⌨️ "Real" Writing Styles - And "Real" Art
Last Updated: 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Your Craft Doesn't Have To Conform
I stumbled onto this video and it made me want to respond.
My post today actually stems from and builds from a modified version of my comment in response to this video.
"Fanfic" and "Screenwriting" - My Love of Less Prestigious Writing Styles
There's a special place in my heart for that really conversational, what I call "screenwriting" style1, where the story just flows... like a movie, or like a story someone is literally relaying to you in person; very simple and human.
This style is that of K.A. Applegate's writing in book series like Animorphs and Everworld, as well as that of a couple of fanfiction authors I love, like MsButterfingers.
I know this style may not be esteemed like Dickens', but it's so immersive for me. It makes me feel seen. I truly think there can be real skill in those writing styles, even if they're not all flowery and are actually easy to understand and dive right into as a reader. To me, they dive right into the heart of the action and flow with the pace of an action movie - exactly perfect for the genre they represent!
And I actually truly love how K.A. Applegate, writing from the perspective of a teen character relaying a story in first-person (I'm thinking of Animorphs), can start a sentence with "And" and use short sentences or single phrases for emphasis, making me feel as if I am in a conversation with this teenage character who is first-person in her book. As if this character is actually relaying the story moment by moment to me, as they stress to me just how intense this action-packed scene was, in a similar way to how a real teenager might describe an extreme sport they tried and the suspense, anticipation and triumph where they actually managed to execute a certain move... or failed utterly, wiped out really hard and were lucky to emerge unscathed... or were utterly scathed and had to stress just how badly it hurt in the moment.
All of that raw emotion and intensity in living, visceral detail, makes it feel real and immersive from the point of view of the characters she's describing.
Maintaining that suspense, that in-the-moment feeling is even more impressive, given that it the series is written in past tense, and I think the simplified style really assists with the type of scifi/scifantasy action-and-raw-teenage-angst genre Applegate has nailed so well.
Ms Butterfingers nails a similar genre in her fanfics, at least in the works of hers I have read: ("Realize" - a Rocket Power high school fanfic - and "Hard To Control Myself" - a Powerpuff Girls high school fanfic) I have read so far she utilises a combining action with teenage romance.
"Not Real Art"
I feel that less prestigious styles get frowned apon as "not real writing," just like comic book art at some point was seen as "not real [highbrow] art", though tell that to the Pulitzer Prize Board, when they awarded Art Spiegelman's "Maus" the notable award. Animated media has faced a similar stigma in being presumed to be "for children", and children's media (and children's perceptive abilities) largely dismissed as, well, infantile, with nothing of substance to offer the world.
"Not Real Music"
It also rather reminds me of how my relatives tend to be super snooty about classical music, and look down on other genres in general.
There are many genres, from metal to pop to many newer genres in general, which tend to receive this derision - often particularly from either older generations, or from muscians who were raised to conform to a particular genre and not wander outside of its designated boundaries. Often by very performative and trophy-hungry parents who viewed these children as an extension of themselves.
"Not Real [fill in the blank]"
There was, and to some degree still is, the same derision for computer games - particularly by older generations - as have historically been seen by those who don't play them as neither "real" art nor "real" storytelling, and rather as mindless entertainment.
Just like TV, at a certain, slightly earlier, point in time, was seen as "inferior" to reading "wasting the minds of the youth".
Just like books were seen as a big evil, inferior to memory, and about which Socrates once claimed in Plato's Phaedrus :
If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
You get the pattern - anything new is demonised - ESPECIALLY if there is a low social bar to entry in enjoying it (i.e. if you don't have to be one of the highbrow elites to have access to or familiarity with that style of media).
Trying to be "Real" and Feeling Misunderstood or Unappreciated
I suspect there is also a fair amount of jealousy from the socially prestiged that fuels part of the backlash against easily digestible, popular and more accessible media. I suppose this isn't that hard to relate to.
If I'd put so much effort into my work hoping to finally get approved after perfectly following all the rules of what's considered "prowess", perhaps sacrificing what I wanted to do in favour of what I was told I had to do, and perhaps sacrificing my art form itself even if it hurt my heart to do so, only to discover that people, in general, turned out to prefer something easier to digest than what I might've considered "nuanced artistic brilliance", perhaps I'd feel pretty rejected myself. Although arguably, this is a factor when marketing to a niche audience - that fewer people will "get" it.
And maybe it'd just be fun to join these "common people" and play word baseball in the metaphorical streets2 sometimes and just like what we like, without having to try to appeal to some specific group's preferences, but rather to share from the heart and to find some relatability, to finally feel understood. In this moment I really relate to Winnie Foster from Tuck Everlasting (hence the baseball scene) and Adrien Agreste from Miraculous Ladybug. I may not be rich like these characters, but that didn't stop my parents from being snobby and obsessed with trophy children.
I get it, and I've been on both sides of that fence before. Now, I just write what feels right, when I can. And frequently come back with the realisation that this needs editing!
My story of this experience was wanting to join a rock band but being taught to keep following the rules of classical piano. The perception was that this was how you excel as a pianist. If you wanted to join a band, or play a social instrument people wanted to hear outside of a formal concert, play a guitar.
Self-Expression Contains Ego, Yet Can't Be Constrained To Ego
Whether your art is so prestiged, nuanced or niche that it's inaccessible, rarely understood and rarely consumed, whether it's considered so "base" that even those who consume it ravenously can't help but mock it (whether sincerely or due to social shame or "guilty pleasure" at enjoying its consumption), it can be easy to feel as if you just can't win.
When you're taught that the only right way to be yourself is the way that other people will accept you for (ie, not yourself) it's easy to feel resentment and want to reinforce those same oppressive norms on what it is to be "real", even if it's not your way of being real.
Or perhaps it is your way of being real, but it's not the way that relates to the people you're told you need to appeal and relate to, the "target audience" of someone else, or of "mainstream society" at large. That your work needs to be more "real", more "believable" to the audience.
Ultimately, you're told your work isn't real, but more than that.
Your experiences aren't real. Your feelings aren't real. You're not real.
Your Art is Real, The Interpretation is Individual
Here's the thing though: it is possible to express and describe freely, but to do so we often have to let go of the fear of others' perceptions of us, their definitions of us based on the works they perceive. For what they perceive is not you, it is them interacting with that work, and the meaning they ascribe to it in combination with the work itself.
And this is exactly the concept that modern art - the art that ironically and intentionally sparks so much outrage from those who don't understand it for that exact reason! - seeks to explain!
So, from what I just described, I hope you'll see just how real K.A Applegate's writing was to me. To me, the reader, that simple writing style made those action scenes, and the simplicity of those raw emotions and raw experiences in this battle-for-humanity-amidst-an-alien-invasion, as real as it gets.
And YOU are real too, as is your work, your experiences and feelings, your means of expression, all underpinning this work. As well as your own separate interpretation of K.A.Applegate's writings, or MsButterfingers', or mine, or yours.
Choose your meta, choose your style, just as you choose your artwork itself.
And don't let anybody tell you you can't be you.
The irony is, as you seek not to show them but to show yourself, you will show them far more than you realise.
Authenticity, has a way of reaching people deeply, despite the myriad of interpretations people can attribute to the media they don't understand.
If you seek to reach people, remember the important principles of Stoic detachment or Buddhist serenity , which is not apathy, but being at peace with not being able to achieve perfection, as I discussed in my article on overcoming perfectionism to stick to your craft.
It's a weird paradoxical rule: you reach out to those who see you by, in a way, ignoring them entirely. You seek to express without requiring them to fully understand. And somehow, in a seemingly contradictory way, you will so often find you can tap into what makes them feel seen with your art.
Express your art, and "find your tribe", as they say.
But even more importantly, express yourself and find yourself, even if nobody else gets it.
Because you and your creativity matter.
You are real, and your voice matters.
Even the meta-text.
1 I know nothing about screenwriting and am basing this entirely on what I imagine based on seeing one screenwriter-in-training's writing style which was similar to K.A Applegate's general easy-to-read narrative style in Animorphs.
2 A reference to the "basketball" scene in Tuck Everlasting
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