The Point of Writing is Doing The Work (Giving The Middle Finger To A.I.)

I remember several years ago I was sitting in a stylist's chair getting my hair trimmed. As folks in this profession so often do, she started making small talk with me. When she found out I was a professional writer, though, it was like I'd opened a floodgate. Apparently she'd had this idea rolling around in her head for years that she thought would make a really good book. I can't remember most of it now, but it somehow involved a cartel drug dealer who got romantically entangled with his stylist, and the two of them had to go on the run from both gangsters and the ATF, trying to find some way to cut a deal so they could live happily ever after.

Could I have made that into a decent action romantic comedy? Sure... but what stuck with me even more than the idea was the serious tone in her voice when she looked in the mirror and said, "If you want to go in on this with me, we can split the take 50/50."

And this, I think, is what really gets to the heart of why so many people have fallen down the generative A.I. rabbit hole.

Chuck really puts it into simple words.

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The Writing Is The Point

Before we get lost in the weeds, I want to make a clear distinction. "Generative A.I." refers to software programs that are trained off of data that are fed into them until they can recognize patterns, and produce something similar to what they've seen before. They also allow users to enter prompts, such as telling it to paint a portrait of a barbarian king holding an ax in the style of Frank Frazetta. Or telling it to write a short story about a secret, cannibal family in the style of H.P. Lovecraft. The main problem with these softwares is that they're thieves; the data they are fed is based on stolen work, taken from people who did not consent for their work to be used in training the software, so everything it creates is fruit from the poisoned tree. It doesn't matter how amazing the thing it made it, it's all tainted by that initial plagiarism.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that someone produced an "ethical" generative A.I. program for writers. Let's say that it was trained only on work that was given freely by writers, or that it used only works in the public domain. So you could just push a button and get a private detective story in the style of Agatha Christie, or perhaps a war story in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle (we'll assume his estate went along with this in the scenario I'm painting). You could do that.

But what's the point?

As Mr. Wendig said in the picture in the introduction, and as I said a while ago on my show Tabletop Mercenary over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, ideas are barely worth a weak piss in a stiff breeze. The idea isn't what's worth something... it's the execution of that idea that is worth something. It's the skill it takes to realize that idea, and to turn it into something that actually exists.

Consider any invention throughout history. From the telephone, to the automobile, to the locomotive, the ideas of those things aren't valuable. The execution of those things is. Saying, "It would be jolly convenient to be able to have a conversation with my friend on the other coast whenever I wished!" is not an inherently valuable thing. That idea is, on its own, worthless. The people who built the telegraph lines, and then the telephone lines, and the machinery that allowed voices to travel instantaneously over long distances are the ones that created something of value.

This is where the disconnect happens with so many people. Because we have this stereotype of The Visionary (TM) whose ideas are so powerful they can change the world. But as we've seen with Thomas Edison (who was only responsible for a fraction of the things he claimed credit for) and Elon Musk (who is responsible for nothing he's claimed credit for), vision is worthless. Vision is nothing without an engine to drive it, and to create actual momentum to make it into a reality... and if you aren't the one creating that momentum, then you weren't a meaningful part of the process.

Consider, for example, works of art that the church commissioned from the artist Michaelangelo. Sure, the church might have told him what they wanted the art to be (which figures from the bible it should feature, the general vibe the piece should give off, and so on), but when we study those art pieces, is the particular clergyman mentioned as anything other than a patron or sponsor? No, because the person who made the art is what matters. They are the one who turned vision into reality, not the patron who fed them the prompts. As such, they're the ones who deserve the credit.

If you want to be an artist, you have to make art. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you turned to a writer, gave them the basic pitch of a book idea, and then they wrote the book, you are not an author. The same is true if you type a bunch of prompts into an engine, and then see what it spits out.

What I Am (And Am Not) Saying

That was a lot to take in, so I want to reiterate some points for folks who made it this far.

First of all, yes, there are tools you can use as a writer that involve you just pushing a button. From character name generators to automatic writing prompts, we have had access to generative tools for decades now. Hell, when I was in high school and just starting my journey as a writer, there was a website that held weekly contest for short stories written using the automated short story prompt generator.

However, before claiming something is a tool, you need to ask yourself several questions:

- Does it use stolen material to create what you are using?

- How much of the finished project does it create for you?

If something just creates a prompt, or gives you a character name, or even throws out a theme or plot synopsis for you, and it wasn't made using stolen text, that is a tool you can use as a writer. If you just feed in some prompts, and the thing in question writes a short story or a book for you, that is not a tool; that is an artificially-written story. You didn't make that happen any more than the clergyman who told the Renaissance artists what characters to sculpt or what scenes to paint is the artist of those works.

The whole point of writing is that we're telling a story. The point of reading is because we want to be told a story. Yes, writing is hard. Yes there will be stumbling blocks along the way, and things that give you trouble, and lessons you have to learn. But the work is not some obstacle to be overcome by outsourcing it to a machine. The work is the point.

Put another way, if you had a robot go to the gym for you, and do an entire fitness routine, it wouldn't make you any faster, stronger, or better. You're just wasting time and electricity avoiding the work you need to do to actually get good.

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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!

 

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In Media Res- Get Stuck Into Your Story!

Gregory's fist came swinging for my face. I managed to duck, his knuckles glancing off my forehead. I kept my momentum, going into a low crouch and shooting forward. I rammed my shoulder up into his stomach, driving with my legs and wrapping both hands around the back of his knee. He folded under me, his breath rushing out of him as I rode him to the ground, slamming into his solar plexus. He struggled, lashing out, but he'd lost his coordination. I snatched his wrist and pulled, locking my legs around him in an arm bar. I pulled until I felt every tendon in his arm go stiff.

The sound of the whistle was piercing, and I immediately released my hold in an almost Pavlovian response.

No orders were given. I pushed myself to my feet, and offered my hand. Gregory took it, and I pulled him to his feet. We didn't exchange words as we changed partners. Mikhail stepped into Gregory's place. The whistle came again, and my heart started racing. Everything ceased to exist except for me, my opponent, and application of clinical violence.

Have you ever come across a story or a film like this? Where you're thrust into the middle of a high-speed car chase, a pulse-pounding shootout, or a violent street brawl, with zero context of what is going on? You don't know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what the inciting incident is... you just got thrown into the deep end, and you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The term for this storytelling method is called in medias res, a Latin phrase that means "into the middle of things," and if you haven't used it, it's something I would highly recommend.

Who doesn't want to stay and watch the fireworks?

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The Advantage of Jumping In With Both Feet

The major advantage of starting your story in the middle of the action like this is that it immediately throws your readers into an exciting situation. No matter the nature of the situation, whether it be a steamy encounter in an underground rave or a rooftop battle against a vampire, bringing your readers in like this provides an immediate hook that is likely to grab their interest. This is particularly true because it allows them to establish context as the story goes along, likely getting up to speed by the end of the first chaper (or the introductory scene if this is a short story).

The other advantage of an in media res opening is that it often allows you to do some literary sleight of hand that you couldn't get away with in other storytelling styles. For example, you could have a bloody shootout between a squad of cops and a gang of cartel enforcers with gunfire ringing out, and blood fountaining from wounds, only for a director to scream, "Cut!" so that you can reveal all of this took place on a film set, and the heroic, iron-jawed detective we were following is actually a Hollywood stuntman-turned-action star. You could also pull a time skip, showing that this scene is the ending of your book, before you rewind back to the start of events, with the audience wondering how you got to that opening scene, or even pulling a bait-and-switch with the scene your audience came in on being a scene from a novel the protagonist is actually writing. There are a lot of different advantages of this strategy.

However, as with any tool in your box, it's important to understand when to use it, and when not to.

Sometimes this isn't what you want to open up with.

Not every story is best with an in media res beginning. Some stories are more deliberately paced, or they benefit from a slow start that leads into the story as it goes. Whether it's a cloak and dagger spy story that wants to start with tension and lead up instead of smash mouth action, or a mystery where a slow ratcheting of danger is more of a benefit to the case as it unfolds, this isn't a tool that every story and every writing style will benefit from. Not only that, but this tool follows the same rules as monsters in horror movies... the less you see of it, the more effective it is. Because if the book starts off with an in media res scene, that can be an effective hook to snag your audience with... but if every chapter starts off that way, it reduces it to a gimmick. While there are always exceptions (such as an action comedy story where part of the joke is the unconventional nature of the writing), generally speaking this isn't a great strategy.

As with all advice, take this with a grain of salt, and remain true to what feels right for your story. But if you want to have a sharp slap in the face to start your story with, and you haven't given this particular method a try yet, play around with it! It may just be the thing that sparks the progress you want.

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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. 

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Cliches and Tropes: The Age Old "Squares and Rectangles" Setup

Writers strive to avoid using cliches whenever they can. This is generally a good practice, but something I've found throughout all my conversations with my fellow pen monkeys is that a lot of us have trouble telling the difference between a cliche and a good, old-fashioned trope.

It reminds me of the saying I heard back in math class; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

Related, yes... but they aren't the same.

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Avoid Cliches, But Not Necessarily Tropes

Let's be real here, cliches are bad. Even the times they're acceptable (such as when they're being subverted as a way to examine how stories really function) are sort of the exceptions that prove the rule. When readers see a cliche, it often results in them sighing, and shaking their head. While different readers have different tolerance levels, too many cliches will drain their interest, and result in them putting your book down before they really get sucked in. Or, worse, if they're deep in your story and get hit with an unexpected cliche then it could take them out of the narrative entirely, and make them give up.

This is where that phrase I mentioned comes in. Modified, it would read, "All cliches are tropes, but not all tropes are cliches."

It's easy to tell the difference once you're familiar with them.

So what is the difference between the two? Well, a trope is a common or recurring device in literature, film, etc. that sets a mood, conveys a tone, or to make something feel familiar. For example, the harsh lighting and sharp shadows associated with film noir (to say nothing of the Venetian blinds) could be thought of as a genre trope. Alternatively, the trope Red Right Hand is where a character seems normal, but a single feature such as a mismatched eye, a twisted hand, etc. gives you a clue to their monstrous (or at least deeply hidden) nature. Tropes are, in many ways, the building blocks of a story. While some are clumsier than others (and some should be left by the wayside as times and conventions have changed), there is usually nothing inherently wrong with a trope as long as it isn't based in something objectionable (such as the Mighty Whitey trope, where a white guy goes to another culture and becomes better than anyone else at something associated with that culture).

Cliches, on the other hand, are like tropes that have been blown up, magnified, and sucked dry of the meaning and impact they once had. While cliches once had their own meaning and resonance, they've been used so often they've become a Flanderized version of themselves, to the point that no one can take them seriously. For example, the opening phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night," is a cliche. Not a story taking place on a night of bad weather, but that phrase specifically. Then there's the. "It was all a dream..." ending that will make readers pitch a book straight out the window of a moving car. Character descriptions being given via a mirror, chosen one narratives, and many other tropes all fall under cliche territory.

It's important to understand the difference between these two things, not just for the sake of clarity when discussing your book with fellow writers, agents, and publishers, but so that you know what tools you're using. Because for all the negative things I've already said about cliches, they are still tools you can use, if you choose to. It's important to ask if they're really the right tool, though, as they've been used for so long that these days they make a botched job of things unless you're really thinking outside the box, and use them in a new and different way.

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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!

The Problem With Flashbacks in Prose

A flashback is a storytelling device where we pause the current narrative, and we cut back to an earlier time in a character's life to show the audience their earlier experience. Whether it's Max Rockatansky having visions of his dead family in Fury Road, or Tallahassee remembering his life before the walking dead in Zombieland, it's a quick-and-dirty way to feed the audience additional context, or to remind them of something important to the narrative in a pivotal moment.

Movies, TV shows, comic books, we see flashbacks everywhere... even in prose. However, it is often a far less useful device in text than it is in a visual medium. Which is why I'd recommend that most writers really consider just not using it whenever possible.

It was six years ago to the day...

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The Right Tool For The Right Job

When we see a flashback in a visual medium, there are signs that show us as the audience that what we're seeing happened previously in the character's life. There may be a musical sting, echoing words, and a change in camera angle or shooting style in film, for example. Not only that, but when we see our characters there are often distinct changes in their appearance (hairstyle, costume, lack of scars, obviously younger/played by a different actor entirely, etc.) that clue us in as to what we're seeing. Comic books use the same visual identifiers, but they'll often have a label indicating when and where the flashback is taking place so that the reader has full context for what they're looking at. Even stage plays use this device by changing costumes, set, character relationships, etc.

Prose... doesn't really do that. More importantly, though, flashbacks can often be the worst solution to an issue of getting information to your readers.

All right... let's crack open the archive!

If you want to have a flashback in prose, you often have to put in a messy scene break of some kind so the reader knows what's happening. You need to re-contextualize everything, and provide some kind of bearing for your audience to understand what's happening, and what they're seeing. Even if you manage to execute it smoothly, it can often feel jarring because you stopped telling the story in mid-flow to deliver what is, in essence, an aside to the audience.

Can you do this? Of course you can, it's your story. But is a flashback the best way to clue your reader in to what happened in the past?

As an example, let's say you have a violent vigilante in custody after killing dozens of members of the gang responsible for shooting his brother. The audience has seen the character's hollow-eyed, dead stare, the scars along their hands, and felt the rage radiating off of them. We see them as they are now. Could you have a flashback where we see what they were like before all of this? Sure, we could, and if this was a movie or a TV show, we probably would. But the audience will still get the idea if we show the reaction of people who knew this character before. We could bring across how they used to be in dialogue, perhaps by having a separate scene where we talk with people who knew the vigilante back in the day. Soldiers who served alongside him if he has a military history, friends and neighbors if he was close with anyone, parents, an ex... anyone else who can paint that picture.

The biggest sin a flashback commits in prose is that it often doesn't feel organic. That isn't to say that you can't make them work, but that you should ask what other methods you have on-hand that might function just as well. Often the best reason to use a flashback is because you have a tight word count you need to maintain, and it's the most expeditious option for you. Perhaps most importantly, though, the flashback is used to reveal information you have no other way to bring up, and you have a character whose mind you can delve into in order to show the audience what they're remembering.

As an example, check out my short story Dead Man's Bluff, from my collection The Rejects.

CW for those sensitive to flashing images (due to the projector effect).

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Stock footage provided by Vedeevo, downloaded from www.vedeevo.net

Thank you to Tabletop Audio for the following tracks:
- Lonesome West
- Antiquarian Study
- Nightmare
- Dark City" />

Were there other ways to bring that information about the card sharp's past up? Absolutely. I could have had the two men swapping stories over cards. I could have steered the conversation to talking about mothers when Jim alluded to his own. I could have had him ask about Fawkes's voice, and have him launch into the tale. I could have outright had Fawkes accuse Ruby to his face, shocking him and the audience both. However, that brief trip down memory lane seemed to fit best with the slow burn of the scene, but also with the mystery of what's happening, and the slow reveal of the history of these two men.

Again, just to reiterate, flashbacks can work in prose. But too often we reach for them as our go-to solution for bringing up information about a character's past when there are alternatives that would feel more organic, and which wouldn't break the flow of the story we're telling. So before you hit the reverb and let us drift back to an earlier time, ask if there's a better way to convey the information you want the audience to have. Sometimes the hammer is the right tool for the job... but if it isn't, don't try to use it anyway because you're more familiar with it.

Lastly, if you enjoyed that story, follow my Daily Motion channel! I'm hoping to keep converting more of my stories into audio dramas, but I need all the listeners and views I can manage if I want to make that a viable project going forward.

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 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!