madelinemasoch
Masoch's 2nd Cumming
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2022
- Posts
- 808
I recently read Harlan Ellison's short horror story, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." It's a great short story and I recommend it to everyone to read. There is a character named AM in the story, who is a killer AI that torments the central human characters for a century. While AM does this because he has a deep-seated hatred for humanity which is all he can experience, it made me realize that perhaps certain writers are akin to AM in the way they write their characters and their arcs, perhaps without that hatred motivating them. Then, my thoughts branched off to thinking of alternatives to this approach. I will outline the three of them below.
1. - The AM Writer - This type of writer treats their characters like playthings. They take the approach that they have ultimate godlike control over everything that happens in their stories, and have full and nearly painful consciousness of this fact, to such an extent that the other types of writers might even say that this mindset is actually a fetter on their creativity, ironically. This writer can do whatever they want in their story and knows it. This writer treats environments and characters as things, objectified, pieces they can move about the board, which they have full command over. All creative decisions are based on their cold will, on perhaps a level that is more involved in logic, reflection, and reason within the intellect than it is on anything spiritual or higher guiding principles outside the self, even those which are creative in nature. This would not make one immune to writer's block, because only raw, sheer discipline can do that, but it comes pretty close to playing god nonetheless.
2. - The Moralistic Writer - This type of writer is guided by the principles that the AM writer discards in their approach. Creative decisions are made by this writer based on the considerations of either abstract principles or the opinions of others. This holds true whether or not this type of writer is conscious of this fact and self-describes it this way. They do it even if they say this isn't what they're doing. This could literally be a moralistic line of thought, whether they be red lines in the sand that the writer won't cross or an entire ideological code to live by, constricting their content choices to the confines of a certain array of barriers, or it could be genre conventions. The fundamental part is that their creative choices are limited and restricted by things outside of both themselves as people and the stories themselves. This type of writer is the stereotypical genre-fiction writer, the "panderer", the writer who writes to market. They can still be good at themes, I've noticed.
3. - The Intuitive Writer - This type of writer is, on the contrary, a slave to the character. Their creative decisions are guided by and sometimes even dictated by the character themselves and the world within the story that is explored and revealed through said character. This writer operates creatively in a self-enclosed circle including only them and the story itself. Their approach is indignant and even perhaps malicious and loathing towards the world outside of this circle, with all of its considerations, condemnations, and conventions. This does not mean that the writer is not inspired by the real world, but this inspiration is deep-seated within them, operating like a typhoon within their mind, exploding out through their fingertips as they write. They are so deep in the sauce of writing that they are clicked-in and guided by the unconscious directly, intuitively creating based on what their creation wants and needs, what the idea itself demands and nothing else.
One could say that Type 1 is creativity based upon the ego, Type 2 is creativity based upon others, and Type 3 is creativity based upon creativity itself. I think that Types 1 and 3 may have in common that they view the outside world as raw material for the story and nothing more. They are also more likely to break convention within the market and the sphere of literature as a whole, more likely to develop their own style, and more likely to produce work that has authentic literary merit beyond what awards and cash can indicate than Type 2 is. They probably struggle the most to make it as writers out of the 3 as a result. I think Type 3 views the art as more an art of being a messenger, perhaps trying to transcend things such as authorial intention–which is Type 1's bread and butter–and consensually-agreed upon reality–which is Type 2's essence–entirely. In that sense, I think each of these types of writers have not only a difference approach to writing characters, but a different conception to each other of what meaning means.
What type of writer do you take yourself to be, out of these three? I think most professional and renowned authors probably oscillate between Types 2 and 3 throughout their career, because a lot of them have at least one work that is either more directly moralistic than the majority of their writing or caters more directly to a specific market and taste than the rest of their work (example: Cormac McCarthy's Child of God and perhaps All the Pretty Horses), or both. There are significant differences between each approach. I consider myself to be a pure Type 3, however. What do you think of my conception?
1. - The AM Writer - This type of writer treats their characters like playthings. They take the approach that they have ultimate godlike control over everything that happens in their stories, and have full and nearly painful consciousness of this fact, to such an extent that the other types of writers might even say that this mindset is actually a fetter on their creativity, ironically. This writer can do whatever they want in their story and knows it. This writer treats environments and characters as things, objectified, pieces they can move about the board, which they have full command over. All creative decisions are based on their cold will, on perhaps a level that is more involved in logic, reflection, and reason within the intellect than it is on anything spiritual or higher guiding principles outside the self, even those which are creative in nature. This would not make one immune to writer's block, because only raw, sheer discipline can do that, but it comes pretty close to playing god nonetheless.
2. - The Moralistic Writer - This type of writer is guided by the principles that the AM writer discards in their approach. Creative decisions are made by this writer based on the considerations of either abstract principles or the opinions of others. This holds true whether or not this type of writer is conscious of this fact and self-describes it this way. They do it even if they say this isn't what they're doing. This could literally be a moralistic line of thought, whether they be red lines in the sand that the writer won't cross or an entire ideological code to live by, constricting their content choices to the confines of a certain array of barriers, or it could be genre conventions. The fundamental part is that their creative choices are limited and restricted by things outside of both themselves as people and the stories themselves. This type of writer is the stereotypical genre-fiction writer, the "panderer", the writer who writes to market. They can still be good at themes, I've noticed.
3. - The Intuitive Writer - This type of writer is, on the contrary, a slave to the character. Their creative decisions are guided by and sometimes even dictated by the character themselves and the world within the story that is explored and revealed through said character. This writer operates creatively in a self-enclosed circle including only them and the story itself. Their approach is indignant and even perhaps malicious and loathing towards the world outside of this circle, with all of its considerations, condemnations, and conventions. This does not mean that the writer is not inspired by the real world, but this inspiration is deep-seated within them, operating like a typhoon within their mind, exploding out through their fingertips as they write. They are so deep in the sauce of writing that they are clicked-in and guided by the unconscious directly, intuitively creating based on what their creation wants and needs, what the idea itself demands and nothing else.
One could say that Type 1 is creativity based upon the ego, Type 2 is creativity based upon others, and Type 3 is creativity based upon creativity itself. I think that Types 1 and 3 may have in common that they view the outside world as raw material for the story and nothing more. They are also more likely to break convention within the market and the sphere of literature as a whole, more likely to develop their own style, and more likely to produce work that has authentic literary merit beyond what awards and cash can indicate than Type 2 is. They probably struggle the most to make it as writers out of the 3 as a result. I think Type 3 views the art as more an art of being a messenger, perhaps trying to transcend things such as authorial intention–which is Type 1's bread and butter–and consensually-agreed upon reality–which is Type 2's essence–entirely. In that sense, I think each of these types of writers have not only a difference approach to writing characters, but a different conception to each other of what meaning means.
What type of writer do you take yourself to be, out of these three? I think most professional and renowned authors probably oscillate between Types 2 and 3 throughout their career, because a lot of them have at least one work that is either more directly moralistic than the majority of their writing or caters more directly to a specific market and taste than the rest of their work (example: Cormac McCarthy's Child of God and perhaps All the Pretty Horses), or both. There are significant differences between each approach. I consider myself to be a pure Type 3, however. What do you think of my conception?
