# Which kind story writing is more difficult?



## Mans (May 3, 2014)

Of course, I know, may the writers' opinions are different in this issue, but I would like to know what is your viewpoint?  


1- Humor 

2- Children's Stories

3-fiction

4- History

5- Whodunit 

6- horror 

7-Mystery

8-Fantasy

If you have any other explanation, please express. 				​


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## Bishop (May 3, 2014)

2.

I use curse words, and it'd be hard to stop. My characters just have... foul mouths. I tried to tell them to stop, but NoooooOOOOOOOOooooooo they just gotta say **** and **** and *** and *. Yeah, that last one is REALLY bad, I know. 

I mean, even the aliens curse. It's in their native languages, so it's indistinguishable, but I'm tellin' ya, if you wrote 'em, you'd be reaching for mouth soap!

EDIT: Also, Mans you forgot Sci Fi as a genre.


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## shadowwalker (May 3, 2014)

Whichever one you don't like.


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## ToriJ (May 3, 2014)

I find Sci-Fi the hardest to write for out of the genres I've worked on. Humor, Fiction and Fantasy are the only other genres in the above list I've worked on and I find them easy for the most part.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 3, 2014)

Humor is pretty tough. Mostly because something _you_ find funny, may not be funny to very many other people.

Example: People think Seth Rogan and Will Ferrell are hilarious. I find both of them tedious and boring.


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## Greimour (May 3, 2014)

Lol. My immediate thought has already been worded perfectly by shadow: Whichever one you don't like.

You listed "Fiction" as a Genre... it isn't really a genre in my opinion. Fiction or Non-Fiction is a classification of writing to state whether or not the work is considered factual or true. Be it by society, law, populace or just the Author; if the work is considered truth, it is Non-Fiction. You might as well then list Non-Fiction as a genre. *

Fiction* is the form of any work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not real. (Invented by the author or other party. Imagined, in other words.) Take Sci-Fi: Science _fiction ... _FF: Fantasy _fiction ... et cetera..._

For me, Fantasy is the easiest because that's the genre I read most and the one I like most - and the one I have most practice at writing.

Second easiest would probably be mystery, because I like throwing twists and then double twists at the reader - I also like reading them and I have tried my hand more than once at it.

Third easiest would probably be children stories, depending on what you consider. If I were to do Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I might struggle a bit, but on the other hand... writing a single sentence per page with pictures for a 30-60 page miniature story isn't as difficult. Not to say it's "easy" but it's easier than talking about Willie Wonka and co.

Fourth would probably be sci-fi ... I have never really tried but I imagine I could draw similarities to fantasy. Get rid of dragons and magic, put in technology and science... Bobs your uncle. 

***

I would like to point out something I have said before. I don't believe that a genre is strictly limited to be contained within itself. You can have elements of other genre's within a genre and in some cases, readers would barely even notice. Having mystery and intrigue in my fantasy WIPs is an aim I lean on - as well as humour, and mild horror/gore

**

In summary, I think all genre's are equally difficult. It just depends on you as a person as to which one you personally find hardest. In truth, I would think that the hardest for anyone is Humor. 

If you write a book that makes people laugh non-stop ... you could still end up having it in the Fantasy section - or the sci-fi section... probably not the horror section though. This means you have to successfully incorporate humor into that genre, rather than incorporate fantasy fiction into humor.

Most comedy books I have read have not been in the fiction section though, they have been books by comedians with life stories and what-not that is full of funny instances, anecdotes and jokes. 

Of course this isn't limited to the examples I have given. Slice of Life books make up the vast majority of comedy (fiction) books I have read. They use imagined real life to tell amazingly funny stories. Those are some truly genius books and I envy them their talents and skills. Still, Slice of Life is another Genre and though they can easily be slotted into the comedy section - it is no easier being 'realistic' with slice of life as it is with fantasy or sci-fi. (edit: and nor is it easier to use humor in slice of life as it is in fantasy etc.. either. The skill/talent to make something funny is a real art form.)

A book of jokes is usually as funny as an itch deep in the anal canal - so I am not sure why they are put in the comedy section.

---

Then again some could argue that  Erotica is the hardest to write.... because you have to have deep understanding of sexual relations, understanding of mass imagined fantasies and the courage to actually write that kind of thing without fearing judgement. 
(You might be surprised how many people refuse to skip a rape scene because they don't want to be branded as person who has rape fantasies) 

So again, it is all what you like or dislike... and to a degree, what you are good at.

***



T.S.Bowman said:


> Humor is pretty tough. Mostly because something _you_ find funny, may not be funny to very many other people.
> 
> Example: People think Seth Rogan and Will Ferrell are hilarious. I find both of them tedious and boring.



Agreed. I have fantasies about jumping on Will Farrell's squished head. 
Seth Rogan I can put up with... sometimes I even  smile at stuff he says or does - a couple of times I even laughed! ... but yes, even Seth's corny ass routine is usually tedious to the point of annoying (rather than boring)

I would like to add Jonah Hill to the list. >.<

Others may include: John C Reilly; Bill Murray; Michael Cera & Christopher Mintz-Passe


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## Mans (May 3, 2014)

Bishop said:


> EDIT: Also, Mans you forgot Sci Fi as a genre.



Although Sc-Fic is a little different but I placed it under the fiction title.


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## Greimour (May 3, 2014)

Mans said:


> Although Sc-Fic is a little different but I placed it under the fiction title.



Fantasy-Fiction is as much under "fiction" as Science Fiction.. as is almost every other genre you listed - and others besides. 
I explained "Fiction" to a degree in my previous post.


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## InstituteMan (May 3, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Humor is pretty tough. Mostly because something _you_ find funny, may not be funny to very many other people.
> 
> Example: People think Seth Rogan and Will Ferrell are hilarious. I find both of them tedious and boring.



My thoughts exactly. Evaluating any writing that clears the understandable bar is subjective, but humor seems the most subjective to me.


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## Elvenswordsman (May 3, 2014)

The most difficult thing to write is non-fiction. The truth is difficult to uncover, and claiming to know the truth is a risk. I can have creative license to do anything I want with the other types, but with non-fiction - if you're wrong, there are consequences.


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## qwertyman (May 4, 2014)

Fiction: (reality) is the most difficult. Writing within the confines of probability.  Writing about the world as we know it.

Humour: is subjective as others have said.

Fantasy: is a walk in the park (eh!). Inventing worlds and how many moons and weapons and special powers, does not take special powers, and has not much to be admired. Werewolves and vampires…oh please, when will it end?

History: Is for those really good writers who can't write a plot for toffee, like Shakespeare and Hemingway.

Children's Books: Any 'writer' can write Kid's books. But you won't get published unless you're a celebrity who's 15 minutes has ended.

Whodunit and Romance: Are formulaic, nothing wrong with that.  If you are good at formulas, it can't be that hard.

Mystery: This is more difficult. A Mystery is a whodunit, with more emphasis on whydunit and howdunit and how to catch the dunnee.

And they call me opinionated huh!

Edit: Who is Seth Rogan?


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## T.S.Bowman (May 4, 2014)

qwerty...if you don't know who Seth Rogan is...you aren't missing much.


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## Jeko (May 4, 2014)

I don't write genres, but the difficulty of each is relative to each individual writer and how/what/why they write.


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## Newman (May 4, 2014)

Mans said:


> [h=2]Which kind story writing is more difficult?[/h]​



The one you find most difficult to write.


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## Morkonan (May 4, 2014)

"Humor" is the most difficult of all story-writing genres. It's relatively easy to craft a work with a bunch of humorous anecdotes. But, when it comes down to tying them all together in order to create a story, it's nearly impossible.

Go to the bookstore and find the "Humor" section. What do you find there? Well, there are fifty-eleven "joke books" and a hafteen-dozen or so "semi-autobiographical anecdotal shorts." So, hunt through the shelves until you find the "humorous adventure story" or "funny drama" and how many do you find?

It's much easier, in my uninformed opinion, to write a humorous screenplay or traditional play. With those, you can rely heavily on sight gags and interactive comedy and dialogue or ironic situations spiced with well-known comedic talents. How hard would it be, for instance, to write a screenplay if you knew that Steve Martin was going to be your lead? If Mel Brooks was going to produce? Free money, man....

There are a few humorous stories within other genres. "Fantasy", in particular, has plenty of them. But, from Piers Anthony's "Xanth" to Asprin's "Myth Adventures" and any number of Pratchet's works and beyond, the "Fantasy" genre seems to be a treasure-trove of farcical adventures and comedic talents. However, a "pure" humor plotline is just too difficult, even for the most magic to master.

You just aren't going to find a true "Humor" story. Ever single one, with the exception of a few fanciful mythologies, includes a major component of classic storytelling and drama as its primary hook. It's only once that hook is set and the story takes off that the author can fill it with funny anecdotes and humorous situations.

PS - Writing good humor also requires more knowledge of your intended audience than any other form of writing, in my opinion.


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## Apple Ice (May 4, 2014)

Interesting point Morkonan. I would agree it's hard to write, particularly in novel form. I don't agree with your last statement about a true humour story. I'm currently writing one and it's nothing but daft stuff and doesn't have a single serious point to it. Now whether it's good is another story, but I think it's do-able. I'm certainly managing to achieve it thus far (in regards to it no being serious at all). Although I'm sure it's all subjective and so one of my plot points you may personally deem as serious etc. But yeah, it's hard to write knowing that nearly every line has to be a gag. it's taking me ages because I'm making sure not to use anything cliche and I try to make every joke funny as opposed to just throwing a crap one out every now and then. 

I personally think fantasy is very hard to write. It can be the most cliched plot ever but I still think a decent one is hard to write.


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## Bishop (May 5, 2014)

Mans said:


> Although Sc-Fic is a little different but I placed it under the fiction title.



Writing sci-fi and what's considered "fiction" are very different, and they often appeal to different demographics. We sci-fi geeks don't like being lumped in with the boring books, either!


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## bookmasta (May 5, 2014)

Honestly, I would go above all of these and say historical fiction.


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## qwertyman (May 5, 2014)

Apple Ice said:


> .... yeah, it's hard to write knowing that nearly every line has to be a gag. it's taking me ages because I'm making sure not to use anything cliche and I try to make every joke funny as opposed to just throwing a crap one out every now and then.



I'm sure you're using the words 'gag' and 'joke' liberally.  But just in case, for humour to work it has to come as a result of  character interaction and situation.  If you're imposing set-piece jokes into the story you're probably heading for a pratt-fall. 

Just saying.


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## Newman (May 5, 2014)

Morkonan said:


> "Humor" is the most difficult of all story-writing genres.



Lots of people write humor and don't think it's all that difficult.


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## Bishop (May 5, 2014)

Newman said:


> Lots of people write humor and don't think it's all that difficult.




There's going to be lots of people who write in any of the above genres that don't feel it's difficult. It all depends on what you as a writer know best and enjoy most.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 5, 2014)

Newman said:


> Lots of people write humor and don't think it's all that difficult.



Well..I am a Fantasy (so far, never know what I may want to try later) writer and I don't find that to be "hard". Especially the kind I am writing. That is where my "comfort zone" is.

That would most likely be true of those humor writers you speak of. 

But, whereas a lot of people just don't like Fantasy stories, *nearly every person on the planet *likes to laugh. Also, where folks like to see certain things in certain kinds of Fantasy stories, the same can't be said for humor. Everyone's idea of what is funny is entirely subjective to their own individual tastes. What you find funny, I may not.

That's why humor would be one of the most difficult styles to write. You simply have no idea whether or not your intended audience is going to find the work as humorous as you do.


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## Bishop (May 5, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> *nearly every person on the planet *likes to laugh.



My mother-in-law is not one of these people.


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## Apple Ice (May 5, 2014)

I was being liberal qwertyman, I wasn't sure if there was a difference or not. Will be more careful in future, thanks. 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, I think you're saying I can't be crow-baring in pre-thought jokes, like a one-liner from a comedian or something. I'm not doing that, although I don't entirely agree that wouldn't work (or might not work), it just has to be done well. Would be hard, though. In my WIP most of my jokes are character and situation anyway. But yes, I see your point


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## T.S.Bowman (May 5, 2014)

Bishop said:


> My mother-in-law is not one of these people.



Most of them aren't. That's why I said _nearly_ lol.


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## Greimour (May 5, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Also, where folks like to see certain things in certain kinds of Fantasy stories, the same can't be said for humor. Everyone's idea of what is funny is entirely subjective to their own individual tastes. What you find funny, I may not..



Agreed in the sense that, people do look in certain fantasy books with their tastes in mind. For example, I might want or expect dragons whilst Popsprocket may not...
However, I think fantasy books are just as subjective to individual tastes as humor.

I can open a fantasy book everyone loves and think it is a pile of crap
Equally, I can open a comedy book and think it would be more fascinating as a piece of kindling.

Fantasy with orks, fantasy without, 
fantasy with magic, fantasy without, 
fantasy with elves, fantasy without
etc...

Humor with hilarous characters and banter vs Slice of Life with funny scenes, actions, reactions and consequences.


Truly, the hardest thing to write is that which is unfamiliar or that which you don't yourself like. 

Peter Kay might find it super seriously easy to write humor - or even an hilarious novel.
But to those that don't like his sense of humor, it is not different to fantasy readers that hate the sudden introduction of dragons.

One shoe does not fit all feet.


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## Newman (May 5, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Everyone's idea of what is funny is entirely  subjective to their own individual tastes. What you find funny, I may  not.
> 
> That's why humor would be one of the most difficult styles to write. You  simply have no idea whether or not your intended audience is going to  find the work as humorous as you do.



You don't know if material will work or not, but that doesn't mean humor writers find it hard.

To those humor writers who find it easy, it's not the hardest genre.

The point i'm making is that the hardest genre is the one you find hardest to write.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 5, 2014)

Newman said:


> You don't know if material will work or not, but that doesn't mean humor writers find it hard.
> 
> To those humor writers who find it easy, it's not the hardest genre.
> 
> The point i'm making is that the hardest genre is the one you find hardest to write.



Did you disregard the rest of my post that said something to that effect?

The people who write it may not find it difficult. But that doesn't mean it _isn't _a difficult genre to write because of the subjectiveness of the reader's sense of humor. To be a succesful writer, you need to write something that a lot of people are going to enjoy. To find the same sense of humor in a large group of people can be a tough thing to do. Just ask any stand up comedian how many times they have bombed on stage.

Perhaps it's true that the hardest genre to write is the one you find hardest. But, if someone were to come up to me and tell me that they want me to write a romance (even though I have never even read one) and were willing to pay me for it, I would simply go grab a couple and read them. That would give me at least a decent idea of what I need to do.  Research may be tedious, but it's relatively easy. You could do that with nearly any genre.

Humor, however, isn't all that easy to research. There are far to many variables of what is funny and what isn't.


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## InstituteMan (May 5, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Perhaps it's true that the hardest genre to write is the one you find hardest. But, if someone were to come up to me and tell me that they want me to write a romance (even though I have never even read one) and were willing to pay me for it, I would simply go grab a couple and read them. That would give me at least a decent idea of what I need to do.  Research may be tedious, but it's relatively easy. You could do that with nearly any genre.
> 
> Humor, however, isn't all that easy to research. There are far to many variables of what is funny and what isn't.



Bingo. This is exactly right, IMHO.


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## Greimour (May 6, 2014)

*Is making someone laugh really any different to making them feel anything else?*



InstituteMan said:


> T.S.Bowman said:
> 
> 
> > Perhaps it's true that the hardest genre to  write is the one you find hardest. But, if someone were to come up to me  and tell me that they want me to write a romance (even though I have  never even read one) and were willing to pay me for it, I would simply  go grab a couple and read them. That would give me at least a decent  idea of what I need to do.  Research may be tedious, but it's relatively  easy. You could do that with nearly any genre.
> ...




Upon my first read of Bowmans post, I was inclined to agree - but instead I turned my thoughts on it and tried to view it from as many angles as I could fathom.

I am not saying I succeeded in finding a counter argument or a basis in which to expand on that statement... I didn't. 
I did however come to my own decision in regard to it. Obviously it is an entirely personal opinion that I deduced based on my own (possibly biased) logic. But this is how I view it:

Humor is something one perceives as funny, it walks hand in hand with emotion and emotional responses, such as laughter.

When writing, authors create (whether non-fiction or fiction) a world that may have the ability expand a readers mind, change their belief, enlighten, instil fear, instil terror, create hope, create happiness, give understanding or many others or maybe many of them at once... in short... makes the reader "feel" 

I admit that it is entirely likely that there is more research out there for Romance, but that does not mean the research for humor is any less informative just because it has a lack of existence. The material is there to be found and researched for those willing. In fact, having a smaller pool to drink from may be the key to quicker results. 

I concede that points regarding humor are valid, but I also wish to state that, at the end of the day, humor is a conception of what is funny and laughter is an emotional response. How often do you laugh when reading? How often do you cry?

If you can make someone empathize, or if you can make someone feel anger, if you can make someone sad... then you can make someone smile and/or laugh. 
Perhaps it is the genre's I read, but in all books I have felt more happiness than sadness. The cliched happy ending is a source of happiness for many. But I have rarely cried. If ever. I can't remember a single time when a book has made me shed tears. I can remember hundreds if not thousands that made me laugh out loud. 

Creating feelings is something writers do, intentionally or not... Granted, what makes you laugh may not make me laugh, what makes you cry may not make me cry... but creating emotion of one kind or another is something every writer does. 

I don't see then, why creating a romance is any different to humor except in our own individual interpretations of what is difficult. 

As an example; Pluralized has a gift of creating terror that I can't imagine being able to match and nor would I even try. 
Making people laugh though, I don't think it is beyond my ability. 

Is making people laugh at the words you have written any different _really_... than creating any other response?

I think making people laugh is probably one of the easier things to do. People want to laugh, they crave it - their body even needs it to some extent. Genuine laughter helps the immune system... it's rare people actually _want_ to cry. 

Due to my logic, I have to say that humor as a genre is indeed hard to imagine as anything but hard - but I can't imagine it being any harder than creating any other emotion there is. Different things may make people laugh... but different things make people cry too... what makes you angry may not make other people angry... the list is as equal as it is long. 


That's my opinion.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 6, 2014)

And with that, I bow to superior logic. Nicely put, sir.


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## Elvenswordsman (May 6, 2014)

LOL you're bowing to the wrong "superior logic" - the problem is, everyone took this thread somewhere without setting measures to judge by. You have all been arguing "Validation equals good story telling" - set up different measures, then argue.


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## Greimour (May 6, 2014)

Elvenswordsman said:


> LOL you're bowing to the wrong "superior logic" - the problem is, everyone took this thread somewhere without setting measures to judge by. You have all been arguing "Validation equals good story telling" - set up different measures, then argue.



I don't recall anyone stating anything along the lines of 'Validation = good story telling'
From  what I recall, it was people stating reasons for one genre to be more  difficult than others... I admit I stated that their opinions were  valid. Who am I to claim they are not?  

Logic is the method of valid  reasoning but reasoning doesn't equate to story telling.  

Ability, learning, skill, practice, research, etc... they equate to good story  telling.

Feel free to set new measures... the question was, which genre is most difficult. 
The arguments/debates that resulted were "all are equally difficult/easy depending entirely on the individual" vs "Humor is the most difficult because of the variables and available research material"

If you have incorrect premises you'll arrive at incorrect results, but  the conclusion you arrive at could still be valid, making logic  impeccable. 

Set new measures and then see where logic leaves us.

Would you like to put your own logic on display to put forth arguments of your own?
Which parameters would you suggest?

I would also like to point out I never claimed my logic to be superior or "correct" (which would be an incorrect term due to what correct implies). I only shared a portion of my thought process and the conclusion I arrived at. And I only based it on the argument at hand - not the ability of the writer which was never in question to begin with.

I fail to see any relevance or merit of your post.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 6, 2014)

So I conceded the point, but I did so improperly?

Yeesh. Some people are REALLY picky around here.


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## J Anfinson (May 6, 2014)

I'm going to stand out in left field here and say humor and horror are nearly equal in difficulty. Both are achieved by building suspense, humor being good suspense and horror being bad suspense. If you don't deliver well at the end of that suspense, you're going to get booed off stage. Or in our case you get an impersonal rejection letter.


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## Newman (May 6, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Did you disregard the rest of my post that said something to that effect?



There were some contradictions in your post. 




T.S.Bowman said:


> The people who write it may not find it difficult. But that doesn't mean it isn't a difficult genre to write because of the subjectiveness of the reader's sense of humor. To be a succesful writer, you need to write something that a lot of people are going to enjoy. To find the same sense of humor in a large group of people can be a tough thing to do. *Just ask any stand up comedian how many times they have bombed on stage*.



I am a standup. We inevitably talk. And a lot will tell you that the idea that humor is hard is a myth. Sure, we all bomb. Everyone bombs. Chris Rock bombs. But that just means the material has to be retried with different audiences, reworked or replaced by other material. But there is an abundant pool of material the writer has written / can write from which to choose.



T.S.Bowman said:


> if someone were to come up to me and tell me that they want me to write a romance (even though I have never even read one) and were willing to pay me for it, I would simply go grab a couple and read them. That would give me at least a decent idea of what I need to do. Research may be tedious, but it's relatively easy. You could do that with nearly any genre.



You don't really research humor in the way you mean. People do  research joke structure and form and things like that, but it starts by  writing material which you find funny, arranging it in a performable way  and going out and performing it. And then perfecting it. (the hardest part, actually, is getting the stage time, but that's more a logistical thing)

You're not going to write effective romance just by reading a couple of books. You might use those books to try and figure out how to structure your romantic story or something like that, but your understanding of romance and love will come from another place. And even then there'll be a lot of rewriting, which isn't all that different from rewriting humor.



Greimour said:


> Is making people laugh at the words you have written any different really... than creating any other response?



That's right.

You never actually know whether a scene works - be it action, adventure, romance or humor or whatever - until you start getting the notes / audience reaction.

.

Again, the hardest genre to write is the one you find hardest.


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## Elvenswordsman (May 6, 2014)

Validation (or self-validation) - the state of having been reinforced positively for any effort - "Nice hair." after you get a haircut. "That was funny." after having written a comedy. "Great plot." after writing an epic. Sorry, clearly semantics caused issue here.

People jump so quickly to implied ends. Firstly, Grei, this comment was not directed at you, but feel free to jump in, or enjoy the waters, I guess. Your previous post had made some valid points. Also, Morkonan made a great argument for humour. Anyone saying "To each his own" is just copping out of giving an answer to the OP.

Secondly, it was a typo that I won't edit for the sake of your response, but I had meant to write "Validation equals good story telling, where the more difficult achieving validation becomes, the more difficult the story must be to write." - I am just coming off the tail end of a 28 hour workday, forgive my absenteeism.

And as far as my mistake of saying "You all" - I'm mainly directing this at T.S.Bowman and the members who perpetuated the notion of validation as a defining factor in difficulty to write in a genre.

I had written an essay to argue my stance, but it was lost when my os updated during breakfast, so here's a general summation.

1. The OP is asking what the most difficult genre to write is, and I think there genuinely is an answer that isn't "Subjective" to the respondents.

2. I believe there should be measures put in place to argue this better, as it seems people are genuinely talking about how well it is received over the difficulty to write a piece in said genre. This can be noted heavily in posts if you take a look back over the thread.

3. Things such as "Input by the author" should be considered, as well as "Ability to reach a certain output." and other things. The Bible certainly is a great fiction (or Biblical Genre Piece if you prefer), and it certainly has generated a great amount of output over the years it's been available, both good and bad. I had suggested members who were subscribed to the notion of defining what it means to be the "Most difficult genre to write" could create a better, more robust list of measures to hold the genres against.


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## Bishop (May 6, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> And with that, I bow to superior logic. Nicely put, sir.



Did... did you admit you were wrong... on a forum..?

ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK THE INTERNET?!


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## stormageddon (May 6, 2014)

Elvenswordsman said:


> it seems people are genuinely talking about how well it is received over the difficulty to write a piece in said genre. This can be noted heavily in posts if you take a look back over the thread.


I think reception is a large part of what defines difficulty. I could easily write in any of the genres mentioned, if I didn't consider the way my writing would be received. Writing only becomes difficult when you consider that you have an audience, and that in one form or another, you have to entertain that audience.



> I think there genuinely is an answer that isn't "Subjective" to the respondents.



Disagree. Massively.

Now, I am not funny, except by accident, so if I were aiming to write a comedy, I would fail miserably (and have in the past). I am lazy, and would never have the motivation nor the attention span to write non-fiction. I hate romance, except when exploited for comedy, so would not be able to write it either. Different people have different interests and strengths in writing, and those will define what they do/do not find difficult. I really don't think it can be said that there is one genre that is definitively and objectively more difficult than all the others, unless you use an obscure definition of what is meant by difficulty. 

Personally, I find all of them exceptionally difficult, especially fantasy, which is my preferred genre. Why? Because, like the majority of people here, I don't want to write just another book, I want to create a masterpiece, as naive and hopeless a dream as that is. I want bards to sing songs of my greatness, I want empires to bow down to my wisdom and majesty (metaphorically speaking, of course). That probably does mean I'm motivated by self-validation, but I think that's as good a motivator as any, and likely the most common one.


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## Kyle R (May 6, 2014)

They're all difficult (and fun!) in their own ways. Each have their own dedicated techniques to hone and blunders to avoid.

Also, they're all learnable and master-able. Every single one. Yes, even comedy.

It all depends on which one(s) you want to invest your time in. :encouragement:


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## garza (May 6, 2014)

Fantasy, horror (especially), science fiction, and such bore me. The only science fiction writer I enjoy is Asimov, but only his non-fiction books, articles, and essays. In the past I've recommended _The Collapsing Universe: The Story of Black Holes_ to a number of young people as a good introduction to the way the universe works, though it's badly dated today in places. The only fantasy writer I enjoy is Tolkien but that enjoyment stems from his delightful re-interpretation of northern mythology. Rowling I don't consider a fantasy writer, but rather a commentator on life in the late 20th Century while cleverly disguising her books as children's stories. 

What is for me personally boring would be impossible for me to write. Thus as I go along the path of trying to learn to write fiction, I stick to trying to tell the truth about what I have seen in life while re-arranging the facts. That makes realistic fiction the only kind I would ever try to write.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 6, 2014)

Bishop said:


> Did... did you admit you were wrong... on a forum..?
> 
> ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK THE INTERNET?!



I admit NOTHING!!! 

Besides, my logic was still good. Just not as good as his. LOL


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## T.S.Bowman (May 6, 2014)

Elvenswordsman said:


> And as far as my mistake of saying "You all" - I'm mainly directing this at T.S.Bowman and the members who perpetuated the notion of validation as a defining factor in difficulty to write in a genre.



I'm still trying to figure out where it was that I said that. If I insinuated (or you inferred it from my words) any validation was necessary, then point it out to me, please.

All I have been saying is that it would be difficult to write a story (and yeah, I would think it would have to have a modicum of success) in a genre in which the story is subject to the personal feelings and opinions of the reader. 

I mentioned Seth Rogan and Will Ferrell. My reason is this...

Many people find those two gentlemen to be very funny individuals. I do not. They, and the folks who write stuff for them probably don't find it difficult (as Newman pointed out). However, it _would be pretty difficult_ for me to write something "funny" for them since I do not "get" what it is that makes people find them funny.

If thinking that way means that I am talking about "validation", then sure. But you make that sound as if it's completely wrong. Validation determines success as far as I can tell. A whole lot of validation by a whole lot of people is necessary for a story to be considered, at least by people other than the author, successful. If the writer isn't getting that validation from people, then he has to go back and change something. That = difficulty. If it was easy, everything they write would work the first time.


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## Kepharel (May 6, 2014)

Any genre is difficult if you have had no personal experience of the subject matter of which you write.  All writing, even the most teccy sci-fi or gory horror has to have an anchor in some life experience you have encountered, even if it's the vaguest kind of emotion or moral judgement that you hold yourself to.  Well, that's the principle I take with me while I'm rattling off the story.  If you have no experience, however remote and tangential of the subject matter, you are always going to be a stranger to it, and the more contrived it will be.


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## Morkonan (May 6, 2014)

Apple Ice said:


> Interesting point Morkonan. I would agree it's hard to write, particularly in novel form. I don't agree with your last statement about a true humour story. I'm currently writing one and it's nothing but daft stuff and doesn't have a single serious point to it. Now whether it's good is another story, but I think it's do-able. I'm certainly managing to achieve it thus far (in regards to it no being serious at all). Although I'm sure it's all subjective and so one of my plot points you may personally deem as serious etc. But yeah, it's hard to write knowing that nearly every line has to be a gag. it's taking me ages because I'm making sure not to use anything cliche and I try to make every joke funny as opposed to just throwing a crap one out every now and then.
> 
> I personally think fantasy is very hard to write. It can be the most cliched plot ever but I still think a decent one is hard to write.



One story I know if that does it fairly successfully is L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth" series. It's full of irony and comedic plots, mostly based on the buffoonery of a central character and his somewhat megalomaniac goals. (Think of a character very similar to "Terl" in Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth", but with much less drama and an emphasis on absurdity.) The plot revolves around the main character's desire to discredit a co-worker and advance himself and his personal power. The hook is that this character is a buffoon, incompetent and corrupt, symbolizing the typical highly-placed government worker... of sorts. The "drama" comes from watching the character's plots unravel or backfire on him, typically not from either the success or failure of the plot. "How will everything go wrong for the buffoon, this time?" is what usually keeps the Reader reading. (Though, it wasn't a very popular series, so not many Readers kept reading...)

If you can "keep the Reader reading" solely due to comedic plots, you've mastered the genre. I don't know of any novel that does that, though some of Anthony's "Zanth" novels manage a portion of it fairly effectively. (They're also usually based on dramatic, conventional, plots, IIRC.) I think most comedic novels rely on dramatic or otherwise conventional plot-points in order to provide a bulwark for the Reader in the face of comedic-overload. And, as a result, those are usually the more well-written ones.


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## Sam (May 6, 2014)

Kepharel said:


> Any genre is difficult if you have had no personal experience of the subject matter of which you write.  All writing, even the most teccy sci-fi or gory horror has to have an anchor in some life experience you have encountered, even if it's the vaguest kind of emotion or moral judgement that you hold yourself to.  Well, that's the principle I take with me while I'm rattling off the story.  If you have no experience, however remote and tangential of the subject matter, you are always going to be a stranger to it, and the more contrived it will be.



I write military thrillers. 

By your above logic, I would have to have experience of the following: war; killing; murder; espionage; military tactics and protocol; response protocols of every law enforcement agency in the Western hemisphere; assassination techniques; inner workings of firearms; nuclear physics; chemical and biological warfare; radiological containment parameters; diagnostic medicine; advanced interrogation techniques; human anatomy; aircraft specifications; submarine warfare; first-response protocols; close-quarters combat; martial arts training; satellite surveillance; parabolic and directional microphones; broad-spectrum military radios; encrypted messages; first aid; paramilitary tactics; jungle and desert warfare; sub-zero warfare; survival training; torture resistance; infiltration and exfiltration techniques; standard operating procedures . . . 

I could go on and on. There are some things that you simply _cannot _experience. 

_Ars est celare artem. _"True art is to conceal art". Or, in more direct terms, to produce a natural effect with no trace of study or effort. If research is done correctly, it should be impossible to tell apart from experience.


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## Morkonan (May 6, 2014)

Elvenswordsman said:


> ...
> I had written an essay to argue my stance, but it was lost when my os updated during breakfast, so here's a general summation.
> 
> 1. The OP is asking what the most difficult genre to write is, and I think there genuinely is an answer that isn't "Subjective" to the respondents.
> ...



I agree with your points - We need further direction for discussions.

But,we'd have to start with defining "difficult." For myself, I would define it based on its intrinsic ability to be "well written" (including, but not limited to, the creation of believable characters, plots and the requirements placed on the writer regarding basic story construction) and produce a work that would have broad appeal within its genre. That isn't to say that anything is "easy" to write well-written and appealing for anyone. But, there are certain genres that lend themselves to more of an ease-of-construction than others. 

For instance, the "Romance" genre is one of the more rigidly constructed genres on the shelf. In fact, certain publishers are so firmly set within the known desires of their particular market that they demand certain standard plot-points. So, while some writers might find it personally difficult to write Romance, it's much more easily done in reality. The plethora of titles on typical Romance shelves stand testament to that fact. That genre's particular target market gobbles up titles like bits of chocolate. (IMO, it's also a genre that's fairly revolting, considering the liberties taken with whatever braincells the genre's aficionados have left...) Note: I'm referring to "Romance" as commonly understood, not classical "Romance" writing, which is a bit different IMO.)

I would add that we can't simply discuss some sort of final "intrinsic" worth of the finished work. That's pointless. There must be a commonly acknowledged standard that is applicable across the discussed genre and, IMO, it should be quantitative. Titles on the shelf, Best Sellers, Most Purchased Genre, etc...) If we're going to get down to the nitty-gritty, "production" is the great equalizer. Anyone can write a novel that nobody will read and no publisher is interested in publishing.


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## Morkonan (May 6, 2014)

Sam said:


> ..._Ars est celare artem. _"True art is to conceal art". Or, in more direct terms, to produce a natural effect with no trace of study or effort. If research is done correctly, it should be impossible to tell apart from experience.



^--- This.

If a writer must experience something in order to write about it, they're not very much of a true "writer" in my opinion. A "true writer" can write at the drop of a hat, regardless of subject. Now, of course, they may not be able to create credible works given such an ultimatum, but they should be able to at least write something within the requirements.

So very many great works would have never been produced had we required writers to have direct experience of their written subject. A good writer knows not only how, but when, they need to research. A bad writer doesn't know either.

Tom Clancy didn't have to experience the opening stages of World War III in order to write my favorite military-thriller "Red Storm Rising." (Closely followed by "Team Yankee" and a few other titles.) Orson Scott Card didn't have to attend a space-academy in order to write "Ender's Game." Tolkien did not have to journey to Middle Earth or stumble across a particularly powerful magic ring in order to write "The Lord of the Rings", Beagle didn't have to go to the pet store and buy a unicorn in order to write "The Last Unicorn" and Clarke never set foot on the Moon or went beyond Earth's orbit, yet wrote "2011."

I do agree that it is easier to write "credibly" if one has direct knowledge of the subject one is writing about. But, it isn't completely necessary - A "good writer" can accomplish this feat, undetected.


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## Kyle R (May 6, 2014)

Morkonan said:


> [...]Romance [...] IMO, it's also a genre that's fairly revolting, considering the liberties taken with whatever braincells the genre's aficionados have left.



Egads! Keep in mind there are romance writers and readers on this forum. :disturbed:


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## stormageddon (May 6, 2014)

I took Kepharel's words to mean not that one needs direct experience of a thing to write about it (ie, to have been a spy to be able to write about a spy), but that one needs to be able to relate on some small or large emotional level to the situation they are writing (I don't know if that's actually what he meant, I often interpret things oddly).

For me, this is true. To write about fear, for example, would be difficult if one had never experienced it. To write about despair, or even loss, one must know how it really feels, even if not to the same extreme as the character being written. I have friends young and fortunate enough that they have never known grief, and though they write well on the whole, as soon as it comes to death they run out of words.

Anyone can write a situation they have never lived, though it may take a great deal of research. What makes a situation worth reading about is the character(s) response(s), and how true they ring. Because emotion is an abstract concept, getting that authenticity of written emotion without resorting to clichés is something that I believe is dependent on the writer's own experience of that emotion.

One example of something I would not consider writing about - parenthood. The emotions of the parent are not something I can relate to on any level, so I know I would balls it up.


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## Morkonan (May 6, 2014)

KyleColorado said:


> Egads! Keep in mind there are romance writers and readers on this forum. :disturbed:



My apologies! Of course, I was using the_ metaphorical _"Romance" readers and writers in those statements, not directly referencing any known commodity.

(Though, I have made my opinion regarding pulp Romance known in other posts. However, I have absolutely nothing against those who write it or read it - Everyone deserves to make a living using their talents in the pursuit of something they love and we all have our own guilty pleasures.  I meant to come off somewhat "forcefully comical and absurdly opinionated" in that last little bit in my post above. I was trying to entertain, not insult, preferring to caper about in a guise of illustrative buffoonery...)


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## garza (May 6, 2014)

Morkonan - Odd, to discover at this late stage that I am not a 'true writer' after spending 60 years earning my living solely by putting one word after another. Perhaps Hemingway was not a 'true writer', either, having based his stories on his experiences and peopling them with characters drawn from real life. So too Faulkner, whose every line is a reflected image of the world in which he lived.  

If I read you correctly, only people like Clancy and company with fertile imaginations are 'true writers'. Don't get me wrong, I do admire Clancy as a craftsman of great ability. However, if we follow to its logical end the concept that only such people are 'real writers' we have to add to the list of those who are not 'true writers' John Grisham, J.D. Salinger, John Updike, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, and many others. We must conclude that writing about the kinds of people who live in the real world and are faced with the realities of life as it is and not as it can be imagined is not writing at all.

It's just typing.


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## Elvenswordsman (May 6, 2014)

So then general topics should include:

"How difficult is it to write a :
Plot
Character..."

Define "broad appeal" in its genre? I think the idea is to set a standard, say top .01% of a genre in terms of quality, and then compare the level of difficulty it would be to write each. Then compare directly across genres.

Another question I might propose is:

"How much planning/research/effort is required in writing a piece?" Arguably this would be a section that would heavily favour something like an encyclopedia, or a dictionary, but I think the other questions we ask can balance it out (i.e. Would anyone actually read it cover to cover?).


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## T.S.Bowman (May 7, 2014)

Morkonan said:


> One story I know if that does it fairly successfully is L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth" series. It's full of irony and comedic plots, mostly based on the buffoonery of a central character and his somewhat megalomaniac goals. (Think of a character very similar to "Terl" in Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth", but with much less drama and an emphasis on absurdity.) The plot revolves around the main character's desire to discredit a co-worker and advance himself and his personal power. The hook is that this character is a buffoon, incompetent and corrupt, symbolizing the typical highly-placed government worker... of sorts. The "drama" comes from watching the character's plots unravel or backfire on him, typically not from either the success or failure of the plot. "How will everything go wrong for the buffoon, this time?" is what usually keeps the Reader reading. (Though, it wasn't a very popular series, so not many Readers kept reading...)
> 
> If you can "keep the Reader reading" solely due to comedic plots, you've mastered the genre. I don't know of any novel that does that, though some of Anthony's "Zanth" novels manage a portion of it fairly effectively. (They're also usually based on dramatic, conventional, plots, IIRC.) I think most comedic novels rely on dramatic or otherwise conventional plot-points in order to provide a bulwark for the Reader in the face of comedic-overload. And, as a result, those are usually the more well-written ones.



The 'Mission:Earth' series goes a long way toward proving how difficult humor can be to write. I found that series to be pretty doggone funny. The fact that many didn't find it funny enough to keep reading it says a lot.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Hya Sam_

I write military thrillers. 

By your above logic, I would have to have experience of the following: war; killing; murder; espionage; military tactics and protocol; response protocols of every law enforcement agency in the Western hemisphere; assassination techniques; inner workings of firearms; nuclear physics; chemical and biological warfare; radiological containment parameters; diagnostic medicine; advanced interrogation techniques; human anatomy; aircraft specifications; submarine warfare; first-response protocols; close-quarters combat; martial arts training; satellite surveillance; parabolic and directional microphones; broad-spectrum military radios; encrypted messages; first aid; paramilitary tactics; jungle and desert warfare; sub-zero warfare; survival training; torture resistance; infiltration and exfiltration techniques; standard operating procedures . . . 

I could go on and on. There are some things that you simply cannot experience. 

_I think that's too literal an interpretation of what I meant.  Of course, I can watch documentaries, read books, interview folks and such on War if I need to research, I don't have to do the killing myself, but even that's beside the point.  To give a war novel any kind of depth then the protagonists and antagonists bring their own life experiences to the battlefield.  They were mother's sons, brothers etc. They worked at some job, digging roads, working in an office, they had girlfriends, personal disappointments, fears, and all the rest of it.  If I were to write a military themed novel (which I never will  ) then such experiences as I have encountered in my life I would attribute, where possible, to them and juxtapose this 'ordinariness' with the unrecognisable horror they experience on the battlefield.  After all, when human beings set out to commit murder legalised by the state for its own protection, or whatever, the most important thing about such an encounter is that they are no different from you or me.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Though I will concede my original post was ambiguous, Storm read it how I meant it, but others have a different take. That will teach me not to post after a couple of real ales.............


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## Sam (May 7, 2014)

Kepharel said:


> I think that's too literal an interpretation of what I meant.  Of course, I can watch documentaries, read books, interview folks and such on War if I need to research, I don't have to do the killing myself, but even that's beside the point.  To give a war novel any kind of depth then the protagonists and antagonists bring their own life experiences to the battlefield.  They were mother's sons, brothers etc. They worked at some job, digging roads, working in an office, they had girlfriends, personal disappointments, fears, and all the rest of it.  If I were to write a military themed novel (which I never will  ) then such experiences as I have encountered in my life I would attribute, where possible, to them and juxtapose this 'ordinariness' with the unrecognisable horror they experience on the battlefield.  After all, when human beings set out to commit murder legalised by the state for its own protection, or whatever, the most important thing about such an encounter is that they are no different from you or me.



Someone above mentioned that they wouldn't attempt to write a story about parenthood because they weren't a parent. Yet, I'm going to venture a guess that they have written _something _in the past that they had little to no experience of. Why should parenthood be any different? I may not be a parent, but I can _imagine _being a parent. I can _empathise _with being a parent. That's the thing about creative writing: if you can imagine it, you can write it. This "write what you know" malarkey is so unnecessarily restrictive as to be pointless. I don't write what I know. I've _never _written what I know. I started writing novels when I was 15. What does a 15-year-old know about _anything_? 

With enough research and a truck-load of imagination, I can make it seem like I know _everything. _For that reason, I will never buy into the notion that experience is a necessity when it comes to telling stories.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Just noticed another remark on here about writing in the context of being a 'true writer'. What irks me about this term is the context in which it was set to mean some kind of failure or a limiting factor in ability.  People write for many reasons.  Personally I am not a true writer in the sense that my imagination works best when in tandem with my own life experience.  For example, My LM entry this month is almost autobiographical in it's content, and that's why I feel it works; it is something I can relate to.  It's also the reason why I did not put up "Paxo Made Me Do It" as an LM entry, because I am a stranger to that kind of content....it didn't work.


For my money, a 'true writer' is someone who recognises human emotion, triumph and frailty as being the real story, whatever the genre.  It's what makes a book on warfare a novel rather than a 'how to' manual. (I note the sad passing of Leslie Thomas on the news just now who wrote 'The Virgin Soldiers').In the worlds of fantasy where reigns evil to be overcome by good, the motives are human and the 'true writer' will be at home exercising his own personal experiences in authenticating the story to the reader.


So am I a true writer?  Morkonan would appear not to think so.... as I said, there are many reasons to write, and by one measure I don't pass the 'true writer' test, but that's OK because I like to write, and isn't that a worthwhile thing on its own.


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## Elvenswordsman (May 7, 2014)

I'm of the mind that anyone who writes is a writer. "True writer" seems redundant. A true wanker is still just someone holding his willy.

Anyone else have suggestions for measures of difficulty?


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## Jeko (May 7, 2014)

> I'm of the mind that anyone who writes is a writer. "True writer" seems redundant.



I'm of the belief that sending a text to my girlfriend* doesn't make me a 'writer'; to be a 'writer', I have to write with a focus on the actual act of writing, and not mere communication. Else, practically everyone on Earth is a writer, a singer, a dancer, a philosopher...

'true writer' definitely feels pointless, though.

*Speaking in theoretical terms here; I do not have a girlfriend.


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## qwertyman (May 7, 2014)

Elvenswordsman said:


> I'm of the mind that anyone who writes is a writer. "True writer" seems redundant. A true wanker is still just someone holding his willy.
> 
> Anyone else have suggestions for measures of difficulty?



Holding your willy while plate-spinning?


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## stormageddon (May 7, 2014)

Sam said:


> Someone above mentioned that they wouldn't attempt to write a story about parenthood because they weren't a parent. Yet, I'm going to venture a guess that they have written _something _in the past that they had little to no experience of. Why should parenthood be any different? I may not be a parent, but I can _imagine _being a parent. I can _empathise _with being a parent. That's the thing about creative writing: if you can imagine it, you can write it. This "write what you know" malarkey is so unnecessarily restrictive as to be pointless. I don't write what I know. I've _never _written what I know. I started writing novels when I was 15. What does a 15-year-old know about _anything_?



A 15 year old knows a hell of a lot emotionally, and I believe that's what's in discussion. I have written things I have had little experience of, but never no experience. To clarify from the start, I'm purely speaking in terms of emotional experience, because I agree with you on the rest.

There are writers who tell stories, and writers who tell stories with meaning. You can't tell a story with meaning if you don't truly understand the words you're putting on the page.

When I hear people talking about what it's like to be a parent, I cannot relate on any level to what they're saying. "You don't know true love until you've had a child" is the line that has me convinced of that. Parents speak about having a child as though it's given them a great emotional epiphany, and if that's really the case and they aren't just being dramatic, how could I begin to imagine it, if they couldn't until they had the child?

One of the stories I'm working on right now is an alien invasion from a pensioner's perspective - I've never been old (not that mid-sixties are old, of course), but if I really want to I can think like an old(er) person, because I can relate to the emotions involved in being old(er) from even the vaguest experience of them. Nostalgia for my youth, fear of death, world-weariness etc. But there are some things I can't relate to, so can't write about, or rather won't, because my writing would lack both depth and meaning, and therefore purpose.


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## T.S.Bowman (May 7, 2014)

Now wait a second...

I am a Fantasy writer. I have exactly zero experience of being pulled from my world into another. I have no experience with magic. I have never met a dragon. But those are the things I write about.

Are you, stormageddon, trying to imply that I cannot write a story with meaning and depth in my chosen genre because I have no life experience with the things I am writing about?


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## stormageddon (May 7, 2014)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Now wait a second...
> 
> I am a Fantasy writer. I have exactly zero experience of being pulled from my world into another. I have no experience with magic. I have never met a dragon. But those are the things I write about.
> 
> Are you, stormageddon, trying to imply that I cannot write a story with meaning and depth in my chosen genre because I have no life experience with the things I am writing about?


Not in the slightest, dear Bowman. You have at some point in your life experienced the emotions that allow you to give meaning and depth to what you write, even if in a different context.

It's difficult to comment without knowing the way you've written all that, but I imagine on being pulled into a different world your character will have experienced wonder, fear etc. And as you have experienced those emotions in real life, you can use them to give meaning to your work.

I write fantasy too, and apart from dragons have no real life experience of the things I write about, just like you. But both of us - all writers - can use their knowledge of emotion to place themselves in their worlds and write about them with authenticity and meaning. Well, I hope I can >.> but I'm sure you can.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Okay, let's take fantasy as the vehicle for discussion regarding experience and why not go for the whole nine yards and look at Lord Of The Rings.  So what's the storyline?  There is a ring of great power, but it is so powerful it corrupts anyone who owns it.  It must be destroyed.  There ya go! a classic fight between good and evil.  Poor old Gollum, driven insane by the ring, and further insane at its loss is a hobbit of tragedy.  A classic split personality who nevertheless, through choice and circumstance, finds his own redemption by leading the heroes safely to Mount Doom.  when you cut through all the fantasy that is the vehicle of the story, this is what you are left with...fighting the evil within yourself, a very human story with which each of us has personal experience viz. resisting temptation to do things we know are wrong, and we can all cite (but would rather not publicly) individual instances of that.


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## Sam (May 7, 2014)

So you can't write about emotional matters if you've never experienced them? 

Well, then, that narrows it down to writing about fluffy kittens. If you think a writer can't write work with meaning if they're bereft of emotion, you don't know what being a writer is. I don't know about anyone else, but I can write just about anything. It's what I do. I don't need emotion to write emotion. I don't need to kill someone to know the enormity of the action. That's what I've got imagination for.


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## stormageddon (May 7, 2014)

An understanding of the emotion involved even if not to the extent or in the same context the character is feeling it. And very few people are genuinely bereft of emotion - anyone can write meaningfully about most things. I just find that there are a few things I wouldn't be able to do, like parenthood, because I have felt nothing similar to it.

I'm not saying you have to kill to write about the emotions involved. Rather that if one has never felt guilt, horror, or perhaps satisfaction depending on what you're writing, it may not feel genuine to a reader.

I've read hundreds of writers' attempts at writing about depression, for example, but published or unpublished they rarely ring true, because while the writer will have felt despair, they can't quite grasp the irrational side of it that makes it an illness rather than just an emotion.

If I have misinterpreted what you're saying, and you're simply saying that emotion in any form is entirely irrelevant to a writer, then we are simply in disagreement about what makes writing worthwhile.


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## garza (May 7, 2014)

This discussion has been of great interest to me because I've been trying these past few years to learn to write fiction. I've tried to follow the discussion as time allows, dropping in and reading a post or two then going back to a project I'm working on for an NGO. Writing radio and TV scripts for the NGO will bring in a nice piece of change, so I need to put most of my attention there. I've been told that, regardless of any other qualification, I can never be a real writer because I write for money. That's like saying a prostitute can never have 'true sex' because she does it for money. And, yes, the 'writing is art' crowd in New York have called me a prostitute at a few cocktail parties because I write to sell.

It's true that for most of the past 60 years my motive for writing has been to make money. I've never had a job, so it was write or starve. And like any good prostitute, I've never turned away a paying customer. 

Now in my dotage I've decided I want to learn to write fiction. That's why this discussion interests me. What I find especially interesting is the concept that to write strictly from one's own personal knowledge is not writing at all, and the person who writes from personal experience and not from pure imagination is not a 'true writer'. 

I can, and many times have, written detailed reports of fire-fights in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the mountains of El Salvador. I've put a few fictionalised versions here. Can I call that 'true writing'? Or is what I have written degraded because it's drawn from experience and not created entirely in my imagination? Does seeing it happen mean it's wrong to write about it?  Are _The Sun Also Rises_ and _Absalom, Absalom!_ strictly second rate because they are modeled on the world as personally experienced by Hemingway and Faulkner?

None of what I say is meant to detract from the ability of those with an interest and sufficient imagination to create horror stories, fantasy, and such. What I object to is the notion that those of us without that kind of interest and imagination can never be 'true writers'. I can imagine all sorts of real-world situations involving real people. I've neither the interest nor the ability to create a new world and new kinds of people. For me this world we have and the many varieties of people who live in it are all the resource material I need to write the kind of fiction I want to write. 

So what's the bottom line? What kind of fiction is harder to write, so I'll know what to avoid, and does drawing from personal experience disqualify one from being a 'true writer'?


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## ComplexVariable89 (May 7, 2014)

ToriJ said:


> I find Sci-Fi the hardest to write for out of the genres I've worked on. Humor, Fiction and Fantasy are the only other genres in the above list I've worked on and I find them easy for the most part.



Writing "hard" SF is probably the most difficult of. Not only do you have to do a lot of convincing world-building, but you have to be current on your knowledge of the current state of whichever scientific discipline(s) being considered, not to mention a good grasp of which advances may be just around the corner during the period your story is set. The closer to the present your hard SF story is, the more difficult.

An additional facet is, for contemporary readership, one must keep in mind how to integrate good characterization and development and drama. Even my favorite hard SF author of all time, Issac Asimov, had a difficult time with this. Even his best stories fell kind of flat in that regard. Of course, he gets a pass, since he came of age during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, back when the genre wasn't exactly as mainstream as it is now.

An excellent example of a hard SF story that (IMO) combines the best of all these facets is _The Light of Other Days_ by Stephen Baxter.


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## ComplexVariable89 (May 7, 2014)

Sam said:


> So you can't write about emotional matters if you've never experienced them?
> 
> Well, then, that narrows it down to writing about fluffy kittens. If you think a writer can't write work with meaning if they're bereft of emotion, you don't know what being a writer is. I don't know about anyone else, but I can write just about anything. It's what I do. I don't need emotion to write emotion. I don't need to kill someone to know the enormity of the action. That's what I've got imagination for.



Exactly. Personally, I use music to evoke moods in my characters when I'm writing.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Hi Garza,

A very interesting post of yours. The discussion so far is the idea that, without experience, and relying purely on imagination it is possible to write convincingly on any topic and any genre.  I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, but with the proviso that, however convincing it may be, without the authors life experience, relying purely on research, the story will be contrived.  Much of the discussion has revolved around warfare and fantasy, which are out of the realms of experience of most would be writers who have seen the implication as being that they are somehow inadequate to the task of such genre.  Regarding warfare, I have always been left with the impression that it consists of hours/days/weeks of boredom interspersed with seconds of pure indescribable terror.  I find it difficult to conceive of a book being written that does not account for what the majority of a soldier's time must actually feel like to them, what they think about, their past, present, and future, their predicament and how they cope philosophically.  Once you delve into this realm, and you have listened to old warriors recount their stories in documentaries and such it becomes apparent that they are ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  This may be enough for a novel's 'personal touch' and the book may well be a triumph...good on the author for that.  Because we are all individuals leading different lives, each of those old warriors met and dealt with their trials and tribulations in different ways, according to what lessons in life were applicable to them.  My downfall, in the context of this thread is that my only certainties in life are my own experiences and, apparently, my inability to overcome this shortcoming is preventing me from being a true writer.  This is a situation I unreservedly accept, but it doesn't mean I'm a bad writer.


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## garza (May 7, 2014)

So you agree that the person such as myself who writes from personal experience can never be a 'true writer'. As I said in my first post in this thread, odd to find out after 60 years of living by writing that I'm not a 'true writer'.  

And does this also mean that Faulkner and Company, all the writers of the past who wrote about the real world drawing on their own experiences, were not 'true writers'?

I reject this concept. If you want to say I'm not a 'true writer' that's one thing, but please don't extend the idea to include Joyce, Hemingway, and other such writers of the past. And I'll admit that I find horror stories and fantasy, with the exception of LoTR, boring. That, I suppose, is another strike against me. 

Certainly I'm happy that Mr Wilkes and Mr Rand, editors of The Daily Herald and The Dixie Guide, respectively, never found out I'm not a 'true writer' or they would never have given me a start in my writing career. 

A question. If I'm not a 'true writer', what is it I've been doing these past 60 years?

Just typing?


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## Sam (May 7, 2014)

I write about Spec Ops soldiers who are smack in the middle of major conflict on a daily basis. These are the sort of people who get shot at, beat up, and somehow find a way to survive in the most high-stress environment imaginable. They can almost die one day, wake up the next, and do it all over again without hesitation. Not because they're thrill-seekers or action junkies, and not for reasons of honour to one's country or unit or even oneself, but because it's their _job. _They do it because they've never known anything else. It's their livelihood. 

You want to know how I know that? Research. Because no amount of life experience is ever going to come close to understanding how someone can watch their squad mate take a bullet to the brain and yet continue until they find the solace of a bed or a bottle or a fellow soldier to talk to. That's not life experience. That's life. That's reality. How many ordinary people can say they walked ten miles dragging a body behind them just so the deceased could have a proper burial? You can have all the experience in the world, but you'll never know what that feels like . . . unless you research what it felt like for someone else.


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## Kepharel (May 7, 2014)

Hey Ho! Garza


If you have the experience and use it in your work it's the equivalent of a lottery win in my book, and I envy you.  The question you have to ask is can I step outside of this and write about something beyond my experience.  Whether having both within your remit is a requirement for being a true writer is another matter.  I believe this term 'true writer' came along in the discussion because it was asserted that if you cannot write out of pure imagination you are somehow not within the definition.  That is something I disagree with.  I don't think I ever said Joyce and Hemingway weren't true writers and I would be willing to bet 50 pence each way imagination was not in short supply for those individuals.  As far as Joyce is concerned he is a kind of picasso of the literary world.  I know it's great, so do lots of other people, I just don't understand a word of it


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## Greimour (May 7, 2014)

I opted out of this conversation some several posts back. It was clear to me the views and opinions are not here to be discussed, changed or enlightened upon but to be argued over.

I stand by my argument that the genre in question is entirely dependent on the person in question. 
"Jack of all trades, master of none." is a term that comes to mind. In writing, you find such authors... those who master the genre in question but fail in all other genre's. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Humor, Slice of Life, Romance, Mystery, other... 

It doesn't really matter what you specialize in (if anything) there will still be a genre that is more difficult to you than others. That is to you alone. Every genre has a reason to be difficult and to claim one is more difficult than another is akin to asking which genre is better to read. Or stating that writing music for Opera is harder than music for rap - that lyrics for rap is harder than lyrics for pop, that lyrics for heavy metal music is harder than lyrics for RnB... it is entirely different based on those writing it, composing it, reading it, listening to it - as well as any and all interpretations of said pieces. 

There is no difference. It is unique to each person. The reasons one person find it difficult could very well be the reason another person finds it easy. 

Garza.

In regards to your being a prostitute. Personal opinions aside, there is one thing that ultimately decides if a person is a writer and that is whether or not that person writes. Do you write? (Yes obviously) Then it is safe to say you are a writer.
Do you enjoy writing? This is the real issue. Whether you write for pleasure, money, hobby, sharing joy, teaching philosophy, personal diary, memoirs... anything! Whatever the reason you write, if you enjoy it - then that is where the answer exists in being a "True Writer" (if such a thing exists). Ideologies don't make a person what they are, ideologies don't stop a person being who they are. A person is who they are and only they themselves can decide on what label they fall under.

Are you worth your weight in gold? Only you can decide that. Vanity aside - you are what you believe yourself and can be whatever you aspire to be. 


Kepharel.

Regarding life experience. I tend to agree, but the whole issue regarding what life experience is can be boiled down to almost nothing. 
Fantasy Fiction can be exempt from life experience because it is made up? Nonsense.

Let's take a single example... [essay deleted and simplified example]

When I read a book (even a crappy one)... whether it is Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, Eragon, Great Expectations, Game of Thrones... whatever... good or bad... I live those experiences as much as the characters do. Just because it is a world of fiction, it does not mean that it is outside the realms of living. I have never been to France, but I have felt love as I held the hand of my beloved beneath the Eiffel Tower. I have never been to Japan, but I have experienced a samurai battle in the streets of Tokyo. I have never been to Mongolia, but I rode alongside Genghis Khan as he retook his tribe and went on to unite all the tribes and conquer half the known world. 

Life experience? "Experience acquired during a lifetime."

I have lived a thousand lives and been alive for a thousand lifetimes. Reality may not have me live for thirty years, but I do not feel the lives I have had inside books and stories is any less significant than the life I live daily. The experiences I have lived in life are not always easier, harder, better or worse than the experiences I have lived within books. Experience, teachings, wisdom, logic, philosophy, dreams, fantasies, ideologies - does it all come from the world of reality? If so, why then do we bother to read? If no one read, would we bother to write? 

Your eyes may be the tool for vision, but it's your mind that sees, its your mind that understands, your mind that interprets and you mind that tells you what you feel - whether emotional or physical. So what you live in your mind, is it not that which is reality and that which is life? 

What you write may be limited to your life experience... but your life experience is not limited to events your body has lived through.


P.S EDIT:

I wrote about death before I experienced it. I had a character I seriously loved (truly); die. I was so distressed in fact, i considered turning back time (of the story) and keeping him alive. I mourned him for quite a while and a reader (who had read it without permission) had also been greatly upset by the characters death and asked me why I couldn't just let the character live. I didn't know why the character had to die, I write by the seat of my pants... but he died and who am I to change his fate? The Author? Sure.. but i live the stories as I write them... his death was as much a surprise to me as anyone who might read it. 

Equally, I had a dream where one of my parents died (both live) I was in my teenage years at the time and I woke up crying. I was still haunted by it and mourned the passing of my parent more than a week later. I even made sure to go give both my parents a hug frequently and assure myself they both existed. It was only a dream, they both live to this day... but does that mean I didn't feel what happened in my dream? Did I not live it? Mourn it? Feel it?

I wrote about flying from London to New York before I ever got on a plane. Since being on a plane, I see no reason to change what I had written beforehand. 

I have characters that are parents, characters that are daughters... I am not a parent and as a man, I am not a daughter either... I fail to see why my writing has to have me physically live the life of a pilot to write about one, why I have to be a parent to write about a character that is one... or why I have to have a sex change to write the role of a woman. Nor do I see a need to master Swordsmanship to write about a swordsman, master Kung Fu to write about martial artists or even visit London to write about the place.


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## garza (May 7, 2014)

Sam - One morning I ate breakfast sitting next to a 19-year-old not long out of Parris Island. He was a farm kid from up in the midwest and like all new Marines was gung-ho to the max. He talked about his family, talked about how he would win a medal for his mother and go home to farm the piece of land his daddy had promised to give him. He showed me his girl's picture, and said he would marry her as soon as he was home, they would build a house on his land, and settle down to farm. 

Later in the morning I saw him in a muddy depression, probably an old 105 shell hole. He wasn't dead, but shot through pretty badly. He was begging for someone to help him. A company of North Vietnamese regulars faced us. I was with a mixed U.S. and South Vietnamese company trying to get to a ridge to establish a new LZ. Fire was heavy. There was no way to get to him. I sat and watched the boy who dreamed of having a farm and a wife bleed out in the mud. 

'Don't make friends with any of them,' an old reporter had told me. 'It'll break your heart.'

So you are saying that now I need to go do research to find out how I felt that day watching that kid die. 

And all the long conversations I had with guys just off the front line are of no value in understanding how they felt, what they believed, what they dreamed. Their words mean nothing.

Better to look it up in a book.


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## Greimour (May 7, 2014)

I think Sams mention of "you" was generic. If you (literal) have lived it, then fine use your own experience. 

Equally, that doesn't mean your experiences are going to be accepted of how things are. How you felt in your circumstances and how you reacted, how you coped, etc... that was you... I might not handle things the same way. So, you may not have to do research on how you felt... but that doesn't mean you don't need to do research on how other people felt. Abandoning research because you have lived it doesn't make sense to me. You only have your own experience to go on. I think personally, I would rather research how other people felt living through the same experiences.

Further expansion on my comment is largely covered in my previous post (the one before yours), "life experience is not limited to events your body has lived through"

 I am not going to go into further detail now, I literally have to go. I have already stayed 20 minutes longer than I had intended.


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## garza (May 7, 2014)

Greimour - I have much more than my own feelings to go on. In war, research is easy. Sit in a bar in Saigon (or wherever) and talk to the fellows who've been out there that day. This is how many wire service guys wrote their battle dispatches without ever taking a chance of getting shot. For me it was a way to add to what I had seen.

So far as the kind of research Sam is talking about, of course it's valuable and should never be discarded. In the case of someone who's never been there, it's the only way to find out. What I object to is the notion that personal experience should be discarded. And when you think about it, who writes the material for Sam to use for research? 

As for your earlier post, which I overlooked, I love to write. Truly fortunate I've been to be able to follow so easily my grandfather's advice to find something I enjoy doing that would make me a decent living and so avoid having to get a job. At the age of five when my friend Josh showed me the secret of slip-joint pliers I decided to become a mechanic like my father. My sister said I should go to university and learn to be a mechanical engineer instead. I had no idea what she was talking about but it sounded good so she started teaching me algebra - very basic stuff, of course but I fell in love with it. My grandfather continued to insist that language study was more important, but for a few years algebra and geometry pushed English to the back  burner. My grandfather died when I was ten and I was devastated. I suddenly felt that I had betrayed him and turned my attention back to the study of English. At 12 I knew I wanted to be a writer. At 14 I sold my first stories to the local newspapers. At 74 I continue to write, some for money, mostly for the love of it.


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## Greimour (May 7, 2014)

Then imo, if a "true writer" exists, then you are one... if for nothing else than because you love to write.

Also, I don't think Sam's comment on research was limited to reading material... I don't think his post meant to discard life experiences. To me, it is the same as what you and I have said. 

My breakdown interpretation of what Sam said regarding "no amount of life experience" :
Life experience is there to use as research material, but no amount of life experience will give you the full scope of a situation. You will only ever have your own view point. You have to research more than just what you yourself have lived.

As you said, you don't _just_ use _your own_ life experiences, you have other people too. What you have said about your own research on "war" is further crediting what Sam said. Seemed to me you picked up on a single point and addressed that sole point. Out of context it could very well imply what your objections are, but that's not how I interpreted his post and why I interjected my own viewpoint.

On the whole it can be agreed, you don't have to live through an event to write it in a believable way. You yourself said "This is how many wire service guys wrote their battle dispatches without ever taking a chance of getting shot."

Is that any different to the point Sam was making? (with research you don't have to live it - nor is it limited to research you read)

Is limiting research or writing to _life experience only_ what you consider a full perspective view?


I think the comments and responses escalated a little. I am not defending Sam, he is perfectly capable of defending himself and maybe I too misinterpreted what he was saying (which he can rectify himself if I did - to which I will happily apologize for). But, I felt things were spinning off topic and people were becoming agitated with misinterpreted points of view - so I decided to volunteer as mediator and stick my nose in.


~Kev.


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## garza (May 7, 2014)

Well put. As for some of the wire service hacks who sat in a bar to write their firsthand battle reports, I always believed they were cheats, and they always believed I was an idiot looking to get my head shot off.

In the end, all research boils down to someone's personal experience. 

And, who is Imo?


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## Kyle R (May 7, 2014)

garza said:


> And, who is Imo?



IMO is an acronym for "in my opinion." :encouragement:


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## Sam (May 8, 2014)

garza said:


> Sam - One morning I ate breakfast sitting next to a 19-year-old not long out of Parris Island. He was a farm kid from up in the midwest and like all new Marines was gung-ho to the max. He talked about his family, talked about how he would win a medal for his mother and go home to farm the piece of land his daddy had promised to give him. He showed me his girl's picture, and said he would marry her as soon as he was home, they would build a house on his land, and settle down to farm.
> 
> Later in the morning I saw him in a muddy depression, probably an old 105 shell hole. He wasn't dead, but shot through pretty badly. He was begging for someone to help him. A company of North Vietnamese regulars faced us. I was with a mixed U.S. and South Vietnamese company trying to get to a ridge to establish a new LZ. Fire was heavy. There was no way to get to him. I sat and watched the boy who dreamed of having a farm and a wife bleed out in the mud.
> 
> ...



Garza, I wasn't referring to you with that post. You happened to post a minute or so before me, but mine was intended for Kepharel. 

You were on the front lines and saw the horror of war up close. That's invaluable experience for conveying to a reader what that life is like. However, my point was that Kepharel seemed to think an ordinary layman, who had neither served in a war nor seen one up close, could write that world by basing it on their own life experience. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You, for instance, would be someone I would consult when I'm doing research into war zones. You lived it, and it would also give me great insight into life as a civilian in that scenario. But saying you (generic) can substitute your own limited life experience for that of a solider or an astronaut or a mass murderer, and feel content that you know what their lives are like because they can't be anything other than 'ordinary people', is wrong. 

Everyone is different. A trained pilot, for instance, does not panic and wonder if he'll ever see his children again when his plane is taking a nosedive. I've read accounts of pilots righting aircraft from otherwise perilous positions. They are trained to be robots in those scenarios. Their first priority is getting the plane on the ground. They do not think about anything else. If you've lived through that, or been one yourself, that kind of experience is invaluable. But if you're saying to me you can understand a person's motivations and desires because they're the same as your own, with no viable experience to back that assumption up, you're wrong. 

My point is: if you (generic) have the life experience to call on, that is brilliant, but if you don't, you need to *research. *My life experience is not the same as yours. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Northern Ireland, and so if anyone tries to tell me that with their life experience as a chef they can understand what it's like to chase after escaped cattle at one o'clock in the morning, I'm not buying it. 

We're all different.


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## garza (May 8, 2014)

íComprendo! You had me puzzled because I misunderstood the kind of personal experience you were talking about.

You mentioned the difference in the experience of a civilian amongst soldiers. There is a major difference. I've never pulled a trigger with the intention of taking another human being's life. While I saw all the horror of a battle front, I was not a participant. I like to joke that I was armed with a camera, notepad, and pencil. I could take pictures and scribble notes about what I saw, but I never killed. I came away with no blood on my hands. It's rare to hear about severe cases of post traumatic stress disorder amongst journalists. We saw the same dismembered bodies, had people beside us we'd just been chatting with shot dead, been frightened half to death, had our teeth rattled by a 105 too close behind the line, but we didn't suffer the psychic, or, if you will, spiritual, injury of the soldier who was violating one of the commandments he'd been taught all his life. 'Thou shalt not kill' was ringing in his ear even as he pulled the trigger, jerked the lanyard, or tossed the grenade. As a bystander I suffered from watching what unfolded before my eyes, but my mission was to report, not to kill, and so my suffering was inconsequential compared to the suffering of the soldier who's just killed someone while seeing his buddy blown up. 

Many of them carry away a load of guilt that will weigh them down for all their lives. They not only blame themselves for the death of someone they killed, they blame themselves for the deaths of their buddies. I do not believe that any amount of counseling can ever erase that guilt. I remember well enough, but I didn't participate, and that makes all the difference.


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