Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #2

Don't Consider Yourself Too Smart


It's possible to sabatoge your fiction by being too smart for your own good -by being a smart aleck. Even before you begin writing your next story, you should examine your attitude toward yourself, your readers, your own work and contemporary fiction. It could be that these attitudes are damaging your work without realizing it.

Ask yourself:

• Do you consider yourself more intelligent that most of the stories and novels your read?

• Do you believe contemporary fiction is sort of beneath you in terms of intellectual attainment?

• Do you figure your readers -when you get them- will be dumb compared to you?

• Do you revel in Proust, adore T.S. Eliot, think there has never been a really great American novelist, and sneer at everything in popular magazines and best-sellers?

If so, I congratulate you on your self-satisfaction, but warn you that such smug condescension will be the death of you as a writer.

Condescension is a terrible thing. Readers sense it and are turned off by it. The good writer writes humbly, never in a condescending manner, as if to lesser mortals. As the sign said on many a newsroom wall in the olden days, "Don't write down to your readers; the ones dumber than you can't read."

And in terms of fiction, that statement is absolutely true, because fiction does not come from the head; it comes from the heart. The job of the fiction writer is to plumb the depths of human emotions, and then to portray them ...re-created them... stir them up. *** Bigness of heart -compassion- is far more important that bigness of IQ.


***I think those that write in the Loving Wives category have this down to an art!


Once again, the above was taken from a book I recently picked up, "The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes."

Sorry, but i disagree. Dumbing yourself down for your readers is cheating them of the best you have to offer.

Thinking that T.S Eliot is better than Jackie Collins is no sin.

dr_mabeuse said:

Sorry, but i disagree. Dumbing yourself down for your readers is cheating them of the best you have to offer.

Thinking that T.S Eliot is better than Jackie Collins is no sin.

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The Doc is right.

dr_mabeuse said:

Sorry, but i disagree. Dumbing yourself down for your readers is cheating them of the best you have to offer.

Thinking that T.S Eliot is better than Jackie Collins is no sin.

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Yeah, but ...


I hate reading material when it's OBVIOUS that it was written by someone who believes him/herself a superior being. Now, I can't exactly put my finger on WHY it's obvious ... but it is.

There's clever writing ... and then, as you once opined about a story, there's "too clever for it's own good."



EDIT: I don't advocate "dumbing oneself down" ... but rather, not putting up a false front.

Write as you feel - not as you think you feel, too much analysis kills the flow.

I understood those comments to mean writing in more of a smug style, rather than dumbing down the literature.

Kind of like Burt Reynolds in the middle of a movie mugging for the camera? He leaves the movie "make-believe story" briefly to talk to the viewers, then returns to the movie plot, but you can always tell he feels it is a big joke.

(Of course, the Smoky and the Bandit movies make that point quite well.)

I didn't see it as lowering the readability standards, but rather not "mugging for the camera."

Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense..... IMHO anyone reading a book or any form of written material is smarter than someone who spend all their time watching TV... It takes imagination to read and people with imagination can tell if you are talking down to them... intelligence is one thing but being condescending is something else altogether...


Oh Mckenna... this is one i don't have to worry about... I tried writing down to my readers in one story and then I found out rocks can't read.....

I am not planning on being a great writer, just a writer.

It's the ego that turns me off. If I can see the writer looking down their nose at me in their writing I'll go read some one else.

Another problem is that many writers write for other writers. "See my mastery of technique?" they're saying. "Am I not superb?"

Gag. "Tell the fucking story and get over yourselves," is my comment to people like that.

dr_mabeuse said:

Sorry, but i disagree. Dumbing yourself down for your readers is cheating them of the best you have to offer.

Thinking that T.S Eliot is better than Jackie Collins is no sin.

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I'll bet T.S Eliot didn't intentionally change his style and ambition to peak the high-brow inellectual gauges with his writing, but rather that it just happen because he was bloody good at what he did.

That's the difference. Write on a level that comes naturally, and you'll be the best you can be. That requires some self examination though.

Egomaniacs drive me nuts. What I take from this chapter is to avoid being condescending in my writing. I'm trying to reach an audience, not put them off.

There's literature ... and then there's literature. I enjoy the classics, sure, but I'm not going to use them to fluff my ego and make me appear more learned and wise than my peers. To me, that says my ego is more important than my story, and that just doesn't jive.

I'm not about to think T.S. Eliot is better at his craft than Joan Collins is at hers; both have had success, just in different circles. Apples and oranges, you know? When I want something to make me think, to make me reach inside and plumb the depths of my inner humanity, I'll pick up Eliot. But if I'm lazing about on a beach, give me the fluff of Collins. I enjoy both equally, just on different levels.

Speaking of smug writers...

I've had ego run-ins with other writers. (None from Lit, though.) Being self-published, and worse yet through a Print-On-Demand service, a lot of writers look down on me. I get a lot of, "I would NEVER pay someone to publish my work" and "If you had to self-publish, it can't be worth reading."

The thing is, I've never gotten that attitude from a successful published author. I've only gotten it from lower level published authors and unpublished writers. The lower level published writers who have given me the most shit have either been slightly more successful than I have, or even less successful than I have. The unpubished writers who give me shit just make me laugh. While they may NEVER stoop to self-publishing, I'm selling books and telling stories to people who have (according to some rather rabid feedback) overwhelmingly enjoyed what I write, while the unpublished "genius" is torturing him/herself over every little word and putting nothing out.

Now, to get back around to the point... the reason I'm having some success is because I write to the reader as an equal. I don't use words that will send them to a dictionary every other page or so, and I don't remove myself from the category of "reader". Dumbing it down is just as insulting as intentionally writing over someone's head. On the occasions I find myself being too wordy and artsy I just say to myself, "Quit being an asshole and just tell the fucking story!" That said, I have never had aspirations beyond "hack".

I guess the difference would be the target audience. My target is, currently, English speakers. I haven't refined it further than that at this point.

Can someone give me an example of one of these egomaniacal yet condescending writers? I'd be interested to see how they write.

I think of Patrick O'Brian, whose writing is extremely complex and whose knowledge of the eighteenth century is downright intimidating, and he cuts the reader no slack whatsoever. Still, he's one of the most gracious and graceful writers I've ever read. Is that showing off?

Who else? Poe? Oscar Wilde? H.P Lovecraft?

As for myself, I hope I always continue to push myself to be a little bit better than I can manage. To do less, in my opinion, is to settle for being a hack. As they say, a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

dr_mabeuse said:

Can someone give me an example of one of these egomaniacal yet condescending writers? I'd be interested to see how they write.

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Dan Brown. It's clear he's out of his depth from page one of any of his books. And still, most people don't seem to mind.

I don't usually consider the reader's literacy much when I write. I write how I write because that's how I'm doing it. I use big words and shit, but that's because that's my natural speaking vocabulary. And on the same flip of the coin, I love to mock myself as a writer while I'm writing, make a joke out of a cliche or a metaphor or what not.

Mostly I just try and have fun writing and tell the story the way it needs to be told. That's the most any writer can do and besides, I've always beleived that if I don't enjoy writing it, if I don't feel proud of my work, then my readers aren't going to either. It's all about making writing fun and enjoyable to yourself and hoping someone else out there agrees. The fact that I have -2 readers has nothing to do with this theory.

No comment.

dr_mabeuse said:

Can someone give me an example of one of these egomaniacal yet condescending writers? I'd be interested to see how they write.

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If they're anything like me, lucidly, limpidly, and loquatiously, revealing a fierce passion for their subject.

There is a brand of writing which goes beyond deploying talent (which great writers do) and becomes simply smart-ass.

For example, James Ellroy doesn't pander to his readers or alter what he says, or how he says it, to suit other people. If you don't like it, don't read it. Fair enough.

But someone like Patricia Cornwell takes a basic plot, and then throws in loads of pointless and largely irrelevant detail that doesn't add anything to anything. It screams "look at me and marvel at what I used to do for a living that you don't really know about but I do". Big deal. Is it adding to the plot, to the reading? No. It's just plain showing off.

As is endless use of foreign words in italics when they aren't actually needed. Doubly so if it's Latin, which is a dead language.

Lauren Hynde said:

Dan Brown. It's clear he's out of his depth from page one of any of his books. And still, most people don't seem to mind.

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What depth is that?

dr_mabeuse said:

Can someone give me an example of one of these egomaniacal yet condescending writers? I'd be interested to see how they write.

I think of Patrick O'Brian, whose writing is extremely complex and whose knowledge of the eighteenth century is downright intimidating, and he cuts the reader no slack whatsoever. Still, he's one of the most gracious and graceful writers I've ever read. Is that showing off?

Who else? Poe? Oscar Wilde? H.P Lovecraft?

As for myself, I hope I always continue to push myself to be a little bit better than I can manage. To do less, in my opinion, is to settle for being a hack. As they say, a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

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Stephen Hawking.

he's a condescending writer and he makes no bones about it. And I don't mind a bit, he's fascinating and frankly he has room to condescend.

Liar said:

That's the difference. Write on a level that comes naturally, and you'll be the best you can be. That requires some self examination though.

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Amen, amen, and amen. It's all about being realistic...

But I did appreciate this post because ... well, I have a tendancy to want to sound smarter than I really am, even when my readership is better when I'm just being myself.
(I'm basing that on my Xanga readership, btw.)

It takes a while to find one's voice. I only started writing in my forties, and trying to find a clear, honest voice has been a major motivation for my writing.

I think I've found my writing style, which, not surprisingly, is a little like the way I speak.

All I need now to become a good writer is to actually have something interesting to say.

bloodsimple said:

But someone like Patricia Cornwell takes a basic plot, and then throws in loads of pointless and largely irrelevant detail that doesn't add anything to anything. It screams "look at me and marvel at what I used to do for a living that you don't really know about but I do". Big deal. Is it adding to the plot, to the reading? No. It's just plain showing off.

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Sounds like Clancy.

Note to self: avoid Patricia Cornwell

Colleen Thomas said:

Stephen Hawking.

he's a condescending writer and he makes no bones about it. And I don't mind a bit, he's fascinating and frankly he has room to condescend.

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I've not read any of his fiction.

Once wrote a twisted (anti) incest story in first person liar, introducing the character as such, where reading between the lines was the real story. The inspiration was Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" and I thought it had moments of brilliance and subtle humour. The feedback I got back was that it should have had more sex.

It's not a matter of dumbing-down for the reader but they had no reason to expect that on a smut site. I wrote the story for one person in a hundred, or so I thought, but I never heard from anyone who got it. By the way, it ended with the character having a nervous breakdown with a dildo stuck up his ass. The truth hurts in the end.

Lauren Hynde said:

Dan Brown. It's clear he's out of his depth from page one of any of his books. And still, most people don't seem to mind.

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Ha! This was the first author that popped into my head although it wasn't his particular style that I was thinking of after reading the first post so I'll give you a couple more.

Yes, Dan Brown is condescending and totally out of his depth but because he knows more about his subjects than the vast majority of his readers he manages to get away with it. Brown's is the quasi-intellectual, PC, middle-school instructor brand of condescension but to give the man his due he didn't come full blown with it until DaVinci Code.

A.S. Byatt also comes to mind. Now, I don't know that she intends to be condescending (I assume it's a she) but I could not, could not read Posession. It was so academically minded, so clearly specific in its world and audience that I at first felt stupid and then felt excluded and then completely bored and unimpressed. It took all of five pages for me to get to that point.

I'll throw in with the anti-Cornwell crowd, as well. I read her first few books and enjoyed them but pretty quickly too much of her own bias and sense of self-importance began to bleed through into her books and she lost my attention. Her books became steadily more depressing, ponderous and self-aggrandizing and frankly, the woman's just not as cool as she thinks she is.



-B