Chad Wife

they never said it to me directly, but they had a few gay friends and explained what being gay was to me in a way that made it clear to me that they were ok with it

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

I really hate to be that person, but this is a misunderstanding of that specific advice from Chuck Palahniuk. Firstly, this advice was originally framed as a time limited challenge. I think it was for a year, if i recall correctly. The rest of the piece goes on to explain how one should do this. He describes it as "unpacking". He wants you to show, through actions and words rather than a simple descriptor, how the character feels, what they are thinking. It actually ends up with the author writing MORE words to say the same thing. To paraphrase an example he gave, since I dont have the essay in question right in front of me: Don't write, "He thought Becky didn't like it when he stayed out late." Instead, write something like "On the nights he came home late, he would find the house dark and cold. Becky would have long gone to bed. When he woke up the next morning, she would have only made a cup of coffee for herself, his mug left untouched where it would have usually been setting, steaming on the table waiting for him.". It's about show don't tell, and is meant as an exercise in unpacking those kinds of words into more immersive text, rather than being a solid rule about economy of prose.