Mistakes of Progress vs. Mistakes of Avoidance, by Eric Witchey

(Source: Eric Witchey)

by Eric Witchey

We All Make Mistakes

We all make mistakes. We all chase illusions. We all try to learn from our mistakes so we can reorient and rebuild our visions and dreams. This is life, and I do hope I keep learning until my eyes close and my heart gives its last buhthumpa.

Teaching is one of the tools of my learning. At the very least, it forces me to recognize perceptual frames of reference in my students and reconsider concepts for presentation in new frames of reference that will help the students grow. That’s the worst case.

The best case is that questions will force me out of my own frame of reference so that I have new insights. Sometimes, that takes a while and new insight only comes when a contrasting experience allows a new connection.

That’s what happened recently. I taught a Zoom class on Character Arc, Dramatic Tension, and Suspense. The concepts might be interesting, but they aren’t the point in this little stream of words. What matters is that a few days later while talking to another writer, I heard them say something that connected to and contrasted against a moment from that class.

In the class, a student asked a very specific question about a moment in a scene they had written. The question showed that they had worked at their craft long and hard and come to a moment where they could articulate a difficulty that would lead to an answer that would move them forward. Questions like that always make me happy because answering them leaves me feeling like I actually helped. Certainly, our ability to isolate concepts and articulate questions helps define the trajectory of our progress.

The student had made a mistake in their writing. The mistake generated frustration. They turned the frustration into focus and the focus into a question designed to acquire skills that would help them change their outcomes.

To me, the nature of the mistake considered then articulated as a question demonstrated that they were engaged and learning.

A few days later during the conversation with the writer, we ended up discussing a behavioral pattern in students where they make certain types of mistakes in spite of available opportunities to change their outcomes.

The insight that struck me was that mistakes can be grouped into two types: Mistakes of Progress and Mistakes of Avoidance.

I’m fond of saying flippant things like, “If you want to learn faster, make mistakes faster” or “Screw it up until it starts to make sense,” or “Dare to be bad,” or the perennial answer to how to get to Carnegie Hall, “Practice, practice, practice.” The insight that hit me was that those kinds of statements imply my underlying assumption that the developing writers are moving through layers of discomfort in the pursuit of new craft skills. The underlying implication is false. Sometimes, writers move through their discomfort in pursuit of craft. Sometimes, we become comfortable in our discomfort and engage in behaviors that preserve the discomfort with which we have become comfortable.

Mistakes of Progress

Some mistakes demonstrate the writer is practicing craft. They are leaning into the knowledge and working to change themselves into someone with new understanding. Early development writers might ask questions like the following:

• How much do character names matter?
• Do I have to have conflict?
• Are short stories worth writing?
• How do you come up with ideas?
• What is manuscript format and why does it matter?

Some writers roll their eyes at questions like these because they feel the writer is showing that they are beginners—as if that’s a sin of some kind. However, all these questions imply that the writer has encountered some level of discomfort in their pursuit of craft. Perhaps the questions are not as sophisticated as they will be later on, but they are born of engagement and pursuit of progress. Thus, they deserve respectful answers. We were all there once.

Later development versions of those same questions might look more like this:

• Does the reader internalize the cultural mythic significance of a carefully chosen name that represents a thematic role in the story?
• When working with combined Person vs. Self and Person vs. Person conflict sets, how does arrangement of tactic group climaxes influence reader internalization of emotional-psychological change?
• How do you use your short story practice as part of your development of longer works, and do you use the shorts as marketing material?
• When working with creativity brainstorming, how do you select results that become the seed values for the stories you choose to turn into projects?
• When working with manuscript format as the input to workflow for an intermediate press, what kinds of XML artifacts can I control to make the conversion to the publisher’s electronic format easier for the book designer?

Still later questions look something like this:

• Why is that student struggling with the syntactic relationship between character history and diction?
• How can I better explain the nested elements of emotional change so it is a less abstract concept related to already printed stories and more concrete as a usable tool for writers approaching a broken page or new concept?
• Why am I making the mistake of writing an essay on mistakes instead of working on the current novel I want to finish?

Which brings us to a pause.

All the questions above, except for the very last one, are questions that demonstrate the willingness to engage in discomfort in pursuit of change. They are questions born from mistakes of progress.

The last question represents. . .

Mistakes of Avoidance

Mistakes are. That’s all. Sure, I could say they are unavoidable. That would be true, but it’s sort of obvious. I could say mistakes are how we learn. I could say that people who want to learn must make mistakes. In the history of people writing about mistakes, thousands of cliches, aphorisms, and similes have been catalogued to remind us that we will all, every one of us, make lots and lots of mistakes.

Some of these cliches, aphorisms, and similes become habitual ways we think about mistakes beginning very early in life. Our relationship with mistakes can be a source of shame or guilt. It can be a comfort when faced with inevitable setbacks. It can be both.

And that’s where I find myself when I engage in mistakes of avoidance. These types of mistakes are mistakes I make then justify in some corner of my mind and heart as an indication that I’m making progress. Simultaneously, I can feel like I’m failing and moving forward even though I know I’m doing neither because of the type of mistake I’m making.

WTF, Eric? That makes no sense at all.

Except it does if I step back and really find the patience to let myself unravel my own convoluted behavior. A mistake of progress comes from engaging at the edges of my skill and discovering some element of craft that I could not have experienced otherwise and that will require me to engage in focused practice to develop.

Mistakes of avoidance happen when I avoid engaging at the edges of my skill then justify my actions as progress even though I’m resting on some imagined laurel or set of status quo skills. Mistakes of Avoidance are only actually mistakes if they are overused. We do, after all, have to do things like research elements of a story, engage in characterization studies, play with voice, research markets, and engage in revision to existing works. We have to compose new material, and we have to get some kind of feedback from peers or beta readers.

However, all of these can become mistakes of avoidance when we engage in them without also, sometimes separately and sometimes simultaneously, working at the edges of knowledge, understanding, and skill in craft.

My personal favorite mistake of avoidance is procrastination by production. When faced with a problem in a longer work, one that would require me to focus, isolate, analyze, and discover new skills in order to move the project forward, I step back and justify spending hours and hours composing new short stories. Mind you, I’m not saying finishing short stories. I’m saying composing.

I’m quite comfortable pounding out page after page after page of material I’ll never look at again. In fact, I convince myself that I’ll rewrite all those new magical pages—that they will be the best short stories I’ve ever written. I avoid the harder work by engaging in comfortable work, and the days go by. And the days go by…

This essay is another perfect example. I’m writing it instead of working on the characterization issues that are blocking progress on the current novel. I composed the first half of this essay over the course of a couple days, then I had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery, then as part of my recovery I finished composing this essay, and now I’m revising it after spending three days telling myself I’ll work on the novel today. Except for the whole medical emergency bit, this essay is self-referential. I am procrastinating, and I know I’m procrastinating, and I’m telling myself this is just fine because I need to do this essay “at some point.”

As with this essay, mistakes of avoidance often include an illusion of progress. While it is not one of my personal favorites, the mistake of endless unconsidered revision is one I see in writers quite often. Having drafted a novel-length manuscript or a short story-length manuscript, writers will set about revising the manuscript over and over and over again. Often, they will treat revision as if it is some subset of reading. That is, they start on page one, paragraph one, line one, word one and make changes as they move along from word to word to word.

The activity feels like progress, so it is quite easy to justify continuing the process. However, page-by-page, line-by-line revision is rarely useful in terms of craft development or even project development until the overall dramatic content of the story has been considered in terms that allow reorganization based on character changes, oppositional elements, thematic intents, and climactic convergences.

Changing a line of dialog outside of an understanding of character psychology manifesting in immediate agenda and/or personal social history as a modifier to the immediate agenda does not improve the story. It only changes the lines and provides the illusion of progress—a mistake of avoidance.

Years can pass without significant improvement for a writer if they persist in revision that “feels good” without developing a deeper understanding of why the feel good changes will improve the experience of the reader. A writer can engage in constant activity that feels like progress without ever risking improvement via mistakes of progress.

Perhaps the most common mistake of avoidance is research. “The rapture of research” is a mistake of avoidance writers often have to face. I certainly have to admit to this one. Give me a good rabbit hole to run down, and I’m happier than a door mouse at a tea party. So many of us can easily get caught up in chasing after the next interesting detail we think we “might” need to understand in order to tell a particular story. Days, weeks, and years of highly focused, organized collection of details that lead us to new details that, in turn, lead us to new details can easily be justified as progress while never pushing us up against the edges of our craft. After all, anyone who has taken a degree in any discipline, and especially anyone who has worked with formal content research in any form, has the necessary skills to chase down the underlying research on C02 scrubbers in a submarine, the consequence of designs, failures, redesigns, successes, applications in WW1 vs. WW2, and current use in modern nuclear and diesel-electric submarines.

Fun, but useless unless the story has a POV character who is an environmental engineer on such a submarine. Even then, it is only useful if that character is faced with some psychological/moral/ethical pressure that requires them to engage with that detail in a way that demonstrates personal change.

I currently get advertising emails about ETSY whalebone corsets because I spent time searching for details about hiking footwear for English women between 1780 and 1820. How much time did I spend on that research? I don’t know. I have a whole Pinterest file full of shoes and riding clothes, but I don’t actually have a character who needs them yet. I do have a character from that period who might, maybe, need to hike across a highland landscape, but I don’t yet.

A mistake of avoidance.

The illusion of progress that comes from feeling like I’m engaged while sitting firmly in the center of a comfortable set of skills I already have.

The real issue in the project has nothing to do with hiking shoes. It has to do with my having failed to face the definition of the underlying psychological scars of a rift between family members and the main character’s need to take personal responsibility for personal choices in new relationships. What a difficult, messy, emotionally triggering space for my heart and mind. Researching shoes is a lot easier than applying mindfulness skills to separate my own emotional reaction from the emotional damage of the character and the impact of that character’s personal history on their decisions in the dramatic moment.

Another personal favorite mistake of avoidance for me is to teach the same material repeatedly. First, I’m teaching rather than producing, so it’s easy to believe I’m engaged in valuable activity. I am, but it is only valuable if I don’t allow it to become more important than my own production and growth as a writer. In fact, the teaching only has value if I continue to grow, experiment, and explore my own boundaries. Teaching the same material over and over is comfortable, but it is not progress for me. It might help others, which only serves to make it more seductive as a mistake of avoidance.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have to teach old material to new students who need it. However…

Teaching can be a way of pressing against the edges of my own skills, but teaching the same material in the same way over and over is a pretty good indication that I’m falling back on complacence. Even teaching something as simple as emotion-driven fiction, a concept I’ve been teaching for over 25 years, can be seductive because it is universally useful to writers and the apparent simplicity of the concept creates a bias in the direction of repeating the form of presentation. It’s so easy to feel justified in presenting the same concept in the same way over and over. However, the result is neither production nor new engagement with the concept.

A mistake of avoidance.

By stepping back, examining the concept, seeking new layers and understanding, testing them in story development, and testing them against students, new questions will arise, new nuances of understanding will appear, and new skills will improve stories under development. The mistake of avoidance becomes a mistake of engagement because of awareness, conscious focus, desire, and application of will.

-End-

What I Learned From Watching 192 Episodes of The Murdoch Mysteries

by Christina Lay

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Murdoch Mysteries is a long running Canadian series; a cozy historical mystery set in Toronto in the late 1880s/early 1900s. This show is exactly my cup of tea. Cozy, check. Historical, check. Mystery, check.

Perhaps the fact that I’ve watched twelve seasons of sixteen episodes each says more about me than it does about the show, but I think there is a lot we as storytellers can learn from such a durable series.

What the show does right, IMHO:

The main character, Detective William Murdoch, is an interesting, intelligent, well-drawn protagonist. He is keenly interested in all of the technological revolutions occurring in the time period of the show, and his enthusiasm can’t help but engage the viewer. This was a brilliant piece of story crafting, to meld a fundamental characteristic of the hero with the exciting, ever-ripe-for-conflict reality of the turn of the last century. Detective Murdoch, an exceptionally clever man, is often allied with or pitted against great minds and personalities of the time. The first episode features Nikolai Tesla. Over the years, we meet Alexander Graham Bell, Teddy Roosevelt, Marconi, and a host of other inventors, scientists, authors and politicians. Even Frank Lloyd Wright gets accused of murder. Most of the famous “guest stars” are, of course, accused of murder at some point. All are proven innocent, for which history is thankful.

What can we learn aside from the obvious requirement to write interesting characters? A character is more than a set of characteristics. They are creatures of their milieu. Give them interesting times and people to react with and against, and they will grow and come to life. This is especially effective if the setting is an interesting character in its own right. For instance, Murdoch and his wife end up buying and living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, much to the confusion and pity of their friends. In this case, the viewer gets to “be in the know” and have a gentle laugh at those silly Victorians. (Although personally, I’d rather have one of those lovely Victorian houses featured in every show!)

The secondary characters are also interesting, intelligent and well-drawn. Murdoch’s romantic interest, Dr. Julia Ogden, is not just a foil for Murdoch. She often has her own story lines, pitting her modern, progressive viewpoints against the staid, patriarchal society of the times. She’s a woman doctor who runs for office and is thrown in jail for it. She’s had an abortion, which causes a believable rift between her and the devout Catholic Murdoch. She enjoys cutting edge art and brings levity and wit to many a stuffy social occasion. This is another great conflict generator, and another way to learn about the actual history of suffrage and women’s rights.

I find it amazing that a show can go for so long and not lose or corrupt any of its core cast. The gruff Inspector Brackenreid, the charming and gullible Constable Crabtree, even the annoying journalist Miss Cherry and not-so-bright Constable Higgens are all characters that are fully drawn and reliable, and by reliable I mean that the writers do not resort to having our favorites do stupid or ridiculous things just because the creators are running out of ideas. Consistency and clarity work in the case of a cozy. When readers/viewers develop a fondness for a character, they don’t want them to change too much. Yes, the characters expand their horizons, learn, recognize prejudice inside themselves, become more tolerant, stretch their horizons, etc., but their basic goodness does not change.

A stellar ensemble of actors doesn’t hurt

Now, some readers/viewers might consider this boring. I’d suggest that these are not your target audience if you’re writing this type of series. The audience for cozies does not require great upheavals, radical shifts, or the killing off of regular characters. In fact, they will rebel. In this aspect of coziness, Murdoch excels. Perhaps Canadian actors are less likely to demand more money and leave the show?

The mysteries are often (though not always) blended with scientific developments or social issues of the times. This is another great way that the setting is put to use. Murdoch is always dreaming up innovations right about the time the real inventor shows up in an episode. In the Tesla episode, someone is electrocuted and Tesla helps Murdoch figure out how. Cameras, fingerprinting, night vision goggles, even a lie detector, are all put to good use for the first time and we get to imagine what those developments were really like, and how significantly things were changing. There is a touch of sci-fi to the series, because of all the wild inventions which were in fact real, or just on the horizon.

What the show does wrong, IMHO:

The mysteries themselves are often silly. Or, there is a whopping coincidence (or two) or something just doesn’t make sense. Yes, the show is generally playful in tone, but the writers have trained their viewers to expect truly engaging content and sometimes, the basic structure on which everything else hangs isn’t up to snuff. However, because the characters and setting are so big and well-developed, a weak plot can stumble along and no one minds too much (except a writer who is taking notes).

I spoke of consistency as one of the strong points of the show. The only times I’ve given up on an episode is when my expectation of the show has been let down. In these cases, the disappointment comes in the form of the tired and annoying plot device of the serial killer who develops an obsession with Murdoch and then just won’t die. These characters are always more persistently violent and psychotic than what jives with a cozy, and I personally find them boring, because there’s nothing to solve, only a lunatic to escape from. As a writer, if you have success in creating a cozy mystery, be wary of treading into darker, more grisly and hopeless waters. Probably you’d be better off starting a new series altogether.

Along with the occasional serial killer, the writers will sometimes fall back on tired tropes, such as using the long suffering Doctor Ogden as victim just so Murdoch can suffer the agonizing pains of worry and then be heroic in rescuing her. Also, every single regular character has been falsely accused of murder. That’s a bit much to take. Every time Murdoch and Ogden talk about how happy they are, something goes terribly wrong. That level of loud foreshadowing is just annoying.

What I learned about myself as a consumer of story: I like to know what to expect, even if it’s to expect the unexpected. In other words, I choose what shows to watch based a lot on what mood I’m in. If I’m in the mood for cozy and familiar, then by gum, it had better be cozy and familiar. As writers, we have no control over what readers want; however, if we are writing a series, we can be consistent about our tone, level of violence, and so on.

If I really love the characters, I’ll let a wobbly plot slide.

I have a low tolerance for the unsolvable conundrum of a one-dimensional psychopath.

To sum up, The Murdoch Mysteries is a fine example of one my core beliefs: Character is everything. In the worlds of mystery, fantasy and science fiction, multiple book series have become the norm. I believe this is because readers don’t want to let go of characters they love. How often have we wished a great book would never end? When that happens, it sometimes feels like we’re losing a good friend. If you can create that level of devotion for your characters, you may just achieve a 12-season level of success.

HEA vs. Suspense: How To Keep Your Readers Nervous

by Christina Lay

I recently took part in a conversation among writers in which the question was asked “How can you create suspense in a romance novel when everyone knows the two main characters will end up together?” One answer offered was along the lines that suspense in romance is always built on a misunderstanding that drives a wedge between the characters, leaving the reader to wonder if they’ll ever be able to overcome the damage done. I protested, saying, well, that’s one hoary old device, which sometimes works, but in a good romance novel, there’s much more going on, and so many possibilities, just like in any other type of fiction.

I should point out that The Misunderstanding isn’t necessarily bad. After all, misunderstandings happen in real life all the time. In this age of communication, we seem to communicate successfully less and less, especially when texting is the preferred method. The most important thing to remember is to make whatever happens a believable, and not annoying, occurrence. The Misunderstanding should not make your characters look stupid, petty, or hysterical, unless you’re writing a comedy, and even then, make sure it doesn’t just make your reader despise your hero. And, if The Misunderstanding could be cleared up with one question, like “Did you really sleep with my sister?”, then you’d better make Damn Sure your character has an excellent reason for not asking the question.

One complicated doohickey

But really, The Misunderstanding is just one device that writers might use to drive a wedge between their would-be lovers. Whatever serves to keep the romantic interests apart helps to create suspense.  It may or may not be crucial to the plot. In a light romance, or comedy, The Wedge might be a lie told by a jealous rival, a piece of conversation heard out of context, or a meaning ascribed to an action that wasn’t intended. It is also possible for two intelligent, rational people to have entirely different perceptions of an event or conversation. In budding romances in particular, this can work, because it’s such a sensitive and vulnerable time, but again, make sure the motivations and reactions of the characters are believable and not insipid.

In a more serious romance, suspense is created by giving the characters motivations or values that are at odds. The police woman who falls for a possible crook. The betrothed king who falls for a landless nobody. The democrat who falls for a republican, and so on. The question then revolves around whether their love is strong enough to overcome the difference, or if they’re doomed to failure.  If you really want to up the odds, you’ll give the characters friends and family who are also in opposition to the lover’s values/family/job/quest. Then romantic love is pitted against familial love, or tribe loyalty, or an oath sworn to a vengeful god. The more pressure you can put on the two lovers to stay apart, the better. But then, of course, you’ll need to make their passion for each other greater and more compelling than the value/family/tribe/quest they are putting at risk.

A great way to make readers fidget is to make them unsure of what is of greater importance: the cause or the lover? Make them seriously doubt if there is any way the two can exist in the same world. Make the future of their love look bleak, maybe impossible.

Suspense depends on how great the stakes are in your story. Not all romance has to be about The Wedge. It is possible that the lovers are together, deeply in love, and it’s the outside world that is threatening their bliss. One might be in physical peril and the other must risk all to save them. One might be called to sacrifice something important in order for the other to achieve a dream. Maybe they are an interracial couple moving to an intolerant community, or a gay couple being threatened with the loss of job, status, familial acceptance.

Now, you might be thinking, but it’s a romance, of course they’ll work it out, no matter what IT is. Usually, readers of romance do like their HEA (Happily Ever After), but not all romances end that way. Even when they do, there’s no reason at all to think they lack suspense. Suspense can come from many and all quarters, and if done right, will force the characters to face their fears, their weaknesses, even their possibly misplaced desires, and either grow and triumph, or fail, miserable and alone (MAA is nota recommended ending, but still possible).

When you pick up a mystery, you pretty much know the detective is going to solve the crime and probably not die. You get wrapped up in the personal life of the main character(s) as you get nervous about whether or not the killer might strike again, and maybe even you start to worry the detective will end up a victim after all. Likewise, in a romance, you’re pretty sure the main characters will end up together, but along the way, you get involved in the challenges they face, the sacrifices they might have to make, and hopefully, you get nervous about whether or not they will be able to work things out.

A hard fought love scene is truly a wonderful thing. That’s one reason I enjoy writing the enemies-to-lovers trope. So many reasons for them not to get together and yet, they can’t live without each other. Such a dilemma. Such juicy territory for the writer. When are we more vulnerable than when in love? When most likely to risk all? A character in love lives in suspense, every minute they are not with their true love. And most of us can relate to relate to that kind of separation anxiety, even if it is all due to a terrible misunderstanding.