Writer's Mission: Awesomeness
The one piece of writing advice I fully believe in.
I don’t much talk about how to write, but there is one concept I fully believe in. I call it the Contract of Awesomeness. The name makes me cringe, but there’s no better alternative because anything more professional or toned-down would carry weight in areas I don’t intend. Awesomeness is a simple word, and this is a very simple concept that’s meant to be freeing in its application.
In everything we write, this contract exists, but the contract is different from writer to writer, and sometimes even from story to story. In any particular tale, for any particular writer, there are qualities that matter most. Know what they are. Articulate to yourself what you hope to achieve and how that success will be measured. This is the contract you’re writing with your future reader. These are the areas where you’re promising to deliver.
The most important thing is to be honest with yourself about what matters in this context and what doesn’t—and what matters to your ideal reader. That adjective, ideal, carries an enormous amount of weight. We can’t worry about what any possible reader might want. Maybe you don’t care what anyone thinks; you’re your own ideal reader—but in most cases, that’s not the case. You’re writing with genre standards in mind because you and your ideal reader enjoy the genre because of those standards. The two of you have strong opinions about things that should be different, and your writing reflects that. Your contract reflects what brings you and your reader joy, and it speaks poorly of those trends you hate.
Do you know what’s not in your contract? Anyone else’s opinion.
People who don’t like the category of story you’re writing think it should be done differently, and their opinions are everywhere. Your contract says exactly what they can do with those opinions. You get to decide what matters, not the critics.
You’re not writing for the people who will never read your story—who will never love your story.
The New Yorker shouldn’t run reviews of Mission Impossible movies, but they do. It’s a masturbatory effort meant to make their readers feel superior for collectively looking down on something popular. Thankfully, the filmmakers aren’t catering to the New Yorker film critic who states that it would all look the same on green screen. One of the most breathtaking shots was simply Tom Cruise hanging from that helicopter with the clarity of the mountainside field behind him.
I know my parents lived in Baltimore in July of 1991 because that’s when Terminator 2 came out, and I can remember the reviewer on the television asking if we really needed this movie. We’d seen it all before.
Look up beloved books on Amazon and read their one-star reviews: “More a punishment than a work of art.” “Tolkien should've researched psychology a bit more before writing characters.” “But all of this fails to make the story compelling and readable and fun. I'll admit I've been spoiled by Harry Potter.” (The Fellowship of the Rings)
Having differing opinions is normal. Where we often err is in believing there’s only one correct way for a story to be told.
From one of the above reviews: “I challenge everyone to read this and cast aside any preconceived notions, and you will find that the beloved classic is hardly lovable.”
There is this idea that if someone is enjoying something we aren’t, that person must be in error. The art they love is, in fact, bad, and if we could strip them of their delusions, they’d see that. The contract becomes the tinted glass through which we see all art, and we assume it to be less an agreement between artist and audience and more a fact of existence that can no more be denied than gravity or inertia.
Art is a conversation between two people, and there will always be bystanders demanding to know why we aren’t speaking their language. Your contract isn’t with the world, and their contract isn’t with you.
Haters hate; lovers read.
Your job is to deliver with frequency and intensity. That’s the one consistent measurement of a masterwork. The story delivers with greater frequency and more intensity than other efforts under similar contracts. Every page, every paragraph, every line drips with awesomeness.
If I don’t share your contract, then I might not recognize the awesomeness. The frequency and intensity mean nothing because the master is giving more of the very thing of which I desire less. That’s how art works.
Art is personal, and every writer is an artist.
—Thaddeus Thomas
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I like this view and I needed to read it today
What awesome advice!! 🥰