading?

If you're looking for additional stuff to check out before you go, might I recommend the following?

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities: I've been up to my elbows in professional fantasy world building for most of this year, and these are the tips I've found most useful for making sure places feel organic, no matter how fantastical they are.

- The Silver Raven Chronicles Part One: Devil's Night: A free fantasy short story, this tale begins in the old quarter of the city of Kintargo. A rumor whispers in the corners of a ghost risen from the past to take Cheliax to task for allowing devils into its heart, and its throne room. Most don't believe it... but one of the city's dottari finds this ghost is all too real when it steps out of the shadows with a message for her to spread to her fellow enforcers. They are no longer welcome in his city.

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 cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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