Voldemar Lemberg's Blog: The Lion's Den - Posts Tagged "reason"
Why writers write
Even thought I touched upon this subject in my Q&A, I would like to shortly expand on this question because I believe that the reason WHY someone takes up the art of writing is probably the most important one.
And even though most writers respond to this question that they write because they have a story to tell and they simply can’t hold it in, in reality that is often not the case at all.
I’m not saying that those people are deliberately lying or anything. What I believe to be the case is that they lack the ability to analyze their motives deep enough.
The most obvious case of this are the YA fiction writers, especially if they are young themselves. Because while they feel that the reason they write is the right one, the real motivations behind their writing is that they were so influenced and inspired by someone else’s book that they just can’t help but write something similar (only worse in quality) and thus unwillingly plagiarize. On its own that isn’t a problem at all.
The problem is that when a book series like the Hunger Games or Divergent (which is already similar to the former, just nicely written) becomes a hit, hundreds of sameish books suddenly appear on the indie circuit, while dozens find themselves on the bookstore’s shelves.
But even so, that’s still not the thing that I think is the real problem. After all, a lot of those writers do mature and create something unique later in their lives, and those who don’t still get to write something in their lifetime, which is a nice experience to have.
The real problem are the people with actual talent, yet those that solely follow the trends of the publishing world and writer “help” websites. Thus nowadays if you see someone with a “strong, independent, yet conflicted” female protagonist with one or two love interests while there’s a black and homosexual character added into the mix and the plot follows the traditional “exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe” model with a lot of showing, instead of telling – you are witnessing a writer whose real reason off writing is either making money or becoming famous and it doesn’t matter what they say in their interviews - actions will always be louder than words.
Writers that actually write because they have a story to tell don’t follow trends and topics that are popular on the bestsellers list, they follow their own interests and write about stuff that is important to them.
Thank you for reading and I will see you in the next post!
And even though most writers respond to this question that they write because they have a story to tell and they simply can’t hold it in, in reality that is often not the case at all.
I’m not saying that those people are deliberately lying or anything. What I believe to be the case is that they lack the ability to analyze their motives deep enough.
The most obvious case of this are the YA fiction writers, especially if they are young themselves. Because while they feel that the reason they write is the right one, the real motivations behind their writing is that they were so influenced and inspired by someone else’s book that they just can’t help but write something similar (only worse in quality) and thus unwillingly plagiarize. On its own that isn’t a problem at all.
The problem is that when a book series like the Hunger Games or Divergent (which is already similar to the former, just nicely written) becomes a hit, hundreds of sameish books suddenly appear on the indie circuit, while dozens find themselves on the bookstore’s shelves.
But even so, that’s still not the thing that I think is the real problem. After all, a lot of those writers do mature and create something unique later in their lives, and those who don’t still get to write something in their lifetime, which is a nice experience to have.
The real problem are the people with actual talent, yet those that solely follow the trends of the publishing world and writer “help” websites. Thus nowadays if you see someone with a “strong, independent, yet conflicted” female protagonist with one or two love interests while there’s a black and homosexual character added into the mix and the plot follows the traditional “exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe” model with a lot of showing, instead of telling – you are witnessing a writer whose real reason off writing is either making money or becoming famous and it doesn’t matter what they say in their interviews - actions will always be louder than words.
Writers that actually write because they have a story to tell don’t follow trends and topics that are popular on the bestsellers list, they follow their own interests and write about stuff that is important to them.
Thank you for reading and I will see you in the next post!
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