Open Novella Journal 2024

Objective Standards

Say some, "What is good writing is subjective."

I discussed this a bit in my last essay, but I want to discuss it a bit more.

Subjective means based on opinion, so effectively "what is good writing is subjective" is just another way of saying "what is good writing is just opinion" which in turn is a way of saying there is no facts on which to judge our writing by.

And this is I think one of the major myths writers, and for that matter, readers need to contend with, but with the complaints regarding this...

Well, one of the things I noticed regarding entries that didn't make it was this, in one case there was an overuse of "to be verbs" which, believe me when I say there are essay after essay out there detailing why this isn't good writing, noting when there are exceptions to the rules such as dialogue, although...

Thinking about it, there is another exception I can think of, that to be verbs are more likely, but not necessarily likely to show up in children's fiction, such as, "Jane is a girl." But they shouldn't be saying things like, "Jane is running down the hill" when the writer should be saying, "Jane runs down the hill," unless of course the former is in dialogue, for example dialogue coming from someone verbalizing what is going on in a sport.

In this case, the writing tends to be - it can sometimes feel like the writer is talking down to the reader, if the writer isn't careful. In other cases, the over use of to be verbs does nothing to thrill a writer, and it's often a sign a writer hasn't yet developed a writing style, which for an ONC contest--if one doesn't have some form of writing style developed, you are going to stuggle. In saying this, some writing styles are also more adaptable than others.

However, to be verbs wasn't the only thing I notice -- I noticed my own issue, the issue I used to have way back in the day, of run on and/or poorly constructed sentences that don't at all convey what the writer wants, and--

To be clear, it wasn't that this writer wasn't a good writer, but more of they'd not gotten to a point in their writing where they could correctly convey what they were trying to convey in  a way that didn't jolt the reader out of whatever they were reading.

And I remember back in the day that I got reviews saying, "The story would be good if not for the grammar", and my thoughts were more along the lines, "This is a good story, but unfortunately, the grammar issues detract attention from how good the writing is."

In this, back a bit I said most of us have grammar and spelling that wouldn't dock us when we do ONC, but this writer -- the grammar is at a point that it is an issue, but that's okay. I say this as a writer whose been there, whose struggled through that. Some of my older fanfic, I go back and re-read and I cringe at the grammar and spelling. I can say, honestly, they're a good story, but they're difficult to read because of the grammar and spelling issues, which is not the same as saying they're a bad writer.

Going back to the whole, "I didn't make it," and "my friend didn't make it" and "these stories I read didn't make it", one really doesn't do any favors not paying attention to the grammar, because the other thing I said about grammar is that while it doesn't have as big of an impact on necessarily who goes through each round, it does start having an impact when we're talking about who gets picked as a round winner, what with so many awesome stories out there. It can be the silver of a thing that knocked it out of the running.

Of course, these aren't the only things.

Word use is important. This whole not trying to write for a modern audience is important, because I've seen a few writers definitely attempting to modernize certain things for the modern audience and what they think a modern audience wants.

For example, this train of thought that the modern audience wants girl boss characters and girl power can lead to a writer thinking, "Hey. I'll create a girl boss character, and amp up the girl power to the nth power! I'll do well." What they don't stop and think about is how there is a difference between a girl boss character and a fake girl boss character, or whether a girl boss character is even appropriate for the story they want to tell, what kind of purpose she serves the story.

And as for girl power to the nth, ugh. Girl power is fun, but when it's built upon putting male characters down it doesn't feel real, but instead fake. And as a female audience, I'm really tired of female characters who are only smart because their male counterparts are dumbed down that much, or a female character who looks like a saint only because of how vile the male characters are made out to be, when in reality she isn't a saint.

But, I as a female reader/watcher actually scewed away from works that purposefully targeted a female audience because they placed me in a box, expected me to self-insert for romance purposes and to settle for a two-dimensional character, whereas when I picked up something for a male audience, the actual female characters were fleshed out, were allowed to do more, nor was the focus on self-inserting for wish fulfillment purposes.

Yet, thinking back, I didn't need that false self-esteem boost, of say a romantic character who we're told is plain who turns out not to be (Bella from Twilight) who had her hearts desire when it came to men handed to her on a silver spoon, let alone a female character who had other things handed to her on a silver platter. I didn't need to be treated like a special snowflake, but if you're treating your audience like that, it's not good writing.

Not that it doesn't have it's place, but it's also not writing that should be winning contests. This isn't some popularity contest. And I think some are mistaking it for this, but I think--

Well, there is a fanfic that ended up being popular here on Wattpad that ended up being retooled into original work, and I think some writers aim for that kind of thing because they saw how popular that work became.

But what they didn't notice was how much flack Wattpad got for that particular work, how people were disappointed at the lack of quality, as well as some of the messaging.

In the end, despite the popularity, this wasn't a work that should be getting accolades, winning contests, yet once the Wattpad ambassadors started up the contests, there were people who want to be that next thing when they tackle contests, never thinking what the contest is actually asking for, thus only thinking about what's popular. And on the other side there are people who judge whether a story is good or not based on whether something is gramatically correct, or according to them gramatically correct.

For ONC, to succeed, one needs an objective standard for their writing, but that objective standard does include some level of telling a compelling story, although that isn't the only objective criteria, but by compelling story I don't mean a story that compells you, but that may compell an audience, a work that even if it wasn't your cup of tea can be seen as something that might be anothers cup of tea.