I've been continuing to read Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders one chapter per night.

Chapter 5 was about the sort of crux of the whole thing, to me. What do you write about when everything is on fire?

On what to write:

This is the biggest issue that I'm having, and at least part of why I'm reading this book. When the whole world feels like it's just the worst, how can I justify spending time and energy on writing frivolous stories? How can I be happy about them, or stressed about them, or think they hold any value compared to the evils of the world?

And I'm not sure that I have an answer for that, still.

I appreciate the point that the book is making, saying that the right thing to be writing is whatever you want to write. What you want to write, not anything that you feel like you "should" be writing. (I do also very much appreciate that the author is supportive of all sorts of writing, giving room for even the most-maligned genres to be valuable and legitimate.)

I'm just still trying to believe it!

The thing that was honestly most convincing so far, while trying to get myself to believe this central tenet, was the author talking about writing back in September of 2001.

September 11th happened, and it was such a major, life- and culture-altering event, it was very hard for her at the time to feel okay working on her queer identity exploration novel that she was writing. It seemed like she "should" be writing about war, or something else "of the moment."

Now I can't imagine how awful it would be if every book that came out in the years after September 11, 2001 had been devoted to The Big Issues. I am so glad that every book that came out when I was in middle and high school and beyond was not solely confined to being about The War.

(But at the same time, the author's book about exploring queer identity and gender and such does seem far more important than anything I'll be writing, ha.)

It does also make me think about how there's basically always horrible shit going down somewhere. It will never be practical to wait for a perfectly peaceful, conflict-free time in order to write.

I'm not sure I'm yet convinced of the inherent value in my stories specifically. In general yes, I fully do believe that it matters to keep writing stories of all kinds, no matter what is happening in the wider world. The weird little queer romances, the aspirational stories of worlds without the kinds of prejudice that we're facing in our real lives, or conversely, stories that examine the hatred and fear and pain and portray it writ large, or the horror stories that make the horror a very literal Thing... 

I'm just still working to feel that my stories are included in that.

Then it was on to part two of the book!

Chapter 6 started part two with a chapter on starting more projects than you finish.

On false starts:

Basically the point was that it's a good thing to treat stories like first dates, in a way. It's okay to start something and then realize that it's just not working the way you'd hoped. It's okay to do this several times, until you find the right one to work with. And nothing says you can't come back to an old idea, even if it didn't work the first time around.

Again, this is nice to hear someone else say, haha. I tend to want to finish everything I start, and am reluctant to start things unless I think I'm going to finish them. Maybe it would be worthwhile to start a few things just to see whether they pan out, and not feel bad about it (or try to force myself to stick with it) if it isn't working.

(Though I think I sometimes do run into an issue where I can't quite tell if it just isn't working as a whole, or if I've just hit a snag that will ultimately be worth pushing through. Is the project not working or is it just me struggling? I may have to learn to discern between those sorts of issues better.)

It does make me feel slightly less bad about a couple projects I've started and then just utterly failed to get anywhere with. Several were old NaNo projects that I had a lot of initial enthusiasm for... but then just a little ways in discovered I had no idea how to make it do what I'd hoped for, or just couldn't get the different components to gel into something that worked.

This section also brought up the fairly common "advice" (or just... saying, more than advice) that ideas are cheap. There are infinite ideas out there, so you shouldn't approach writing with a scarcity mindset. It's okay if an idea doesn't pan out the way you'd hoped, because there will always be more and more ideas to try out.

I'm really trying to avoid that scarcity mindset, but this is something that I have some actual anxiety around. Because I used to have endlessly spawning ideas that occurred to me as easy as breathing, it seemed like. Mostly through high school. I still have those word documents started back then, and have been adding to those lists of story ideas (for fanfic and original) for twenty years or so now! 

Random things inspired those sorts of ideas - advertisements for media I was unfamiliar with, daydreaming on a car ride, a particular stuffed animal, snippets of song lyrics, what I wished would have happened in a different story's plot, dreams, someone else's comment or conversation, etc. Then at some point it just... kind of stopped. I've gone a year or more at a time adding at best one or two ideas to those lists. Sometimes none. 

I can just go for upsettingly long time periods without thinking of anything that seems like an interesting story seed. I don't know if the problem is truly that I have no ideas that occur to me, or if I've just gotten bad at following them, or recognizing them when they do occur... I have enough backlogged ideas that I'm still in no danger of truly running out (and even one or two ideas per year is more than I can reliably turn into completed works!)

To an extent, this is maybe the place where I feel the keenest sense of impostor syndrome. All the "real writers" talk about how they get endless ideas, how ideas are cheap, how anyone can come up with a dozen ideas before breakfast, and how the true hard part is narrowing it down to the ones worth exploring... So the fact that I don't have all these great ideas flooding my brain at all times makes me feel like I must not really be much of a writer!

(Though maybe the author here is right too, that the more ideas you do explore, the more ideas come to you. Perhaps the dearth of ideas has simply been the longer tail of the years and years I did almost no writing at all. I've been writing again for a few years, but maybe getting a few more things out, whether completed or even just started, will help unstick the ideas themselves, too.)

Chapter 7 was about how writing a complete story is just writing good scene after good scene, and the importance of each individual scene.

On scenes:

This is definitely worthwhile advice. It's not the first time I've heard it, but it's a really useful reminder about the importance of those individual blocks that you're building the story out of.

This is also what I'm currently... not struggling with, exactly, but am very aware of in my current WIP. I've basically stumbled through the most basic versions of the various middle scenes, and have managed to keep up a good pace at writing... but I'm also extremely aware that they are very basic versions of those scenes, and that they should be more interesting, have more tension, go through something a bit more dramatic, or introduce more conflict of some kind. Right now I'm happy enough to leave that for a much-needed future rewrite, and am turning over some ideas for how to improve it in the back of my mind, but it was sort of nice and validating to see advice that so exactly syncs up with what I'm currently noticing.

(And at one point it was very exact, haha. I was already sort of thinking about what I was working on, and the specific scenes I want to rewrite... which include a meal and the character going shopping. The next bit of the chapter gave examples of "lower-stakes" scenes that can still be given a lot of tension... and used arguing over lunch and a shopping trip as the examples, lol. Uncanny.)

Sometimes I think I do think of scenes in a bit too much of a utilitarian fashion, where I treat some of the scenes that have to happen, but aren't terribly interesting in and of themselves, as necessary stepping stones to get to the next "good part." I definitely need to work harder to just... make that scene good, too. Not to make every scene have a huge, dramatic conflict, but to make sure that there's some arc to it. There should be some sort of tension to make it worth continuing forward.

Chapter 8 is about change, specifically the need for characters to change throughout a story, as well as how seeing that potential for change is one of the ways that stories can be inspiring.

On change:

Here is one of the specific areas I struggle with! It's nice to see it laid out in a fairly straightforward way, just so I can try to make sure I'm keeping it in mind and can try to do what I can to improve my work.

This is mostly a continuation of the issues I have with sanding my characters down until they're just smooth blobs of nothing... that also means it's really hard to give them much growth or ability to drive their own stories. This is fear-based and not helpful, and very much what I'm working to overcome. (And she does acknowledge that the desire for a character to be "likeable" is sometimes a culprit for struggles with this.)

I liked her discussion of how this is usually called a "character arc", but that arc implies both a rise and a fall. She gives the additional example of pressure turning coal into a diamond as another way to look at how a character could change.

Making sure that my characters have definite wants/desires/goals and have to actually experience some sort of change is... just something I need to keep in mind and work at.

(I think this has been easier when it comes to fanfic - I write AUs, but already have characters that I'm working with. I can extrapolate how their wants and needs and flaws would apply to a new setting and new plot, and I like to think that I do reasonably well with that.

When it comes to characters I'm creating, that's when I struggle to make characters with enough edge to them [since I don't mean that in the "edgy" sense, maybe I'll just say enough "texture"] to be interesting. They need rough spots to interact with other characters or the world or the plot. When I've sanded them down into a shapeless blob, I can't figure out their true motivations or points of conflict or flaws. And if I don't find them interesting enough to write a story about, then no one is going to want to read about them either.) 

I will say that I remain less convinced about seeing characters in fiction change as being inspiring in real life. She talks a bit about how real life change for the better can and does happen, but it feels glacial and difficult... In fiction we can see the change happen, but even if it's slow in-story, we still see it happen over the course of reading a book. 

I have found fictional characters inspiring to me when I am working to become better at something or about something. (Blorbo from my book grew out of this attitude/wouldn't say that to someone/wouldn't let this stop them! Maybe that's cringe, but I don't care.) 

But in general? I think I'm just... too cynical about things right now. A recent book I read, for instance, featured a background character changing from a minor antagonist in the first book to at least a sort of neutral-to-minorly-heroic ally at the end of the second. It's meant to be inspiring, that even someone who was once a bigot can realize the error of his ways and stand against the true bad guys to protect the neighbors he was once so prejudiced against... but to me it just felt very artificial, because right now, I do not believe that kind of change is realistic in the slightest. I do not believe that the bigots of the real world will do anything except grow more bigoted and empowered to do harm.

In that case, fiction showing me the change that I wish would happen in the real world does not inspire me to believe it's possible... it reminds me that that was more of a fantasy than the magical creatures in the novel.

(Though perhaps the author means it more in the sense of main characters going through change; it might seem less of an impossible fantasy if you get to see the character's internal journey.)

Chapter 9 is about plotting.

On plotting:

This section talks about two components of the plot: plot devices (all the stuff that happens) and turning points (the spots at which the story changes.)

It was nice not to hear about "plot devices" in a sort of condescending/disapproving tone. It's one of those neutral descriptors that I mostly hear people sneer at in bad crit. "Ugh, that was just such an obvious plot device." Uh, yeah. Because the plot of the story is in fact a plot. (To be fair, the chapter also talks about how a really good plot starts to feel like more than just the combination of those two things. I think some of that sneering is what happens with a weak plot, where that scaffolding is just still a little too visible. But like with "tropes" [which this book promises to discuss but hasn't gotten to yet], it feels like people have gone a bit overboard with declaring "plot devices" to be some sort of evil in writing, when they're actually a building block.)

That was a tangent.

It was a relief to have her repeat - a couple times! - that it is not a bad thing for an early draft to have fairly easily replaced or substituted plot devices. If you aren't sure why the characters go somewhere to do a thing, it's okay if you end up changing the motivation later on. (Though at some point it becomes a lot more difficult to do that without changing a lot more about the work, as those devices become more embedded in the plot as a whole.)

This chapter also talks about rethinking two different binaries that a lot of writing advice focuses on: planner vs pantser and character- vs. plot-driven. She suggests looking at these as spectrums rather than either/or, which is another thing I was happy to see! I'm probably more heavily to the planner side, but not to the exclusion of following tangents or having to redo an outline midway through because the story worked better going in a different direction. The character vs plot one has always bugged me deeply, because the works I truly love and care most about focus so heavily on both!

I think the thing I appreciated most was her saying "it's an ecosystem!" in regards to why something might not be working. If the plot lacks urgency, maybe it's because there's not enough tension in the devices being used. Maybe that's because the character motivations themselves are weak. Remembering that all the aspects have to fit and work and influence each other is really important.

Chapter 10 is about putting your characters through bad things

On the bad stuff:

Still sorting my feelings out on this one, I think.

Basically good reminders that a) you don't have to put your characters through the worst things imaginable if you don't want to. There are other ways to develop tension and raise stakes. b) Particularly in a real-world climate where everything is awful (she mentions "cruelty becoming public policy" and boy does THAT hurt right now), you really may not want to or be able to handle having similar levels of horrible things happening to your characters (though if you do want to fictionalize or explore real horror, that's also valid!)

There's also some discussion about whether particular terrible things are necessary to include or not, as well as respectful/realistic depictions of trauma as response to those horrible things. I admittedly have a really knee-jerk negative reaction to people bringing that sort of thing up, because there's so much discourse of the "you should never ever depict a bad thing, or else you're automatically condoning it, and you need to consider ~the implications~ of including something and ~take responsibility~ for it, and anyway, ew, why would you want to write Bad Things unless you're a Bad Person" type.

BUT. Thee discussion in this chapter is a lot more nuanced than that, and isn't condemning the choice to include terrible or traumatic things. It's not about never depicting something terrible, it's just about being thoughtful when you do (and not forcing yourself to do so.) Make it a decision to include or not, rather than doing so out of a sense of obligation to the genre or current trends. (She's not wrong about the way in which people will insist that horrible thing after horrible thing in a grimdark story is "realistic", while finding good things happening to be inherently unrealistic unless they are very carefully "earned.")

I don't think I often do so much of the "torturing my characters" thing, and probably need to allow them to go through more bad things, haha. But yes, it's worthwhile to remember that "just make things worse forever" isn't actually the only way to write a story.

Chapter 11 was about endings.

On endings:

Oh no, another weak point! I love when something I'm reading really nails the ending. (And *not* nailing the ending of books I otherwise enjoyed was just my strongest complaint about two of the fiction books I read in January. Though maybe I should say they just didn't nail the ending that I was hoping for.)

I'm not sure if the endings of my stories tend to really hit with the strength one could hope for. Some fics probably have, or at least I like to think so. (I really like the end of that Silent Hill fic I wrote, though I'm not sure it could have ended in any other way.)

With my original stuff... unfortunately a lot of times the ending is something I have the least idea about when I'm going into the thing. I usually have ideas for a few pivotal scenes, and maybe a sense of where the characters start out... but not so much what the actual ending is.

The advice in here is definitely something I'll try to use... That you can come up with the best, most amazing ending possible, and then you can go back and write the rest of the story in a way that will earn that ending. Figure out what makes that ending as cool/impactful/exciting/dramatic as you wanted it to be, and go back through the story to put in everything you need to get up to that point.

...But I still need to figure out what those endings are.