Tuesday, October 23, 2018






















James Kennedy said...

So far all I know about this book is the implausible coincidence that you mentioned; the motivation hole that you mentioned; the inauthenticity of the research that you mentioned; and now, this ludicrous plot twist you just mentioned. You keep saying you like the book, but you seem to be building a rock-solid case of how it's terrible!

Eric C said...


If there's one thing that everything I've learned about writing for an audience, marketing, public relations, and pretty much everything about public appeal can be boiled down to, it's that it doesn't matter if what you're doing is objectively terrible, as long as it's terrible in ways that make enough people feel that it's meaningful - then they don't want to think about it too hard lest they have to question themselves.

Matt Bird said...

I thought it would be fun to look at a big, super-popular, somewhat-unintentionally-comical book that's equal parts how-to and how-no-to.

James Kennedy said...

> it doesn't matter if what you're doing is objectively terrible, as long as
> it's terrible in ways that make enough people feel that it's meaningful

Honest question: If it doesn't matter if what we're writing is objectively terrible, then . . . why should we bother paying attention to a writer's craft blog? I don't ask that rhetorically or cheaply. Maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe we're all chasing our tails here, worrying about second act reversals and character motivations, when really all we need to do is write about guns and tits, or whatever people want to read about. Who knows what people want? This country elected Donald fucking Trump.

I guess that's the unstated tension in this blog. Everybody would like to write something that's objectively good AND popular/beloved. The two cartoonish opposite extremes away from that would be "the well-crafted story that almost nobody reads" and "the objectively terrible story that is very popular."

Is Matt trying to elucidate a theory of what makes for a satisfying story? Or is he trying to teach us some rhetorical tricks that will fool the rubes into liking our story? I guess we can't always know the difference between the two. But sometimes it feels like the latter.

I quote Matt himself, from his last post:

> Readers eat this shit up. I know I do. And the crazy thing, as evidenced by my commenter, is that this
> anyway) don’t care.

Doesn't this imply a certain contempt for the reader? For oneself?

Is this why we write?

Matt Bird said...

But there's no such things as objectively terrible, as you'll see in today's blog post.

Eric C said...


Enjoyment is subjective, but the tools are objective.

There are basically two sorts of things that you work to improve as a creator: the stuff that makes you (and the people you personally care about the opinions of) enjoy your work better, and the stuff that makes people who have tastes you don't like enjoy your work enough that you're getting paid. These are subjective and vary from person to person, but there are basically objective ways to optimize for them, and the methods are the same regardless of which side of the divide something is for you.

Sort of like how any given die roll is unpredictable but a billion of them are extremely (if slightly fuzzily) predictable through statistics, despite there not being a clear universal standard of what makes a good story, there are, actually, pretty reliable ways to make stories that are both more likely to satisfy oneself and more likely to satisfy an audience. Nobody can tell exactly where and when lightning is going to strike years in advance, but actuarial tables sure make it possible to make a consistent profit insuring against it.

I think that unless a creator is able to coast on talent alone, it's important that they let go of any idea of buying into to their own glamor. It's not contempt, it's just... banality. Making sausages is dirty work, and trying to block it from your mind while you're doing it just makes it more likely that you'll end up giving someone food poisoning. Safe and delicious breakfast comes out of being honest with yourself that you're working with pig entrails, your hands were filthy when you came in, you can never be sure when the meat coming out of the farm is tainted, and having sane standards for consistently dealing with it all. Sunshine on shiny plates, the smell of fresh oranges and light rain is important for the customer experience, but for the back room that delivers that experience, it's sharp steel and the butcher's block.