With her permission, I’m using my coauthor as an example today. So, my coauthor is a phenomenal writer. When she’s writing at her best, she has such emotion and humour, and has techniques I honestly love to emulate. The thing is that when she’s writing at her best, she isn’t writing novels. She’s roleplaying.
We roleplay with text all the time. It’s very rare for us to not be roleplaying in one form or another. I had an itch to go back and reread some of these (we’re such good writers, y’all, we’re amazing) and realised that the reason I have such high regard of her writing while she doesn’t is because I get to read it, all the time, in the form in which she has practiced it the most.
See, mediums matter. The more you practice writing in specific ways the better you’re going to get — in those specific ways. I’ve written a lot more novels than my coauthor has. I’m comfortable with the prose. But she’s written just as much roleplay. And there are days where I cannot Write A Book, but can certainly bang out something short and indulgent for her.
The thing she feels she’s missing in her prose — depth, emotion, rhythm, pacing — are all things I see in her roleplay. She’s got so many more hours under her belt in that medium than she has with prose. No wonder there’s such a difference. So I suggested she begin her prose in roleplay-style formatting, to get a lead into that mindset and bring it over.
She was Dubious.
I think I know why. The Novel is a highly regarded narrative form. It’s contemporary, common, publishable, fashionable; you can earn income on it, get prestige from it, mess it up …
The Novel, as a narrative form, as a fuckton of baggage attached about Doing Things Correctly. The form itself is about as intimidating as you can get — there are so many myths needed to work through in order to find a place where you can write a novel without much care. (And then work through them again, and again. Unfortunately the myths that limit writing are strong and pervasive, and need defeating more than once.)
Meanwhile, roleplay is indulgent fun. It’s not for anything, it doesn’t mean anything. Lacking adjectives, most people would immediately think it’s something sexual. (Which, to be fair, if can be, if you’re writing porn.) But roleplay has no strings, no expectations attached: there’s no assumption that anything will grow from it, whereas The Novel is a capitalist venture.
And my coauthor and I have easily written millions and millions of untracked words to each other, in the form of joyful indulgences.
This is what writing ought to be.
If you have trouble writing Novels, find a place where writing is an indulgence, not a venture. Write in it. Write lots. Learn how to bring that aesthetic, that feeling, into prose, if prose is indeed what you’re aiming to learn. That place, that medium, whatever it is, is your doorway into the joy that modern branding tries to leash.
It’s okay if your medium is silly, indulgent fun.
That’s what stories are too.
Aurichalcum Publishing 