Or Questionable Author Services

With the proliferation of social network services and instant gratification, it seems more and more questionable consultants have slithered out from the reefs, people willing to monetize your virtual socialization outreach, maximize the lateral and vertical interconnectivity of your website, and, if you’re involved in the arts, people willing to create blockbuster plots and unforgettable characters, all for a fee, of course. What, you think these people are working this hard to right social injustices? To rid the reef of barracudas? Or is that barracudi?

It’s the concept of hiring a creative expert, that leaves me doing a gaping fish interpretation. What self-respecting, bona fide, can’t-stop-thinking sort of writer has to resort to some hack to come up with a plot for a book? I’m scratching my scales over this, because, forgive me for perhaps suffering from delusional standards, but isn’t it sort of integral to the craft of writing to actually plot a novel yourself? Good characters and writing aside, isn’t plot the hook, the skeleton, the navigational chart that makes a novel what it is?

Oh, silly me, apparently I contract out for that and then throw in a few characters I’ve generated through an APP I downloaded or contracted from some Tweeple, assemble it all in Word that will spell check, grammar check, and even do a style check according to the style manual I stipulate, slap my name on the thing and then shove the whole mess over to Lulu and call myself a writer. Yep, just like Richler, Atwood, King, and Ondaatje.

Oh, but there’s that small problem that Richler, Atwood, King and Ondaatje all actually came up with IDEAS, and built CHARACTERS, and PLOTTED a story around those IDEAS and CHARACTERS. Wow, talk about WORK. Hours and hours and hours of work.

Plot consultant indeed.

If you need a plot consultant, you need to find another line of work.

Harsh words. But true. At least in this zone of the reef.