Ben sent me a link to a story he’s written. Better, he’s recorded it, someone has provided illustrations and they’ve put it up on youtube as a multipart short story experience thingy. I watched the first part last night and thought a but about how impressive Ben’s output is. He is maintaining a relationship with his fiancé who needs some emotional support and care, he is running several related but independent podcasts and holding down a full time job as well.
Impressive stuff really.
The story wasn’t the greatest, but I must admit it’s vastly better than anything I have published, in part because I have never published anything. I am reminded of years and years ago when Pratchett gave the general encouragement – don’t say you want to write, just write. Followed by Abnett who said pretty much the same thing, The work is in putting the words down on the page and then working at them to make them better.
Despite hearing this, perfectly sensible, advice from actual professional authors who make a crumb or two from writing words and selling them to people I have written surprisingly little. Preferring for much of my life to think about doing things rather than doing them.
There are so many excuses and justifications available. Rest, illness, stress, anxiety, being busy with something else, worries about how it might go wrong, spending time researching, spending time designing, spending time thinking about whether or not it is the right thing to do.
Ok, so I wandered off and spent a few minutes reading a summary from Claude. 西毒 is the character’s name, Western Venom. Xi Du. The last time a character landed on my so powerfully was when I was reading Ayn Rand. There’s something about people who honour their internal sense of righteousness and refuse to apologise or justify themselves in terms designed mainly to help other people feel more comfortable.
Perhaps one of the reasons I thought about it is reading the short story Ben wrote. It’s good, there’s a clear plot, people are acting with purpose and there are plenty of references and fun ideas. Something was missing, and I think this is true of most good writing. When a situation is described well, when you become familiar with a character you can develop a sense of what they are going to do before they do it.
As a scenario is described you can already see, as though it was also laid out, what the character is going to do. This creates a sense of attachment and involvement in the story. I can think of times when reading a story I have put the book down because I can feel so strongly what is going to happen, feel the pain of the inevitable mistake or the pain or loss before it has happened.
There’s probably a term for this. My point here is that I think it was missing, or at least had not developed yet in Ben’s story. One of the reasons Dan Abnett leans so heavily on caricature and stereotype is that by setting out that his characters are typical examples of certain types you already have some sense of who they are. The highland sniper who keeps himself to himself and is a master of stealth. In just a few words you have some feel for who the oerson is and what they will do.