Category: Musings

Show and Tell and Why I Don’t Think It Matters

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, writingLeave a comment
Photo of a road with two solid yellow dividing lines down the center disappearing into the distance.

All right, confession time:

I despise the adage “Show Don’t Tell.” With a passion.

Once a week, usually more, someone on Reddit or Discord or a forum I’m part of will ask the dreaded question, “How do I show instead of tell?” or “Is this showing or is this telling?” or “How do I show emotion?” That last one then gets comments about how you ought to describe characters clenching fists or gritting teeth or laughing uproariously. Or someone will level this flippancy at someone and call it critique, causing the other person to spiral into an endless self-destructive cycle of ripping their work apart for no damn good reason.

So I’m going to be contrary and confess how much I hate that adage and how utterly useless I find it. If ever there was a piece of writing advice I could expunge from the grand lexicon of writing advice, it’s this one. I believe it was Chunk Wendig in his book Damn Fine Story who pointed out how useless the idea of it is. Because at the end of the day, no matter what you do, you are still telling a story because you are using words not actual pictures. On some level, everything is always told. Is that a pedantic way of viewing it? Of course. Do I know what is meant by “Show Don’t Tell”? Also, of course. But that frankly isn’t the point, because very, very rarely is the meaning of it ever explained when someone bandies it around as wisdom.

I will also get on my high literary horse and claim that the predominance of “Show Don’t Tell” has led to some exceedingly lifeless, emotionless, voiceless prose, and I make this claim as someone who often beta-reads and has noticed this trend of fist clenching, teeth gritting, uproarious cackling, but other than those rather visual markers of emotion, experience utterly no intimacy or deeper emotional connection with the characters. And, dare I say it, I believe this has its roots in the erroneous belief that “telling” the reader what the character is thinking or feeling or experiencing is “Telling” and thus, must be removed in favor of almost cinematic—and lifeless—depictions of the visual action.

Photo of a forest from above, divided down the center by a river, one half dark, the other light/frozen.

Except. Except, except, except—the strength of the written medium is that it isn’t visual, or isn’t just. Cinema, being a purely visual and auditory medium, uses exaggerated expression but, also, vitally, the soundtrack score to create emotional resonance because we, the viewers, usually can’t get a snapshot at what is happening in a given character’s head. Written words, however, can, but don’t have the ability to, say, balance a purely visual depiction with an emotionally resonant soundtrack, so instead, ought to invite us into the that character’s head and emotional space so that we can feel and experience what’s happening. To insist only on “Showing” and depicting only what an outside observer might “see” and allowing us none of that character intimacy, that snapshot into the emotional topography of the story, is essentially denying one of written media’s strongest tools, in favor of one of its weaker (because the strength of a visual depiction is only as strong as its clarity and both the writer’s skill at description but also the reader’s skill at interpretation and imagination—because written media is a method of communication, and as much as we writers like to think it’s a solitary art, it’s not, it’s an act of communication and cooperation with at least one other person, your reader, who is also an active participant and in many ways your co-creator…but that, frankly, is a whole ‘nother blog post*). Because the written medium is not entirely a visual medium—yes, there’s some extraordinary things you can do with layout and typography and font and the visual construction and depiction of the story, but that’s secondary to what it excels at: creating a facsimile of an experience in all its many facets by tapping into the imagination and mining a potential shared past experience of your reader.

The way one can most easily create that deeper intimacy with a character…is by telling the reader what they’re thinking. Not, “They thought this” but a deeper dive, one that breaks down the barriers and filters between reader and character, letting them, for that moment, experience that fictional perspective, which, on the surface, may look like the “telling” of that adage, but “Show Don’t Tell” simplifies the technique and craft of this to a detrimental degree. What I argue the “Tell” of “Show Don’t Tell” actually refers to is a prose depiction that does not invite the reader in to experience the emotion and the character’s perspective, and thus, reads as almost authoritative in its direction…because readers want to feel, want to experience (broadly speaking) and when they are instructed “Feel this!” but the story, the prose, the depiction hasn’t invited them to invest their emotion and imagination, have a contrary response of rejection—which creates the oft-ill-named “Tell.” It’s not the “Tell” that’s the culprit, but that the story/prose/character hasn’t built the relationship with the reader to invite their investment, and so, when they are instructed the character feels this or thinks this or emotes this, but they themselves are not experiencing it in tandem, it creates a dissonance, and the “Yeah, Right” response.

Photo of a bizarre and fantastical teetering stack of a book, binoculars, an apple, and other objects.

It’s harder for that response to be evoked with pure “Show.” Because pure “Show” doesn’t invite their investment the same way. In many respects, pure “Show” forces them to have to embroider the story with their own interpretation and emotional experience, which creates the illusion of great emotionality…except, it isn’t the story that is bringing that emotional resonance, it’s the reader. Which covers the deficit and causes most to think, “Ah, yes, this is properly emotional storytelling.” Now, there are some masters of this style, who do create true emotional resonance through a lack of deep point of view intimacy, an external narrative “camera” as it were relaying the outside representations of the characters and events, forcing the reader to, yes, embroider…but the art behind this technique is that the writer is consciously presenting particular elements that will most likely draw a particular emotional parallel and, thus, create emotionality and the experience of intimacy through the reader’s interpretation. This is deceptively simple on its surface; it’s honestly a lot harder to pull off and pull off well, and, I argue, not universally applicable to all forms of storytelling. It is one approach, one technique, much like a visual artist choosing to use only a palette knife and gouache as their medium and tool for the visual effect, for the challenge. But this does not mean that everyone should only use a palette knife and gouache, nor that that particular artist will continue to only use that medium and that tool. Perhaps it will become a hallmark of their style. Or perhaps it was just for that one piece or series of pieces. It’s an approach, not a rule.

Thus, my parallel to “Show Don’t Tell.” It’s an approach, a way of creating and depicting a facsimile of an experience. It’s not a rule. If you choose, as a writer, to follow this method, know that it’s a method, a choice of tool and medium within your medium, not a rule and not broadly applicable to all forms of writing. You have no idea how many times I see critique leveled at, say, Romance novels that they don’t show enough, only tell…except, that genre uses a different array of tools to create emotional resonance, and one is a deep-dive intimacy with the viewpoint characters and often high octane emotional content because the goal of a Romance novel is to make a reader feel, and feel deeply. That’s the attraction of the genre. That’s the whole point. Of course it’s exceedingly transparent and almost totalitarian with its instruction of what emotions to plumb and what a reader should feel…and, by the way, most Romance readers are consenting and complicit in that, and are, in that way, actively contributing to the emotional resonance of the story.

These are all tools and methods and technique—elements of the craft of writing that are more nuanced with greater degrees of applicability than some flippant “Show Don’t Tell” supposed “rule.” You want to depict deep intimacy with your viewpoint character’s mental and emotional state, regardless of whether it’s in first or third person? Of course, tell the reader what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. At first, if your skill isn’t quite up to snuff, you will likely run into that dissonance problem and people will, erroneously, advise you to stop “telling.” I argue to ignore them, because the problem isn’t that it’s being told, it’s how it’s being told. Instead, level up your telling skills until a reader simply forgets that they’re reading (or hearing) a story, and instead experiences this scenario of fiction you’re creating for them, with them. Because, like a mentioned, writing and the experience of writing is a two-person road of communication; both you and your reader are reaching out to each other and creating something in that space between.

Photo of a road disappearing off into the foothills of mountains.

And, oh, by the way, one of the other possible contributors to a feeling that a story is “Tell” is that you, writer, aren’t leaving enough room for your reader to dance in this act of co-creation with you. That, too, can create a feeling of being constrained, being stifled—because if you don’t trust your reader and leave them space to imagine and interpret what you are offering them, that, too, creates that contrarianism. It’s a hideously delicate balance, to give just enough that the reader trusts you and imagines with you, but to also leave them room to make the story and the experience their own…while also having their hand held just enough that they are experiencing and interpreting your intent. It takes practice. It takes a lot of practice. And writing is an art—meaning, as you reach the goal, the bar, the “good enough” level, you look up to find…there is simply another level to reach for after that. It’s a lifelong pursuit.

Which, I realize, might sound rather defeating, but to me at least, it sounds galvanizing. Because I can write all my life and still learn new things.

This is not to say that prose that “Shows” is somehow wrong. Far from it! It’s a tool, and if your writing lends itself to it, by all means, embrace it wholeheartedly. I’m only suggesting that there’s more than one way to achieve emotional resonance in your writing, and that “Show Don’t Tell” is denying a whole range of other approaches. Or the entirely delightful possibility of using that range and variety of techniques in one story to create a variety and range of experiences.

And, really, every time I see that advice, I just want to scream…

* Actually, that’s the topic of my thesis that I submitted for my MFA and a presentation I gave at ICFA a few years ago. But that’s neither here nor there.

Photo credit: Photo by Joshua Woroniecki, Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash, Photo by Pickled Stardust on Unsplash, Image by MaxWdhs from Pixabay

Two Books in Two Years: Exile and Witness

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, Prophecy's Exile, Uncategorized, Witness, writingLeave a comment
Photo of my computer with the current draft of Witness on the screen, a candle, and a lukewarm cup of coffee.

And so, two small behemoths of books are now complete. Or, well, rather, one is complete and the other is undergoing a proof-read. And in two years. I wrote two massive, doorstopper fantasy novels in two years. Prophecy’s Exile was drafted in 2021, and I’m currently wrapping up revisions and proofing at the tail-end here of 2022, and Witness was written and proofed entirely in 2022 (no beta-reads on it yet, but I do question what I’m going to do with it, so my approach on beta-reads and revisions is a bit skewed compared to my usual go-tos).

An absolutely adorable illustration of a garn a friend of mine made me.

SUMMARY: A bit of babble about the current state of Prophecy’s Exile and Witness, followed by some impromptu compare and contrast, and a bit of a digression on ace-representation in fiction, and an awful lot of footnotes.

Exile has been expanded a bit, and I’m currently doing a proof-read via turning it into an ebook and reading it on my phone’s e-reader.* I took it to Futurescapes for the 200-page workshop (which…had some good and some bad, and I recognize I was insanely lucky with my workshop lotto numbers) and got some amazing (and amazingly) applicable feedback, which led to some expansion of the beginning.

Gev now gets some fried noodles, tours the city of his birth and expounds semi-poetically (he’s not very poetic) on why he loves it so much and what being home means for him, and runs into a friend. They talk shop and politics and military assignments and deployment. A great deal of world-building which hit a reader all of a sudden in chapter, like, 10 has been seeded throughout the beginning. Some later things have also been tweaked so that Exile and Witness match up better, since Witness did a bit of retroactive patching of some very minor logic gaps in Exile, and it isn’t like Exile is published, so I can still tweak with little difficulty. I kinda find the idea of writing the whole trilogy out before it ever sees the light of day a bit attractive, though that approach has some logistical issues. However, it would guarantee that nothing contradicts anything and I don’t accidentally write myself into a corner because I said one thing was true in Exile, then later find that it constrains the story unduly, so I have to do narrative backflips to work around it.

Anyway. Exile is now about 170,000 words (compared to the 158k it was when I finished drafting—I feared it would grow, but not quite that much!). Woo! Nice big chonky epic fantasy. …book 2 is going to be a beast.**

My favorite "Gev is a Potato" illustration.

This week is proofing-time, and getting to know Gev again, since it’s been a bit since I wrote him extensively, and I’d like to dive back into Incarnate for next year.

As a fun data-point, this Sunday will mark the end of me submitting it in 4-6k chunks to my critique group, which took about a year and a half. It was an experience! It made the book stronger! But was also a hella frustrating approach, as scenes or chapters which, in story, take place over the course of, I don’t know, fifteen minutes could take up to a month of real-world submission time, since my crit group meets every two weeks. It is a decidedly odd and unnatural way to read a novel. That said, my crit group was able to dig into chapters and scenes and pull things out that might not have been noticed in a full read-through over the course of days or weeks. Will I continue to sub novel chunks to my group? Of course! But will this approach possibly need some tweaking? Er. Yes. Maybe. We’ll see.

Witness (which needs a better, more evocative, more intriguing title—and I can’t call it “Fuck Mandate,” the same way I couldn’t call Exile “Prophecy’s Bitch”) has been proofed and is now (mostly) free of typos and general oddities, though I’m sure there are artefacts left over from drafting. Complete at 204,000 words, it’s officially the longest single thing I’ve ever written, and unlike Exile, a standalone…although it is a spinoff prequel, so does assume you’ve read Exile and are familiar with the world, so it’s not exactly a standalone, but it is a complete full story. I’m not currently planning a book 2.

The contrast between the two books fascinates me, to be honest. Gev’s story is a traditional hero’s journey type plot***, whereas Asheru’s story is very much not. Asheru doesn’t physically travel much, and most of the story is constrained to a mile-square space (with some exception right at the end). Gev travels everywhere. Most of Exile is a glorified travelogue. Witness is quieter, but spans six years of events. Mostly small, day-to-day life events, but still, six years. Witness is also, frankly, a romance? Well, okay, it’s a love story, and a story about healing, recovery, and finding your way again after some hefty trauma. But about half of it is a romance between two characters, and it is, er, rather on-screen. Which was fun! And if I wasn’t quite so stressed, and quite so far into my “fuck it” philosophy, I probably would have froze a whole lot more than I did, ’cause it’s got quite a few sexy scenes, which is something I, personally, as an ace person, have a limited range of experience with—definitely writing outside my comfort zone there. But it turned out okay. Will I let my mother read it? …er, probably not. Is it fan-fic levels of smut? Very much no. But it isn’t, ah, fade-to-black either. And it was a delight to write two characters who not only enjoy each others’ company, but are clearly having a great time with each other, so it’s less steamy and more sweet—with an awful lot of conversation and talk of not just consent, but where they want their relationship to go and what they want to be. Which makes for a very un-sexy synopsis? “They bonk, and then talk about boundaries.” Oh, and the romance is definitely queer. If we’re going to use modern queer terminology,† Asheru is allo-pan, and his lover is genderqueer/genderfluid, also allo, and has a clear preference for men (or, at least, one man in particular).

Cover of Ace by Angela Chen.

Which is sooo opposite Gev. Gev is more ace-coded in Exile, but by the end of Incarnate, it’s pretty explicitly stated—but he also probably falls heavily into the aro-spectrum, too, and while he forms friendships (some quite deep), I plan for them to be more platonic (if leaning more on the scale toward queer-platonic††). He’ll never have a romance arc and there will be no kissing—because that isn’t something on his radar. And I will fight you if there’s a suggestion of him being somehow deprived; there are more ways to experience love than just sexual, there are more forms of intimacy than just that one, and I fully intend to embrace that and make it abundantly clear. Because there aren’t a lot of books out there with ace and ace-coded protagonists (and all gradations of that spectrum under the broad umbrella of “ace”) that aren’t robots or ancient dragons or immortal wizards. While an ace-character can be a robot or dragon or wizard, it’s usually implied or depicted that their ace-ness is because of an unnatural or supernatural impetus, not because real people can, y’know, be ace/aro. There’s more representation out there with secondary characters, but rarely viewpoint characters in my experience. I admit, I’m biased because I intentionally don’t seek ace-characters out because of the number of times I’ve been burned (they’re ace because they were sexually abused! they’re ace until they meet their love interest and suddenly it’s revealed they were repressed the whole time! they’re ace, but only ace-coded because the book has them, idk, moored alone out in a tundra, so we never see them interact with another person, so they could be ace, they could be allo! they’re ace until the next season retroactively changes their sexuality and they are revealed as being allo the whole time! Am I salty about this? …yes).

Gev is also rather emotionally reserved and prone to unemotive understatement. His narrative can sometimes seem empty of his reaction and feeling…because it is. Because he has a history of emotional repression. And because he’s also just a phlegmatic sort of person in general. This will, hopefully, be made clearer in Incarnate, since Exile is entirely from Gev’s PoV, and Incarnate will introduce a second viewpoint character who isn’t emotionally repressed and can view him from the outside. And comment on his staid, erm, Gev-ness. Asheru, however, feels everything. He is very emotive, and because of certain narrative concerns, sometimes, it’s just his emotions the reader has access to, ’cause he can’t read the expressions on other people’s faces and has to rely on others’ tone, which doesn’t lend itself to nuance. He’s also an anxious ball of insecurities. Gev can be paranoid, and sometimes jumps to the most negative conclusion (out of a sense of self-preservation). Asheru is…a different flavor of paranoid. Gev struggles to maintain relationships outside of very specific location-centric structures. Asheru is absolutely surrounded with family and friends (to the point that there’s a whole arc about where the hell do we have sex without someone seeing us, why are the walls so thin, why do we not have DOORS, good gods).

Writing as self-therapy! Wee!

Photo of spices: peppercorns, curry powders, chili flakes, cinnamon sticks, rosemary, saffron, star anise, and a dried herb.

Also, in Witness, I got to wax poetically about food. Gev eats food, he likes food, he enjoys food, but he doesn’t know the why of food. Asheru is a chef. Asheru talks not just about food, but about technique and process and color and texture and taste, and moans over homemade chili oil and sticks his nose in spices and describes that, and I finally, FINALLY got to write a character who likes to cook. I like to cook, though just as a hobbyist. I also love to bake, though specifically sweets, pastries, and cakes (as much as I adore bread, every loaf I attempt comes out dense. Like, a slab of bread is an entire meal sort of dense. I’m a terrible bread-baker). Gev talks about food as he eats it. Asheru experiences food. Is my goal to make readers hungry? …maybe. Also, I want more fantasy about food! I want more feasts! I want more variety and not just “it’s stew!”

In contrast, Gev mostly waxes on about setting description, culture, and language (all the linguistic geekery! Except, with a character who’s poly-lingual, not a linguist, so has no idea the why behind why he’s having so many issues with grammar). Lots of culture and culture-contrast and lots and lots of language. Because I also want more conlangs in fantasy. I miss the days of glossaries at the backs of books, and not the glossaries of nowadays which seem designed more for quick recaps if you put the book down and come back three months later and forgot what that word means. I mean glossaries, which are their own meaty extension of the world-building, very much in the vein of Tolkien-look-alikes.

Yet, for all the differences, they both definitely have a similar texture, and not just because they are set in the same universe and written by the same person. Idk, they just bookend each other well, at least, in my head.

And good lord, this blog-post inflated. It was just supposed to be a little update on what I’m working on and instead transformed into, er. This. Anyway, so that’s what I’m working on. Once I’m done proofing Exile, it’s on to drafting Incarnate, because I’m still obsessed with this world and I want to explore it more.

Anyhoo, wrapping this up before I get ambushed by another digression.

* Highly recommend this approach—it changes the format, the font, and the, ah, setting of the manuscript, and typos and missing words leap off the page in a way I find doesn’t happen so much with a word processor. I draft in my tired old workhorse of a word processor (Word 2007, and no, I will not upgrade, Windows will pry that program from my cold, dead, driver-less fingers, thank you; I can’t stand the later Word’s weird animated cursor and typing lag) then convert the file to an ugly, but functional, ebook with Calibre (a free ebook/epub conversion program). And then I read. Mostly like a reader, but also like a writer, but not necessarily like the writer of the work, if that makes sense. It allows distance to really catch all those accidental repetitions, echoes, weird/unclear phrasing, and so on.

** Exile is one PoV character, Incarnate is planned to have two, and has just as much traveling about, doing things as Exile, if not more.

*** Though if we’re going to get technical about it, it’s more a heroine’s journey for many reasons, which is why I strongly suspect the story can be a bit polarizing since Gev doesn’t, ah, act like a traditional masculine hero, but if you gender-flipped him, I have a sneaking suspicion that if he was she, people wouldn’t get so frustrated with his seeming passivity quite the same way…

† Which doesn’t come up in the book, ’cause it’s a fantasy book and queer-normative and I’m leaning into the theory of no modern labels because they wouldn’t necessarily view it that way because they don’t have our world’s history of prejudice and oppression. Which is just my approach, and for this book universe.

†† If you’re new to this terminology of ace/aro/queer-platonic and so on, I do recommend checking out the book Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. It’s a useful primer for those new, and useful also for those like me who aren’t/weren’t part of a community and discovered their own ace-ness by trial and error and don’t know that there are words to describe this stuff. Or that other people experience the world the way I do. That I’m not weird or freakish or just a prude (hah, hah—no. I might not experience sexual attraction unless I actively choose to and work at it, but that doesn’t mean I’m sex-repulsed—btw, there are gradations within the spectrum, which Ace does discuss).

Image credits: Photo by Marion Botella on Unsplash

Reflections Post-MFA: Or, Should You Get a Degree in This or Not? (Answer: It depends)

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, writing1 Comment

So periodically, I see this question comes up online of whether or not a writer should (or shouldn’t) go for an MFA. And there’s always a chorus of replies either for or against, and I always think I’ll chime in, but never do. So instead, I’m just collecting all my unsaid thoughts and reflections on a BA and an MFA in creative writing in a single post, and admittedly, it’s been a few years since I graduated, so everything that follows has a retrospective tinge. This is a long one, so strap in.

First and foremost: no, attending an MFA program will not automatically make you a great writer.

Or, rather—not the way you think. You CAN get things out of an MFA program that WILL make you a stronger writer, a more efficient writer, a more confident writer—and a more precise critic and a more active reader.

In my six years of formal education in creative writing, I wrote just shy of 2 million words. I totted up my word count back when I was graduating from my undergrad, but I didn’t precisely tally what I did for my grad program, but it’s probably around 2 mil. And much of that word count was produced on tight deadlines.

I often joke that my undergrad program was a crucible and my grad program a forge—because for my undergrad, I typically had to produce about 3k-15k a week for four years, often following strict prompts, with little time to revise or edit, so it better be right—or, at least, something I could live with—the first time. I didn’t have the luxury of multiple drafts. I produced a fuck-ton of wordage. Most of it utter garbage, but some of it salvageable. I’ve sold a few short stories I wrote in undergrad to magazines and anthologies, but what my undergrad really did was built up my writing muscles to the point where knocking out a 7k short story following a strict anthology theme prompt a week before the deadline is not hard.

It also built the habit of writing, and now I don’t feel right or comfortable with myself if I haven’t written in a few days (unless I’m pouring my creative juices into some other expression, like painting). Writing is my joy, my happy place, and what I turn to when I’m stressed. Something which I probably could have built up on my own without the undergrad BUT doing the undergrad caused it to happen in a FAR MORE COMPRESSED amount of time. It did have the severe drawback of ridiculous stress and bouts of depression and anxiety that took a few years to work through, but hey.

Grad school had looser deadlines, but a greater focus on honing the edge of my skills and helping me figure out who I am as a writer, what it is I’m trying to do. For that one, it was bizarrely based on page count, not word count, with 30 pages a month, one major 30-something page dissertation paper, and one 120-page minimum thesis.

Basically, in short, the BA and MFA made me work, and it made me learn how to write while having other commitments. I currently have a full time job, am a full time student for another program (in support of the job—will be done in three weeks, woo!), and of my current novel, I’ve written about 130,000 words in less than four months. True, I don’t have many friends I see in person but, hey, pandemic times? Would this regimen work for everyone? Fuck no. It worked for me, but even while having a good end result, it wasn’t what I’d call a comfortable experience. So. What did I learn from those six years of schooling?

1. How to write a lot, and the benefits of quantity over quality. For a very long time, I wrote pulp stories. I embraced that, and wrote a lot, much of it terrible, but a lot of it, not, and on that foundation of what was not, I built my craft. You can get there with quality, it just tends to take longer, and in my personal opinion and experience, it’s easier to get to quality by going through quantity than to get to quantity through quality. Not that it can’t be done, but…easier.

2. Schooling did teach me to “hear” the rhythm and poetry of words. Now, I’m not a poet, but I appreciate the poetic beat—which, by the way, is why I will FIGHT YOU if you say, “high word count? just remove those filler words like ‘that’!” because those “filler” words have a purpose beyond the baseline of creating clarity, they also create rhythm, and I can TELL when something is over-edited. Why? Because it’s arrhythmic. It doesn’t “sound” right to the inner ear. Usually because words have been cut out with a search/find tool, so the sentence rhythm and structure has been changed…but all the sentences surrounding it haven’t, so there’s this discordancy where the sentences don’t mesh. Going to cut out words? Do a full read-through as you do it to make sure your words are still dancing to the music of the whole narrative.

3. How to critique—both how to give it and how to receive it. Most MFA programs are workshop based, and the more you do workshops, the more you learn there are different methods and approaches and which ones work for you (and which ones really don’t). The gift of tons of workshopping hours is that…I’m far less critical. Because I’ve seen that there are so many ways and methods and approaches, I’ve given up the whole idea that there’s a right way to do this. Really, there’s just many ways, and it’s highly individual; what’s right for someone else isn’t necessarily right for you. Which is frustrating, at first, because people tend not to like ambiguities. But, to quote Barbossa, “They’re more like guidelines.” It teaches you how to separate personal taste from the writer’s vision, and refine your ability to give feedback that strives for that vision, rather than what you, personally, would like. Yeah, sure, of course, this isn’t 100%, and critique will never, ever, be truly impartial, but practice helps get you a bit closer.

4. How to receive critique…and not be rocked off course. Schooling helped me figure out what I want from my writing and what I want to do, and taught me how to listen to critique, say thank you, that’s an insightful reading and has give me much to consider…then not act on it at all. Because the critique in question wasn’t helping to further my vision and bring my work closer to what I conceptualized it to be. It helped me figure out what were my hills to die on…and what is just stubbornness and being enamored with my own work. I’m more centered now, more grounded. I have a better idea of what I’m doing and what my intent is, and have learned how to define it, if only to myself.

5. How to reverse engineer other people’s writing! Like, other people talk about how studying writing or becoming a writer ruined books for them and they can’t just read for fun. Au contraire! You can read to reverse engineer and revel in the recognition that someone else is doing something a fuck-ton better than you can…and then you can figure out how they did it and do it for yourself. It isn’t theft! You’re acquiring a new tool for your craft.

6. I’m going to be absolutist and talk about extremes, but there are two kinds of writers: those who love the act of writing and those who love to have written. Of course, this is really a spectrum, and people fall everywhere in it, but the strategies for finishing your work can be different depending on where you fall.

Those who love to have written tend to be more productive when they have deadlines, prompts, and often, an outside force goading them on. Many of these sorts, if they don’t end up finding a community of like-minded writers in their MFA programs, tend to stop writing after getting their degree.

Then there are those who love the act and will do it regardless…but not necessarily see projects to completion. Because they have a thousand ideas, and chase plot bunnies with abandon. They, too, benefit from deadlines and outside forces placing constraints to keep them on track, and after they finish their program, while they may continue to write a fuck-ton, they might struggle to complete things.

So what can MFA programs do? Help you figure out where you are on that spectrum and give you strategies and tools that you can do beyond the program—this might take the form of dedicated spaces, writing goal tools, communities, workshops, a regular submission routine to agents or editors or markets. Whatever fuels you.

And, while we’re on the topic of finishing: yes, finish your shit. Because the more you finish, the more you’re able to recognize the feeling when something is finished. And the easier it becomes to replicate. Also, if your goal is publication, you can’t usually publish something without it being finished. So. Finish things.

7. Rules are bullshit. No, really. They don’t actually exist. EXCEPT! When you’re starting out, you NEED the rules, because the rules create context which, until you get more experience, you’re not going to have. So rules = necessary, but also rules = illusionary. When it stops shoring you up and giving structure and instead starts stifling and constricting you, and you find yourself having to do writerly gymnastics to get around it, jettison it. You don’t need it anymore.

8. The philosophy of “Fuck it.” It’s so very freeing to reach a point where you just yeet all those rules into the very sun and scream, “Fuck it!” and do what you want. Also, writing, like any art, doesn’t end. You always have a new bar to strive for, a new goal. Which…can be intimidating and defeating, at first. But eventually, you might, like me, come to the conclusion that it’s a hell of a lot more fun if there’s no level cap.

So are MFA programs necessary? Of course not. And they tend to be very expensive, and for the most part, if you are driven and dedicated and have the support—either from yourself, from those around you, from a larger writing community—you can easily replicate the lessons an MFA program can teach you for free—or nearly so. But is it worthless? Also, no. But the caveat is, you tend to get back what you put in. Although, if you’re willing to go $20k into debt with student loans, I hope you’re willing to put in the effort. ‘Cause with that kind of money, you could instead take out a loan for a good car…

Would I trade my BA and MFA? No. Because they worked for me. However, I do want to note that while I do have some short stories published and regularly submit to agents, editors, and markets, I haven’t sold a book, I don’t have an agent, and I’m not popular. So having a degree in this is not going to guarantee you success or a book deal or whatever. That’s a separate, though closely parallel, thing. Same way attending that prestigious workshop isn’t going to get you a book deal, either. It can, however, help you build a community, a network of fellow writers and, sometimes, agents and editors. It can help you get perspective not just on your work, but also the industry.

But, honestly, as stressful and intense as it can be, MFAs and workshops and classes can also be fun. ‘Cause you’re basically in a room with a bunch of people with brains that work like yours, that see stories and patterns and the rhythm of words, and are bursting with ideas and characters and plots and metaphors. You ain’t alone, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, my nearly two thousand words of two cents. Congrats! You made it here (and I honestly have no idea why you put up with me…?). Have a cookie. 🍪

Cross-posted on Reddit, thus, the Reddit cookie emoji.

We Have Crossed the 100K Barrier!

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, writingLeave a comment

New novel is officially long for it has crossed the 100,000-word line. Though I still aim for 140k, I have to admit, it might possibly weigh in at a bit heftier. I still have the other half of this fight scene, the aftermath, the reporting-back, the off-to-see-the-wizard section, then you-might-be-the-chosen-one-I’m-too-sober-for-this aftermath, then the last scene of proving chosen one status, and end of book. Which, um, sounds like a lot, I realize. It’d be nice for it to be 140k, but we’ll see.

Screen shot for proof:

Forgive all the placeholders. Proper nouns are my arch nemesis and usually the last thing I work out in a draft, so everything just has hundreds of ________. Also, the precision of the word count meter wasn’t intentional. I knew I was getting close, stopped to check after finishing a sentence, and ‘lo and behold, it was 100k exactly, so I screenshotted. Because how many times will that happen when the word count falls on such a nice round number without it being choreographed or cut off mid-sentence?

Endgame begins. My writing soundtrack has shifted from ESO ambiances to Witcher III combat music.

Aiming also to have this book done and polished by the end of this year. It’s been a personal challenge to see if I can (finally) write a novel and finish it in the time constraints of a typical publishing house contract, since most of mine have taken between two years and three, but I’ve never dedicated the whole of my attention on the one book. Previously, I was writing the novel while I was doing creative writing grad school work, and while I’m still doing grad school work (though for a different degree), the fact that I started writing this book the first week of January, it was too tempting to see if I could finish it in a year.

It might happen. I want it to happen. I’d be really happy if I could finish the initial drafting by the end of August and move on to fixing all those proper noun placeholders and doing revision work to the beginning in the fall, but best laid plans and all that.

Anyone else hitting fortuitous word counts that make nice screenshots lately?

Ode to Morrowind

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, writing2 Comments

Because in real-life, I’m fighting the fluctuating but constant feeling that I’m either being gaslighted by society at large or that things are utterly bleak and hopeless, and in the U.S., we’re experiencing so much social and political upheaval ramping up to an election with potential results that, frankly, terrify me, I’m going to use this space to babble about a video game that shaped how I write and what I write about.

That game is Morrowind.

Look at those graphics! Look at those giant bug critters! Look at those…people with eldritch horror tentacles ripping their way out of their faces…hm. Y’know, in the original low resolution on an old 90’s block screen, you didn’t quite get the visual horror of these guys that modern high resolution retexturing mods give them.

Anyway, this video game was THE video game for me, though as a kid, I had issues with sticking to a choice and playing a character for more than six levels, along with just not quite getting what I was supposed to be doing. So, as a kid, the guidebook was my bible. Like, really, I carried the guidebook around at school and when the glue in the spine crumbled from so much reading, I put the pages in individual protector sheets and stuck them in a binder. I also read a lot of the in-game lore books, since I was mostly restricted to Seyda Neen, Balmora, and maybe Ola Oad or Aldruhn if I felt particularly daring. A few times I ended up in Sadrith Mora, but since I usually didn’t play a character long enough to unlock the levitation spell, I couldn’t go past the entrance halls of the Telvanni towers.

These convenient portal-pads for the magically deprived weren’t a thing in Morrowind, so if you wanted to go exploring Telvanni towers, you needed the levitate spell or something enchanted with levitate.

A few years ago, I bought the game and played it as an adult and…yeah, well, the graphics haven’t aged all that well and the combat is absolutely nothing like subsequent games (Oblivion and Skyrim). But! As an adult, I was able to, 1. commit to one character and 2. finally understand how to read directions. Because there are no map markers in Morrowind, and occassionally, the directions are wrong. After many, many years of never getting beyond the first major quest in the main quest, I finished not only Morrowind, but Tribunal and Bloodmoon, the two expansions.

It also gave me the opportunity to truly appreciate how much of an indelible mark this game made on proto-writer me, particularly in how I approach worldbuilding.

Morrowind has a steep learning curve, and it explains very little beyond the basics. Once you click past the tutorial, you are on your own (unless, of course, you have a guide). Instead, it immerses you entirely, and once you start scratching at the surface of the worldbuilding, you realize…it’s layers. Layers upon layers, and some of those layers are in direct contradiction with other layers, but both are, sort of, true. The sheer amount of reading available in this game is utterly staggering. Though the lore books average maybe four pages, there are hundreds. And, unlike subsequent titles, most of the game’s dialogue happens in dialogue boxes, with a single notable exception. Little is voiced. (But the little that is…oh, the sound of an Ordinator saying, “We’re watching you. Scum.” will forever be immortalized in my memory. Along with, “Mournhold! City of light! City of magic!” and “Wake up. There you go. You were dreaming. Now, what’s your name?”)

But the worldbuilding is so, so rich, and the quests and characters are some of the most unique in the Elder Scrolls series (excepting Elder Scrolls Online, only because that game is truly massive, and it does its fair share of callbacks to Morrowind, but I’ll get into it more later). And so much of it is conveyed with little explanation, forcing you, the player, to fill in the blanks and dialogue with it while the local fauna is trying to kill you as you run for your life under the canopies of giant mushroom trees. And if, like me, you’re one of those players who, when you stumble across a secret or uncover another layer of worldbuilding, you squeal in glee and treasure it like the shiny nugget it is, this game rewards you, and often. It encourages multiple play-throughs, simply because you are going to miss details, and every time through gives you something new.

Yet, it also plays a lot with the mutability of truth. Of how much perspective plays a role not only in history, but in how history unfolds in the present. And the importance of leaving just a bit of mystery, just a few questions unanswered, because it’s in those spaces that you let imagination proliferate.

So, basic rundown of the core concept of the game. By the emperor’s order, you’ve been pulled out of prison, stuck on a boat, and shipped to the very alien landscape of the island of Vvardenfell in Morrowind, one of the two eastern-most provinces of Tamriel. At first, you are an imperial agent who gets cast in the role of the Nerevarine, the reincarnation of Nerevar–an ancient Dunmer hero–and a sort of Dunmeri messiah figure. But, the further along in the story you go, the more tests your character passes, and it starts to become clear that you might actually be the Nerevarine, not just an impostor lookalike. Which coincides with the rise/reawakening of Dagoth Ur, the fellow behind the eldritch horror tentacles and, possibly, Nerevar’s murderer.*

It’s surprisingly tricky to find an image of all three together.

I say possibly. Because it’s also possible he was murdered by his own allies, Vivec, Almalexia, and Sotha Sil, who subsequently ascended to a mortal godhood and became the Tribunal. And even though you have the opportunity to talk to, well, two of the three (Vivec and Almalexia), you’re never given a clear answer as to what happened. How did Nerevar die? It’s unclear, and depending on the interpretation, all perspectives are true due to a dragon break. But even without the dragon break, it’s fascinating to hold up the pieces, the snippets that different characters give you, and see how they fit together. What overlaps, what doesn’t? And that approach, that uncomfortable “knowing but not knowing” is a fascinating technique that I notice I often use in my own work. What’s truth? Subjective. Different people have different takes, different theories, even when they were witness to the event.

Also, judging by the content of Dead God’s Bones, I also really love to engage with the idea of mortal gods. Oh, and when I do utilize the chosen one trope, it’s almost always the “you look like the chosen one, you’ll do” and the character becomes the chosen one through a “fake it till you make it” approach (or never becomes the chosen one at all). Which has similar parallels to Morrowind’s approach.

And, for DGB at least, I often channel the visual, mm, texture of Morrowind and, to a certain degree, Oblivion. Less so Skyrim, not sure why. I often wish I had the ability to convey truly alien creatures the way visual media–such as games, movies, or art–can do. Writing is filtered through the reader’s perspective, and so such things require a different kind of building to maintain clarity. Sometimes, I wish I could drop a reader into a landscape like Vvardenfell the way Morrowind does but, alas, my skill is not yet high enough. But I can try, to some extent.

For fun, here’s an ascended sleeper, what those tentacles-from-the-face-guys eventually become. The painting is also, shockingly, one of mine.

Still, I so very much enjoy building massive worlds to only show the surface, inviting a reader to scratch and see what’s underneath. Or, in the case of short fiction, since short fiction is limited in word count and what can be explored, setting up the illusion of great depth of worldbuilding. I strive to give just enough hints, while maintaining just enough mystery, to engage my readers’ imagination, and invite them to piece things together and fill in the blanks for themselves. Mostly because I want to recreate that experience that Morrowind provided me, but for someone else.

Also, as a side thing, I still haven’t found a literary equivalent of this game. I’m always on the hunt for suggestions, though, so if you’re familiar with Morrowind and have read something that channels the same spirit, please suggest?

Remember how I mentioned this would relate to ESO? Right, so when I bought ESO and started playing it for the first time, I hadn’t realized that the version I got came bundled, original game plus the Morrowind chapter. The game started, there was a tutorial thing, I did it because, er, ESO has a bit of a learning curve too, if you’re used to TES games. Anyway, tutorial over and…I’m in Seyda Neen. More so, I am on that DOCK, the one from the beginning of Morrowind and…the music is playing, and it’s reminiscent of the original soundtrack, to the point that some things are direct covers of the original, and…oh, the feels. So much sentimentality going on. And then I start walking and run into this thing:

Vvardenfell has a thing with tentacles…

And went, “What the hell is that? And what are those?”

The vvardvark, a critter that, by TES III: Morrowind, is extinct.

Apparently, the in-game explanation for why this Vvardenfell’s flora and fauna look a little different (beyond developments in graphical capabilities and changes in aesthetics due to different development teams) is that ESO’s Morrowind is a little under a thousand years prior to the events of TES III: Morrowind, and things change. Notably, things change a lot if your island is an active volcano and only gets more active, and covers your land in a fine dusting of ash. Which actually makes a lot of sense. One of my critiques of the Elder Scrolls universe is that, between games, there often isn’t a huge visual difference, though hundreds of years may have passed. Beyond Vvardenfell, the entire architecture of Mournhold is different which…also makes sense, seeing that in a hundred years or so, it’s going to get razed.

  • Almalexia’s Temple of ESO
  • Almalexia’s Temple of TES III: Tribunal

TES in general has a thing for reoccurring characters, and ESO is no exception. There are a lot of references in ESO’s Morrowind to TES III: Morrowind (similarly, Skyrim’s Dragonborn expansion references a bit, though not quite as thoroughly).

Ah, Barilzar…why does your name sound so familiar? Oh. Right. That Barilzar. The one of the Maze Band. And, oh, thank you for helping us save Vvardenfell from certain destruction, here have a few…crystals…for your experiments…oh. Um. Enjoy lichdom? Sorry that my Nerevarine kills you? And that my Vestige, er, dooms you?

I have shamelessly bought the Ald Velothi bug-style Redoran house in ESO and have, also shamelessly, decorated it to be as Morrowind-reminiscent as I could, with a few nods to the Clockwork City because, second to Vvardenfell, it’s by far my favorite area. Also, Clockwork City gave that denied chance to speak to Sotha Sil, seeing that events of Tribunal make that rather impossible. He’s…interesting. Philosophical but also very meta, very sideways-aware he’s an NPC. It’s an interesting conversation.** Vivec is Vivec, and by the end of the Vvardenfell chapter, I was questioning just how much I was charismatically manipulated into certain actions. Hmmmm… And Almalexia is…slightly less insane. But, also, roped me into saving her temple and then gifted me with a lamp? It felt a little anti-climactic, but also very fitting.***

However, since I’ve now cleared Vvardenfell, Clockwork City, Stonefalls, and Deshaan, I’m off to Shadowfen, which is very much new territory to explore, given that there hasn’t been an Elder Scrolls game set in Blackmarsh since Arena, but that’s set on/in all of Tamriel, and Daggerfall is as far back as I’ve gone so far.

In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Skywind, and fan-made port of Morrowind’s intellectual spirit into the Skyrim engine. They are making their own models, they’re making their own textures, they’re building Morrowind from the ground, up, but using Skyrim’s more modern infrastructure. And I absolutely cannot wait. This is the game that’ll woo me away from ESO, I guarantee. My grand-plan is to, eventually, play Skygerfall (the Daggerfall main quest remake in the Skyrim engine, a mod that’s already released), then Skywind, then Skyblivion (the Oblivion recreation in the Skyrim engine, much like Skywind), then eventually, replay Skyrim and actually do the main quest without taking a year break in the middle. And, depending on how the release schedule ends up, maybe being able to then play The Elder Scrolls VI.

Maybe.

Look at this amazing thing. This is going to be glorious when it releases.

And thus brings a close to my long, rambling ode to a game near and dear to my writerly heart. If not for Morrowind, I certainly wouldn’t write the way I do, and I wouldn’t be fascinated by the concepts that I am. Or, er, quite as obsessed with worldbuilding.****

After writing all this, I do find myself craving a new playthrough. Hm. (Wait for Skywind, I tell myself, wait for Skywind.)

Ta-da! My ESO Vvardenfell house! With as many references to Morrowind (and Clockwork City) as I could work in. It’s not finished yet, and there are things I wish I could get but can’t (*cough cough* the Lord Vivic furniture pack *cough cough*), and there are rooms I didn’t include in the screenshot collection (like the kitchen), but at its core, ’tis the house. I am stupidly proud of that mezzanine level and water feature on the landing. Was this post an excuse to show off my ESO house? …maybe.

* I don’t feel like this is a spoiler, since this game was released in 2002.
** There’s some a few references to what ends up happening to Sotha Sil peppered around in the dialogue. He apparently has defense measures set up for three potential, and possibly only, threats to his life. One is himself. Another is an angry daedric prince. The third is Almalexia. Very much a “Hah!” and “Oooh…” moment.
*** Also, fun and somewhat weird thing, but if you start playing in the Morrowind chapter, then go back and wander into Mournhold, you’ll run into a familiar face from Morrowind…who’ll have no idea who you are, because ESO is designed to go chronologically for character development, but being an MMORPG with multiple expansions, doesn’t guarantee a player will meet that character at the start of their arch.
**** It didn’t fit in the essay, so this is postscript, but the Elder Scrolls universe also plays, at least worldbuilding-wise, with cultures which aren’t based on a good vs. evil dichotomy, which is rare in high fantasy. A reoccurring theme within the Elder Scrolls is more an order vs. chaos, which is fascinating.