Category Archives: Orca Blog

Is Your Fiction an Affirmation or an Exploration?

A lot of what I see in the submission queue seems to be the first kind of story. These are works in which the writer has decided, before the story is written, where it is going to finish and what point it is going to make.

From Orca’s perspective this creates several issues:

  • In today’s ultra-politically charged environment this often means writing stories that promote a particular political or cultural belief. When you are writing to a known conclusion it is more like an op-ed piece, in which importance is placed on the endpoint and the narrative is not allowed to deviate from the path that gets there.
  • Since the writer is locked into that conclusion it can sacrifice plot inventiveness and character depth. It’s almost like saying the people in the story don’t matter—I was going to get to my conclusion anyway. Which is just another way of saying that plot can become predictable, and characters can become stereotypes. Of course this isn’t always the case, but I’ve seen too many of this kind of story in the submission queue.
  • In such a work the writing can quickly become didactic, focusing on the facts of the story, and not its ability to evolve. Alternative paths that might lead to a conclusion are ignored.
  • And that conclusion is too often one that’s been conveyed before in other stories. I don’t know about other people, but I don’t feel I need to be hit over the head with the same message over and over. Where’s the hope, or the solution? Where’s the growth? Often I feel like the story was written to provide the writer with some form of validation or peer group recognition. But that is not why we should write creative fiction. Fiction is much more about what the reader gets out of it.

Being human offers many more possibilities. And creative writing is a lot about understanding what it means to be human. True depth of character means exploring the nuances of each individual person in order to make them unique, and increase our understanding—even of the apparent stereotypes. That’s the kind of exploration we like to see at Orca. Imagination and plot inventiveness are great tools to achieve this.

  • Exploration demands investigating character motivation until the reasons for a character’s actions become clear. This is not to excuse those actions, but to understand them. Placing your characters in difficult, unexpected situations brings out their true nature. It also makes you (the writer) work harder. You can’t settle for a storyline that’s been done before. And isn’t that more like real life? People rarely act the way you expect them to. Events rarely unfold in a predictable pattern.
  • Doing so leads to possibilities about both character and plot, which creates greater intrigue for readers. Sure, some readers only want their beliefs confirmed, but that precludes their growth as people. Plus, it’s boring. It’s more satisfying to readers when the story goes to a place both unexpected and earned. It makes the writing process more exciting and fulfilling, as well. Writers can still surprise themselves.
  • That’s the true purpose of creative writing: not reaching a predetermined destination, but detouring and learning about other ways of thinking. That’s why it’s called “creative.”
  • This is more like life. There are a wealth of possibilities that present themselves as we live, and the more we explore them, the more we mature and learn to become more accepting.

How to do it:

  • Many successful writers I have spoken with don’t start with a conclusion in mind, but with a situation that contains risk for a character. That open-endedness gives the writer freedom to explore a variety of responses to the situation, each of which will lead to a different conclusion. It’s like a game of what if. What if a character wanted X but faced situation Y? What are the options the character might choose? What are the risks and potential benefits of each? Which path offers the greatest intrigue and potential payoff for your readers? And the greater the risk the more creative the response might be. Think about it. How do people act under situations of extreme stress or risk? Convey that creativity through the choices your characters make.
  • Here is where you need to get deep into your characters and their backgrounds. What kind of people would be in this situation? What is the life path that has led them here? (Quick aside 1: Develop your characters off the page and present them as fully formed. I see far too many submissions in which the writer stops the forward momentum of the plot to deliver paragraphs or pages of dry, dull backstory about characters’ past lives. It’s clear the writer hasn’t thought much about character until the story is well under way.)
  • Think barriers. Life is full of them. For everything you desire, someone or something stands in your way.
  • One of the best pieces of advice I have ever read about creating your plot comes from Robert McKee in his book, Story. He noted that in a great story every solution to a problem leads to an additional problem. (Quick aside 2: This is why I don’t care for much fiction that emphasizes happy or conclusive endings. That ain’t real life, it’s sentimentality. Sentimentality is an unearned emotion based on nostalgia, which is the abandonment of intellectual integrity in favor of wishful thinking. It was once even considered a mental disease.)

Just like your characters, you have to be willing to take risks in your writing. What is courageous about telling the same story someone else already told?

Explore, and your fiction will get to some place you may not have expected. And if it does you may find that place makes an even more powerful statement than you intended.

– Joe Ponepinto

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Defining Success as a Writer

by Kellie Tatem

On the first day of every semester, as the students come into my class, they see a question projected on the screen. It asks, “How do you define success?” I want them to think about it as they enter their college careers. These are college freshmen so most of them would answer with something about fame or wealth. I know plenty of experienced humans with full professional lives who would answer the same. But is that the answer? Should it be the answer? What if the thing you’re successful at isn’t a big money maker or a path to fame? How do you define success then?

These are all questions I’ve asked myself as a creative. I have my hands in a lot of creative areas: writing, various visual arts, baking, candy making. Most of it could be classified as “hobbies,” but some of it I take very seriously. My writing, my beaded tapestries, my photography—those things are designed and executed with careful consideration. Some of those things—photography and writing—I can put a price on, but the tapestries? There is no price that can be put on them. I could never sell or make one for someone else. These are deeply personal projects for me. The idea of doing one for someone else, even someone I like a great deal, makes me want to pick up my phone and start doomscrolling.

The same could be said for my writing. Yes, I’ve sold it before. It was entirely transactional. I had been asked to write a how-to article, a software manual, and a few other instructional texts,  and I did and life moved on. Selling my technical writing is easy. I’m not emotionally involved with it. My fiction is a whole other story.

Grinding is something video gamers and writers are very familiar with. To us, it means exerting a lot of effort for little, if any, payback. It means years of writing, revising, submitting, and rejections ad nauseum before you become recognized, if you become recognized at all. Once you get some success with stories you can try selling a novel. That’s an even more grueling process because now you’re adding query letters to the equation. I hate writing queries. I hate submitting. These are things I discovered once I decided to try to find “success” as a writer.

Realizing that I was not at all cut out to be a fiction writer given my visceral aversion to the submission process, I understood I was going to have to redefine success for myself or risk feeling like an abject failure. This was not an easy process, this redefining. I’d spent my childhood and early adult life dreaming about days hovering over first a typewriter, then a computer, typing madly, as if possessed, while I transformed into the next Shakespeare—visions of interviews and book signings and all kinds of nonsense swirling around my head because for a long time that’s how I defined success as a writer. What I realized once I started thinking about it was that I had it all wrong. Success isn’t fame and fortune. Success is confidence and skill, it’s the ability to create when you feel the need to create. Success, for me, has already been realized.

I am a successful writer, tapestry artist, and photographer. I am not a success in these areas because I am known or wealthy due to my skill. I am a success in these areas because I possess the space, resources, and certitude necessary to create what I know to be solid work with no mind toward what may be popular or marketable. Chasing someone else’s idea of success left me feeling trapped and stagnant. Defining my own idea of success has been the greatest freedom imaginable.

Kellie Tatem is an assistant editor at Orca and an instructor at West Virginia Wesleyan College

Walk of Fame photo by efes from Pixabay; modified by Orca

Why Do So Many Emerging Writers Try To Sound Pretentious?

I’m sometimes amused by submissions we receive at Orca—or maybe the word is bemused—in which it’s clear the writer is being deliberately pretentious in an effort to impress our readers.

“Merton was big and heavy, a ponderous rhinoceros of a man, who moved like a bulldozer at a construction site.”[1]

But mostly, these passages have the opposite effect. This kind of overdone prose colors the writing with phoniness. It makes it sound artificial, cartoonish, self-absorbed, unnecessarily adorning something that’s supposed to communicate its value unadorned—like the gold-plated toilet in Donald Trump’s penthouse. It is motivated, often, by ego. But I think there’s another factor at play, one that causes even sincere writers to wander into the meadow of purple prose. (Yes, like that.)

When we first learned about the written word—in school, from our parents, in our own explorations—it was a new and wondrous experience. Imagine, some stranger had used the words we were just learning to tell a story, a thing that somehow created in our minds images of people and places maybe far away, acting in events we could only see in our heads. And as we continued to encounter more complex texts, filled with words we did not always understand, the mystique of writing grew. How awesome it must be to be able to do that.

But we were children then, naïve and impressionable. Unfortunately some emerging writers appear to have retained the idea that good writing is supposed to sound mysterious and incomprehensible. If the writing sounds dense it must be smart. And they would like to sound smart, as opposed to stupid, which is not good for a writer. So they try to pump up their prose with flowery, overwritten language that sounds “literary” without actually being literary.

When critiqued they may point to successful writers who use longer words and complex constructions, but what they don’t understand is that those writers use those words and techniques because it is natural for them to do so; they understand both the meaning and nuance of the words they choose. They’ve spent years working on their craft, and when they use a big word it is the right word to use, and when they employ a complex sentence they have a certain idea they wish to communicate, and to write it another way would not be as effective.

I recently re-read one of my favorite books, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of essays  by Joan Didion. There are many more aspects of her genius than I can cover here, but one of them is the exactness of her writing. She used lots of big words because those were the words that communicated exactly what she wished to say. Here’s a sample, writing about her home in the Sacramento Valley: “Many people in the East…have been to Los Angeles or San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon sun off Big Sur, and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California. They have not been, and they probably never will be, for it is a longer and in many ways a more difficult trip than they might want to undertake, one of those trips on which the destination flickers chimerically on the horizon, ever receding, ever diminishing.” Notice the inventiveness, joined with the straightforward imagery of her reportage, in long sentences that stress the point she is making. It is complex, but clear. This creates a tension in the writing that transcends the vague immaturity of the example at the top.

Throughout much of human history, writing was deliberately intended to sound obscure and distant, as though delivered from an intelligence far superior to ours. People spoke in their local vernacular, but writers sometimes used archaic, pompous language—often in Latin or Greek—as evidence they were smarter than the average person, and by extension, to keep the average person from trying to achieve the prestige and power they had. (Like the Catholic Church then; like lawyers today.)

It wasn’t until the late 13th century that a movement began in Florence to write in the people’s language. It culminated with Dante Alighieri’s writing of La Comedia Divina (The Divine Comedy), which became wildly popular in its own time and was one of the key events of the beginning of the European Renaissance, an era marked by a radical shift in the way artists and people understood their world. It was writing that anyone who could read could appreciate. It abandoned the bombastic obfuscation (like this!) of previous forms and was focused on being meaningful and relatable.

Since then much published writing has been focused on communicating the story over the writer. Yes, there are many writers who adhere to the other, more pompous way, and they have and probably will always have an audience (but not at Orca). And there are still some emerging writers more interested in promoting themselves instead of the story they are telling. (I imagine they dream of publishing books that have their name printed larger than the title). They communicate too, but what they’re communicating is their own overblown sense of self-worth. I doubt they can change.

But I’m speaking to the others who still have that childhood impression nagging them as they write: if I use a three-syllable word instead of a two-syllable one, my writing will sound more intelligent.

Literary is not about the length of words and sentences, and not about how many adjectives a writer can string together. It’s not about, “how many different ways can I say this?” Think of literary writing as going deep, not wide. It’s writing with focus and purpose, drilling down to the smallest meaningful detail, not a hazy view of some far-off horizon. Literary goes below the surface of the writing into character and meaning. Make sure the big word is the right word. Make sure the long sentence says something worth saying. Better to remember the advice of Elmore Leonard, who said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

– Joe Ponepinto

[1] The mixed simile alone is killing it. BTW, examples of writing mistakes are always made up. I’d never use anyone’s real writing.

Photo by Thomas William on Unsplash (screen text added by Orca)

Economist Daniel Kahneman’s Contribution to Fiction

2 Replies

This past week Nobel prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman passed away at the age of 90. He is best noted for having never taken a class in economics (he was actually a psychologist), and yet he, working with his partner, Amos Tversky, changed the way economics was perceived. His theories of behavioral economics also had a profound effect on fields as diverse as medical malpractice, international political negotiations, and the evaluation of baseball talent (according to The New York Times).

Why mention this here? Because Kahneman’s observations about human behavior are just as important to fiction writers as they are to economists and negotiators. He and Tversky realized that the traditional way of thinking about humans as rational actors, who make well-considered choices, was wrong. In fact human beings are subject to hard-wired biases that very often cause them to make counterintuitive and self-defeating decisions.

Perhaps his most important discovery was that the possibility of loss is of far greater importance to people than the possibility of gain. Think about what your creative writing instructors and mentors told you about character motivation and how it is critical to not only establishing a foundation from which a story begins, but also kickstarts the rising tension that moves a work toward its climax and resolution. Character motivation often involves a goal of some kind. But the way characters pursue their goals needs to accurately reflect human behavior. Sure, there are some people who go after things with detailed, meticulous plans, and never waver from that path. Those people, as fictional characters, are either obsessed villains or simply too boring to want to read about. Readers are much more interested in characters who pursue their goals while battling their shortcomings. These are characters who often get in their own way because of their emotional hangups. They are people like you and me, and they are far more interesting to read about.

Similarly, the kinds of motivations your characters have make a difference in the success of your work. Kahneman’s theory (which has been well proven) that loss avoidance is more important to people than gain has a direct correlation to fiction. In the real world it’s why you see so many advertisements that try to scare people into buying something—security systems, life insurance (or any kind of insurance), medicines, etc.—you can lose your home, your valuables, your life! It’s why your local news broadcast is more about making you afraid of something—local crime, mold in your heating system, bad drinking water, internet scammers! It’s why Donald Trump has so many followers—dangerous immigrants everywhere, you’ll lose your job and safety!

It’s not a trait that people should be particularly proud of, but it is one that exists, and fiction writers need to be aware of it in the sense that having their characters face profound loss is a much more effective driver of their work than having characters who simply want something. It’s why, for years, I’ve been telling emerging writers to consider what their characters might gain and more importantly, what they stand to lose if things don’t work out.

Frankly, good fiction writers have known this stuff intuitively for centuries. But Kahneman is owed a debt of thanks for systematizing it and making it easy for even beginning creative writers to understand.

– Joe Ponepinto

Image by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay

My Internship Experience at Orca

Leave a reply

Rory Ohr

A large part of my school’s curriculum, available to the juniors and seniors, is our internship program. Throughout the school year, every student searches for an internship that suits the career field they hope to go into. For me, that was the literary field, where I found Orca, A Literary Journal.

At the beginning of the internship, I truly had no idea what I would be doing. I had a very limited understanding of the inner workings of editing and publishing, and there is a definite learning curve to understanding how Submittable (the online site that handles submissions to Orca and other journals) works. Even once I understood the platform, my nervousness didn’t go away. Reviewing a work and commenting on it was easy. It was what I loved to do. Voting yes on a piece was exciting. But for every piece I voted yes on, I also inevitably had to vote no on another. There isn’t anything wrong with voting no on a submission, and one vote will not decide the fate of that piece. It’s a collaboration between all of the Orca readers, so it’s impossible to mess it up with your opinion, but it’s uncomfortable regardless. Gaining the courage to vote no on pieces instead of settling for the noncommittal comfort of a “maybe” vote was not easy, but support from other members of Orca really helped me. They encouraged me to say what I felt, not what I thought they expected me to say. In the end, I am glad for the discomfort of that situation. Without it, I would still be hesitant to give my opinions on things, big or small.

Communicating with other writers on staff had a large impact on me, but it also impacted the way I communicate with people who aren’t writers. I commonly get asked by my friends to review their English assignments because they know how much I enjoy writing, and I do enjoy editing their work. However, I struggled greatly with it. I could tell when something within a work didn’t flow correctly, or wasn’t right for the piece, but I couldn’t explain why. I could fix it for them, or give suggestions, but when they asked me why it didn’t work, I couldn’t tell them. A big part of reading for Orca, the main part of it in fact, is doing exactly that—explaining why you feel something doesn’t work within a submission. Seeing what terms other writers used to explain why certain things didn’t work helped me internalize that knowledge. By the end of my experience, I was able to turn “This doesn’t work for this piece,” into “This doesn’t work for this piece, and I can explain why.” It was a skill I didn’t know I needed, but one I desperately did, and Orca was the perfect place for me to foster it.

On the more personal side of the internship, I had the ability to ask the more senior members of Orca about their career paths, and their advice on such things. I have a lot of trepidation about college and the tremulous process that connects to that. They all had excellent advice on what paths I could take and helped me understand the differences a degree can have in the literary field. It isn’t always necessary—being a writer is not about a degree or certificate saying that’s who you are. It’s about how much you give to keep being a writer, the joy you take in it, the ability to play with words until they click into place like puzzle pieces. Talking with the staff at Orca helped me see that. Being a writer is hard, and they know that, so their greatest advice was that you can be a writer no matter what—you just have to keep putting effort into it and stay with it even when it’s hard. There are no guarantees of success in this field; and coming to terms with that is difficult. With all of that, the best advice anyone has ever given me came from a conversation in which they stressed: “Don’t Panic.” It’s a simple enough sentiment, but it held so much more weight when other members of the staff admitted it has affected them as well. Knowing that they understand what I am feeling, and that they believe in me regardless, has impacted my world view tremendously.

I keep that advice in the back of my mind even when I am not writing or contemplating my future career in the field. For once, surrounded by fellow writers who understood, I felt seen. This internship was never about school credits or mandatory curriculum for me, but still, I didn’t know how much it would end up meaning to me when I first started. I am a writer, and I have a lot of words and emotions and grammatical rules stored within me—yet I still find myself unable to describe the full weight and meaning this experience has given me. I can get close though, and that’s what this piece is.

Orca gave me an opening into the literary field, but it also helped me grow as a person. My writing has improved, but so has my ability to help those around me with their work. I am not the same writer I was when I went into this internship, and I will take that with me wherever I may go in my life. But for now, I will continue to stay and grow at Orca for as long as I possibly can—and I encourage anyone out there who is considering interning or becoming a reader at Orca to take the jump. Trust me. It’s worth it.

Rory Ohr is a young writer from Gig Harbor, WA. She is currently working on her first novel, and enjoys writing about self-discovery, psychological horror, fantasy worlds, and dystopias.

And we at Orca are honored by her commitment to our journal – the editors

How Does Rejection Influence Your Writing?

1 Reply

Should you alter your work to fit the market?

The Orca staff shares a lot about the writing life among our members. Recently one of the staff lamented that she had been receiving nothing but rejections for her submissions in the last few weeks. Rejection is always a common topic among writers, and thousands of articles and blogs have been written about its emotional impact, and how to deal with it. Writers have heard the advice to toughen their skins, to celebrate rejection, to silently curse the decision makers, and on and on.

But as our discussion continued we started to talk about another dimension of rejection. Not how it affected our psyche, but how it might affect our writing, for better or sometimes, worse. For most writers a rejection sends a message that there’s something off about the writing, even if they feel in their hearts that the story is as good as it can possibly be, and says exactly what they want to say. And if a story receives a lot of rejection—perhaps months or even years go by without the work being published—that feeling intensifies. And that’s when writers start to think about how to revise. It’s how they think about revision that’s the question here.

As writers we’re always trying to improve our craft—or at least we should be. If persistent rejection leads to efforts to find flaws in the writing, such as parts of a story that don’t resonate or create character sympathy, that’s potentially a good thing. Maybe it’s time to find an editor, or resubmit it to your writers group, or find a new writers group. But what if rejection compelled writers to alter their work to fit the market?

We want our work to be published. It’s not only validation of our talent, but a path to possible career success. It’s pretty hard to make a living as a writer. Most writers I know make more money editing, teaching, and through day jobs or side hustles, than they do through their published work. It’s natural to want to make whatever changes necessary to find acceptance. But in doing so do we lose something—our individual voices, our originality, our imagination?

Assume for a moment that you’ve written a spectacular short story. You’ve submitted it to literary journals for months and have received nothing but rejection. You know it’s good. You believe in it and what it says. You’ve workshopped it and everyone loves it. You’ve sent it to a professional editor who refused the job because she felt the work could not be improved. But you can’t help noticing that the journals you send it to, particularly the ones where a publishing credit would be a big boost to your career, deal with topics that are different from yours.[1] And that’s when you start thinking about altering your work to fit what they print.

But when you do, you’re no longer writing the story you were originally had in mind—what you wanted to say. Instead you’re now writing what someone else wants to say, and trust me, the difference shows. For example, we sometimes receive submissions of short stories about racial and gender issues that are obviously written by white men from the boomer generation. Those stories are almost always filled with attempts to pander to current social values, and make generalizations that reveal their lack of knowledge about what’s really happening in our culture. In a way, those stories are just as stereotypical as some of the attitudes from decades ago that these writers appear to be trying to renounce.

Good writers know that success in this business is alchemy. It’s an inexact combination of talent, luck, timing, networking, and perseverance. Leave out any one of those and you will probably not achieve the success you believe you deserve. Success isn’t giving in to what appears to be popular. That need to conform to a certain paradigm in order to be successful only breeds mediocrity—that’s the outcome of too many people writing the same things in the same way, no matter how well written it appears to be. Who wants to be considered a mediocre writer?

Perhaps this says something about the contradiction of being a writer in 2023. How can a person be true to their art and true to themselves if they have to pay so much attention to the market? (Not to mention social media.) Popularity, and therefore taste in art, is largely driven by people who know nothing about creating it, so to give into that pressure is a kind of surrender, and a kind of personal cheat to one’s self. But as artists we crave that attention. And we have to survive, and survival means finding a way to create value in the market. So how can we not give into market pressure? I don’t know if the two aspects can ever be reconciled. But then it’s always been that way. For centuries successful artists had patrons, and those patrons definitely had influence over the work. Now we don’t have patrons, we have posses, and the influence they wield is just as great. No wonder so many artists have committed suicide. Perhaps the greatest writers were ones we’ve never heard of.

Is it self-confidence to resist giving into market pressure, or is it simply stubbornness?

I sometimes think about writers like William Saroyan, who reportedly received 7,000 rejections before selling his first short story. And William H. Gass, whose short story, “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” is now an American classic. But, said Gass in an interview, “I was turned down for ten years. I couldn’t get a thing in print. My writing went nowhere. I guess you have to be persistent.”[2] I could go on for hours about great writers who received hundreds or thousands of rejections before becoming established. Just keep in mind that eventually they did make it without giving into market pressures.

The decision on what to do when you receive those bushels, those hordes, those tsunamis of rejection is, of course, yours. Will you give in? Or will you keep believing in what you have to say? Which matters more?

Note: ICYWW, it may sound contradictory for me to be talking about staying true to your voice and vision, when I’ve just published the book of essays titled, “Reader Centered Writing.” But the essays are about understanding reader psychology—what appeals on a subconscious level to readers. It has nothing to do with pandering to market tastes.

– Joe Ponepinto

[1] I’m not talking about ignoring a publication’s guidelines, such as sending a space opera to a journal that only publishes literary flash fiction. Instead I’m alluding to popular trends within a genre of the same style as your work.

[2] From a 1995 interview with BOMB. A little more: “Talent is just one element of the writing business. You also have to have a stubborn nature. That’s rarer even than the talent, I think. You have to be grimly determined. I certainly was disappointed; I got upset. But you have to go back to the desk again, to the mailbox once more, and await your next refusal.” No wonder he’s one of my literary heroes.

AI for Writers Means You Have to up Your Game

Leave a reply

Recently Jane Friedman’s newsletter, The Hot Sheet, noted two new AI products designed for writers: Novelai and Sudowrite. Each offers some free features, and, of course, upgrades that writers have to pay for. There will likely be more such uses of ChatGPT technology in the not too distant future.

Novelai describes itself by saying, “Our Artificial Intelligence algorithms create human-like writing based on your own, enabling anyone, regardless of ability, to produce quality literature.” Sudowrite self-describes as, “The AI writing partner you always wanted.️” It seems designed to augment writing by providing plot ideas and prose to cure writer’s block. Sudowrite also claims to help writers “Write a novel from start to finish. In a week.” Yeah, right. I can’t help wondering if those descriptions were themselves written by AI or by actual thinking and feeling marketing people (which may be an oxymoron when you think about it).

Anyway, the hype is moot. Can they churn out publishable prose?

I checked them out and the writing they can produce seemed not bad. To test them further I used a prompt based on a story I’ve written: A man and a woman in a struggling relationship visit Galway in Ireland on a very windy day.[1]

The result from Novelai was dialogue heavy, but otherwise decent, although it did not include anything about Galway in the story. An Orca staff member also fed Novelai a prompt—this one for a time-loop western story. On the first try, it responded with correctly written incorrectness—it decided to tell her about Batman films, particularly the ones in which John Wayne starred. Overall, though, the writing does sound like mainstream fiction.

Sudowrite did a little better (for a while). It focused more tightly on the prompt, and had a more story-like structure. It purported to know a few things about the Irish city—some were even right. Here’s the beginning of what Sudowrite produced:

The man and the woman walked through the narrow streets of Galway, their footsteps echoing against the ancient stone buildings. The wind was blowing fiercely, threatening to knock them off their feet at any moment. They walked hand in hand, but their grip was loose and their fingers barely intertwined. They were both lost in thought, their minds preoccupied by the tension that had been building between them. As they turned onto a quieter street, the wind suddenly died down, and the silence that followed was almost eerie. The woman stopped and turned to look at the man, searching his face for some sign of affection. But his eyes were cold and distant, and she felt a chill run down her spine.

Had I entered more information, such as the characters’ names and a little of their backstory I suspect Sudowrite would have returned writing that is on a par with the writing we see in the majority of submissions to Orca. By that I mean the writing is conventional and mainstream. It’s not particularly creative, but there’s nothing terribly wrong with it. It’s writing that cannot be easily discerned from human generated writing. However, I allowed Sudowrite to continue based on what it had already written and the narrative soon turned into hardcore porn, with the two characters tearing each other’s clothes off and having graphic sex right there on the street.

So writers’ AI still has some work to do. But it does have potential. And by that I mean potential to eventually replace the average writer. That’s right, not just augment, but replace. If we can get a computer to do the same kind of writing that you do, then what do we need you for? Sorry to be so blunt, but machines and computers have been replacing people in jobs for decades. Machines and computers do not need to stop for lunch breaks. They don’t goof off and gossip when they should be working. They do not need to be paid. They do not need health insurance. They do not complain about working conditions or wish they could be at the beach instead.

This may be a little premature, but it may also be prescient: If a computer program can write as well as you, then it can eventually replace you. The writers who survive the AI onslaught will be those who are able to produce imaginative, beautifully written stories that AI cannot produce.

The AI that the average person can access is primarily based on information that is already on the web (hence the porno, I guess). The algorithms are sophisticated enough to pour through oceans of stuff and repurpose it for the writing task at hand. Considering the pace of advancement in AI technology, I’d say it’s only a matter of a couple of years before the flaws in AI’s ability to write decent fiction are filtered out. Maybe less. At that point more than a few writers may be in trouble. As a former journalist I know this is a distinct possibility. In the early 2000s many newspapers refused to acknowledge the growth of the internet as a source for news and entertainment. Many that did not adapt became noncompetitive and went out of business, and many journalists lost their jobs. (Fortunately by that time I was already out of that career field.) So if you think this can’t happen, you might want to think again.

But I also think that for a much longer time AI will not be able to replace true inventiveness. Writers who are far ahead of the mainstream curve possess some aspect of intellect that is not quantifiable or predictable, and has little relation to what most others are writing. Since AI is based on knowledge that has already been recorded, it simply can’t reproduce that level of inventiveness. It may recombine existing ideas into new ones, but it can’t do that and still make it seem plausible. One of the more interesting aspects of fiction is that, unlike nonfiction, it has to be believable to be successful. Weird but true when you think about it. It also can’t speak to readers with a voice that hasn’t been done before, because it has no model to do so. Its efforts at good literary fiction will likely continue to be as ridiculous as the examples posted above.

If you want to survive in the writing industry in the coming future, you may have to up your game. Instead of mimicking the style of a better-known writer, you’ll have to develop your own, unique style. Instead of regurgitating tired story ideas you’ll have to invent characters and situations that AI won’t anticipate. It will be a challenge, but creative people have always been up for such challenges. In fact, they relish them because they’d rather take risks with their art than pander to mediocre tastes. Someone once said the internet is like a vast ocean of information that is only an inch deep. Find the depth in your efforts and AI won’t be able to compete with you.

*

As long as we’re doing predictions, I asked the staff at Orca which popular writers could be buried by AI and which will thrive? Here’s what they said.

  • Raymond Carver for yes, Richard Powers for no.
  • Who’s likely to be replaced early on? I’m tempted to say writers of whom a great deal of scholarship has been written—thousands upon thousands of papers on in-depth textual analysis might be able to help AI. I don’t want to think of an old classical fella so I’ll go with a good mix of controversy and reasonability: Orwell. My couldn’t be replaced (or more specifically, one of the later replacements): I’m guessing some genius poet or writer that we don’t know about yet. For novelists maybe Georges Perec?
  • I think AI could write a Murakami novel (at least in English) but I feel like it could not write Tolkein, considering how hard it was for Tolkein to write Tolkein. 
  • AI might replicate Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard) but maybe not Clarice Lispector.
  • Stephen King. Not that he would actually be replaced because he’s too famous, but I think AI could replicate him. But an imagination like Margaret Atwood’s could never be faked.

*

PS: If you’re thinking about submitting an AI-generated story to Orca, go right ahead. We (and other readers for literary journals) may not be able to tell the difference between a submission generated by AI and one written by a human being, but it would be a futile exercise because that kind of mainstream writing is not what we are looking for, and we’ll decline it anyway. And if you submit an AI generated story for feedback, we might just recognize it and send back AI generated criticism.    

– Joe Ponepinto

Image by ClaudeAI.wiki

[1] There’s more to it than that but I didn’t want to confuse the algorithm too much.

Losing the Narrator

When was the last time you watched a documentary? Admittedly they are not everyone’s cup of tea. But if you have you may have noticed that many documentaries no longer use a voiceover narrator to introduce or explain. Instead what you see are a series of interview segments with people who are either witnesses to the events being discussed or experts in the particular field covered by the program, sometimes interspersed with factual material such as video clips or publication headlines.

I find this approach very interesting because it does away with what had long been considered a necessary part of a documentary, the know-it-all white guy with the penetrating voice. Just a few years ago no one would ever have produced this kind of program without the authoritative narrator telling viewers what is going on and how it all connects, and what the viewer should learn from the show. Documentaries were approached as a teaching experience, rather than an entertainment experience. But now they are both. Exploring a particular event or subject without the voiceover allows viewers to have more of a first-hand experience, hearing about what happened through the words of the people who were or are involved. This, I think, provides an added dimension of authenticity to the story being told. It is more than just facts, it is as close to the actual experience as possible, and adds greater emotional meaning. The format may have had its origins in the work of Ken Burns, the paragon of the documentary world. Although none of his documentaries ever eliminated the narrator, he was one of the first to use the actual words of people involved in the experience, through letters, newspaper articles, speeches, and other artifacts. As documentaries continued to evolve you may have noticed the guy’s voice replaced by women’s voices, and more diverse voices.

The questions for fiction writers are whether this technique is desirable for our genre, and is it even possible to do it? I’ve written before about the concept of the “silent story,” one in which the narrator is as unobtrusive as possible. These are stories that create an experience that invites readers to get closer to the characters, to share their situations, and seemingly participate in the decisions they must make. As a reader, nothing turns me off faster than an authorial narrator who simply tells the reader what happened, and often what it means (read: subtle hint to submitters).

How far can fiction writers go in removing narration from their work? There are forms of writing like this—stage plays and screenplays—that by nature are all dialogue and stage directions. But without some form of narration to hold scenes together, to provide enough description so that readers can visualize the setting, can fiction work? I find those narrator-less documentaries immersive. Often it’s like having a conversation with the interviewee, getting to know these people through not only the content of their speech, but also their vernacular and mannerisms. What was once a formal teaching process has become informal, and yet I feel I learn more that way, because I’m getting psychological insight along with facts.

First-person stories come closest to this style—obviously—since the character, like the interviewee, is relating a personal experience. Second-person stories are also like this; the “you” POV is really something of a literary trick that forces readers to substitute their personal perspective for the “you” character. Third-person is different, however. The challenge there is to create character identification and sympathy while using an intermediary (the narrator) to provide a logical progression of information. Here the framework of the story is much more important. The visual elements that are always present in film and theater have to be provided in a non-visual medium. But that doesn’t mean third person requires an authorial narrator. I was thinking about this when rereading Joan Didion’s collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion was careful not to prejudge the people she wrote about. She also understood, more than just about any other writer I’ve encountered, that human desire and motivation is largely a product of circumstance—the place and culture in which we were formed—and she had a remarkable ability to let those factors speak for the people she wrote about.

Okay, you say, but that’s nonfiction. But what if the same technique were applied to fiction? The great writers have always innately understood that to truly engage readers they have to empower them, and to empower them they have to create the illusion of experiencing real life, which by nature precludes a narrator (unless you’re one of those people who goes through life narrating their existence as though starring in a movie). Think of it as an advanced form of showing-not-telling. Details are closely tied to character experience to enhance the impact of action in the present moment. Background information (backstory) arises organically, when it’s apropos for a character to relate it. Nothing is forced. The narrator’s/author’s agenda is eliminated in favor of a forward-moving story that may or may not get to where the writer originally planned (to me that’s part of the challenge and fun of writing). The result is that readers feel they’ve experienced a story, not been told a story.

Possibly the most common reason submissions to Orca are declined is that too-heavy narrative voice. As documentarians have realized, you don’t need it. You may not be able to completely do away with your narrator, but you should strive to come as close as possible.

– Joe Ponepinto

A Deep Dive into Backstory

Leave a reply

Note: The opinions in this post are mine. They do not necessarily reflect the views of other writers or even other members of the Orca staff. – JP

Sections:

What makes fiction work? What gives readers the feeling they are reading a great story and don’t want to stop? I’ve devoted a lot of time and research to this idea, reading the opinions of successful and well known writers, as well as critical articles from dozens of academics. I’ve come to believe there are some psychological factors that appeal to readers and make them want to read more. And I’ve discovered that using backstory in fiction, especially when it is ill-timed or off-topic, often works against those elements. In this post I’d like to point out why backstory does not work, and to offer a better way to write fiction.

Backstory is enormously prevalent in fiction. I’d estimate that more than 80% of the submissions we receive at Orca resort to backstory within the first page or two. Even many published works employ extensive, blatant, and often boring backstory right after the opening (not at Orca, of course). I’ve had other writers tell me they actually enjoy writing backstory.

I believe it may be helpful to take a deep dive into backstory to see if my opinion is justified. What’s involved when a writer uses backstory? What’s the motivation? What’s the result? Why do so many writers use backstory in the first place?

Some definition is in order. Often a story begins with a promising opening scene that contains good tension. As soon as that scene ends (or in some cases even before it is finished) the story switches to deliver background facts from a distant, authorial narrator. Something like this:

The assailant pulled out a gun and held it to Bob’s head. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll kill you right now,” he said. Bob’s knees began to shake uncontrollably.

A few years ago, when Bob had just graduated from college, he could not have anticipated a situation like this. He had been offered a job at a brokerage house. He was engaged to be married. All he could think about was the great things the future held in store for him.

That’s a little over the top, but hopefully you get the idea. The writer has switched from a tense and compelling scene to dry, factual background. The second paragraph is more like the writer’s notes than a part of the active story. This info may be of some use in understanding the character and his motivations, but it has nothing to do with the present action, which theoretically is the story you are trying to tell.

The Reader’s Perspective

Let’s look at this from a reader’s perspective. Almost every well-known writer or critic who has written a book about writing has identified the aspects of fiction that readers subconsciously hope to find in a story and that hold their attention. Some of the most important ones are creating sympathy for characters, rising action, creating mystery, and maintaining forward momentum. (As you can probably tell, these are related to each other.) Consider each in its relation to backstory.

Creating Sympathy: This is perhaps the only aspect of fiction in which backstory might seem helpful, but that is an illusion. Providing background details about a character makes the character more easily understandable to readers. It touches on character motivation, which is crucial to creating sympathy. I can see why so many writers want to employ that device. But that doesn’t condone it. Good writers know that they can better convey character motivation through the subtext of the present action. What characters do and say in the present are clues to what’s inside them and what has happened to them in the past, compelling them toward their desires. Doing it this way engages the reader to want to know more about the character. Readers want to learn through discovery, not through backstory. This is how we learn about people in real life—gradually, through the actions they take and the things they say.

Rising Action: Anyone who’s taken even a beginner course in fiction has seen the graph of rising action. I like to think of this as an illustration of increasing tension from the beginning of a story to its climax and resolution. As events move forward things get tougher for the main characters. The barriers to achieving goals get bigger and more consequential until the character is forced to make a crucial decision or achieve a revelation. Backstory reduces tension by explaining things, by simply laying out the facts like a lecture. If the goal of fiction is to create rising tension, then backstory, by reducing tension, is a self-defeating device. It does not contribute to rising action, but instead works against it.

Creating Mystery: Every good story is a mystery. Good fiction gets readers to want to know what happened next. This is initially done by establishing the stakes for the characters. What do the characters hope to gain, and more important, what do they stand to lose if things don’t work out? A huge part of successful fiction is knowing how to get readers to turn the page. Good writers provide just enough information to get them to do that. They leave out some to make readers want to discover the rest. In concert with character sympathy and rising action this creates reader engagement, the feeling that makes readers forget about what else is happening in their lives at that moment and immerses them in the world of the story. Backstory, by its nature, does exactly the opposite. It explains things for the reader. It makes things clear, and therefore defuses the mystery. If a story uses backstory to answer my questions, then why do I need to keep reading?

Forward Momentum: “The story is not in the news, it is in the moment.” That’s a favorite quote of mine from the editor Gordon Lish. He understood that good fiction is immersion and engagement in another world. And that world can only be conveyed well by allowing the reader to participate in it. There’s no chance for participation in a work of fiction when a writer stops the story as if to say, “But wait, let me explain…” Think about why people love movies and plays. It’s not just because they are more visual and auditory, although that does have much to do with it. But think also about how you can’t really stop a movie or play to offer backstory. How would that go? The action would cease and the spotlight would focus on the director or the writer, who would then just sit there and tell the audience the facts about the characters’ past lives. Pretty silly, isn’t it? Backgrounding in those disciplines is done in flashback, which is not the same as backstory because it’s still in scene and it still has the immediacy of a scene. It’s also usually engendered by something that happens in the present action. You don’t just drop into a flashback for no reason at all. It’s triggered by something that’s happening in the present. Backstory is something completely else. It is simply an explanation, the kind of thing that you got when you were in school: Here’s a fact that you must know, and here is why you must know it. Few people like that kind of lecture.

Why Backstory is so Prevalent

Education: That’s part of the problem, however, because from day one we’ve been schooled by parents and teachers to explain ourselves. The emphasis in the American educational system is on making ourselves factually logical and understandable to others (which these days means rote memorization, but that’s another subject). There is not much emphasis on creativity. It makes some sense, since most people will not go into the arts, but will enter careers in which communicating facts are important (obviously this no longer includes politics, which has leapfrogged creative writing and now dwells in the world of fantasy). A writer must realize, then, that those lessons from childhood do not serve good fiction because that discipline is based on the communication of characters’ emotional states more than the facts of their lives. That’s one of the things that gives fiction its impact.

Examples in published writing: They are everywhere, and, honestly, have always been everywhere. I was writing a critique of a client’s short story recently and was reminded of a story on a similar topic that I had read a couple of decades ago and that has stayed in the back of my mind. I looked it up, and found it on the web, and started reading. To my shock I saw that the story dropped into several paragraphs of boring background facts before the first page was completed. Obviously my understanding of the art of fiction has changed over the years. But it’s no wonder so many emerging writers think it’s okay to write this way, and worse, that there is no better way to convey a story.

Laziness: Creating character sympathy through subtext is not easy. It takes a deep understanding of each character by the writer. It also takes the ability to convey that character motivation through subtle, symbolic language. Communicating these through backstory is a cheat. It is lazy writing. It’s a lot easier to write backstory than it is to write present action. Backstory is almost always exposition and summary. It is generally the writer telling the reader about character motivation, rather than allowing the characters to have the spotlight and convey motivation through their actions and dialogue, like real human beings. But since when is writing fiction supposed to be easy? It is hard, very hard, for most writers to inhabit the minds of several characters at once, but if a writer can it results in realistic, compelling scenes. Plus, it gives readers the opportunity to discover these motivations for themselves, and those revelations make readers feel involved and satisfied, instead of feeling like a passive listener.

Low Expectations: I’ll admit, some readers like backstory. Readers who like backstory like things simple. They do not want to work to figure out character motivation. They are not interested in character depth. They would rather have things explained to them, than be challenged to figure them out for themselves. It’s hard not to talk about societal trends when discussing reader preferences, and I am not an expert in that area. But a look at popular culture indicates that many people prefer sentimentality and nostalgia over reality and intellectual challenge, and since the publishing business is more focused on appealing to the general public than ever before, backstory (not to mention editorializing) in fiction will remain popular. If those are the people you want to write for, then fine, load your work with simplistic, boring backstory. If you would rather challenge your readers and use your work to say something more interesting, then you will need to eliminate backstory.

Speaking of Nostalgia: I believe there is a correlation between backstory and nostalgia. Both are simplistic. Both ignore the nuance and complexity of reality and wish to replace them with easy answers to difficult questions. In that sense both exhibit a fear of reality. They avoid the challenge of the present. Until about a century ago nostalgia was considered a mental disease (see https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/when-nostalgia-was-a-disease/278648/). It indicated an unwillingness to face the current situation. Although nostalgia is no longer considered a mental defect, it is still a way of retreating from the present. Backstory is like that. In terms of writing it looks inward, avoiding engagement with the reader, while realistic character sympathy looks outward, welcoming it.

Tips for Eliminating Backstory

If you want to write intelligent, compelling fiction I believe there is a better way. I am hopeful these suggestions will help.

  • Stay in the moment and keep the story moving forward. Always remember that readers typically want to know what happened next, much more than what happened before. Forward momentum in fiction creates the rising action/tension that keeps readers engaged, and you can only maintain that forward momentum by staying in the moment. As much as possible keep the active scene going. Don’t cut it short by dropping into a long, boring explanation.
  • Envision your story as a play or a movie. Readers translate what you have written into visual images, so the better you are able to imagine what is happening, the more compelling the story. Background facts do not translate into images as well.
  • Instead of you saying it, let your characters say it. When you review the previous day’s writing (and this part of the revision process is a must if you are to become a successful writer) analyze how you have conveyed information. Is it coming from the narrator, or is it delivered through the characters? Keep in mind that character action and dialogue is much more effective at both engaging readers and conveying information. It’s important that you understand how subtext is used to convey meaning and character motivation in good fiction. There are many great books about using subtext. I recommend Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot.
  • Does your reader need to know this right now? Does your reader need to know this at all? The same is true for the information you wish to communicate. When you read what you have written, ask yourself if the information is important enough to include, and if so, whether it belongs at the place you have put it. A mentor of mine, Bruce Holland Rogers, said it best: Don’t offer background information unless and until the reader absolutely, positively can’t go on without knowing it.
  • Keep thinking about your readers—what do they want and expect from your fiction? Successful published fiction is a balance between what the writer wants to say and the readers’ expectations. Good fiction is not just about you. It’s about how you communicate with the people who will pay to read your work.

– Joe Ponepinto

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

100 Stories: Reflection

Conor Barnes

Orca editors’ note: To help bring in the new year we wanted our blog to offer something inspirational to writers. Conor Barnes’s recent post on his accomplishments over the past year seemed like a perfect fit.

This year I resolved to write 100 short stories, and over eleven months I achieved it. I am absolutely pleased that I achieved it. This is a post of general reflections on the process and the results.

This all came about because I wanted to push myself as a writer, enjoy writing short stories, and was inspired by Visakan Veerasamy’s do 100 things proposal. Doing 100 things is something I would strongly recommend for anybody trying to get good at something.

I went for breadth more than for depth. I wrote about lovers and war and fools and the anxious. I wrote happy stories and sad stories. I wrote fairy tales and science fiction and literary fiction and one Chrono Trigger fanfiction. I thought they would all be microfiction, but the average length was at the higher end of flash fiction. The first one snuck in on December 12, 2021 and is one of my favourites. The last one was written on November 30 and is also one of my favourites.

I reread them frequently. This might be abnormal—but because I wrote the kind of stories I like to read, I enjoy reading them quite a bit! Simultaneously, it helps surface issues, by noticing bits that chafe on every read.

I wrote in a variety of conditions. Often in bed, sometimes at a cafe, a few on my girlfriend’s armchair, a few on a couch beside some lovely writers, a few in a notebook at a beach. Whenever possible, I used Abricotine because I find it much more pleasant than word processors, but my longest were written on plane rides on Google Keep.

The Publication Process

I started the year by publishing pieces on my blog, then I mostly settled on submitting to online magazines. Both are documented here.

I submitted 342 pieces (places usually asked for three pieces, so this actually means a bit over 100 submissions). Rejection didn’t really bother me. Much gratitude to the editors at Orca, who supplied wonderful feedback at what I think is a steal of a price.

I am not sure what comes next with my short stories. In August I decided that I had been published enough online and now wanted to just submit very deliberately to magazines. Shortly after that I was hired at 80,000 Hours though, so that slowed down significantly. What I’d like most is to publish a chapbook, so that might be my next venture alongside editing.

Level

I strongly feel that I have leveled up as a writer. Funnily, I don’t think my last piece was stronger than my first piece—but at the beginning of the year I could do one kind of voice, and now I can do many.

I worry that I have the common poet problem of assuming that readers taste the profundity I do. More generally, I want to be sure that I am generating in readers the feelings and images I am feeling. When I imagine a serpent long enough to wrap around the world, I want the reader to picture it as mysteriously and horribly as I do. I know I have improved at this, and I know I still have a long way to improve.

I am not yet the writer I want to be. I think the next step is to go for depth instead of breadth—devotedly focus on leveling up a particular style. This could be by writing a novel (I’ve had an idea percolating for years!) or by working on a few, particular short stories.

Joys

I explored questions that would otherwise have been blog posts: Would a society that defeats aging become risk-averse? If we had a Marvel-style multiverse, what would regular people do with it? I created sentences I’m still proud of. I became more attuned to the quirks and ugliness and beauty of the world.

The greatest joy has been in sharing. My girlfriend has been a lovely listener minutes after I’m done writing a piece. Friends have graciously read pieces sent as Github gists or FB messages.

Thanks

Thanks to friends who responded to entire short stories in Facebook messages. Thanks to the magazines who published me (Blink Ink and the Parliament Literary Journal even published physically!) and the editors who gave feedback. Thanks goes to the wonderful writers with whom I got to share stories. My biggest thanks go to my girlfriend for being both endlessly supportive and an excellent editor.

Conor Barnes is a Canadian writer living in Halifax. His fiction has been published in the Apple Valley Review, White Wall Review, the Metaworker Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. His poetry has been published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and Puddles of Sky Press.

Image by tookapic from Pixabay