Writer Growth

[pink_silk_glove]

You never stop improving. A story is never perfected. Changed, improved perhaps, but never mastered. Musicians will tell you. They get better every time they play. They never master their instrument.

Art regardless of the genre, is never mastered.

Cagivagurl

Your repetitive arguments prove that indeed repetition does not necessarily improve one's skills. : P

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It is choice, and I agree that stagnation is generally the wrong choice in creative fields. But at the same time, it's still not as simple as mastering the 10k stroke story as you might master noughts and crosses. There's too many variables. You might master the template, as you say, but you still have to actually write the thing.

I submit Jonathan Kellerman and the unnamed author on lit that I mentioned above as proof that your statement is untrue. As both of these writers write at a significantly higher level than the 10k stroke story. Yet even at that level of complexity, whatever gains in word skills that they may make by repeating their easy template works is so small that it's not worth measuring. Effectively, they are not improving.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think I've grown as a writer, but objective indicia of growth are often difficult to identify or measure. My highest-rated story was my first one.

Growth isn't automatic, and it doesn't just come from doing. There are countless examples of writers and musicians whose best works were their first works, and after initial success they settled into doing what worked rather than growing. Growth takes work. In my case, I try to take more care with the words I choose, and with the way I write characters. I'm also more willing to take risks with my stories than I was before.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It is choice, and I agree that stagnation is generally the wrong choice in creative fields. But at the same time, it's still not as simple as mastering the 10k stroke story as you might master noughts and crosses. There's too many variables. You might master the template, as you say, but you still have to actually write the thing. And by virtue of fiction being art (however repetitive and soul-destroying, as some of those long series are), you can't master the act of writing the words themselves. Those authors are always deepening their understanding of language and prose as they write. It comes with proximity, like how after you've first learned to drive you'll continue to improve with practice even if you know all the rules by heart. It's the difference between efficiency and expansion, which are both types of improvement.

Frog #1 sits on a lily pad in the middle of a 20-metre pond, 10 metres from the edge. She hops 9 metres towards the edge. Then she hops 0.9 metres away from her starting position, closer to that edge. Then she hops another 0.09 metres...and so on.

With every hop, she gets further from her starting point, which we'll say is "improving". But that improvement is bounded; she'll never get out of that pond, never get more than 10 metres from where she started.

Frog #2 sits on a lily pad in the middle of an identical pond. With her first hop, she hops 9 metres from her starting position. Then she hops another 9 metres. And another. She, also, is "improving". But unlike Frog #1, her improvement is not bounded; there's no limit to how far she'll hop, given enough time.

IMHO that's the kind of distinction we're talking about here. I think it's technically incorrect to say an author who keeps on writing the same story will hit a point where they just stop improving; there's always room to get a little better at writing that same kind of story. But that improvement is bounded; they're just creeping closer and closer to the edge of that one pond, slower and slower so they never get there. It never drops to absolute zero but it asymptotes to zero.

An author who tries to do something different with each new story is more like Frog #2, improving without bounds. (Or almost so; in practice, the human mind can only hold so much. But those bounds are much, much further away than the bounds on Frog #1.)

So while it might be true that an author can keep on improving either way, one kind of improvement is more meaningful than the other, IMHO.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

IMHO that's the kind of distinction we're talking about here. I think it's technically incorrect to say an author who keeps on writing the same story will hit a point where they just stop improving; there's always room to get a little better at writing that same kind of story. But that improvement is bounded; they're just creeping closer and closer to the edge of that one pond, slower and slower so they never get there. It never drops to absolute zero but it asymptotes to zero.

Exactly. (... whatever asymptotes means : P )

whatever gains in word skills that they may make by repeating their easy template works is so small that it's not worth measuring. Effectively, they are not improving.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Exactly. (... whatever asymptotes means : P )

It's just the math word for what Frog #1 is doing: getting closer and closer to something without ever quite getting there.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Your repetitive arguments prove that indeed repetition does not necessarily improve one's skills. : P

LOL....
You miss the point...
To have a discussion over the same point.
Both parties have to be guilty of repetition....
Personally. growth comes from continuously practising an art form. Paintbrush, musical instrument, words... Work brings improvement.
You may disagree, but that's OK...

Cagivagurl