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Robert McKee Say: Shut Up and Write Like ME
A really good quote from Robert McKee's book STORY:
(WAIT! Before we get to the quote, quick caveat: I don't usually cite crappola from books on writing, as I don't believe there are absolute answers or how-to's in crafting a good, polished story, but I do believe in certain generalities of human behavior and self-delusion, and this one hits home. Way home. Oh-so-uncomfortably so. If this quote doesn't make you nod in agreement and squirm in consternation - at the same time - you're probably one of the delusional. To wit:)
"As for technique, what the novice writer mistakes for craft is simply his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel, film or play he's ever encountered. As he writes, he matches his work by trial and error against a model built up from accumulated reading and watching. The unschooled writer calls this "instinct," but it is merely habit and it's rigidly limiting. He either imitates his mental prototype or imagines himself in the avant-garde and rebels against it. But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the sum of unconsciously imagined repetitions is not, in any real sense, technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with clichés of either the commercial or art house variety."
Now this, of course, leaves out the possibility of a fledgling writer honestly coming across something unique and powerful that nevertheless defies most of modern technique, as well as (and in support of that last point) the fact that "technique" is a highly time-sensitive word in definition. Most of what we call "technique" is, at any given time, due to the greater part of our culture retaining the past learning of its leaders in any particular field, and therefore it is, absolutely, arguable that modern technique naturally rivals all past technique, in both form and effect. Though while that may be true, only in some of its ways would I say it is thus. In others, technique of any time period is as much a fashion or zeitgeist as actual fashions, though these aspects can usually be determined by their historically cyclical comings and goings, in today, out tomorrow, in again come tomorrow's tomorrow, etc.
So what Robert Mckee say is true, but it isn't unanimously so. That means yes, your rejected "masterpiece" may be allowed to be called such a thing without quotations. But it also means that that isn't bloody well likely. What it means without exception is: don't justify, because justification exposes your work's amateur roots and inefficient attempts at homage thereof. If your work needs justification, it's not what you think it is, or rather, it's precisely what you think it is, but it's nothing more. It's a poor substitute of Alan Moore, or William S. Burroughs, or Stephen King, if all you do think of it is that it's "the next Alan Moore" or "the modern Stephen King". Aping isn't technique-ing, and there's always an example of someone, somewhere, doing something exceedingly well that few if anyone else can handle with equal panache. So the question isn't who else sounds like you (and easy thing to find a fit for), the question is: do you actually sound like them?
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