The Importance of Writing Fundamentals (RESOURCE)
The Importance of Writing Fundamentals (RESOURCE)
A response to an article by The Brothers Krynn on The Hero's Journey
Author’s Note: This post is aimed for the writers. So I won’t be emailing this one.
Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of “writing about writing”. But there is a reason why this kind of content is popular. The question of “how to write good” continues to dog writers, especially “indie writers”. It's only natural.
Now let’s be honest, if you release your work on Substack, you are an indie writer. Personally, I hate the label and I do all I can to distance myself from that moniker, but it is what it is.
Being an indie writer usually means you don’t really have a mentor. At least that’s the case with me. You are an autodidact. You may even make it up as you go along. Whatever’s the case, you will look for answers. Then, you will find all these rules, concepts, and rubrics. Chances are, you will struggle to put them together in a coherent way.
This brings me to an article by
about “The Hero’s Journey” and “archetypes”. I recommend you give it a read:The first part of the title is certainly striking: How to Always Succeed at Writing. A bold statement to be sure, some may say arrogant. But were the authors wrong?
The Fundamentals
Lately I have been watching basketball analyses and commentaries on YouTube. What struck me more than the specific tactics or even the crazy mentality of these sporting legends were the idea of “fundamentals”, also known as the “Xs and Os”.
I found basketball interesting as a sport because the marketing tries sell you on the dunks and the explosive plays, in other words: the players’ athleticism. But in the end, what truly wins championships are the fundamentals. Do you really understand the game? Are you able to make the tough shots? When it matters most, can you make the right play?
Some players excel in the fundamentals. Others, not so much; they got by through sheer athleticism. One argument made against today’s league is that players have athleticism, but not so much the fundamentals. They don’t really understand the game, so they break the rules with impunity:
But I don’t want to bore my fellow writers with basketball stuff, so I’ll move on. How do the “fundamentals” apply to writing?
Tropes and All
The concept of tropes or storytelling devices is something I am well familiar with. Back in the day, I used to frequent the website TVTropes. I was even an anonymous editor, going by the name of Counter Blitzkrieg.
Though I no longer go to TVTropes, even finding the whole community “cringe” (for lack of a better word) nowadays, I do owe the website for helping me understand storytelling devices and how they work. Learning about the tropes used by various movies, games, etc. allowed me to write my own stories. For better or worse, TVTropes was my writing mentor.
The Brothers Krynn brought the spirit of TVTropes (without the cringe) over to Substack through their media analyses and their essays on archetypes. Needless to say, they strongly disagreed with those who have a freewheeling approach to writing (para. 2 & 4):
I’ve met many an amateur writers who detest the pair [Campbell & Jung] and others who continued their teachings, and claim that they were ‘wrong’, ‘arrogant’, or that somehow Archetypes and the Hero’s Journey is everything ‘wrong’ with writing and with Hollywood.
…
What is also interesting is the amount of rage that it stirs up. Something that is strange and laughable even, as the ‘haters’ of this line of thought seem to think that the pair were somehow seeking to ‘disbar’ or otherwise ‘banish’ alternative cycles and ideas. When truth is the idea of Comparative Literature is that ALL stories fall under the Hero’s Journey.
Are the brothers right in their claim that “all stories fall under the Hero’s Journey”? I am inclined to agree as my own novel, Inquisitor’s Promise, uses this template. And at the time, I remember not being the fan of the Hero’s Journey if only because of how everyone kept yapping on about it.
But despite my (slight) antipathy towards the concept (at the time), I ended up making use of it. Funny that.
To me, Inquisitor’s Promise is Exhibit A for what the brothers were saying in their article (para. 50-51):
I know this isn’t fun to hear, but the truth is that Archetypes are a proven fact. Just as the Hero’s Journey. The sooner you square with that knowledge and humbly accept the Truth, the sooner you can bend to its power and write a masterpiece. And trust me as Musashi once said you cannot defeat, break or bend from the Truth but must acknowledge it.
Once you have bent your spirit to the Truth, and recognized you are powerless before it, your story WILL follow the Hero’s Journey and your character WILL fit into a designate Archetype you can worry about the funner details of the World, Character-Backstory, Culture, Character Personality, Plot, Villain-details, Support Cast and other stuff that makes writing fun.
This can be a bitter pill to swallow. Trust me, I understand.
As an author, I do take the freewheeling approach. I’m not afraid to to mix up the tropes and even the genres. That’s why in my About page I said the following: genre should not be a straitjacket for the story.
But even if your style is unorthodox, you still need to understand the fundamentals of writing. You can’t just say, “screw the rules, I have my style.”
Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Maybe you think you can get away with it because you’re such a talented writer and you can weave a yarn that will rival the likes of Tolkien or Lewis in your sleep. If so, then you’re like the basketball player with the athleticism of Shaquille O’Neal or LeBron James but not much else; when the going gets tough, you will struggle because you don’t have the fundamentals to fall back on.
Unlike basketball, though, writing doesn’t have referees or opposition teams who will punish you for your lack of fundamentals. If anything, I see “writing coaches” who encourage this blasé approach to the fundamentals.
Post-Modern Writing
I have seen people in my circle of authors who have nothing but contempt for “writing courses”. And I can’t say I blame them. Before I started seriously writing, I purchased a writing course from Audible; I found it to be a waste of money. To be fair, the course did have some interesting material. However, the course has a fatal flaw: it came with the caveat that writing has no rules and that I’m free to ignore everything in this course (at least, that’s how I remember it).
Now if writing has no rules, why should I care to remember anything that was said by a writing instructor?
This is what I like to call “post-modern writing”. There are no rules, so do what you will.
But I must stress that it’s not just a “normie” or “left-wing” thing. I’ve seen the “based” authors making the same mistake.
For example, there is a pulp author who claims that certain genres like science-fiction or fantasy doesn’t exist. I’m not going to mention him by name because I don’t want to call him out like that. In fact, I actually understand the point that he’s trying to say, and I actually agree with the author on said point. I just found the idea that certain genres don’t actually exist to be overselling it.
That said, I think the author (and those in the pulp circle) are responding to a phenomenon I have noticed.
Rubric Writing
The other side to this “there are no rules” approach to writing is the “you must follow all these steps” approach to writing. I call this, “rubric writing”.
One reason why I didn’t care for “The Hero’s Journey” as a concept is because it has become a straitjacket in which everything must fit. Thus, one’s approach to writing became akin to satisfying a school rubric. That’s why I call it rubric writing.
Remember back in school or university when you have to write an essay? The professor gave you a rubric. And the essay you write must hit all the checklist as was shown in the rubric if you want to get an A.
That’s how it feels sometimes when dealing with “The Hero’s Journey” or tropes in general. Oh, you must have the “refusal of the call” otherwise it’s not a good story. This character must be like this otherwise she’s poorly written. You get the idea.
It kills the fun in writing, and I get people who take the “know-nothing” approach to tropes.
Even so, fun is not an excuse to ignore the fundamentals. In fact, rubric writing, if applied correctly can get you far. For example, Lester Dent.
Lester Dent made his name (and money) selling stories he wrote with speed and efficiency that will impress the Germans. This “pulp speed” of his has a formula. The Lester Dent Formula is a tried and true method for selling short stories, at least back in the day.
If you are writer (and I know you must be since you’re reading this), I recommend you give it a try. Seriously - here’s the link.
I myself had tried the Lester Dent formula and got a short story out of it; one that I submitted to an anthology magazine. They rejected it. I was frustrated at the time. But now? I’m glad they didn’t publish the story because after thinking it over, I don’t think I like it all that much anymore. And I don’t want that story to be what people know me for.
Perhaps someday I’ll get around to submitting that short story for another magazine. Or maybe I’ll put it out in this Substack. Regardless, it’s now sitting in my hard drive.
I haven’t read anything by Lester Dent, but I can respect his hustle and productivity. Furthermore, his formula does work; I can attest to that. That said, I am not Lester Dent; and I don’t want to write like Lester Dent.
Coda
So what now? Screw the rules, I have my style? Absolutely not. Again, that’s post-modern writing. There is value in the rubric, there is value in the fundamentals. But do not let the rubric become the straitjacket in which everything must fit.
To quote Sun Tzu’s famous treatise, The Art of War:
While heeding the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules. According as circumstances are favourable, one should modify one’s plans.
Remember that at the end of the day, you are the writer. You must do what what is necessary for the story to become the best as it can be. But to even know what is necessary, you must know the fundamentals.
And now comes the million dollar question(s). What are the fundamentals? Who can teach them? Where are the resources?
For starters, you can try this one…
-Michael P. Marpaung
Tagging the Substack fiction writers (I will miss somebody):
[and everyone else]
I need Substack to give me a few dozen more like buttons to smash here. Hamish McKenzie, please get on that.
What you're discussing here in terms of the pitfalls of the postmodern "I don't need no rules" style of writing versus those that come with pure and rigid adherence to a rubric hit on the lessons I learned when I studied fiction in college. From what I've seen among our contemporaries who play around with our theme days and try to make our marks as independents, I'm the only one who's done this, and I can tell you now the approach that my professors took was a world apart from the instructor you encountered. Writing absolutely has rules and fundamentals, both on the technical and creative sides. No matter what process is taken to do so, I consider learning them to be a necessity, and by that same vein I consider learning how to properly break them necessary as well.
The rules and fundamentals of fiction will give you the solid foundation needed to build your story. Learning how to bend and break them based on the needs of your writing is how you develop your style.
Great insights here, man!
Reminds me of that Tumblr post that says how Tolkien would get destroyed by modern writing workshops.