Timothy Johnson

Category: Writing

  • How Writing Works (for Me)

    Am I doing this right? Photo by Haonan Wei from Unsplash

    Somebody on social media tried to tell me how writing works, and I thought it was weird. I feel like I have a pretty good idea at this point how it works. But it got me thinking: how does it work? More to the point, this was in the context of fiction writing being a non-deterministic, unquantifiable process. Writers around the world and throughout time have wanted fiction writing to be predictable and measurable, but we all have learned, for various reasons, it just isn’t.

    If you write 1,000 words a day, you technically will have a novel in 50-ish (depending what reckoning you use for a novel’s length) days, but will that be a finished novel? Almost certainly no (there are plenty of notable exceptions, of course), and that rests on the idea that you can maintain that pace consistently. 

    But let’s say you do hit that mark every day. How many of those words are the right words? And how do you know? More to the point, do you feel good about those words, ready to engrave them in stone for all time?

    Writing is strange in the sense that its very name indicates a simplicity in the act: typing one word after another. It sounds so easy!

    But when I talk about “writing,” I’m talking about the writing process, or what it takes to create a finished piece of writing and how that works.

    First things first, it’s essential to note writing works differently for everyone because everyone is different. Obviously. That’s part of the difficulty of learning to write: we all have to learn what works for us in achieving our own goals. Also, goals vary, and any process that helps you achieve your goals is 100-percent irrevocably valid.

    That said, there are some constants in the writing process because, despite all of us being unique snowflakes, we’re all snowflakes, so we have that in common, which is cool. 

    These are parts of the writing process we all have in common, the unavoidable truths we all have to face to produce a finished piece of writing. My deepest concern is that, in this time when anyone can just rattle out a story and publish it in minutes, young, beginner writers deny themselves vital parts of the writing process. What’s more, I’m concerned there’s a broad, too-literal understanding of what writing is and what the writing process entails. There is one view of writing that is as simple as putting one word after another until you get to the end of the story and then moving on. If that aligns with your goals and provides everything you want out of writing, okay, but for me, as a reader, I look for the writers who spend more time and energy on their writing than that. As a writer, I’m chasing a story that outlives me, and I know that, by simply putting one word after another, I will never produce it.

    Let me explain how writing works (for me).

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  • Storytelling Elements Are Connected (in Triangles)

    Yellow, glowing triangles in the dark
    Photo by Jumping Jax on Unsplash

    Last time, I wrote about Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals and how they can play a role in storytelling, and it got me thinking about triangles. We often express Aristotle’s appeals in triangular shape to demonstrate effective rhetoric can’t exist without all three and to express the idea that they’re connected. Triads appear in all kinds of artistic theory, from the color wheel to the building blocks of musical chords. So what about literature? I’ve been wondering about other storytelling elements that we can visualize as triangles and how this frame of thought can help us better understand the stories we’re experiencing or telling.

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  • Four (Argumentative) Questions to Ask for Better Storytelling

    A statue of Aristotle holding scrolls

    All stories are arguments.

    I know what you’re thinking. That’s a bold claim, and what’s a fiction writer doing talking about argumentation anyway? Well, I’ll have you know I taught it at the university level, thank you very much, but that’s beside the point (actually, no, it isn’t; it speaks to ethos, which is a fancy word I’ll get to momentarily). If you disagree stories are arguments, that’s okay. How about we let that particular statement stand for the time being? If nothing else, we can use argumentation as a framework to look at storytelling through a new lens.

    Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher (maybe you’ve heard of him), conceived of the rhetorical appeals (ugh, I know, booooooooring, but stick with me as I crash you through a rhetoric lesson). Those appeals are logos, ethos, and pathos. Aristotle envisioned three different modes any speaker or writer uses to appeal to an audience. He also conceived of a fourth, kairos, or the moment in which the speech or writing takes place, which can affect the speaker or writer as well as the audience. We also often refer to this concept as context, and especially in writing, we consider the context in which the writer is or was writing as well as the context in which the audience receives that writing, which can sometimes be extremely different. Aristotle also considered logos, ethos, and pathos as wisdom, virtue, and goodwill, respectively.

    Got all that? Good. Now how does it apply to storytelling?

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  • My Big Think on Generative AI and Human Artistry’s Death

    In a parody of Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam," a human hand reaches out to touch fingertips with a robotic hand.
    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

    For maybe as long as I’ve been published (a decade this fall!), I’ve used the line, “Timothy Johnson fears nothing more than the future, so he writes about it and hopes he’s wrong.”

    I think that’s important contextualization for who I am as a futurist and precog (admittedly, I don’t think I’m a very good one), but I think it’s good to frame all of this with the sentiment that I hope I’m wrong about generative AI, or large-language models (LLMs), which is a less-sexy name but probably a more accurate and responsible one we should be using (and I will use for the rest of this post).

    I struggled with this post because not only is it a very complex issue (one I’m betting the non-artist techbros will challenge), but I think I had illusions it would be my definitive take on LLMs and its position in art. I’d write about it once, and that would be that. But, I know these can’t be my last words on the subject because, well doggonit, I’m a human being, but more to the point, LLMs are still so new and changing so rapidly that my takes on it are evolving, too.

    Suffice to say this post may exhaust you (it exhausted me to write it), but it won’t be exhaustive.

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  • How to Develop Your Characters on the Page

    A doctor shows a patient a chest x-ray and points approximately to where the heart is located.
    “You see, your character’s heart should be right about here.” (Photo by Skintone Studio from Freerange Stock)

    My last craft post covered how to develop characters for your understanding as the writer. I’ve split this crash course in character development into two parts because characters develop in two main spaces. Well, three, actually: the writer’s head, the page, and the reader’s head. Your perception of your character is inevitably different than the one that exists on the page and is further invariably different from the one that the reader comes to know. I won’t be going into readers’ heads because that would be presumptive and rude.

    In my previous post, I made another critical separation. I split you planners and pantsers into your respective groups, and I gave the former a whole heap of questions to consider in your logic-centric minds. For the latter, I gave you some tips that almost resemble exercises, and they are focused on helping you get the feel of your characters. For both groups, it all was work for you to do for yourself, work intended to pour the foundations for your characters so you could write from a place of intentionality instead of wandering and wondering what the heck you’re writing about (an affliction that plagues us all, I promise).

    Now, let’s look at developing your characters on the page for the reader’s understanding. How does character development actually work on the page anyway?

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  • How to Develop Your Characters off the Page

    A black cat reaches out to touch a human finger in a reference to the Creation of Adam painting
    Photo by Humberto Arellano on Unsplash

    Last time I wrote about craft, I directed you to the starting line. In that post, I wrote superficially about getting to know your characters, kicking off the plot, building your world, and the search for information. Someone asked me about developing that stuff, and I realized I’d glossed over it. I’d told you it was important work but took for granted you’d already done it.

    Oops!

    So let’s talk about character development. When we talk about character development in a story, we typically refer to the ways in which that story develops its characters on the page. How do the characters develop for the reader? What does the reader come to learn and understand about the characters, and how do the characters change through their arc? What story does that arc tell, and what significance can the reader derive from it? Those are questions I won’t be addressing in this post but will in a later one. This time, I focus on developing your characters off the page for your understanding. How do you create a character so that you understand and know them well enough to then insert them into a story for the reader to meet and follow?

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  • Finding Your Story’s Starting Line

    Track athlete in a light blue track suit crouching at a starting line and preparing to run
    Photo by Gratisography / Ryan McGuire from Freerange

    I was on a panel once that was taking questions from the audience, and a guy raised his hand and asked how to know when to start a new chapter. He said he’d written hundreds of pages, and it was only chapter one. A silence fell over the room as the audience waited with rapt attention and those of us on the panel had no idea how to respond to that. Without seeing that guy’s manuscript, I was certain his problem was he hadn’t found the beginning of his story yet.

    To the guy’s credit, he’d started writing his novel, and that’s admirable. Moreover, he’d started doing the work, and that’s progress.

    I don’t remember how we, the panel, responded to him, but the point here is, again, without seeing that manuscript, I would expect to find pages and pages and pages of world building and information about characters, places, customs, traditions, etc. That stuff is important, but it’s not the story.

    Finding the starting line is a very common problem for us writers because we are (and this is true—unless you’re using generative AI, which is bad and I’m going to get to someday) human beings, and it’s natural for human beings, when beginning any creative process, to search for information. Even legal cases start with a discovery process. As storytellers, we begin by asking questions like, Who is this person? What is this place? We build a foundation.

    I’m here to tell you, while that stuff is incredibly important and you need to work on it because everything rests on it, the story starts elsewhere.

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  • You’re Not a Bad Writer If It’s Difficult and You Choose Grace

    An exhausted writer lays his head down at his desk.
    Image by Nataliya Vaitkevich, Pexels

    I think, if any writer says every day is a good writing day, they’re lying. I think it’s okay to struggle. I have to think that because I struggle often.

    I think we (as in human beings) tend to believe in The Natural because we all (as in all human beings) want to believe there’s something we each were specifically designed to do. We want to find our life’s purpose, and we want to fulfill it. There’s a bit of the chosen one complex hidden here, but I think it’s typically fine and healthy. 

    Where we might go awry is in the logical leap that, if we find our purpose, it should be easy, right? I mean, when you take a pair of jeans that should be your size to the dressing room, they should go on without much tugging or tummy tucking involved.

    In my own case, I’ve spent about fifteen years of my life chasing my writing dreams. That’s a long time, and I haven’t felt like I’ve really accomplished much, if I’m being honest. Sure, I’ve had some wins here and there, but most of those could be attributed to stubbornness versus actual skill or talent. Law of averages and all that.

    Despite a world that seems resistant, I firmly believe I was put on this earth to tell stories. That isn’t to say I believe in an omnipotent and omniscient deity that had a plan for me when my parents did the deed, but I do think, given all of my talents, desires, passions, etc., I keep coming back to banging thoughts out on a keyboard. It’s the intersection of what I love and what I think I’m pretty good at (nevermind the other half of the Ikigai).

    The trouble is writing fiction is difficult, and in my experience, there’s a difficulty creep. That is, as I’ve grown and improved as a storyteller, you might think it would get easier, but it doesn’t. There’s a principle that google’s failing me on right now in which every new discovery begets a certain number of new questions, and I think the pursuit of every artform is probably a lot like that. Not only are we evolving as people, writers, and readers, but with each project, we spark new ideas that we might not have otherwise illuminated, and as we chase those, inspiration strikes again, and writing then becomes a chain or web of stories that probably wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started somewhere.

    All of that is to say any writing worth writing is an act of discovery, and that is necessarily difficult. Therefore, I don’t think any writer should feel difficulty is an indication that the pursuit is in vain. Quite the opposite, I would think. I would imagine, if we asked every writer who achieved a measure of success, none of them would admit to it being easy for them, and I don’t think that would be a lie.

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  • How I Define Bad, Good, and Great Writing

    A book lays open with some of its pages folded over to create a heart shape.

    In my last post, I wrote about some practical tips and approaches for writing better prose. Then someone asked me about the qualities I think make writing good or even great. It was an earnest question, but the question, itself, is a bit of a trap, I think.

    My tips, generally speaking, will be broad or even unbearably mechanical. Some might consider them vague or esoteric. Others might consider them unhelpful.

    Without turning this post into one about creative writing pedagogy, I think it’s vital to grant writers the space to be themselves, to explore their own tastes and desires in literature, to become the writer they were meant to be not the writer the world thinks they should be. (I acknowledge there are writers who want to write to market, and that’s great, but I’m not the best teacher for those writers.)

    Which is to say I’m never going to tell you what to do. I’m going to try to guide you toward figuring that out for yourself.

    So when I was asked how I see the lines between bad, good, and great writing, I felt a little wary of defining bad, good, and great writing for others. I think saying the lines between them are subjective is a bit of a copout, and I think it’s wrong. I think we can define good art, though importantly, I think the bar for what constitutes good art should be set perhaps shockingly (to some) low.

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  • Practical Tips for Writing Better Prose

    A frustrated man at a typewriter with many pieces of crumpled paper nearby.
    Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels

    I think it’s important to know your strengths as a writer. That way, you can embrace them and lean into them but also challenge yourself to grow in other ways.

    One of the most common pieces of positive feedback I get is about my prose. It’s nice to hear, because I’ve worked very hard to develop that as a strength.

    Now, I’m not claiming I am the best proser that ever did prose. I’m simply saying I think my ability to construct a sentence is one of my strengths. I have many weaknesses. Believe me, no one knows my weaknesses as a writer better than me.

    I attribute some of my prose acumen to one of my other artistic loves: music. There was a time in my life when I considered myself a musician, and for many reasons, I shifted focus to fiction. However, I think the time I spent studying, composing, and thinking about music tuned me toward the melody of words. Some writers struggle with voice and tone in their writing. Those are elements that come naturally to me. I often tell people I can’t write a character until I hear them speaking to me. I usually get a funny look for that, but it’s true. Every character, at least the way I write them, has a voice, a musicality that gives their personality color. Once I hear them, my job is to help readers hear them, too, using text. That’s the goal, anyway.

    I do think some writers are naturally inclined toward writing good prose. Writers are, and this is true, people, and every person has natural abilities. That isn’t to say I believe in the “it” gene for anything, really. I think everyone can write good prose if that is what they want from their writing.

    What are your strengths? What are your goals? How can you leverage your strengths to achieve your goals?

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