To Write Better Stories, Set Your Ego Aside

It takes a certain amount of ego to be an author in the first place. Because anyone can make up stories in their head, but to dedicate dozens to hundreds of hours to put that story down on a page? And then, once you have manifested it in the world to put it out there for people to see? To decide that the story you have to tell is good enough that people (many of whom you have never met in your life) should take time out of their day to read it? And not only that, but that they should pay hard-earned money for the privilege?

Yeah, that's how art should work... but you've got to admit, in this climate, it takes some serious fortitude to stand up and make that claim boldly.

However, the flip side to this coin is that a lot of us become so reliant on our egos to help us plow through those trying to stop us from making art that we deafen ourselves to legitimate criticism. Which is why it's important to maintain your forward momentum, but to also learn how to listen to people who raise issues we need to actually think about.

Is that a hater, or a helper? I can't tell...

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Now then, let's get to it!

Hear What They're Saying, and Evaluate

First of all, let's address the elephant in the room. You are not required to just shift gears and bow to every opinion that comes your way. A safe rule I've found is that if you wouldn't go to a person for advice, then you probably don't need to give serious weight to their criticism.

With that said, though, criticism is going to come your way whether you seek it out or not. What you need to do is figure out how to set your ego to the side, and to evaluate what's being said so that you can decide what to do about the issues being raised... or if you need to do anything at all.

Incoming negativity. Analyzing...

My recommendation is that you ask a couple of questions, and try to put yourself in this other person's shoes so that you can see your work the way they see it. Some good places to begin are:

- Is This a Matter of Taste? A lot of the time criticism comes down to whether someone personally likes or dislikes something. There's no right or wrong there, but it helps to ask if the issue is structural (something in the story is actually weak) or flavorful (the presentation/style isn't to the person's liking). Maybe they wanted a Happily Ever After, or a certain character got killed that they really liked; being personally disappointed is valid, but may not rise to the level of making edits.

- Did This Have an Unintended Consequence? Sometimes the way we tell a story just doesn't land, or brings up things we didn't intend to. Maybe a particular term is actually really offensive among a certain community, so using it to refer to characters in your story makes it racist even if that wasn't your intention (Pro Tip: The proper term is Inuit). Maybe the way a villain is queer-coded plays into problematic stereotypes. It's better to fix an issue than to double-down on it, especially if you genuinely didn't see this reaction coming.

- Is This Situation Necessary? Let's say you were writing a psychological revenge thriller, and you wanted it to have that grimy, nasty feel from films like I Spit on Your Grave. However, we aren't in the 1970s anymore, and sexual-assault-as-plot-device is pretty gross regardless of when the story was told. Is this absolutely necessary? Or could the character seeking revenge have been wronged another way? Did someone spread vicious rumors that got them kicked out of their social circles? Did someone not speaking up and telling the truth lead to them getting thrown out of school? Losing out on a big job? Being sentenced to prison for a crime they didn't commit? If someone asks whether a particular situation, tone, event, etc. is necessary, stop and genuinely ask yourself if it has to be that way, or if there are alternatives that would work better.

- How Much of an Effect Will This Have? Sometimes an issue with a story is relatively minor. You have a historical inconsistency that a lot of folks may not notice at the time (looking at you Titanic), or you have a character use a particular turn-of-phrase that isn't right for the location where this story is set. Sometimes an issue is major, and it leads to the audience rolling their eyes, or being taken out of the story entirely. Evaluate the scale of both the issue, and what changing it would cost in terms of time, energy, and effort.

Most importantly, when looking at criticism leveled at your work, ensure you have an answer as to why you aren't making changes to it. Perhaps it's because a certain event is key to a development that happens down the line, and you would have to re-work an entire plot or subplot by making too many changes. Maybe it's a deliberate homage that you feel is an important part of the story, even if not all your readers are going to like it.

Generally speaking, though, you should always have a reason beyond, "Because I don't want to change it." Of course you don't. No author ever does. But you need something more compelling than that.

You Aren't Obligated To Change Anything

The important thing to remember here is that you are not obligated to change anything in your story. It is yours, and you can tell it how you want to. However, it does behoove you to examine the criticism, and see what validity it has. When you reach this point not changing things should be a deliberate choice you make, rather than simply your standard position.

Figured I'd share a few of the ones I dealt with.

For those who haven't read Crier's Knife, it's a sword and sorcery novel I put out some time ago. It's been generally well received by folks who've actually read it, but there were more than a few criticisms that came my way when I was getting it ready for release. Some of those (and my response to them) were:

- The Introduction Is Unnecessary: The intro of this book starts with a young man escaping captivity, and sending up what amounts to a magical signal flare to let his family know he's in trouble. One person I spoke to told me I should cut it because it was a waste of space, and distracted the audience from the actual story. I was fully in agreement that the introduction wasn't a necessity, but I kept it for two reasons. First, because I wanted to make an homage to classic sword and sorcery novels where we were presented the situation before our hero came along to fix things. Second, I didn't want to make the word count up somewhere else in the book.

- The Magic is Confusing: Our protagonist comes from a family whose matriarch is a witch who lives on a mountaintop. We see her magic, as well as the magic of a strange cult, in action several times throughout the book. This criticism came from a reader whose background was more in high fantasy and RPGs, and was used to Vancian magic systems. As a piece of pulp, magic is significantly softer in this novel, and shouldn't be easily understood (especially since our perspective character is a warrior, not a witch). So while I understood the criticism, I felt it was more the reader being unfamiliar with this genre and expecting it to act like a different kind of fantasy.

- I Don't Get The Setting: The world where this novel takes place isn't like a lot of high fantasy settings where there are ancient, long-established kingdoms and nations. There are, in fact, no countries on this map. Most people exist in smaller communities like villages and hamlets, with a few large city-states existing as centers of power. The way I brought this across was how language changed from one place to another, making it clear there weren't huge highways like we often see empires build, or how most trade was done with barter instead of with coins. Input from other readers said this made the setting feel unique, so I'm glad I didn't change it to make it more conventional.

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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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