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.

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.

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.

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.

The post Why Americans Measure in Football Fields & Likely Always Will appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

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’t find true love, land the dream job, take out the evil HR Empire. This is why we read fiction. Messy but with a satisfactory ending…not some fresh toke on a fire hose.

Enjoy the RIDE!

With rollercoasters, have all the twists and turns you want, but design must play along with the laws of physics or things go terribly wrong.

Same in stories.

Additionally, just like rides have a clear beginning and clear destination, so should our stories. It’s the how we take the rider reader from beginning to the end that makes all the difference.

Which is weird because most of the time, we know how stories will end, don’t we? Well, kind of. We know the good guys will likely win, just aren’t exactly sure how. And that is what makes us tense, where we storytellers can strip away control.

How many of you sat at the edge of your seats when Frodo and Samwise finally stepped into Mordor? Did you worry when the spider tried to make Frodo into a snack? Wonder if Samwise would get there in time? I mean actually worry?

No.

WHY?

We “worried”, sure. Yet we all knew on some level they’d be successful (unlike life). If Tolkien had just let everyone fail pointlessly to illustrate some existential morass…we’d have Russian Lit. If they made that into a movie—once the reader revolts subsided—we wouldn’t have one of the most iconic movies of the modern age.

We’d have a French film.

And everyone died. The end.

Yet, somehow Tolkien threaded between Dostoevsky and Sundance’s latest rave and gave audiences movies they never tire of rewatching even though we all know the Ring is destroyed. How did Tolkien/Peter Jackson manage this tension?

Choice.

Or rather, the illusion of having one.

See this is where choices—particularly messy choices—make the difference. Once our story starts becoming predictable, we leave a nice convenient place to put a bookmark.

In our business, BOOKMARKS=DEATH.

Never, ever leave a logical place to stop reading your stories. The only acceptable place to leave your story needs to be at the end, when the reader is giddy, breathless, shaken and can’t wait to do it again.

Now Use Your AI

Obviously, this is a personal decision. Once you have your log-line (your story in ONE sentence), feel free to riff from there. Though I, personally, don’t like outlining every detail of my story, I do begin with at least a general idea where I’m going.

This starts truncating choices from there into an increasingly narrower decision tree.

We let the reader “know” a vague idea of how our story ends (true love, happily for now, business saved, family restored, babysitter club in tact, justice served); we just don’t explain how we intend on getting them there.

Every scene begins with a GOAL (external or internal). In the scene, there are three options: win, lose, draw.

Our MC should get hammered most of the book (mostly lose and draw with a rare win), but this is where we need to be careful. This is where sticky choices can help. Messy “good enough considering” choices keep our characters out of The Land of Too Stupid to Live.

Instead of obvious good and bad choices, we should mirror life, then amplify the hell out of it.

AI can actually be an excellent soundboard. When your MC hits a choke (choice) point, what is the obvious good decision? Now scrap that. Also the obvious bad one. Brainstorm until you drill down into maybe the MC’s third or tenth choice.

If we get the reader’s the adrenaline pumping, that’s awesome because stress narrows focus. They might “see” the first couple sane options but if we dig down and serve up the less obvious? It won’t make sense until after the ride is over.

And retrospectively, they’ll see it wasn’t merely brilliant but inevitable, which is why they’ll tell all their friends and preorder our next book.

Stories Have a Clear Finish Line (Ending)

So does life, but that is beyond the scope of this blog. I want y’all to imagine your reader. Then answer WHY your book? Why spend limited money and time they don’t believe they have to engage in an activity most people rate alongside doing their taxes?

Most people don’t read because they believe reading is boring. But, for those who do read or who will read…WHY?

We have desires that may or may not come to fruition in life. Stories offer a place where the underdog wins, right and wrong matter, characters defy all the odds and WIN. Stories give us respite from reality long enough to reignite what makes us utterly human.

Belief.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I LOVE hearing from you!

What choice in your story scares you to make, and why?

Where in your current project is your character avoiding the hardest decision, even though it’s the one that would change everything?

Have you ever realized mid-draft that your character had no real agency—just motion? If so, what did you change to fix it?

What’s the messiest, least satisfying choice you’ve forced a character to make, and how did it affect the story?

Have you ever used AI to brainstorm story decisions or turning points? Did it help you uncover a less obvious option you hadn’t considered?

The post Why Choice—Not Talent—Drives Great Stories appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

AI is the new buzzword. Everything is AI, has AI, offers AI. To be blunt, AI is not the problem. People believing the tool can replace the work is the problem.

Yes, I have been quieter on here far longer than usual. Not gone, just down and dirty in the trenches doing postgraduate work in AI/Machine Learning because y’all matter the world to me. You deserve more than an opinion piece.

For those who might be new to this blog, writers and tech are my jam. The “new shiny” is always something to be wary of. That was true with Web 1.0 and websites, Web 2.0 and social media, Web 3.0 and algorithmic alchemy, and it is truer now than ever in human history.

AI enters the chat.

In 2014, I introduced the concept of the SWOT analysis with 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing & Increase Sales. Back then, the new tech shiny happened to be social media and algorithmic alchemy. Again, the tools evolve. If we want to remain in the game, stagnation equals death. What I said in 2014 is still relevant today, and we are all going to address the AI generated elephant in the room.

The AI Bubble is Already Here

I’ve been around since companies were tossing billions at anything with dot com at the end. I wrote very literally the first books on social media and branding back when writers were throwing holy water at email and snail-mailing agents.

Suffice to say, not my first rodeo.

Today, we are going to do a quick and dirty SWOT analysis because I want you to remember you matter, people matter and human voices matter.

I didn’t jump head first into AI commentary because I wanted to see how the pieces moved, how the machines “thought” and where we could spot and exploit the blind spots.

Because there are always, and I mean always blind spots.

SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Strengths. AI is an incredible tool for those who use it wisely. It can compress research time we might have once lost in a library, then later on Google. Using ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini or whatever can help us sort through sticky ideas and find our core through lines. This can save time, revisions, and stop us from spending months or—God forbid—years on a WIP that has no spine.

Weaknesses. If we fail to understand core AI concepts like hallucination, model confabulation, synthetic error, false interference, unverified synthesis, we can unwittingly train our chatbot to sign off on some really, and I mean really bad ideas.

Opportunities. Again, AI as a tool can cut down on time we spend chasing our tails. Additionally, AI can help us shoestring or outsource tech that we have to “know” to do this work on a professional level in a way that is incredibly cost-effective. For instance, need a basic website? When I started out, a basic website was outside of the scope of most people’s abilities. One had to drop five grand or more on just a simple web page that told the world we were actually being serious.

Threats. Mistaking the tool for the artisan who wields the tool.

Even the Big Wigs at Davos See This

Follow along the speeches at the WEF and the cracks are already showing. Many thought leaders pushing AI still cannot seem to make good on all the promises. And, personally, I am happy they’re admitting this.

AI can give the illusion of replacing real jobs—writers—but that is all it is.

An illusion.

Go hang around on LinkedIn and feeds are crammed with beautifully crafted posts that look great at a glance. But that is the problem. Beyond the glance, the reality is far more troubling. Yes, maybe social media posts before were ugly. Too many folks who misused your and you’re and goofed up there/their/they’re. But at least back then, despite the grammatical ugliness and typos, posts still had a human beating heart.

To quote The Incredibles, “When everyone is special, no one is.”

Social media sites have recently added AI as a feature so people could feel confident they were saying something thought-provoking and brilliant. Maybe we fell for it…for a while. It hit us (writers particularly) in the confidence because masterfully crafted sentences and proper usage of em dashes and colons once helped US stand apart.

Now? Everyone using an em dash properly has to prove they aren’t a bot.

No, the irony is not lost on me.

We have fallen into the AI Uncanny Valley where we wonder who and what is real. Who can we trust? Which people are doing the real thinking versus who’s offloading all their brainpower and human ingenuity? That is what we are going to drill into today.

Landman, Wildcatting & What Creatives Do BEST

For those who have yet to inhale watch the Paramount series Landman, no spoiler alerts. The irony of this wildly successful story is merely an illustration of exactly why AI cannot and will not replace authentic creativity.

All industries have blind spots. Multinational oil companies mistake decades of what they think they know while dismissing rule-breakers; entertainment does the same by churning out predictable, forgettable stories using outdated ideas of what “works.”

Landman is proof of concept. Audiences want great stories. They are wholesale rejecting formulas, especially formulas where investors and boardrooms hold more sway than the audience.

Maybe the reason Landman landed so hard with me (pardon the pun) is writers are wildcatters. We learn the emotional topography then drill. We pressure test, see what hits. What is a leak? When is a leak a sign we need to go deeper? How can we parlay that experiential intuition we know in our bones into a gusher?

When do we stop drilling and move on because the terrain is tapped out?

Many of us traipse off into the wilderness of story, trekking past the bones of countless who tried to strike it rich before us with only a dream, our instincts, and a stubbornness that can often look like madness.

AI cannot and will never replace that.

How many of you decided to become writers because you LOVE books? Back in the day, you queried agent after agent hoping someone would invest and kept at it despite rejection? Then with social media. How many of you risked everything starting a blog? Trying? Failing? Reinventing? How many of you self-published went indie or hybrid?

You, my lovely wildcatters, are the pioneers with a dream and the unconquerable spirit.

But let’s all be honest here. Maybe some of you never used AI or refuse to. Fair enough. Perhaps you’re in love with AI. Wonderful! Again, it can be a great tool. Yet, as I mentioned, the world has been drifting into a place that doesn’t need anymore drilling.

AI UNCANNY VALLEY is DRY

It might not all be “dry” but it’s either pumping out the predictable or it’s being worked over when it long ago needed to be ditched. Differentiation is the key, but this is where we need to reverse the mantra I’ve hammered for years.

Instead of working smarter not harder? It might just be time to also work harder not just smarter.

Just because Uncanny Valley is dry in no way means humans no longer yearn for great stories. The point is creative professionals might just have to go Old School to dominate the Brave New World.

Just like in the series, Landman, it is the person dismissed by “those who know” who often demonstrate exactly how much the power brokers are blind to.

AI is fabulous for optimizing, but that is the danger. It can over optimize exhausted terrain. This is where your instincts—instincts no machine can replicate—are going to be golden. While LLMs (large language models) can synthesize a human experience, they cannot replace them. They can’t translate humanity the way you can.

Many of us have been reading since we were children. We are the product of decades of novels, encyclopedias, lived experiences and we must get back to WHY PEOPLE LOVE WRITERS (Code for stories).

We see what non-writers cannot.

When we write stories about families, love, loss, murder, heartache, death, redemption there is a visceral nature to it that only other humans can recognize. Almost every human being has been in love, been betrayed, been misunderstood and the reason they read stories, watch movies, inhale series is that the artists are the ones who are the intermediaries.

We take the liminality of life and offer readers a vocabulary for what they feel. Why are they afraid, inspired, burned out, misunderstood? We put that into words and make it real, ironically…through fiction.

By definition…NOT REAL.

Why AI LOVING Your Writing COULD Be a Warning

Maybe it’s just me, though I doubt it. AI is impressive. It’s easy to start collaborating with your chatbot and finally feel heard, seen, revitalized. It is, however, also easy to suddenly feel replaced.

Maybe this AI thingy is better at this than I am. The writing seems cleaner, the ideas appear better, everyone seems to looove AI so do I even matter anymore?

*sobs into brownie batter*

It’s hard not to teeter on personal extinction. Creatives already struggle with feeling like we are “real writers.” In the early days, “real writers” had book deals out of NYC. Then the wildcatters struck out on AMAZON, hit big with self-pub, then suddenly how much money we made on a book—regardless of quality—became this new de facto benchmark of a “real writer.”

Now? Hell, we are trying to prove to a robot we are not a robot.

Then, if we post something that sounds sane, fun, imaginative that WE WROTE, deep down we are asking a new question, “Will readers think I am AI?”

Whether we were/are “real writers” has now literally transformed from our own emo-creative-insecurity talking to something tangible.

Are you a robot? *feeling the side eyes*

This is where we have to be careful with AI. Artists have always struggled with deep insecurity. It’s tragically the very quality that can make us damn good at what we do. We refuse to let go until something is “perfect.”

Until recent years, we understood that perfect is the enemy of the finished. Now? Perfect is no longer the enemy of the finished. AI can step in and “finish and perfect” a turd.

Enter in AI slop.

The next pivot around perfect is the enemy of the finished might just need to be that perfect is the enemy of authenticity/art.

Humans are Messy and So is ART

Remember the old films of oilmen who struck black gold? The gusher spewing oil everywhere and men cheering even though they were covered head to toe in sludge?

Why were they so happy?

***Took me a while to figure that out especially after getting covered in an oil spill in Corpus Christi when I was FOUR.

They were happy because they understood the value in that mess.

Humans are sticky. Our lives are rarely pretty and packaged perfect. Love, hate, loss, divorce, death, murder, intrigue is all ugly just like what comes out of the ground. But what comes out of the ground must be refined into what people use every day. Into what they VALUE.

Writers are the explorers, the drillers and the refiners.

Why so much that is coming out of the lazy use of AI is failing to keep our attention is that it is too perfect. It’s a food replicator synthesizing a five-course French meal without any of the messy pots and pans. Refuse to be intimidated by the food replicator. We want the real deal, dirty dishes and all.

The World Still Needs Us To Get “Dirty”

The new writing paradigm did a lot of great things for creatives. We were no longer solely beholden to gatekeepers. This was wonderful because gatekeepers had shareholders. They wanted what had demonstrably worked in the past from the next Twilight to Fifty Shades of the Same Old BS.

For those writers who didn’t fit neatly into boardroom projections, self-publishing and indie opened up areas of writing that had either been wholly abandoned (long form works, short form works) to what hadn’t yet been even tried (genre blending, mixed POVs, previously overlooked audiences).

And what happened? We suddenly had an explosion of some incredible works that never would have made it in any other market condition, E.g. The Martian.

Yet, algorithms stepped in and started lulling us into the same predictive models us wildcatters had hoped to shrug off. Suddenly, authors no longer had time to write thoughtful, deep, meaningful works because audiences wanted more and more and faster and faster.

Problem is? Optimization only takes us so far. Optimized garbage is still…garbage.

The market and technology has accelerated. This can be bad. We need to learn, grow, move, learn, pivot and somehow remain sane. Conversely it is also AWESOME. The cycles are getting shorter. Bad ideas are dying faster.

And THIS is where we drill.

Not every reader (or television audience) wants faster and faster if it is at the expense of quality. Writers are exhausted. We feel sold out and burned out and audiences now watch live streamers because too many plots are more predictable than my cat puking on the rug when there is TILE literally RIGHT THERE.

Refuse to Settle for Efficient When YOU ARE ESSENTIAL

No more low-hanging fruit. Yes, AI can help us plot, outline, turn bad ideas into better ideas. We can streamline what we do and nothing about that is bad. At no point will I ever tell you that spending a year or five or ten on an idea that needed to die on the cutting floor is a bad plan.

Being bad at managing our time does not an artist make.

Yet, the world doesn’t need anymore prefab “perfect” and utterly forgettable stories. Sure, we can use AI to churn out book after book after book and look super productive on the outside. Audiences might even bite initially, but AI is not our target audience.

PEOPLE ARE.

While AI might tell you everything you have is golden, AI isn’t spending time it doesn’t have and it’s hard-earned money to step through the wardrobe into another world so it can forget the world it lives in for just a little bit.

Again, people are.

And this is where y’all are going to shine and it’s how we “beat” the machines.

Or at least remember they work for US.

***DISCLAIMER: All em dashes are mine, any semicolons ethically sourced and plot bunnies raised humanely. Any and all typos are “certified organic” and run-on sentences are now “free range sentences.”

What Are Your Thoughts? I LOVE Hearing from YOU!

Where have you caught yourself optimizing instead of risking? Have you ever loved a piece of writing because it was a little rough? What part of your process would you never outsource—even if AI did it better? Have you started feeling the eerily perfect “sameness” of the AI Uncanny Valley?

I really DO love hearing your thoughts especially on AI. Again, I have missed y’all. Just learning to code, build LLMs, creating my own chatbots for school AND keeping up with the blog even been a bit much for me.

What are some of your fears? Expectations? Thoughts you’d like for me to explore? This blog is for you guys, so let me know!

The post If AI Loves Your Writing, Be Very VERY Worried appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Forgiveness is arguably one of the hardest concepts for us to wrap our brains around—which might be why we’re so fascinated by it. What is forgiveness, really? Who is redeemable? What does restoration look like?

Last fall, I wrote about a universal emotion: Schadenfreude—Misfortune, Revenge, Justice & Catharsis. It’s not hard to feel a little thrill when “bad” people get what’s coming. In fact, revenge is one of the most common tropes in our favorite stories.

From Edgar Allan Poe’s The Telltale Heart to Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, audiences rarely feel satisfied until there’s some form of comeuppance.

Yet there’s another kind of story we might love even more: the redemption story.

That’s the beauty of fiction. Life is messy and relationships are hard. Stories not only give us a vehicle to make sense of a crazy world, but they are critical for training our moral imagination. It’s why we tell fairy tales, read bedtime books, and pass down parables.

Many of our earliest lessons in “people-ing” came through allegory.

A tortoise and a hare show us what persistence looks like in practice. Green eggs and ham feel absurd until we understand context. When Horton hears a Who, we see that every voice matters. From sharing to sacrifice, stories model the way forward—if we let them.

Here’s the funny thing: we never grow out of loving stories. And that’s a very good thing.

Forgiveness in Story

As I just mentioned, there may be only one kind of story we love more than a “just desserts” tale: the redemption story. And nowhere is this clearer than in the redemption arc.

If Melvin Udall had been anything other than a misanthropic nightmare, As Good as It Gets would have collected dust instead of Oscars. The magic is in watching him evolve—from a miserable, self-centered, isolated hermit into a man who can love and care deeply for those around him. And when that happens, we cheer.

He begins alone and broken, and ends surrounded by loved ones and a renewed sense of humanity (his own and others’)…and we are so here for it!

From The Joy Luck Club to Finding Nemo, stories provide a pattern for what forgiveness looks like and how to maybe even bring some of that redemption arc into our own lives (Re: Redemption: Can All Characters Be “Saved”?).

How can forgiveness in story shine a way for us to be better at doing it in life? Either asking for it or giving it? Redemption stories captivate us, but they also beg a harder question: is forgiveness simply forgetting the past, or is it something far more radical?

What IS Forgiveness?

Here’s the thing: half the battle with forgiveness is realizing what it isn’t .

As writers, we are keenly aware of the mercurial nature of words. “Cool” can be a temperature on the car AC or a word we toss around to let others know we like something. Words can twist and turn and gain or lose meaning over time.

Few words can be twisted more than…forgiveness.

In our minds, often “forgiveness” is this notion that we just reset the board. Everything is in the past. Forgive and forget, right?

WRONG.

Not a get-out-of-jail-free card — consequences can still stand. So if forgiveness isn’t forgetting, excusing, or fast-forwarding…what is it, then?

Welcome to the Process

Personally, I think we’ve become a culture out of tune with our emotions.

As a Gen Xer, I’ll take part of the blame. We were a lost generation of latchkey kids. Our Boomer parents were just trying to survive, feeling like failures because they couldn’t recreate the “Golden Age” they’d been handed—an era probably gilded more with asbestos and sadness than gold. We inherited their brokenness and passed it on to our kids, just in a different flavor.

Our parents gave us nuclear strike drills. It was their way of keeping us “safe”—or at least confused enough to be calm. In a world spinning out of control, they handed down what little they had. And, like generations before, we overcorrected. They raised us to be stoics—the Red Dawn Generation. We told ourselves we didn’t care and wanted to be left alone…until we had kids.

Then we lost our minds.

Suddenly everything had a Lisa Frank neon glow. We went to every game our parents missed. We sewed the costumes, baked the cookies, and even invented something as FRIGGING DUMB as the “Participation Trophy.” Everyone was special, every feeling mattered, and everything had to stay positive.

Like the cereal of our youth, we drowned our kids in sugar—only this time it was sugar-coated emotions.

It took a kids’ movie (Inside Out) to remind us that anger is actually a useful emotion. Of course, we overdid that too. The pendulum swung from a Stepford-smile “everything is fine” to raging about everything. Neither extreme is healthy. Both are denial.

The first step in forgiveness is giving ourselves permission to feel, even when the feelings don’t make sense. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean we won’t feel anger, hurt, or resentment. And being forgiven doesn’t guarantee we’ll feel absolved or at peace.

Bitterness and guilt are just two sides of the same coin.

Emotion is fuel—but like all fuel, it can either move us forward or burn everything down.

The Problem of Pain

It hurts. Simple as that. You’d think it would be obvious, but humans can be remarkably slow on the uptake. Since we don’t like hurting, we’ll avoid confrontation at almost any cost. If we’re the injured party, we steer clear of the people who wounded us.

Instead of doing the meaningful work, we gloss over the hurt, slap on a smile, and insist everything is “fine” when it isn’t. Meanwhile, the bad feelings stew and ferment. Super adult, right?

The irony is, the other person may be completely oblivious that they tromped through our emotions like a toddler playing Godzilla in Lego Land. Doesn’t matter. In our minds, we’re convinced they knew exactly what they were doing.

On the flip side, if we’re the ones who need forgiving…well, we don’t want forgiveness so much as “understanding.”
See, if you understood that we were tired, in pain, late, sick, hungry—or gassy—when we acted like a complete horse’s butt, you’d see we weren’t really wrong at all. In fact, you just misunderstood. That makes it all better, right?

…Right?

Wrong.

The first step in forgiveness is admitting the wrong.

If we’re the one injured, then we need to face that. Look at the wound, triage it, and make a plan to forgive. If we’re the one in need of forgiveness, we need to accept that—even if we felt totally justified or believe we did nothing wrong—someone else is hurting because of our actions (or inaction).

We might not feel the crushing injustice, but they do. Isn’t that exactly what we want when the shoe is on the other foot?

Feeling Feelings is Okay but Not Everything

This is where most of us get stuck. When someone hurts us, even thinking about forgiveness feels like we’re about to puke in our shoes. So we do one of two things: we stuff it airtight or we spew it nonstop.

Enough.

It’s far easier to let go once we understand that forgiveness is an act, not a mood.

In real life, there’s no magical moment where we forgive and—cue the orchestral swell—we’re suddenly living in a warm-and-fuzzy montage. You want that? Go to the movies. Stories can model real life, but they aren’t real life.

Just like we can’t wrap up a murder investigation in 90 minutes, we can’t heal wounds instantly either. If we expect emotions to rise, fall, flare up, vanish, then come roaring back, we won’t be blindsided.

Yes, if someone hurts us badly, we’re going to feel it for a while (and vice versa).

A Parable on Forgiveness

I didn’t fully grasp forgiveness until I heard this story.

There was a monk whose job was to ring the church bells every day. In the course of life in the monastery, a fellow monk deeply wounded him. No matter how many times he went to confession, he couldn’t look at the offender without feeling anger and pain.

Finally, distraught, he asked the parish priest: How can I say I’ve forgiven when I still feel so much anguish?

The priest answered with a question:

“When you ring the bells, does the sound stop the instant you let go of the rope?”

The monk frowned. “Of course not.”

“It echoes, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But eventually the sound grows fainter and fainter until it’s gone, right?”

“Yes.”

The priest smiled. “It’s the same with forgiveness. Your fellow monk rang your bell, and you’ll hear it for a while. But forgiveness is the decision to let go of the rope.”

Every time we ruminate, gossip, backbite, or replay the injury, we’re yanking that rope again, keeping the sound alive. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling. It’s a choice. We decide to let go—because we’re the only ones who can.

Forgiveness and Restoration

These are two entirely separate events — and glossing over that fact is dangerous.

Forgiveness is a decision. It’s the mental shift to let go of the rope. Period. We do it for our own sanity, because if we don’t, Hell’s bells will keep ringing in our heads. Enough ringing will drive anyone mad.

Restoration, however, is another matter entirely.

We are under no obligation to rebuild a bridge someone else torched. Nor do we have to hand out “bridge-building permits” to people who’ve proven unsafe. Sometimes, relationships can’t be restored because doing so would be unwise—or downright dangerous.

Think of a battered spouse. She might believe with everything in her that she can save the relationship if she just tries hard enough. But if the partner keeps escalating, the day will come when she realizes: If I stay, I will die.

So she leaves. She gets safe. But she still needs to forgive. Because if she doesn’t, the poison of bitterness will seep into her, and into every relationship that comes after.

That doesn’t mean she has to go back. No one in their right mind would say she hadn’t forgiven if she took out a protective order or never spoke to him again. He simply isn’t safe.

Toxic people want us to believe forgiveness means saying, “What you did was fine. Let’s be friends again!”

No.

Forgiveness is for us. It’s so we can heal, move forward, and build something better—without dragging yesterday’s rotting garbage with us. But don’t confuse forgiveness with absolution. It doesn’t erase consequences. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean they skip the sentence—it means we refuse to let their actions keep us chained to bitterness.

Forgiving and Forgetting

“Forgetting” is the part of forgiveness people most often skip—or butcher completely.

***Wow, we really do suck at this.

Forgetting doesn’t mean life is a video game where we hit RESET and go back to the last SAVE point. Memory matters. In fact, it’s wisdom. Only a fool allows the same injury over and over. Being a doormat isn’t divine.

But here’s the rub: have you ever been in a relationship where, every time conflict flares, the other person unrolls a scroll of every wrong you’ve ever committed? Did you feel forgiven?

Or maybe you’ve been on the other side—feeling generous for “forgiving,” then dragging out the record book the moment things get rough. That’s not forgiveness. That’s stockpiling ammo for the next fight.

The hard truth is this: once something is forgiven, it must be released.

Let. Go. Of. The. Rope.

It’s okay to get angry. It’s not healthy to stay angry. If we cling to the rope too long, it won’t just hold us back—it will become a snare. Or worse, a noose.

If Stories Forgave Like We Do

The tales we love would collapse if their characters forgave the way most of us do in real life.

Imagine if Simba went back to Pride Rock, “forgave” Scar, and then reminded him of Mufasa’s death at every family meal. That’s not a redemption arc—it’s a sitcom with no laugh track.

Or what if Elizabeth Bennet married Darcy, only to bring up every slight, insult, and misunderstanding for the rest of their days? Pride and Prejudice would be less classic romance and more reality TV.

Even Melvin in As Good as It Gets would never have found love if he’d clutched a grudge ledger. The movie only works because he lets go—because he changes.

Stories demand true forgiveness. Characters can’t evolve if they’re chained to past injuries. If they could, the plots would grind to a halt, and the redemption arcs we crave would be dead on arrival.

And so it is with us. If stories can’t move forward without forgiveness, neither can we.

Grudges keep us trapped in reruns—same plot, same conflict, same ending. Forgiveness, on the other hand, gives us new material. It doesn’t erase the past, but it frees the future.

We forgive not because it’s easy, or because the other person “deserves” it, but because carrying the rope keeps us stuck in the wrong story.

Letting go is the only way to write a better one.

What Does Forgiveness LOOK Like?

At the end of the day, forgiveness isn’t neat or cinematic. It’s clumsy, awkward, and sometimes downright painful. But stories remind us it’s possible. They give us a model, a light in the dark, showing us what love and forgiveness look like when lived out.

Writers, in many ways, are the torchbearers of this process. Through the arcs we create—through villains redeemed, grudges released, and broken people finding their way back—we hand our readers a vision of what could be. We remind them that love is more powerful than bitterness, and that forgiveness, though rarely easy, is always freeing.

Because without forgiveness, stories stall. And so do we.

Stories don’t just entertain, they teach us how to be human. Writers sketch the messy, awkward maps of forgiveness: how people say sorry, how they stumble, and how they finally let go.

That’s the small miracle of a redemption arc — it shows that even the meanest bell can be quieted if someone decides to loosen their grip. We forgive not because the past is erased, but because we choose a future that isn’t chained to old injuries. If stories can do that for characters, maybe they can do it for us too.

So maybe that’s the real gift of story: not to entertain us, but to show us the road ahead. To remind us that though the bell may still echo, we can choose to let go of the rope…and in doing so, step into a better story.

What are YOUR Thoughts?

What about you guys? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What’s your favorite redemption story—book, movie, or show—that really showed forgiveness done right? Have you ever had one of those moments where forgiveness wasn’t about “feeling good,” but more about finally letting go of that rope? Has a story ever taught you more about forgiveness than real life managed to?

The post Forgiveness: Everyone Loves a Good Redemption Arc appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

War of the Worlds 2025. What do I say? What can be said? Other than Orson Welles is probably going to start haunting Amazon warehouses or that it was the pandemic…and Ice Cube really needed the money.

If you haven’t yet seen War of the Worlds 2025, take the challenge. I merely recommend that you don’t watch alone, because this movie is so bad it is hilarious. And we could all use a laugh these days, right?

Sometimes the worst movies are the best teachers. In this post, we shall eviscerate dissect Amazon’s quietly released disaster, War of the Worlds 2025 — and what it reveals about POV, the fifth wall, and how technology reshapes the way humans tell (and consume) stories.

War of the Worlds…Words

For those of you who have been long-time followers of this blog and have read my books, I have dedicated God only knows how much time dissecting the ways technology impacts humanity. Not only does it shift cultural norms and attitudes, technology goes deeper.

It literally alters brain structure.

With every technological advancement, new art forms emerge and tastes evolve. Who wants to read War and Peace when you could watch your favorite streamer shoot demons?

We have all born witness to the vast changes just since the internet and social media swept the globe. In 2011, I couldn’t bribe writers into being on-line. Now? We all struggle to stay OFF.

Suffice to say, all of us know that AI is going to alter the storytelling landscape forever. How will it do that? What are the limitations? Are writers still even necessary?

Short answer is yes, AI will impact writers because…

…it cannot help but impact audiences.

Limitations? The human touch still required and AI (currently) still has a hard limit on how much it can learn/remember/process. Which is probably why Microsoft signed a 20 year solo agreement for all the power from a freshly renovated Three Mile Island.

***Because billionaire tech giants partnering with nuclear energy plants to power sentient computers is NEVER problematic.

So how did a serious movie about aliens leveling the Earth end up so unintentionally funny? I believe it was—in part—because the creators were trying to be serious. Imagine the creators of Sharknado making Sharknado…unironically. War of the Worlds 2025 takes itself so seriously and that just makes the laughs even better. Yet, it was more than just that.

They got BOLD and tried a new technique!

They Broke the Fifth Wall (and the audience’s brains)

In my professional opinion, a large part of what derailed this as a serious movie stemmed from the choice of POV. Point of view is a POWERFUL narrative tool that can totally shift the story tone. We’ve discussed this many times.

Perspective: POV Can Revive or Ruin a Story

Deep POV: What IS It & Why Do Readers LOVE It So Much?

And this is exactly where War of the Worlds 2025 jumped the shark.

I “get” the studios wanted to give audiences a “modern” War of the Worlds for a modern world. To do this, they decided to take a gamble and hired the edgy-outside-the-box producer Timur Behmambetov to give an old story a fresh angle.

Yeah.

For context, Behmambetov has been trying to make a micro-sub-genre within the found footage world—Screenlife—work for sooo long. And bro finally got his chance!

Screenlife is basically found footage’s awkward cousin — instead of handheld cameras, everything happens on a laptop screen (E.g. Unfriended).

So why did War of the Worlds 2025 suck? Other than the obvious answer that the scariest thing in horror isn’t aliens — it’s ninety minutes of Zoom meetings.

Because breaking the fifth wall has a cost.

Many of you probably know about the fourth wall. When actors break the fourth wall, they turn from the stage and address the audience. So what is the fifth wall you might ask?

WE are the audience behind the audience. The audience becomes part of the stage. Clear as mud, right? Now y’all know why this is a tar baby to write.

In the movie, Ice Cube stars as a grumpy Gen X analyst working on a Sunday alone at The Department of Homeland Security. When Ice Cube isn’t spying on his daughter, he is spying on everyday citizens with eerily omniscient powers. Homeland is on the hunt for a hacker known as The Disruptor…cuz it’s spooky.

Sounds “hacker-y.”

Suddenly, superstorms break out all over the globe and meteors crash through the atmosphere smashing into cities, and punching more holes in this plot than my teenager’s socks. We (the audience) watch the alien invasion, the “drama”, the chase, the suspense…from a screen. NINETY minutes of Zoom meetings, Facetime, texts, YouTube and stock news footage clips.

*groans*

Was War of the Worlds 2025 onto…Something?

Just because War of the Worlds fumbled the play, does NOT mean the movie didn’t reveal something we storytellers can learn from. Remember, they made this movie almost five years ago.

What is now more popular than ever?

Streamers.

In my day we killed the aliens ourselves. With our own plasma rifles and sticky grenades! These kids today watch other gamers kill the aliens! What in TARNATION?

Remember earlier I said technology reshapes the brain and changes our tastes? In 2025, I actually think Screenlife would be viable with the right story.

For instance, who would have ever believed found footage would have even been a thing until The Blair Witch Project? Which a lot of people hated until Paranormal Activity preserved what was excellent about the idea…and simply removed the need for Dramamine.

Which makes my point.

Found footage immerses us SO MUCH it is excellent for horror. But, add in a FIFTH wall, and there is enough emotional distancing to laugh.

A LOT.

Technology Shapes Storytelling

Yes, throughout history, technology has shaped and reshaped storytelling (VIDEO GAMES anyone?). War of the Worlds 2025 revealed both the limitations and opportunities of storytelling via digital screens.

As streaming and parasocial entertainment (e.g., Twitch, YouTube, VTubers) rise, using “fifth wall” techniques could theoretically work, but execution must account for audience psychology.

Sure AI can create the “perfect” story from a technical perspective, but we humans love messy. Perfect is boring and—especially after the Terminator movies—we aren’t too thrilled about our computers being emo.

Despite technical ambition, War of the Worlds 2025 proved that human intuition, humor, and risk-taking are essential for meaningful storytelling. What can creators specifically take away?

Clarity of medium matters: New formats (like Screenlife) should enhance, not obstruct, emotional engagement.

Audience psychology is central: Too much distancing results in detachment; balance immersion with accessibility.

Innovation requires iteration: Even failed experiments reveal future opportunities — this format may thrive in comedy or parody rather than drama.

Technology alone isn’t enough: Tools evolve, but audiences still rely on writers and storytellers to make sense of them.

In the End….

For all its flaws, War of the Worlds 2025 is a reminder that even failed experiments push the boundaries of storytelling.

The movie showed us what doesn’t work, hinted at what could, and gave us comedy gold along the way. Maybe Orson Welles is haunting Amazon after all, but if so, at least he’s laughing.

What are your thoughts?

Do you think AI will ever nail messy, human storytelling—or will it always feel a little “too perfect”? What’s one new storytelling trend (good or bad) you’ve noticed since the pandemic? What’s the worst “so-bad-it’s-good” movie you’ve ever seen? Do you think Screenlife films (everything on a computer screen) could ever actually work, or are they doomed to flop?

Since I could never do justice to just how bad this movie is, this is the video that convinced me to take a chance and watch. Pointlesshub is one of Spawn’s great finds. It’s a bit long, but it’s hilarious and breaks apart the story just brilliantly! But don’t take my word for it — grab some popcorn, watch the roast, and come back here to tell me if you survived.

The post War of the Worlds 2025: Is AI Ruining Storytelling? appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Are we too “domesticated” to write truly great stories? This might seem like an odd question, but bear with me. I’ve been incredibly blessed over the course of my life to travel all over the world. While I did get to check out some of the resorts, my favorite travel stories seem to always involve places no one in their right mind would go…on purpose.

Note I DID qualify with “in their right mind.”

Like the time I lived in Syria, went out into the desert to look at ruins but failed to pack enough water *face palm*. This ancient Bedouin shuffled past me wearing a huge glass bottle full of water…that he was selling by the sip.

I have no shame.

I bought the WHOLE BOTTLE.

Or when I was on the Mexican border and had to go to the ladies’ room. As I am sitting there…a chicken just walks in and decides to be my friend. Still funny.

In the jungles of Belize, I spent all day wielding a sledgehammer to pull up a sidewalk at a school (humanitarian mission). The entire day it rained on me. I spent seven hours slogging through mud in the rain carrying buckets of cement, ripping up rebar, and patrolling—machete in hand—for snakes.

End of the day? All I wanted was a shower. I strip down to everything but my seriously stupid lime green flip flips with big goofy flowers on the toes, turn on the water…and SCORPIONS RAIN DOWN OUT OF THE SHOWER CURTAIN.

Apparently goofy flower flip flops make an excellent weapon.

Why are these some of my favorite stories? Especially since none of them cast me in a particularly good light. Whether it is me being too dumb to pack WATER in the SYRIAN DESERT or naive enough to not watch for SCORPIONS in a JUNGLE, there is a common thread.

I was far too domesticated.

Domesticated Writers

There is a strange cognitive distortion we can all experience being a part of First World living. We really don’t know what it is like to worry about most of that really important stuff at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

I mean FOOD? Me? Hunt? *hair flip* I don’t even know how to track tacos. Are burritos migratory? Do pizzas travel in packs?

***If you know, please answer in the comments.

Please understand. I am seriously grateful that I am an American, that I live in a wonderful country and enjoy incredible blessings. Yet, how often do we take these blessings for granted? How much can modern life lull us into a form of sensory sleepwalking that make our writing come across as dull, colorless or inauthentic?

Case in point.

One of my favorite classes to teach was Beyond Bulletproof Barbie. This class covered combatives (various forms of martial arts), guns (everything from pistols to long arms), and bladed weapons. I enjoy teaching it because, while I “get” we write fiction and can’t be 100% accurate, a handful of really great details truly enhances authenticity.

When reading any fight scene, I can almost instantly tell a writer who has a) never been punched or b) has never thrown a punch.

How?

Easy.

Punching suuuucks. I know! News flash. Either way. Honestly. Sucks to be puncher or punch-ee. And I get that it is easy to believe the person doing the punching gets the better of it but no. FUN FACT! Unless one is a professional fighter, odds are pretty good you will break or dislocate something in your hand.

Am I suggesting we start Writer Fight Club? No…because I can’t talk about Writer Fight Club. Also, pain sucks. But, I do believe the answer is simpler.

Domesticated Distortion

Sometimes, just recognizing we have a blind spot is a great start. This is where, first of all, being a prolific reader will be seriously helpful. We can only do and experience so much, so why not rely on the experiences of others? The more we read, the deeper creative well we draw from.

I have no idea what it is like to live in the aftermath of a war (and pray I never do). But I can read works from people who have. I’m not a man, a child, a space alien, a battle hardened Marine, or a geriatric, but I can be all those things because I can use empathy and imagination. That said, empathy and imagination, like other writing muscles, need strength training.

If we believe we might be too domesticated, then how might we ratchet up the story intensity? I recommend practicing deep empathy. Try writing in Deep POV.

Refer to: Deep POV: What IS It & Why Do Readers LOVE It So Much?

Deep POV is not only a fantastic way to hook readers into the story experience at a whole other—visceral—level, but it will also help us be aware of our domesticated blind spots.

Try doing some short writing pieces on the same topic. Same story prompt but from as many different POVs as you can think of. Maybe change the setting, too.

Most of us tend to—at least in the beginning—write as ourselves. Hey, I did it! Still do. When they say “write what you know” then this is kind of a “no duh” thing right?

But can you take a story prompt then write from the perspective of someone who is NOT you? Empathy is a fantastic skill in life and in writing.

Experience Informs Perspective

We can take a simple scenario and do a fun thought experiment/writing exercise. Take our domesticated brains into a domesticated situation that suddenly is anything BUT.

There is a bodega on the corner of a major city. It’s late at night. There is an Uber driver, an elderly person, a young mother, and a juvenile delinquent. Someone decides to rob the bodega.

Who is it? How do the others react? Who “saves” the day? Should it have been “saved” at all? Are things not as they might appear? Do we end up with an unlikely hero? An unintended tragedy?

Could you write the story where each person is the robber and make us empathize with their motives? Note I said we had to empathize not agree. That is an important distinction. In life, we are all good, law-abiding citizens so cognitive dissonance like this stretches our brain muscles.

The key to having a reader empathize is to show who the character is and relay their why (motive).

Under normal circumstances, robbing a bodega is unacceptable. But great stories leave normal in the dust. Additionally, those around react correspondingly using their frame of reference and life experiences. They can help ratchet the tension in the story.

Say our would-be robber is the Uber driver. A half hour earlier, he picked up the Ride from Hell. Unfortunately for him, his fare took a page out of the noir classic Collateral and our poor Uber driver is actually a hostage, himself.

He has to hit a certain number of bodegas before midnight or his family will die.

That’s already a bad night, but what if the senior citizen is an ex-Green Beret and decides to be a hero? What if the teenager is actually a twenty-eight-year-old Vice officer? Or the young mother is actually part of the cartel and was there to collect extortion money from the owner?

What if the cashier just found out his wife was leaving him for his brother and they’d emptied all his savings. All he has left is this crappy job and he just can’t be pushed one…more…step.

We can make these people as benign or interesting as we want. There are plenty of everyday people who do extraordinary things—good and bad—with the right lever. Conversely, there are plenty of folks walking around who seem ordinary at first glance but are anything BUT.

Eg. Spies never look like spies unless it’s the movies.

Psst, neither do aliens.

This is where fiction becomes FUN.

Domesticated Imaginations

I know what it is like to get caught up in the humdrum of life. Whether it is the day job, the WIP that we have been working on for months, life, family, health issues. We can forget how important it is to shove ourselves out of our comfort zone to knock the dust off our imaginations.

Maybe you can do this in your own WIP. If you are stuck, pull out a supporting character and write an experience from their POV. When in a scene, think from all angles. Sight is the weakest of all the senses yet writers (in my experience) rely on it too much. Can we see if we can put ourselves even deeper into the scene? FEEL the cold, TASTE the heat, SENSE the danger?

What Are Your Thoughts?

I know I was suffering from being too domesticated. After working from home for almost twenty years, I took a temporary job in November to get out of the house. You know you’ve been working at home too many years when you eat your lunch like you just served a dime in the pen.

It’s been a lot of fun and has gotten me out of my comfort zone, but the schedule has been a mess trying to fit it with homeschooling and other work. FINALLY it seems to be leveling off. I’ve been working in fashion marketing and the holidays was just BONKERS crazy and January is the start of a whole new year and and and and. LIFE.

BUT it really did show me how many experiences I’d forgotten about working on my own with only my imaginary friends to bug me. VERY different being in a corporate setting.

But I am still here. Still weird. Weirder by the day. So any of y’all have tips on hunting those burritos?

What are our thoughts? Do you think maybe you hold back too much in your work sometimes? Maybe you could push a little harder but have gotten out of the habit?

Also, feel free to drop a try at the bodega story in the comments. I always love seeing y’all show off!

The post Are We Too “Domesticated” to Write Great Stories? appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Fortitude—enduring the tired, tedious and unremarkable chores—is what makes the difference between those who dream and those who do.

Why am I talking about this? Because recently I saw some quote scroll past on social media. It was something (of course) posted by one of those super happy “life coach” people.

Though I’m certain the quote was meant to inspire, it hit a sour note with me. It seemed dismissive of the pain, sacrifice and—yes, suffering—of those willing to dream, and then stick to that dream. It bypassed the fortitude necessary for success.

I don’t recall the quote’s exact wording (they’re all so similar), but the saccharin essence was the same. Apparently, if you don’t LOVE every single moment of what you’re doing, then maybe you don’t have the right career.

Keep searching! Dream! You have a right to be HAPPY! If it isn’t making you HAPPY, then MOVE ON!

See, writing—much like any worthy undertaking—comes part and parcel with a lot of drudgery and loads of stuff we’d rather not do.

Fortitude & Learning Curve Drudgery 

A lot of folks believe that just because they’re proficient in their native language, they are then automatically qualified to write amazing fiction. Yeah…no.

Not judging at all. I used to be one of those people. I had zero concept how ridiculously hard it was to craft a readable story, let alone a good one.

Writing a novel that could span anywhere from 50K to 150K words (depending on genre) that manages to grab then hold a reader’s interest? AHHHH! Balancing plot points, plot arc, character, dialogue, scene and sequel, A-lines, B-lines, on and on?

It doesn’t take too long to understand why many great authors turned to booze and drugs.

*gives Poe a pass on the whole “heroin addiction'” thing*

Far too many writers start out believing the first novel they write is perfect, and if anyone counters this? They fall apart. Some give up. A few hire “editors” who are happy to tell them “the other meanie editor was totes unprofessional and it’s fiiiine to have fourteen POVs…all from cats.”

Others double-down on the denial and write a sequel or—God help us all—a series of equally crappy books that don’t sell.

Why?

Because learning to write novels is hard.

I’ve been through this, myself. My two formative mentors both made me cry…a LOT. And I am NOT a person who cries.

These mentors were nothing like my writing group. My writing group was so encouraging!

Bob and Les didn’t tell me my writing was unicorn tears, they told me it was more like what might come out of the other end of a unicorn.

No, not a unicorn. A hyena with tapeworm and a bad case of mange.

*weeps*

I didn’t love writing the same stuff over and over. Guess what? Didn’t always love reading and rereading the books they recommended I study.

Come to think of it, I didn’t love putting out my best only for it to come back with so much red I wondered if it had been hit by a bus then SHOT before they returned it.

Sure I could have quit. Thought about it a lot. A lot. Because shouldn’t I LOOOVE every moment of what I do? But, I didn’t quit because I wanted to become an excellent writer. I required more than glittery sparkly talent. I had to hone and develop fortitude.

I’m still a work in progress.

My critique group were fantastic cheerleaders, which we need…but not necessarily to make us better.

Cheerleaders look super pretty, but cheerleaders don’t train touchdowns.

Coaches who call out bad form, terrible plays, and awful habits create winners. These experts are hired to criticize, make a player watch footage over and over and, if warranted, do cherry-pickers until the player wants to DIE. Might seem “mean” but THIS is what will help that player make touchdowns.

Drudgery. Not pom-pom waving.

Fortitude: Welcome to the GRIND

There’s drudgery in the actual writing. Oh no! Yes, you heard it here first. Writing, while one of the BEST jobs in the world, contains more than its fair share of suckage.

The first draft can be loads of fun, until the mire of Act Two where you find yourself contemplating sudden and unexpected alien abduction—either for yourself to spring you from writing, or for your characters because you’ve messed up somewhere in the plot and written yourself into a corner.

Becoming successful in writing (or anything really) is never in the BIG things we do. It’s the compilation of a lot of small acts that build up over time.

It is showing up day after day even when we’d rather get a root canal than figure out what went sideways somewhere between page 1 and page 400.

We have to research, proofread, edit, revise, and all of this takes focus and time and pain. By the time a book is “ready” to be published, odds are pretty decent we’ll hate our own book and hope we never have to read it again.

***FYI: The feeling passes…eventually. Most of the time. Maybe.

Publishing Drudgery

For those who still want to traditionally publish, there is the drudgery of writing synopses and query letters and researching agents. Add the drudgery of the actual querying and subsequent waiting.

Meanwhile, most of us have day jobs and laundry and family members who expect to be fed every day #HighMaintenance.

Oh, and make sure to start writing the next book (refer to the love-fest above).

For those who choose a non-traditional path, we have to locate and hire the best people. Or maybe learn to format or design a cover ourselves. There may be multiple iterations of a cover. Then, if we believe we’ve found all our typos in our seventeen (hundred) passes? *clutches sides laughing*

And if we believe the proofreaders and editors caught all them too? Maybe, but..

On top of this, add in bookkeeping, record keeping, accounting, building a platform, understanding keywords and SEO and blah, blah, blah.

Suffice to say that YES, writing is a WONDERFUL job! I wouldn’t be here twenty years later if it was all bad. Yet, I do have to confess that choosing to become a writer showed me the worst parts of my character…in Technicolor.

I didn’t start blogging because I EVER believed my blog would be what it is today with millions of unique visitors. Want to know why I began blogging? I had ZERO self-discipline.

I’d become a person who didn’t want to do anything that I didn’t LOVE. If I wasn’t having FUN, then clearly I’d chosen the wrong career, right?

Wrong.

The Fortitude Factor

People who reach their goals and dreams are different for sure. Are they more gifted? Talented? Unusually good-looking? Perhaps. But, more often than not, these folks excel at handling the boring parts of the dream.

To which I shall refer to one of my favorite books on achievement. James Clear’s Atomic Habits (which I HIGHLY recommend), is fabulous. Yet, this quote in particular piqued my attention:

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next, one diet to the next, one business idea to the next. As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy—even if the old one was still working.

~ James Clear, Atomic Habits

You have NO idea how often I hear, “If I only had the TIME, I’d write more.” As if time is laying around in the couch cushions with the petrified Cheerios and the TV remote no one’s seen Twilight was popular.

Hey, I have been guilty here, too. Still can fall into old (bad) habits if I fail to remain vigilant. Yes, even after a pandemic when we all had more time than we knew what to do with.

The reason people (mistakenly) believe they must FIND TIME? It’s likely because they’ve hit the part of the writing process that’s actual WORK. It’s ceased to be a glorious high.

And, if they don’t start a new book (chasing the high), then they put off writing altogether using excuses more creative than their plot ideas.

Hey! Told y’all I have been guilty too…so no hating .

Yet, when we look at anything worth achieving, from writing an amazing book to being a great parent to running a profitable business, we see that it is how these individuals handle the millions of unremarkable unexciting and downright soul-crushing (but necessary) tasks that makes all the difference.

We see the same common denominator in every success story, from the legendary athletes willing to do the same drills over and over until perfected to the entrepreneurs who mined drudgery for the edge they needed to outpace all competition.

Fortitude: Can You Handle Being BORED?

Everyone loves new beginnings. The new relationship with no baggage and all hugs and kisses, the smell of the fresh notebook, the empty page waiting for all of our brilliant ideas. We love the new blog because it holds so much promise.

Then there is the new workout from YouTube, the new diet we found on Instagram, the new craft project we saw on Pinterest….

A lot of us fixate on whether we can handle the BIG moments, the MAJOR crises but I’d actually offer different advice. We need to ask the hard question.

Can we fall in love with pain and process as much as the end result? Everyone loves the summit selfie but few want the climb. It comes with hypoxia and pretty good odds you’ll die and no one will be able to claim your frozen corpse…ever.

Many of us LOVE the idea of six-pack abs…but we LOVE tacos more. We struggle after a few weeks. Why? Because we are tired, sore, and even though we’ve been working out for a WHOLE MONTH, we still don’t have a ripped physique.

Heck, we can’t even see a muscle. We’re tired of the pile of smelly clothes, the aches and pains and having to measure all our food. It isn’t FUN. In fact, it’s downright tedious.

We don’t LOVE the gym, the job, the book, the YouTube channel anymore because it’s day after day of nothing all that special…and pain.

Lots of that.

Catching Fire

Yet, all these small actions add up over time. When we embrace the dull actions and commit, we will eventually ignite. Ray Bradbury poetically asserted paper had an ignition point of 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The actual number is about thirty degrees higher.

Paper will burst into flames at about 480 degrees Fahrenheit (without being directly exposed to flame).

Using this analogy, let’s take our metaphorical paper and heat it to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then 250, then 300, then 440, then 451. Boy, this is boring and taking a LONG time and taking energy. Nothing is happening.

Heat it to 460, then 470, then 477 and then throw up your hands because paper NEVER sets on fire without a high-budget marketing plan…I mean match.

Or, maybe there is a marked transformation somewhere between 477 degrees and 482 degrees. At 477 degrees Fahrenheit all looks the same. Oh but add in a little more energy and IGNITION. And this ignition all occurs within a range of a couple degrees.

Then…BOOM!

The same goes for becoming a successful author (as in a professional who’s PAID to play with our imaginary friends). A major key to success largely rests on how we handle the boring parts. Can we keep going, keep putting on the heat when it looks as if nothing is happening?

Success doesn’t have a canonized ignition point. If it did, being successful would be easy. Fortitude is a massive game changer.

If I knew I had to write five books, three series, add in a hundred blogs and forty three good reviews to reach literary stardom? Dang skippy I’d stick with it. There wouldn’t be ANY drudgery, because I’d have certainty.

But that’s the problem.

The ignition point for succeeding in anything is anything but certain (and might not even exist in some cases). It differs between people, generations, goals, industries, abilities, etc. We DON’T KNOW and THAT is precisely why drudgery can so easily undo us if we lack the fortitude to outlast it.

In the End

I want all your dreams to catch fire—your dreams to write, create, to be an excellent parent or partner, to achieve the remarkable.

If you can appreciate that every masterpiece began as a blank canvas, a hunk of marble, an ugly cement foundation, a sketch, or an idea and that IN BETWEEN there was a lot of wash, rinse, repeat and fortitude (which we can control)? You’re on your way to reaching those goals.

We’re rarely limited by our talent, yet we’re all too often hobbled by impatience. Drudgery makes us cave in too soon. It takes time to hone skills, learn a craft, build an audience, etc. Just keep pressing and hopefully you’ll see your ignition point and it will be the most beautiful light you’ve ever seen.

Then you get to do it again for the next goal . *smoochies*

But, you’ll be better and stronger because you know to expect the span of suck before the breakthrough! You will have strengthened and honed the fortitude required to finish. And the cool thing is, the more we work it, the stronger it gets.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I love hearing from you! Do you struggle with the doldrums in your dreams? Is it hard not to just start something new? Are your fortitude muscles weak? Have you been starting over so much that maybe that’s why you aren’t further along? Are you so sick of your book you want to cry? #GotTheTShirt

Don’t you wish we had the magic “temperature” where our dreams LIT UP? Some way to know if we were close? Or even heading in the correct direction? Have you struggled with learning to finish what you start? Been too easily distracted?

The post Fortitude: Dream, Do, Then Keep on DOING Day After Day appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Schadenfreude is a word that many of y’all might not have heard of, yet we’ve all felt it. Interestingly enough, it can be a great tool to keep our audience interested and breathlessly wanting more. What is schadenfreude, other than a fifty dollar word we can toss around to impress friends and colleagues?

Schadenfreude—a combination of the German words for damage and joy—is the pleasure we feel at the misfortune of others.

Before anyone gets too judgy on me, we have all felt it.

Have you ever had some driver on the highway who believed they were above the rules and didn’t need to merge and take turns? Instead they sped up the shoulder so they could cut the line instead of patiently waiting their turn? Schadenfreude is the delicious enjoyment you felt when there actually was a police officer present who summarily pulled them over and ticketed the bejeezus out of them.

Don’t you judge me. Y’all know you love it, too.

We humans, by and large, have a sense of justice encoded in our psyche. This is why even a preschooler has a level of acumen usually reserved for an IRS auditor when adults pass out candy. They sense what is fair and unfair, right and wrong.

This ingrained sense of right and wrong and fair and unfair is part of what drives our need for a sense of justice. We don’t like it when others “get away” with doing something we perceive as “wrong.”

Shades of Schadenfreude

Therein lies the deliciousness of schadenfreude…the what we consider “wrong.”

Like most things involving the human psyche, this isn’t black and white, rather it exists on a spectrum. There is wonderful thrill of pleasure we feel when a speeder gets a (deserved) ticket that can go as far as total dehumanization of others and a delight at their complete destruction.

Schadenfreude is story jet fuel.

Before you might believe you are too “evolved” for such feelings, how many movie plots pivot on the bullies finally getting a taste (or more) of their own medicine? When there is a gross power imbalance, and that imbalance is abused, we humans can turn positively feral.

One of my favorite authors, Lucy Foley, wields schadenfreude like few other authors I’ve read. The Guest List and The Midnight Feast are page-turning dark delights. Alice Berman is another author who uses this darker side of human nature to create a thrilling story in I Eat Men Like Air.

Why do I love these books? Because these authors (stories) pick apart “the beautiful people.” From old money to self-anointed Instagram influencer demi-gods-in -their-own-minds, these stories pry at something primal in all of us…that some people are “better.”

Instead of characters who are grateful for a blessed life dripping in privilege, they are the entitled. They amuse themselves at the suffering of others purely for sport. Not only that, but they take great delight in how they, themselves, are above the rules. When these sorts of people commit crimes, the “real” world cannot punish them.

But Author Gods can.

Lovely Loathing

Foley and Berman are of the suspense-thriller variety, but Kevin Follet is another author who is unparalleled at whipping up a fire of resentment that rivals the fires of Gehenna. When I read Pillars of the Earth, I literally had to keep taking breaks reading the book because my own level of hatred overwhelmed me.

Like any book, Pillars of the Earth isn’t for everyone. It nearly wasn’t for me. Every time I considered throwing in the towel, I I found I couldn’t stop because I HAD to know if there was any kind of justice in this mad, mad world.

All of these books have a common thread. Raw, beautiful exquisite revenge justice.

We are ALL wired with a sense of right and wrong.

Even sociopaths have a sense of justice.

Read Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door. A sociopath might not lose any sleep emptying your bank account, but would be horrified if you did the same to him.

Follet masterfully wove situations where I was rendered utterly and hopelessly powerless.

What is the epitome of being a victim? ZERO POWER. When evil strikes, what does it do to a person?

It strips away their power.

From money crimes to sex crimes, to hate crimes to murder it’s the same. Arson, abduction, terrorism, shootings, sex trafficking, burglaries, large-scale vandalism, gossip, slander, lies, it hits us all in the same place.

It makes us afraid and vulnerable and impotent.

What makes it worse? When we KNOW who’s done this, but this is a person no one can touch.

This was what made me practically foam at the mouth reading Pillars of the Earth. Because the story is (loosely) based on actual history. In the Middle Ages, nobility and high-ranking clergy got away with a LOT of really, really bad things.

Talk about powerlessness to the power of a thousand.

*Kristen punching things* *grabbing for inhaler* *ponders subscribing to Hallmark channel*

Yet, it kept me listening (turning pages) because I could not rest until the world was set right and justice was served. I wasn’t even sure it would be or could be. And if it was, HOW?

THAT, my friends, is some fine storytelling (so I am extremely glad I didn’t return the book). Also, THAT is the raw power of schadenfreude.

Villains & Schadenfreude

There are many ways to create legendary villains. And, keep in mind, there are different types of villains. Though, I recommend giving the villain a sympathetic goal, like the word wrong exists on a spectrum, so does the word sympathetic.

I get that far too many “normal people” think writing is easy. That if they only had enough time they’d be the next J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin. Sadly, no number of lockdowns is enough to disabuse some folks of the notion that storytelling is more than playing with imaginary friends.

To tell great stories, we are required to think differently than regular people.

***Refer to 13 Reasons Writers are Mistaken for Serial Killers

A book is more than a lot of flowery words, it is a peek into what makes people tick. Which is all well and good except some people’s “clockwork” is arguably manufactured in HELL.

Villains (antagonists) cannot want what they want for no reason. “Just cuz” is not good enough. When storytelling, we must be capable of violence. That is the only way for the “happy ending” to have any meaning.

***And before you think this is only for gritty genres, remember most fairy tales have some pretty horrifying villains.

Even the most revolting people in all the works I have thus far mentioned, deep down, believed themselves the heroes of their own stories. No matter how horrible they were, they genuinely could not see themselves honestly. Their world was a funhouse mirror designed to warp them into something they were not.

That said, some characters deserve destruction for one simple reason.

They are beyond redemption.

They are the rabid dogs of fiction. Writers and audiences alike know that to let some characters live or remain free is unacceptable. They are poison.

Why schadenfreude is such an incredible literary device is because it speaks to justice, which is universal. When crafting a villain (or even side characters who serve as antagonists), what universal rules are they breaking? Why? How? Now, can you dig deeper until the pages BLEED?

Villains & Cognitive Distortion

To a degree, all characters in our story are dealing with cognitive distortions. If they aren’t, then they aren’t interesting. All humans struggle with personalizing, catastrophizing, minimizing, justifying, unattainable standards, wishful thinking, etc.

In fact, for your touring pleasure, here is a list of 50 Common Cognitive Distortions.

All characters should have a cognitive distortion–to a degree–because all characters should arc.

While the MC or other positive forces (allies), grow, mature and evolve, the villain does the opposite. The villain devolves. They become even more convinced of their righteous cause, even more controlling, raise their already absurd standards to new levels of ridiculous, etc.

Ideally, we will give some reason for why the villain does what he does or believes what he believes. While we might not be able to, say, empathize with the actual cognitive distortion, we (the audience) can empathize with either having experienced the distortion ourselves OR the reason for the distortion.

For example, I cannot relate to the same level of entitlement as Francesca Meadows in The Midnight Feast. I am not old money, reared to believe I am privileged and entitled BUT I DO viscerally remember the first time I met another kid named “Kristen” and the raw fury I felt that another kid in my preschool had MY NAME!

MY NAME. MINE.

It’s a silly example, but she had to be destroyed that childlike rage is something a good story can tap into to give us the proverbial “sympathy for the devil.”

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin

The Bible, in the Book of Daniel, tells the story of Belshazzar, who was King Nebuchadnezzar’s successor. Talk about a guy with an ego problem! He holds a banquet for all the nobility and thinks that calling for all the holy vessels from the Jewish Temple is a great idea…since they totally didn’t have enough cups *flips hair*.

What Belshazzar didn’t know—and likely would not have cared even if he did—was that he’d committed a great sacrilege. Y’all know the phrase we toss around, “Read the writing on the wall.” Well, this is where it comes from.

After Belshazzar uses all the holy vessels as Dixie Cups for his Meta-Influencer BBQ, a disembodied hand appears and writes Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin on the wall.

He can’t read the writing on the wall (nod to Shakespeare and IRONY) and calls for Daniel to translate the message, which was in Aramaic.

God tells Belshazzar that 1) his days are numbered (another nod to Shakespeare) 2) that his kingdom will fall, and 3) that he has been weighed, measured and found wanting.

There are good reasons that we find all the best stories mirrored in Scripture or Shakespeare.

Humans don’t change, and if humans don’t change, then—ipso facto—villains don’t change.

The entitled trust fund baby can genuinely believe they are “better” than others. Yet, though they are deeply believe they are better than others, they simultaneously fear their days are numbered. Frequently, they know that while they are better than everyone else, they’re never “good enough” for the person (people) who matters.

Additionally, with villains like this, their pride becomes their Achille’s Heel. They so wrapped up in their agenda, they are blind. Because they are blind, they cannot help but fall.

And none of us (readers) mind if they’re given a little push.

Schadenfreude & Catharsis

From Edgar Allen Poe’s The Telltale Heart to Kathryn Stockett’s The Help we audiences aren’t happy until there is some form of comeuppance.

***Ironically, in The Telltale Heart the MC is the villain. His own inborn sense that evil cannot go unpunished is the point of the story.

All stories are only as strong as their villains. If we are wishy washy on the villain, the rest of the book is bland. When we hold back on our villain, we inadvertently wreck our stakes.

There is something primal in all good stories. Humans have deep sympathy for the unavenged, the disappeared, and the disenfranchised. Every day, we see injustice and evil, and every day we know that the people causing much of this suffering will never be called to account.

Writers & Schadenfreude

Do you wield a little schadenfreude when you write?

I always find it a bit funny when readers ask if my villains are based on people I know because…DUH. YES. #SeriouslyDumbQuestion

Are they wholly patterned off ONE person? No. That would be copying not creating. They’re a collage of a million little events that made me…ME. And I get to enjoy a little bit if schadenfreude by casting them in my world .

*insert evil laughter*

It’s very therapeutic and cheaper than a defense attorney.

Do you see how just a touch of schadenfreude can also help with a “too perfect” character (maybe an MC)?

“Cutting someone down to size” is enjoyable in life and in fiction. Though we didn’t go into it today, can you see how schadenfreude can work in a redemption story, a love story, or wherever a character needs to grown and learn some humility?

I LOVE hearing from you!

Had you ever heard the term schadenfreude? Are you now committed to now finding ways to work this word into everyday conversation? Do you enjoy books and movies that deal out at least a little revenge?

Am I the only person who revels when a hidden cop pulls over a reckless driver?

Thoughts? Opinions? Favorite tales of schadenfreude?

And remember, my perennial author branding book, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World and my mystery thriller The Devil’s Dance are both on sale on Kindle right now for only .99.

Whether it is comments, shares, sales, or reviews, these are the things that keep us content producers (and authors) going and able to keep delivering. I always appreciate your support and love being able to keep doing this for you!

The post Schadenfreude: Misfortune, Revenge, Justice & Catharsis appeared first on Kristen Lamb.