Just Write Cool Shit

No One Cares For Timid Literature

Apr 05, 2025

“Just write cool shit” seems extremely obvious, but since I’ve had multiple conversations on and off Substack about it, I figure an elaboration was warranted for the benefit of whoever needs to hear it. So, here I am, writing about writing (gross.) Just hear me out, because there’s more to it, beyond cool, beyond shit.

I feel like this advice also falls next to “write sincerely” or “embrace cringe” as acts of creative freedom. Your definition of “cool” might sound like the stupidest thing in the universe to someone else.1 Authorial confidence, or strength, lies in your acceptance that your version of “cool” will not appeal to everyone. It’s a paradox: to be cool you must be willing to be uncool. No one can teach this confidence, but I never, ever want to see you asking “can I [do this] in my novel” ever again, for a start. Every time I see these posts it’s the most amateur-ass signal. My kneejerk reaction is to just comment “no.” No, never ever try to write the thing you thought of in your own brain. “Is [this] a good idea?” No. Nothing is ever a good idea. Yet here we are!

Stop asking permission, for chrissake.

Getting critique partners so you can better implement your vision, good. Bouncing ideas around with them if you’re stuck, good. But don’t ever ask permission. Timidity, bad.

(Just remember: no one is obligated to read anything you write. Embrace it. Pat that thought on the head.)

One of the big reasons I detest things like “authortube” is that ~~they’re all hacks~~ they all come at the idea of “how to write” as clickbait drivel, and then go on to prescribe how they would write (and are probably just regurgitating the same information they got from each other, or from their MFA, or Save the Cat.) All of it is wrong. “Never do this, never do that.” Dumb. Do whatever you want. The wider you read, the more you’ll see someone before you has already done the exact opposite of whatever their “advice” is. No one is obligated to read it, but you can actually write whatever, and however you want. Develop Your Skill and Have Confidence. There, that’s my article in a sentence. If you write like these paint-by-numbers fools that are practically human chatGPT chodes, there’s zero chance you will ever be able to find your voice and allow your artistic soul to thrive. (Yes, writing books is art. “But I don’t write hoity toity literature.” It’s still art, numbskull. Why do I ever need to clarify this. I don’t care if you write reverse harem elf smut. Lowbrow art is still art.) You’ll never know if there’s anyone else out there yearning for your “cool”—and that’s the biggest sin, actually, to not allow them the chance to discover your voice. So craft it.

Here I begin elaborating on specifics:

doesn’t mean a chainmail-bikini-wearing, sword-wielding babe who probably fights wizards will automatically a compelling narrative make. This will put you in trope jail, and we (the reader) don’t want no bread and water.

She requires a story, or she might as well just be painted on the side of a van—and that’s cool too, but we’re talking about literature, here.

(Aside: “But Lisa how do I escape the tropes,” you cry, tearing your hair out. “I need to be original!” There is no escape: everything is a trope, and tropes are narrative tools, but they should not be the thing that defines your novel. Every time I see one of those trope maps on Instagram with all the squiggly arrows pointing to a book cover I want to vomit. Also, there’s no such thing as original. Everything has been said. That’s OK, because it hasn’t been said by you.)

Plot is not the same as story. These words are not interchangeable. You can outline a plot; you have to write the story outside the plot. You might not even outline the plot before you start, and anyway plot is the most overrated piece of what makes a book, it’s just “what happens” but not why it happens. Hell, you can have a whole book with no plot at all and it can still be really good, depending on execution. Story is what makes the book engaging. I’m not here to read a textbook, or a spreadsheet of events. This happens then this happens. Yawn. Story is how the author works with chainmail-bikini-babe to convince the reader she is cool, with all the freedoms the novel, as an art form, allows us. She should to live and breathe, she should fear and love and hate and weep. Maybe even all at once. She should feel the rivulets of sweat down her back from the exertion of lopping off goblin heads or whatever. Why is she lopping off goblin heads? I dunno, put the answer in your story.

Your cool might also be completely structural, and have nothing to do with chainmail bikinis. Do you think switching between 1^st and 3^rd person mid-sentence—to the confusion of some—is cool? Me too, I wrote a whole ass book like that. So, yeah, “folk horror in space” or “worrisome mushroom science” is cool (to me,) but again, ideas are a dime a dozen, the execution of those ideas, any ideas, is what takes it a novel. That, friends, is the hard part.

Cool could be actions, atmosphere, grammatical experimentation, anything. I wrote a fantasy book where there’s no magic in the entire first 3^rd while the characters banter in prison. Swordfights and bank heists are cool.

I wrote a book with so many Space Cigarettes that it triggers nicotine cravings in some readers. I know, because they DM me and type ferociously about it.

Alien heavy metal horse cavalry charges as a vehicle (ba-dum-tsch) for a coming-of-age story.

Just write cool shit.

Do you think Samuel Beckett gave a single fuck when he wrote half a book with only ONE paragraph break? How about when Cormac McCarthy doesn’t include quotation marks just because he doesn’t like how they look? “Figure it out,” says he. “Deal with it.” (So cool.) Could you imagine Michael Moorcock going on some internet forum and asking “Would you guys read a fantasy book about an emo, sickly albino?” No. He just wrote it2. And it’s cool as hell.

Back to plot: we must decide how much value we place on beginning, middle, and end. Do we prize it more than character? Do we place it below philosophizing through dialogue, or whatever? These are all your calls to make. The largest part of Writing Cool is having the confidence in the creative decisions that have nothing to do with swords OR wizards. Again, it’s a sort of paradox.

A satisfactory character arc doesn’t mean a gentle curve. Satisfying can mean a lot of things, and an arc can take all sorts of shapes. Could be totally flat—the character ends the book the same way he started. So how do you go about it? Write good. We like. (“But Lisa, define ‘good.’” There is no good, only subjective perception. Just like “cool.” Oh shit!!)

Am I a rambling mess? Maybe.

What do I mean by “write sincerely,” anyway? Death of Sincerity has been a topic lately, in the cultural analysis zeitgeist or whatever you want to call it. Here’s my sum up: think back to movie classics, before the Whedonization of dialogue.3 Now, imagine virtually any of those movies being made today. You can’t picture it, can you? Death of Sincerity is one of the reasons you can’t. “But those are movies, we’re talking about books.” It’s everywhere. If you’ve ever once thought to yourself “I don’t remember the last time I read and enjoyed a book published by the big 5 within the last 20 years” you may not realize just what it is that puts you off from new books/movies but Death of Sincerity is certainly a reason. If “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth” but all we get are bad lies—you ever talk to a bad liar?—then the fictions/truths being sold to us are untrustworthy. And that feels gross.

Too many people have been conditioned to think genuinely enjoying something, enjoyment without irony, will get them ridiculed. So we get “Well, THAT just happened!” ad nauseum.

Gag. Definition of faking cool, which is incredibly lame. “I was just pretending to be stupid, right guys?”

We need art that takes risks. “Oh no, I might offend someone.” So? That’s the point. Stop caring. You might offend someone by giving your character a chainmail bikini. You might offend someone by having no chainmail bikinis at all. “What if no one likes it?” Are you an artist or what? I don’t personally care for giant mechas but if you write a book compelling enough, sincere enough, with the care and attention of someone who wants giant mechas in their work of fiction to be more than just a thing that is there for the squiggly trope arrows, thereby convincing me it is cool in the context of your universe, I will be more likely to read it—and so will many others. You love giant mechas—give them the narrative and fun sentences that they deserve. Some readers will be enticed simply by the giant mecha on the cover, true—some will be drawn in once word of mouth gets around that it’s more than just “giant mecha book.” Just look at all those wildly popular litRPGs. I don’t personally understand that genre at all, but apparently tons of people get a kick out of it. Maybe one day I’ll read one of them.

To sum up:

Think of the things that you believe to be wicked, this is easy.
The challenging part is the execution, have fun! I can’t overstate how difficult this step is! And no one can teach it!
Good implementation is what we (the audience) want. Work on your craft and confidence and you can get away with basically whatever. A blessing and a curse!
Cool people confidently utilize tropes without falling into pastiche or cliché! They probably don’t even consider if it’s a trope before they write it!
Be true!

And I, being unsure how to end an essay—if you can call this mess an essay—call this The End.

I hope it does!!!

Mechanical Pulp

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