Kristen Lamb
Author, Blogger, Social Media Jedi
Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:39:53 +0000
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Kristen Lamb
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Chasing AI Rainbows & Fool’s Gold: Real Writers Know How to DIG
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Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:39:46 +0000
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The relentless demand for more content, fresh content, relevant content to "captivate" audiences has chained many creatives to Hell's Treadmill.
The post Chasing AI Rainbows & Fool’s Gold: Real Writers Know How to DIG appeared first on Kristen Lamb.
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Humans have always been fascinated with rainbows, yet these days it seems AI rainbows are uniquely alluring. Rainbows lead to that magical pot of gold, right? Even as an adult, I can’t help but see a rainbow and muse over treasure at the end. It is one of those stories that can get so ingrained in a culture, that it almost runs as a subroutine in our brains.
Like when your palm itches and you think about money. Or you hesitate and walk around a ladder instead of under it. The way you might flinch when cracking a mirror. Seven years of bad luck.
While these might be silly superstitions, we’d be naive to believe we’re immune from their influence…or the childlike hope of easy treasure.
We have been down this path before many times with different rainbows: the internet, websites, social media, Facebook fan pages, self-publishing, etc. We’re not immune to the lure of easy treasure…and right now, the shiniest rainbow is labeled “AI”.
The “AI Rainbows” Distraction
Might as well begin with pointing out the ugly truth. To be really excellent at any skill, one has to suffer. We humans, deep down, don’t respect what took nothing to learn, create, or do.
It reminds me of a debate I was having with Spawn (teenage son) about the movie The Matrix. All of us were wowed at the superhuman feats one could “learn” in that movie with just a flash drive plugged into your HEAD. Need to know Kung Fu? Don’t have a couple decades to haul water up the stairs to some monastery while the master hits you with sticks?
No problem. Let’s just give this a download….
I extended the logic with Spawn, though. While this idea of “instant skill” might be novel and exciting initially, what it steals is far more insidious. What if tomorrow, I could download how to play masterful piano? Who really would want to listen to me play? Or come to a concert? Buy my music? Seems to me they’d all be busy pushing their own new and shiny skills in similar fashion.
For a while.
Then it would all feel hollow, empty, cheap, and a lot like…cheating.
How long would I stick to playing piano? What takes nothing to “master” also takes nothing to “dismiss.” How quickly would I grow bored with my new and “perfect” piano skills?
***The same skills everyone else with that “piano mastery brain download” have, too.
It took me years of reading, writing, learning, practicing, sacrificing and showing up day after day even when I didn’t feel like it to hone my skills. Yes, AI can outline faster, organize faster, can even WRITE FOR ME! But why would I do that? Unused muscles either never develop or, if developed, will atrophy from disuse.
The AI rainbow is alluring but so were the sirens’ songs, and where, exactly was that song leading those sailors?
AI Rainbows & Fool’s Gold Fallacy
I have personally witnessed a MASSIVE shift in the quality of writing in the past ten years. With all the digital tools rainbows we have, the easy access to research, spell check, and grammar check, one should expect overall quality to improve. Yet, we are seeing the opposite. Unwatchable movies, unreadable books, soulless art, music without that human spark.
Do we need to mention the McDonald’s Christmas commercial that used ONLY AI? Yes, yes we do.
I’ll admit the Digital Age has been to blame for feeding this monster, especially once social media became such a cornerstone for relevance and market advantage. The relentless demand for more content, fresh content, relevant content to “captivate” audiences has chained many creatives to Hell’s Treadmill.
Companies are falling for this as well, which is why they’re leaning far too heavily on AI. AI can be controlled, monitored and writers become interchangeable pieces on a Monopoly board. Easy to plug in, duplicate and keep on a leash. Same for all creatives. Writers are picky, actors are divas, and artists are moody. Most inconveniently?
They expect to actually be PAID for what they do.
*clutching pearls*
Thus, in another staggering move to “increase profits” and “save money” companies are increasingly outsourcing to AI generated content. Content that is supposed to be bold, edgy, creative, compelling…and just happens to look, sound and feel just as “unique” as all the other “unique” content.
When everyone is special, then no one is, which was the point we explored in the last post, Counterfeit Creativity: The High Cost of Cheap Art.
Writers Who Know How to MINE
Mining is a mixture of skill, courage, tenacity, wisdom, and flat out insanity. It is a lot of tedium, toil, work, and thankless pain. Writing, like mining for anything, requires patience, endurance, innovation, and passion. But, last I checked, those weren’t for SALE.
Yet, what do we know about all “gold rushes”? Who gets rich? The ones wielding shovels or those selling shovels? Prospectors rarely struck it rich. Winners sold to the miners. BIG WINNERS (snakes) sold to those who liked the idea of being rich more than the work involved.
Whether it was reselling spent plots, phony maps, or sure-fire tricks to STRIKE IT RICH, it didn’t matter. There was always a naive/gullible market ready to throw their own gold down to skip the hard parts…and a snake to take their money.
It’s human nature.
Fast-forward to today, and AI companies, prompt gurus, “millionaire author” courses, content mills, “authentic human author” certifications. They’re the shovel-sellers. They profit off the rush without digging themselves.
But here’s where the metaphor flips in our favor. In every gold rush, a few stubborn diggers hit pay dirt. Over time, tests and failures, they eventually became experts at terrain and geology. Skilled prospectors learned invaluable tells that could lead to larger, richer strikes.
They learned to spot “tells” (signs in the geology/terrain like quartz veins, color changes in soil, or river bends that trap gold). Writers—masterful writers—do something similar. We notice the patterns, the trauma, the unevenness and how that all guides the way to the REAL story.
In my opinion, AI’s fixation on “perfect” is one of the biggest flaws in the system. Humans are messy, ugly, irrational, emotional, unpredictable and illogical, which—ironically—are all the ingredients of AMAZING WRITING!
AI is the CZ of our time. Flawless! Perfect! But still just a fancy piece of glass.
All Writers Should Be Wary of AI Rainbows
We have seen this play out time and time again. Whenever we invent a tool to make something better, faster, cheaper, easier, there is always, always a cost. We have film students in COLLEGE who cannot sit through a full-length movie, writers who never read, and Amazon and the internet is drowning us in AI slop.
Why?
Again, humans will always choose novelty and the path of least resistance (at least for a while).
Did spellcheck make a generation of better spellers? Nope. It masked errors so well that many never internalized rules—kids lean on it, brains skip the muscle-building, and we end up with adults who can’t spell.
Did grammar check transform us all into a society that understood the complexities of sentence structure and subject-verb agreement? Hardly. It fixes surface stuff on the fly, but deep grammar knowledge? The knowledge that allows a writer to wield grammar as another tool is something only a LOT of reading, studying and practice can train.
POV is an incredible tool. Why choose first-person, or third or even second? What emotional effect are we going for? In Caroline Kepnes’ You, she selected second-person POV which is almost never used…ever. Yet, when placed in a story told from the stalker’s perspective? Chilling.
T. Jefferson Parker broke with tradition and told the antagonist’s POV through first-person and Charlie Hood’s (the investigator) in third. Why? Because Jeff wanted the reader to bond emotionally with the antagonist to demonstrate the emotional complexity of the topic. There is no clean black and white and good and bad. Just messy, flawed humans doing the best the can when the deck is stacked against them.
That’s the magic AI can’t replicate. It can spit out “correct” prose, but it can’t feel the weight of those choices. It can’t draw from lived chaos to make a story resonate. The cost of chasing “perfect” shortcuts? We lose the very mess that makes writing human—and worth reading.
Keep Those Mining Skills Sharp
Tools in and of themselves can only do so much. Slight tangent but makes my point. I used to LOVE watching home improvement shows that demonstrated ways to decorate for super cheap. Initially, I was mesmerized. They did ALL THAT for under $1000! Then I realized it was a thousand dollars in supplies.
That money didn’t cover the saws, drills, guns, welds OR the SKILL to use any of those. When one hires a contractor, we aren’t hiring the table saw, rather the artisan who can use that saw masterfully. I mean I can use a table saw. Can watch a video. Most have guards that will mostly keep my fingers in tact…but I have zero skills.
I am far more likely to make a mess massacre than a masterpiece.
Same in writing.
While AI rainbows are pretty, what they lead to? Not all that glitters is gold.
Right now? I feel we are living this meme from Fight Club. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. Remember, earlier I stated that humans initially love novelty and convenience? That love wears thin super quick and the shine is already dimming.
There are no shortcuts and we’d all be wise to just leave the AI rainbows where they belong…on Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers.
What are YOUR Thoughts on AI Rainbows?
I know today is St. Patrick’s and we all want a bit of luck, but luck alone has never been enough without the skills to take advantage of opportunity.
How do you feel about what AI is doing to us skill-wise? Are new writers failing to mature and dig deeper because of the quick thrill of “perfectly packaged prose”? If they are “training” on recycled content, how valuable is the training? Are the younger generations of content creators driven by a desire to create meaningful art and expression or the need for a quick dopamine fix?
Is AI unwittingly eroding the very character traits necessary for great artists (Eg. tenacity)?
For writers who have been here more than a minute, are you concerned that your skills will erode? Do you find yourself constantly second-guessing skills you’ve used for years? Or does that compel you to train even harder to stand apart from the crowd?
For a profession that seems to UNIQUELY SUFFER from Imposter Syndrome, do you think AI only makes this feeling worse? It was bad when everyone assumed every published author was self-published, but at least they didn’t think a ROBOT wrote it. How does this make you feel? The shift of bad writing must be human and good writing must be AI.
I’d like your thoughts!
The post Chasing AI Rainbows & Fool’s Gold: Real Writers Know How to DIG appeared first on Kristen Lamb.
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Counterfeit Creativity: The High Cost of Cheap Art
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Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:25:38 +0000
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Counterfeit creativity mimics the appearance of art without the human struggle that once gave creativity meaning. As AI floods the world with content, the real question isn’t what machines can create—but whether we’ll still recognize real art when we see it.
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Counterfeit creativity is robbing our species blind. We are sacrificing our souls on the altar of cheap, fast, free and easy, but at what price?
For most of human history, creativity had a cost. A painting required years of training, mistakes, dedication, practice, and courage. Music required months and years of pain, blisters, practice, rehearsal, performance, and courage. A novel required years of reading, learning, grammar, structure, practice, failure, perseverance and courage.
Even mediocre art took effort.
AI changes the creative math.
Now anyone with an internet connection can generate:
a novel outline
a painting
a marketing campaign
a song
…in seconds.
Which all raises an interesting question.
If something looks creative but required no creative effort, what exactly are we looking at?
Not fraud.
Not plagiarism (exactly).
Something new.
I’d like to introduce what I call counterfeit creativity.
Counterfeit Creativity
Counterfeit money looks real enough to circulate, and counterfeit creativity works the same way. It mimics the appearance of creative work. It seems to have structure, style, aesthetic cues and emotional beats, but the underlying process is fundamentally different.
Authentic creativity comes from struggle, lived experience, experimentation, and failure. Counterfeit creativity is generated through statistical pattern reconstruction. It produces something that looks like creativity without the creative journey behind it.
For now, it seems there are plenty of people left who can sense the AI Uncanny Valley, but that window is closing, and closing FAST.
Many people can’t immediately tell the difference because humans, historically, have judged creativity by output not process. Thus, if something reads like a novel, looks like a painting, or sounds like music our brains classify it as “creative.” But that assumption was originally wired in a world where output and effort were inseparable.
AI just broke that link.
The “Crapification” of Everything
I would love to say this problem happened just with the advent of AI, but end stage capitalism is merely the sterile syringe that delivered the literary lidocaine inuring us to what CRAP looks and sounds like. We are going to zoom in on the writing world, since that’s the water we swim in.
Metacognition isn’t being poisoned by AI. It’s something more primal—dating back to the late 1900s: the fear of being labeled a “f*&king poser.” It’s the harshest epitaph imaginable because it’s a crime of social consequence.Except it’s another relic of capitalism. Writing used to be a creative art—and while capitalism in the form of “best seller lists,” readership metrics, and critical acclaim impacted writing, they served to gatekeep writing as a profession to those who were competent writers. It wasn’t until recently that we “democratized writing” which is a fancy way of saying we made it accessible to everyone, where it went off the rails.Brian Eisold
Early on, when I began this blog, I exclusively geared my content toward authors who wanted to traditionally publish. It wasn’t because I believed the Big Six were that special, but I appreciated WHY we might need a world with gatekeepers.
Additionally, though I could see the many benefits that could come with self-publishing and indie publishing, I saw the inherent dangers. How it would let out a genie we’d never get back in the bottle.
The democratization of publishing happened on other fronts as well, though. Remember Huffington Post? Arianna Huffington IMO single-handedly obliterated the print medium and all the writing jobs that once went with it. The exposure dollar economy was the warning shots.
Show up, write your best for us and you can tell the world we pay you great money let you post on OUR site where we make millions using an unpaid workforce. Tell a bunch of writers this will lead to bigger things, they post their BEST and promote it on all their social networks…and with every click we make ad money.
LOADS OF IT.
Pay the Writer
I know when I drop terms like late or end stage capitalism, I risk the eye rolls, but hear me out.
Creatives have always sought to be paid for their work. Yes, it might be au gauche or tawdry, but we don’t care. We spend years mastering something that others derive joy and value from? We should be compensated just like everyone else.
That and we like to eat and the power company doesn’t accept poetry as payment.
In earlier times, creatives had wealthy sponsors. Later, the markets aligned to give ways creative people could be paid/rewarded meaningfully for our hard work and years dedicated to honing a skill. Newspapers, periodicals, dime novels, copy, marketing, ads were all ways creative professionals could make a living while producing the next great work of art the world enjoyed.
Read Stephen King’s On Writing, Steven Pressfield’s War of Art, Robert McKee’s Dialogue and they all share stories of the paid “crappy” gigs these masters took on while working on the “real art.”
Late-stage capitalism describes the point where market incentives inevitably drive everything toward cheaper, faster, and more scalable versions of itself, even when that process strips away the craftsmanship and meaning that once made the product valuable.
Systems no longer optimize for creating value, but for producing the appearance of value as cheaply and quickly as possible. Pay the writer became…use the writer.
Or the musician, songwriter, painter, illustrator, animator, etc.
Tell them they are special, pay them in attention, then up the operational tempo to such a high level that literally no human artist could keep pace (relevant). Meanwhile use all the real art that creatives built to train the synthetic version that you’ll SELL them later when they are so desperate to remain in the loop they’ll audition for their own extinction.
The Art is Fake but the Rot is REAL
The real danger isn’t that AI can generate content, it is that AI is flooding the world with creative-looking artifacts detached from human meaning.
Imagine a future filled with books no human truly wrote, art no human felt, songs no human performed. You know what? Since we are already here, why do we even bother with museums? Expensive to store, insure, restore, preserve. We could just 3-D print some replicas. I mean is anyone REALLY going to be able to TELL if that’s the ACTUAL Mona Lisa?
Y’all can breathe now. I am being sarcastic. But, hopefully I made my point.
My largest concern with AI “art” hasn’t just been the creative professionals it displaces, but what it’s doing to humanity as a whole.
Never underestimate the unique human capacity to get used to some seriously LOW standards. I learned that lesson my first “hamburger day” in a public school lunchroom. Every kid was excited for a slightly greenish hamburger facsimile (some even bought TWO), while I was clutching my foodie pearls. How could they be excited to eat THAT?
Then I was there long enough to sample what the “normal” food was like and it made more sense.
My biggest concern about AI art has always been the impact on the audiences. Even now. We no longer go to the movies. Most are unwatchable. If we DO go to a movie, you know what is a WIN?
It was…watchable.
I used to think the creators of Idiocracy were onto something. Now? I think they might have had a crystal ball, and they also woefully underestimated just how dumb we humans can be.
The #1 movie in America was called “Ass.” And that’s all it was for 90 minutes. It won eight Oscars that year, including best screenplay.
Narrator of Idiocracy
We aren’t going to need to travel thousands of years in the future to grasp that we are hurtling toward a world where all the top shows are some poor dude getting hit in the ‘nads in clever ways (yes, that is a real thing from Idiocracy).
Dealing with Counterfeits
Since the point of my posts are to educate and empower you, what is the answer? The United States Secret Service oversees most of our money/financial crimes. They also go after counterfeiters. Do you think they train years and years on every fake out there and what to look for?
Nope.
They spend years and years understanding AMERICAN CURRENCY. How do the bills feel? They learn how to tell a real c-note with their eyes closed. Because they know the real thing so intimately, they don’t need to concern themselves with the fakes. The fakes practically pop out.
There is a good reason the best writers are also avid readers. Read the excellent works, train, practice, fail, get up, do better and hone those skills. Write excellent stories. I know we are all under a lot of pressure to be content mills that feed the public’s (supposedly) ravenous appetite.
But why are they so famished?
Years and years of increasingly empty creative calories and artificial art.
Not only is it unsatisfying, but it warps the palate.
Take a person used to drinking cheap sodas and eating junk food then try to give them good food. They won’t like it at first because it will taste strange. Layers of artificial ingredients are masking that what’s being served is inedible, empty and possibly toxic and yet people binge on the stuff.
Same with counterfeit creativity. We have a narrow window where there are enough people around to remember what art used to feel like. With all the AI slop in circulation, get to work. Superlative art will rise. Audiences will find it and stick like glue because it resonates with their souls.
Counterfeits are always costly. Counterfeit money can implode a country just as sure as fake art can bankrupt a culture.
This is why it is critical now, more than ever, to cherish real art before we drift into a world that can no longer even recognize it. If we do get to a point that no one can tell between Monopoly money from the real thing, only then will we be out of a job. Until then, we are still in the game.
But I warn y’all… tempus fugit.
We don’t have forever.
What are YOUR thoughts on Counterfeit Creativity?
Other than it goes with counterfeit cleverness? Personally, I am exhausted with all the AI slop. AI cannot create art. Period. It is a tool. The paintbrush doesn’t make the art, the artist does. The keyboard doesn’t make the story, the writer does. And, for me? There is a certain je ne sais quoi missing from AI “creations.”
That said, do you think we could hit a time that humans won’t really recognize art? Or is it too deeply wired in us? If everything “looks real”, who will remember how to tell the difference?
Do you think that removing the human from art could eventually remove humanity from the human? I know we writers love these existential arguments, but I think this is a good one. If all the art is shallow, derivative and superficial, wouldn’t we eventually see a culture that is shallow, derivative and superfi—–
Houston, we have a problem…
The post Counterfeit Creativity: The High Cost of Cheap Art appeared first on Kristen Lamb.
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Why Americans Measure in Football Fields & Likely Always Will
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Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:54:06 +0000
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Americans will measure distance in anything except the metric system—school buses, blue whales, and of course football fields. But that odd habit might reveal something deeper about how human brains actually understand scale.
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I made a joke the other day about measuring the distance to Mars in football fields. Why? Because it is so quintessentially American. We will literally measure in anything BUT metric: school buses, dump trucks, blue whales, and the ever-classic…football fields.
It started innocently enough. I saw this article…which CRACKED ME UP:
This “article” made me laugh so hard I joked that, “I live for the day we measure light years with a ‘football field’ conversion so we Americans can grasp the sheer enormity of open space.”
Then I did it for fun, because I am a nerd.
*obviously feel free to skim*
Roll with me:
The average distance to Mars is about 2,050,000,000 football fields.
Now we need something like:
(football field)^x
1^x football fields
a^b ~ 2.05 × 10?
2³¹ ~ 2,147,483,648
So we could say:
The distance to Mars is roughly 2³¹ football fields.
That means:
If you doubled a football field 31 times, you’d reach roughly the distance between Earth and Mars.
We can do an entire American conversion chart for distance to Mars:
~ 2.05 billion football fields
~ 1.9 billion Walmart parking spaces
~ 320 million school buses
~ 8 billion bald eagles standing beak-to-tail
Laughs aside though, why do we Americans struggle SO MUCH with the metric system (other than sheer stubbornness, which is a totally valid argument)?
First of all, in the States we grow up in school, life and work constantly using a version of the old Imperial System. Most of us measure in miles per hour and feet and inches and pounds all the time. To us, metric might scale, and might be simple, but it definitely remains abstract.
Which brings me to my point. What IS measurement really?
A story.
Measurement as Narrative
Fans of the metric system claim it is logical, powers by ten, is used by the whole world! All of this is true but, IMO, the problem isn’t math, it’s human brains. We have a proclivity to attach any form of measurement to something we can imagine. Let me illustrate.
End of the World Movie
Picture it.
We are in the White House. Terrified analysts and scientists gather around a bank of computers, faces dour. President Tom Cruise paces thoughtfully back and forth while the experts talk.
Scientist: Mr. President!
President: Yes? How bad is it?
Scientist: Bad, REALLY BAD.
President: *heavy sigh* Just HOW bad?
Scientist: An asteroid approximately fifteen kilometers in diameter is approaching Earth at twenty-four kilometers per second!
President: Um…what?
Scientist: The impact will be approximately 3.1 X 10^17 joules, sir!
President: O_0
Scientist: Sir? Sir! An asteroid the SIZE of MANHATTAN is hurtling our way and will hit with the force of 300 million megatons of TNT!
President: Why didn’t you just lead with that?
See, when scientists say an asteroid is 15 kilometers in diameter that is math. When scientists say it is the size of Manhattan, that is a story. While metric measurement is brilliant for calculation, Imperial might be better for imagination.
Measure Stubbornness Story
I have been pondering this thought for a while. Started when someone on LinkedIn was griping how silly it was that Americans refuse to use metric. Someone answered in a way that made sense for the first time. He said it wasn’t we refused, but that one didn’t have to understand the Imperial system because Imperial made intuitive sense.
Zero degrees evokes “seriously cold” just as 115 degrees “feels” really frigging HOT.
No one needs to teach math or systems of ten or scaling to intuit the measure.
The Imperial System makes sense because I have carried a GALLON. I know a foot is the “length” of a human foot and a yard is the distance of a “typical” stride. I can picture that, feel it, sense it, envision it.
And Americans aren’t solely guilty. Journalists globally measure descriptively to anchor abstract measurements in things people can already understand. They might describe something in terms of “double-decker buses” or “lorries” or “Olympic swimming pools” for easy frame of reference.
Why? Because humans are wired for story.
Even a preschooler (or an American) can grasp the concept of something that’s the size of three full-grown elephants.
Weighed, Measured & Found Wanting
So what is the point of this post? Other than I unwittingly “discovered” something cool I wanted to share?
Nope. Pretty much that.
Light cognitive load today. You’re welcome.
Suffice to say that I have spent years trying to explain that we Americans just don’t USE metric all the time. Back when I was in university and a Neuroscience Major, I took a lot of Chemistry, Biology, etc. Since I was in a lab two hours a day, I used liters and grams and meters to the point I instinctively understood the measure in a practical way.
Decades away from having to use that system daily?
Meh, work is about a $26 Uber ride away. Looking to relocate to the office that is $6 Uber away (Uber being the measurement of length that ALSO factors in pain, inconvenience, and just how willing you are to risk your life).
This is the New, New Imperial Standard, btw
What are YOUR thoughts? How do you measure?
Admittedly I posted my football fields to Mars on Linked in and the comments were HYSTERICAL. Orbits measured in Cheerio boxes, swallows (African or European?), parrots, kiddie pools because WHY does Olympic get all the glory, literally?
What are some of the funniest measurements you have seen? I hope you see the American plot to undermine metric really is NOT as nefarious as has been reported. I am shopping a lot more at Aldi, so totally working those metric muscles.
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Why Choice—Not Talent—Drives Great Stories
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Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:21:37 +0000
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I'd venture to say that 99% of life is choosing the least crappy decision out of a list of horrible options while gambling the fallout is something we can handle.
Ideally later.
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Choice is a word we bandy about a lot in modern times, especially in catchy little “thought-leader” quotes on social media. Over the weekend, someone posted this little nugget of wisdom:
Some uncomfortable math:
Your bank account is a record of your decisions
Your body is a record of your habits
Your relationships are a record of your priorities
None of this is luck. All of this is compounding.
Social Media Know-It-All I Shan’t Name
IMO, this post isn’t about “uncomfortable math,” it’s moral laundering. Decisions don’t exist in a vacuum. Systems, illness, caretaking, instability and plain bad frigging luck all shape the ledger. This is true in life, but even more true in fiction.
See, the weird thing about choice, is it is an inherently human conundrum. Unlike animals guided solely by instinct, we humans possess the concept of a “self.”
We have an ego or id or whatever it is that makes us apex drama queens. It is that conscious self that permits self-reflection, which I am a huge fan of…so long as we at least flirt with a little bit of reality.
Life is not binary or clearly marked with signage.
I get why folks post these passive-aggressive snipes labeled “life lessons.” With a surface read, they feel true.
It’s easy to get folks clapping like seals, heads bobbing as if they’ve ever faced a binary world in their lives. Life is virtually never a choice between one terrible, stupid, reckless option versus the sane, level-headed, adult one.
I’d even venture to say that 99% of life is choosing the least crappy decision out of a list of horrible options while gambling the fallout is something we can handle.
Ideally later.
If LIFE is life like this, and fiction is really LIFE in distillate, what kind of choice are you offering your characters?
NO Choice
If you want to know how professional writers turn out a book or two or ten a year? Whether they’re a plotter, pantser or something in between, they understand story structure.
Deeply.
If we pan back and look at what great storytelling is, it is all about choice. And our characters must have agency. Pretty words alone are not enough. No reader is solely there for our decision to use “cerulean” instead of “blue”. They want a story with stakes.
Big ones.
If our characters keep going from thing to thing and place to place out of no volition of their own? They’re not a character. They’re flotsam. Maybe jetsam. Depends on whether we threw our character overboard or churned them up from the sea bed.
What choice did your character make to get where they are?
Choices are Rarely Obvious or Simple
If this is true in life, then why the hell are we holding the reader’s hands and taking away the very reason they want to read fiction?
First, let’s pause a brief minute and ponder a half a minute as to why anyone, in a world with TikTok and Netflix, would want to read your book? Or mine? Reading is hard, brain intensive and requires focused concentration.
So why are people reading?
For the same reason we hop on roller coasters. We want a safe place for catharsis. To teeter at the edge of the abyss…while strapped in safely in a seat that’s passed nine hundred separate inspections. Yet, don’t we also forget that while we are on the ride believing we’ll surely DIE?
Our audience already understands how life works because—DUH—they’re living one. They also smell bull sprinkles from a mile away. Sure, maybe there are some genres where there is a bit more coddling. I’m not going to pretend that The Baby-Sitters Club has anything remotely in common with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as far as genre and tone. But what do they both actually share?
CHOICES.
Sticky ones.
If I can give y’all any writing advice at all, it’s this. Learn to be hard on your characters. Then get harder and meaner. Hurl everything they believe they love through the metaphorical wood chipper, or (like Fargo) an actual one.
Choice should never be binary, A or B? It needs to be A, B, C left town, D is shacking up with Q, and S wants child support for X, Y & Z.
Life and Fiction is About Sticky Compromise
How many times in life do we get a break? Really? As in real, breathing people? Life is just one decision after another and that has only gotten exponentially worse in the Information Age.
We actually now have a word for the crappy way we feel at the end of the day, when we will happily eat cereal for dinner because we’re cooked (well done, of course).
Decision fatigue.
Do you think people get decision fatigue because life is a pretty path of petals?
Send the email now or wait and hope for better options? Fix the AC or get a new washer and dryer? Tell your partner you love them but also if they don’t stop snoring you might have to find an awesome expensive defense attorney?
Nothing easy.
Ever.
And that is life, not fiction. In stories the problems are grand, stakes are massive, failure is not an option.
In life, problems are grand, stakes are massive, and we experience actual failure all the frigging time. We don’