Tag: Popular

When to Say “No” to a Good Idea

Training an ice-cyclops to freeze over Florida’s highest peak into a popular ski resort. A blind poker player on the run from America’s casinos. A zombie writing an apologetic on zombiedom. Church pastors teaming up to overtake the local mob with an alternate crime underworld.

What do those ideas have in common? They’re all great ideas, but they would all make poor stories.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I have a great idea about a house that becomes sentient after a homeowner “cracks the code” by stirring his coffee with a fork and not a spoon. Faced with the prospect of having a dweller exist more efficiently than the house, the house turns on him, trying to squelch his innovations and everything. So how would I make a good story out of this?

—Violet Naumann, San Diego, Calif.

Ah, a great idea. I agree with that much. Making a good story out of this? Hate to say it (OK, no, I don’t), but the best story you can make of it is no story at all. 

Some great ideas aren’t meant to be fleshed out. Ideas both good and bad make awful tales, short and long. Takes the rare material to stretch a good idea, solid concept into a narrative. Diamonds? Valuable, shimmering, pricey gem: unmalleable. Then there’s gold. Still worth your dollar, yet you can press it out for construction, just like the city of Denver did in erecting their Capitol building entirely out of an orange-sized ball of solid gold.

When to say “No” to a good idea:

1) When the idea shines brightest in its purest form. 

“Zombies bite into brains, seeking the Holy Grail of flavor.” (STOP THERE) You can go on and on about the strains of succulence in brain tissue, but that is ‘polishing the diamond,’ nothing more. It’s a fabulous thought: Tweet it instead.

2) When it delves into idiosyncratic interests.

I would read a story about the underworld dealings in Ty® Beanie Babies™ – picking up on the endless inside jokes about the “pellet density” in the Princess Di bears and the alchemy involved in creating dye to fabricate the rarest version of “Peanut, the Royal Blue Elephant.” And your readership would be me, and me alone. Don’t waste the effort.

3) When it works better as part of a grander idea.

Don DeLillo’s concept of a college professor serving as the chair of Hitler Studies is almost a story unto itself. The concept? Marvelous. But does DeLillo take this and run with it? Not quite. The genius is in its restraint, its tucking away into a larger fabric that works as a narrative. Even if that narrative (White Noise) puts the “stmo” in “postmodern.”

When have you benefitted from saying “No” to a good idea?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and tossed into the wide-mouthed rubbish bin of fantastic ideas and fantastical narratives.

On Spam

As a purist, I’m one most unfortunate. Demanding excellence from all walks of written communication is a rough and unrewarding slog, but someone has to do it. No sending of “rl brf txts.” No truncated leetspeak. No instant message insanity. No shortcuts.

As such, I demand better from you spammers and spambots out there.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Writing All Wrong: This post was of th most excellent, but with even finer tuned of SEO tips and tricks of 2011. you could almost triple your pagviews daily! Reach out to your audiences of greaterr this year: for more see [REDACTED (for your benefit, trust me)]

—10.0.0.1.(254) oomla-kamsing. biz

You can do better than this.

This is why spam is regarded as sub-tripe, sub-human. It’s like an art form that’s gone off to murder itself in the brain, coming back from the brink of death into retardation. You’ve gotten these messages too. Deep down, you don’t detest the generous offers from those princes in Nigeria suffering from banking crises, nor those “good-enough-to-be-true” prescription drug combo-pack giveaways — you detest the clumsiness, the improper grammar, the trappings of the offer.

Let’s shoot for better things here. Would I be interested in SEO meanderings and ferreting out shady links? Why, of course! But not if this deal is packaged in a crusted, mutilated, odor-stenched box.

WRONG: “My dear, Allow Me to Explain on behalf of my Princedom in regard to—”

Who opens up an impersonal letter with “My Dear?” Use “To Whom it May Concern” and go from there.

WRONG: “Bad Credit OK – Up to $1500 fertilisables humanizing roustabouts—”

Punctuation is your friend. The way I treat these humanizing roustabouts depends entirely on whether this is “Bad? Credit, ok.” or “Bad! Credit? Ok…” or Bad: Credit OK?”

WRONG: “Meet the best single on your city, view Chrsitian Dating online —”

I, for one, don’t fancy myself gunning for the best “single” massive enough to be atop my fair city. Would I not have noticed him/her by now, the folds of one’s enormous paunch draped over the skyline? Besides, we all know that the adherents of Chrsit have some iffy beliefs. Love is difficult enough as it is. Spammer, don’t make a mess of this.

Spammer, spambots, and spamwriters, do yourselves a favor. Before you all go to Hell, go back to English class.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and bettered for the optimized SEO traffic.

Writing Contest? Duh, WINNING!

Most of you may not know this, but writing can translate into a few pecuniary benefits. Sometimes even monetary. You really don’t have to do it for free. But outside of cashing in on wordspew, the next best thing you can wing is winning. Contests, limerick slams, plein air poetry airing, whatever. People compete with this business, breaking out the arsenal and making communication a written race-to-the-top.

But does the best writing always win? Nope.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

There’s a writing contest I want to enter. 250-word minimum, and I really want to win! HELP!

—Daphne Green, Fairmont, W.Va.

Didn’t we just get over this contest thing?

That’s not a question.

In a perfect world, I could say, “Write your best,” and that would do it. Cartographic psychoholic thriller? Should be a surefire winner. Borgesian short story with a metaphoric denouement? Hand over that store-bought trophy. A perfect world. Not happening on today’s planet.

No, the contest is rigged with more wires, catches, and detonations than a maniacal professor’s Bomb Diffusement 405 final project. It’s a trapdoor that trips under the weight of greatness. If you write well, then you’re cheating. Contests are meant to reward the mediocre, not herald anything worth reading or writing. So how do you win without coming at it like a natural dunce with a swell of dumb luck?

Know the contest.

Not just rules. They publish rules. Know the people, know who’s judging, know the contest creators. If this is Highlights for Toddlers you’re writing to, keep the meth-strung, zoo-liberating, black-caped unicorn out of the narrative. The Student Siren? Nothing profound. Won’t wake most from a booze-soaked stupor. Go for the flashbang in the wrought-iron pan.

Know the judges.

Make them smile or cry. They’ve got to smile or cry. That’s the sad part about appeasing these flighty judges. The best writing should be a combination of scalpel and machete, writing so good it cuts into your innards and works surgical voodoo. Writing so good it makes a clean chop through brush, crop, and limb. A “whoa, that’s one heck of a blade omigod where’s my arm?” kind of strike. In a perfect world, I want to be maimed by deft writing, wounded. Or I want that scalpel cutting new pathways into my cerebrum, leaving me more room to think when I’m no longer under the literary ether. Judges? No. Make them think too hard and that five-pack of two-dollar blue ribbon goes elsewhere. To the cheeky entry that got an “Oh, that’s cute, I like this” or an “Oh wow, that’s so special I wanted to cry” out of them.

Know thyself.

Every subjective contest (writing, cooking, ice dancing, interpretive sleepwalking, etc.) ends up being a popularity contest. It just makes sense to continue awarding those whom most people like. If you’re the popular kid in class, then just submit something without any glaring errors, and you’ve got yourself a winner. The key to winning is winning the hearts, minds, and fickle affections of your peers, judges, and by proxy, the contest arbiters.

If your worthy writing entry falls ever short to those of Suzie Perfect and Eric Awesome, let it slide. Popularity is fleeting. Art is forever. Winning everything isn’t the only thing.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and voted in Women’s Digest’s annual “Write Me A Man Made Like How You Like Your Coffee” contest.