Question: How Do You Balance What's Good With What You Like?

 "Do you gotta balance writing about the topics you wanna write with what's "good", and is there some ideal level where you really have both going. Does learning about what's good influence what you actually enjoy writing?" 

Greetings, mutants.

I've got another question today, this time from Kieral, one of my writing partners, someone who's much better than all of you reading this. And basically, this is a high-level question about "taste". This comes on several layers: 

-Is writing what you like versus what's "good" a balancing act? 

-If so: What's the ideal balance. 

-And: If you learn what's "good", will that affect what you enjoy from now on?

And so when I pressed, Kieral gave me an example from a show called Dragon Pilot. 

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Well, like for me, over time I've gotten better at reading subtext and making assumptions about what the writer's opinions on things are. Not to say I'm good at it, but that's still shifted my preferences with writing a great deal. Like recentlyish I watched this show called "dragon pilot". It's got everything: dragons, planes, and dragons turning into planes. I shoulda loved it. But I didn't, because I took a fact from the lore (you only get on with dragons if you got nobody else in your life and you HAVE to get on with them to fly) and extended it to something greater (these people are lowkey stuck in possessive relationships and that's not treated like a problem??). And that.. really turned me off tbh, like if they come out with another season I'm not watching it.) 

So: 

When we write, we're obviously influenced by what we like or dislike. Such as dragons turning into planes, or horses, or cowboys. But now, let's say you read a fantasy book, and the fantasy book drones on for almost a hundred pages about how the elves cook their food. We get cookbooks, we get elaborate feasts, etc. 

At some point, that won't matter because while you like that, while your passion comes out, that's not a story. That's background. 

 

Passion and heart are a tool the writer uses to put pathos in a work, but there's more than just pathos. Pathos alone can easily become bathos, or the act of melodrama. 

 

For example, I was recently reading a work where the entire situation was a therapy session and all that occurred was a character talking about how much everyone else in her life sucked and then the story--the text ended. The story didn't end. There was no story. 

 

But this person wanted to rant about society, but that's not a story. That's a rant. This was presented in story format, but that doesn't make this a narrative. And at the end of the day, instead of being a good rant, this was more of a "woe-is-me, tis' nobler in the text to drone the words and talks of probably-right-while-I'm-probably-wrong people" type rant. 

Now imagine this same author took this rant about society, and instead the therapist got pissy and broke ethics and actually started yelling at the patient (who I will admit was clearly insane and needed therapy). And now let's say the patient actually has to defend her point of view. Then we get a story. Now we've got events unfolding. 

Basically, when you include what you want, you can do that, so long as the narrative proper comes first.

 

Remember, there is theme, and that's the universal part of the story. If you like to rant about society, but your story is about being grateful for what you have, now you're going against the theme. 

Now, we got plot. Let's say the plot of the story is about taking out the high school drama cheerleader. She runs the stage, she runs the cheer squad. And she hates the main character because the main character has curly hair (as if having curly hair wasn't a curse already. Anything my hair snags is lost forever). Now if the therapy session interrupts the plot, the audience skips because that's filler. 

And let's say we've got a character who hates to speak her own opinions, but the author wants her to rant anyway. Breaks character. 

The last one is also incredibly common. Someone breaks character to do something they want. They like fighter pilots, so they have the characters pilot fighters, even though most of the characters are too dumb--in canon--to tie their own shoelaces. 

 

Or they put characters in fights and they're experts even though the only thing that's ever hit them was gravity.

 

But then nextly, there's the final question. Will we be affected of what we enjoy if we learn about good writing. 

Well that's a really interesting and neat question, because yes. I can say without a doubt that does affect what you enjoy. Unfortunately, that also means plenty of stuff you liked in the past you will inevitably not like anymore, such as old Disney sitcoms. Or maybe you can't play Pokemon anymore because you've played other, better RPGs. 

Same works for writing. But you also find that strong narratives don't get weaker, but stronger the more and more you learn. 

Now this all begs the question, if you have to learn what good writing is, is "good writing" some elitist club and there's a big story book of how everything should be written? 

No. Good writing is based on psychology of how people think. Good writing is founded on techniques that make people go "oh wow". Based on principles. And some say "good writing is subjective", but you know, whether punching a random person in the face is good or evil is subjective as well. But you don't see many people saying you should punch random people in the face. Maybe a few Swamp Mutants might say punching people in the face is good, I don't know. 

However, subjective is not completely personal preferences so much as a universal sense of what people like. And you might go "well different cultures write differently", but at the end of the day, people watch Anime who aren't Japanese, same as how Japanese people have been interested in writings from Ethiopia.

But that's a full question for another day. Thank you.