Method or Madness? Thoughts From A Steemit Fiction Curator

“My words are important. They have power. I know what all the ‘rules’ say, but I’m so much better than the rules. I write from my heart, and that should be all that matters.”

Riiight—if your bedside diary is the only publication you seek.

I’ve been a writer for many years, a freelance editor, reviewer, and critic, so by now I’ve heard all the rhetoric, all the excuses, and all the reasons. I’ve read a lot of crap, and enjoyed some seriously good fiction. I also like to think I’ve written some seriously good fiction. My first indie novel ranked as high as #17 in its category with Amazon last year. So, occasionally, I do hit the right notes.

With all the reading I’ve done, though, has come a dawn of understanding: people write for two audiences. Either they write for their own ego, or they write for their readers. Writing for one’s own ego isn’t necessarily bad—many legitimate therapies involve journaling and creative expression. But if one intends for their work to be read, then entirely different dynamics come into play. First and foremost, the author has to willingly step out of the way and yield the storytelling floor to their characters. This requires more than just humility. It requires skill, which is not quite the same thing as talent.

EDITING: A NOVEL CONCEPT

One thing I’ve noticed about Steemit—though it’s certainly not unique to Steemit—is the tendency of authors to publish their unedited drafts. Write it, post it, pray for upvotes. Very little attention is given, if any, to self-editing. Many people new to a blogging platform like this one may not even be familiar with self-editing. And that’s to be expected. But for those who want to write engaging fiction that appeals to audiences beyond the blockchain, it’s sometimes a jarring revelation to understand that editing goes beyond the common rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. True editing cuts to the heart of every word you commit to paper, and sometimes cuts to the quick of a writer’s vision for a particular piece of work.

Another thing I’ve noticed about Steemit is the constant stream of buzz-phrases like “quality content,” and “elevate the platform.” Now, if you’re a snake wrangler teaching people about nature and you’re getting it right and have a huge following, I have nothing to contribute except some enthusiastic upvotes. But if you label yourself a writer and regularly add fiction to the blockchain, then you’ve stepped into my wheelhouse, and I definitely have something to say about that.

DEFINING QUALITY

This brings us to the oft-debated topic of “what is quality,” and the misguided perception that it is subjective. Finer points of personal taste are subjective. Technical mastery of a craft, not so much. If your only aspiration is to be a Steemit blogger and collect payouts in seven days, that’s its own thing. Some of those payouts are quite hefty. But if your goal is to bring enough quality to this platform that Steemit can compete with mainstream e-publishing, then you and I need to have a conversation.

There’s a tangible, palpable reason that the Top Five New York publishers have survived all the ups and downs of the market and are still managing to pay certain authors a six-figure advance against royalties. That reason? They know the market. They know what consumers will read, and what they’ll pay for. Occasionally they’ll shell out for a real stinker. But that doesn’t happen often. And despite rumors of its untimely demise, the brick and mortar publishing industry is still very much alive and well.

We are not going to reinvent the wheel. Not with our fabulous fiction, and not with the blockchain. Why? Because a round wheel rolls just fine. You can’t improve on that. We can improve an author’s chances of getting read by a mainstream audience, and possibly landing a book deal. But none of us are capable of getting pissy enough to overthrow the current publishing regime, and quite frankly, none of us are rich enough, either. You want to make a better wheel? Invent one that pays more. So far, that innovation has eluded even the brightest minds in the industry.

BETTER FICTION

So what’s the answer for Steemit? Write better fiction. Not fiction that gets more upvotes, or gets curated, or gets noticed by a whale—although all of those things are nice. No. Write fiction that holds its own against the reams of commercial literature produced by today’s publishing industry. In order to do that, some study of the craft is necessary. Your imagination might be a fertile and inspired landscape, but if your ability to put those images and feelings onto the page is thwarted by lack of basic skill, then your readers are never going to experience the world you want them to see, and they probably won’t be your readers for long.

CURATION, CURATION, CURATION

In addition to all the other things I do as an author/critic/editor/whatever in the mainstream writing community, I also curate for a fiction trail here on Steemit. I won’t go into blatant spamming with details about this fiction trail, other than to say its primary goal is rewarding authors of good fiction with monetary incentives, and to curate only the best fiction Steemit has to offer. Our team decided recently that in a dearth of fiction curatable by our standards (which emulate current publishing industry standards), we won’t curate at all. Controversial? Better believe it is. But it’s how we’re doing it. The blockchain is forever. Once we brand a piece of fiction with our upvote and approval, it’s there forever. And in the likely event that mainstream publishers and agents ever take a hard look at what Steemit has to offer, we want our project to lend as much credibility to the platform as possible.

My time is at an absolute premium. As a curator, I’ll give a story two-point-five seconds to hook me or I move on. Do I miss a lot of good writing this way? No. Because “good writing” is delivered by an author who understands how to write an opening hook. Without fail, when I force myself to read past a soggy opening, I find the middle and the ending are riddled with their own fatal flaws. A good story should have a beginning, middle, and end, with a clear and discernible arc. The inciting incident should be identifiable, as well as the stakes, the goal, and the obstacles for the character. These will vary by genre, but without some form of them built into its structure, no story can exist. This means that five paragraphs of info dump followed by three paragraphs of backstory and a couple lines of “and this is how the story ends, I thought to myself” doth not a fiction make.

If your opening line is about the weather, or your character waking up from a dream or going to sleep, I probably won’t read on. If that’s the limit of your imagination about how to launch a gripping tale, my tail is headed for the nearest exit. If your character notices her own “flowing red locks of hair” or stares into a mirror thinking of her own reflection, I’m done. That’s one of the oldest and most worn out devices in the history of literature. If your first line is “Bobby and I laid by the side of the river talking about spinnerbaits” –or worse: “Bobby and me”—I won’t read on to see if the fish are biting. I’d be too distracted trying to count how many eggs y’all left behind in the grass, and deciding if there’s any possibility they might hatch.

Hook me. Give me a reason to keep reading, not a reason to roll my eyes and click off the page. I want to see the fresh, the exciting, the technically proficient. Thousands of articles about the craft of writing exist on the Internet...for free. Google is your friend. Use it.

Research topics like “show versus tell.” Learn about “Deep POV.” Learn about omniscient versus third person limited. Learn why we don’t litter our prose with exclamation points! Learn how they undermine the strength of your narrative! Study and discover why excessive use of italics will cause some readers’ eyes to bleed and flames to shoot from their nostrils. Explore the reasons that no character can smile their dialogue, and how to avoid dialogue tags altogether, unless they serve a specific purpose. Accept the fact that “he intoned,” or “she exuded” screams “amateur” like few newbie fails other than headhopping. If you gleefully use adverbs in places where strong writing would be indubitably preferable to enhance the readability of your story, I will happily recuse myself from curating your awesomely impressive body of work.

In other words, read and memorize Elmore Leonard’s “Ten Rules of Writing” and refer to it as sacred text until you understand exactly when exceptions might be better than just doing it well to start with.

WHAT "WRONG" LOOKS LIKE

Some examples of writing that will make me stop reading and move on to the next selection:

Mary was a beautiful girl. She had long blond hair and blue eyes, and everyone loved her.

Pardon me while I snore.

The Tygean Amphibious People had inhabited Planet X for hundreds of years. Millenia before, they arrived in shuttles and spacecraft and settled the plains near the watershed, populating the entire northern hemisphere until the Bear Warriors of Wackenridge invaded. So many women and children were killed that the population declined, prompting Karl the Magnificent to declare a national state of emergency.

Just toss me an Encyclopedia Britannica. It’ll make better reading, I promise.

With my gun in hand, I ran along the sidewalk staying close to the edge of the building. I wondered how many of them were waiting for me just around the corner. I felt scared and nervous, and my stomach quivered inside. This may not end well, I thought to myself. But that was before I knew how the story ended.

Who else would you think to, except to yourself? Or are the people waiting around the corner a posse of mind readers? Eh, so much wrong with that example I just can’t even, even.

”I don’t understand why you can’t just love me for who I am,” Gwendolyn sobbed. Her heart was breaking. How could Stephan be so cold, when she’d tried so hard to offer him everything he ever wanted? “I’ve given you everything.”

Stephan watched her weep. Part of him felt guilty, but that made him even angrier. She had no right to blame him for this, to put the burden on his shoulders when he never asked her to love him anyway. “I never asked you for any of it. I never wanted into your heart, Gwendolyn. Only into your bed.”

Gaaaah! I think I have whiplash, from all the headhopping.

The best advice I can give writers about Point Of View is to decide which character can best relate the scene, then write only what they can see, hear, think, sense, or feel. Omniscient Third Person is a recognized technique, but it is not an excuse to ping-pong all over the scene, in and out of every character’s head. That’s just sloppy writing. It leaves your reader confused about which character to root for, to bond with, or even to hate. An omniscient narrator has their own voice, separate and distinct from any character in the scene. However, use this technique at your own risk, because more often than not, the omniscient voice is perceived as arrogant and off-putting, and reminds the reader they’re reading, rather than experiencing the scene as it unfolds.

I hope this article helps. I want nothing more than to see Steemit explode as a mecca of great fiction that draws mainstream readers and publishers en masse. I don’t want to see it become a writing industry joke, or a secondary line of exposure for people who can’t make it in the “real publishing world.” This is going to require discipline, not rebellion. Education, not anarchy. Railing against current publishing standards only means that you’re railing against the readers who helped set them. Trust me, friend—if you want to write something besides your personal journal, you need those readers. Quality fiction is not a product of a gatekeeper mentality. It’s a response to the needs of your audience. Their demands for coherent, readable, engaging prose are just as important in the scheme of things as a writer’s inherent need to express themselves on the page.