Anyone who writes knows there are several mindsets with which to begin. Graham Greene divided his own fiction into two categories: novels and entertainments. The latter were his spy novels and such, the former his serious work.
I made the distinction to my students between writing inside-out and writing outside-in. The latter are the entertainments, in which you begin with parameters defined outside yourself, such things as genre traditions, audience tastes and demands, and here success is usually measured in popularity, in sales.
Writing inside-out is a different matter entirely. Salinger wrote that an artist's only concern is to try for some kind of perfection, which is measured on his terms and no other. This is writing inside-out. Success has nothing to do with popularity. Schoenberg wrote that art is not for all and if it is for all, it is not art. Writing inside-out. Writing outside-in is not art, though it can be skillfully crafted.
A rare writer can do both at once. Durrenmatt does in such plays as The Physicists and The Visit. But this is rare, more rare than many critics suppose.
This came to mind as I was reading about the development of Homeland, the series I just watched and admired. Initially the marine character was only included for the first two seasons but became so popular they gave him three and a romance with the female lead. This is pure outside-in writing. It's not bad writing, it just has a different motivation than the other. Outside-in is about popularity, making an audience happy. Inside-out is about self-discovery, making the writer wiser. Maybe others will come along for the ride.
I've done both in my career but I definitely prefer inside-out writing and in the latter years of my career did this more and more - and today exclusively. But both are honorable work.
As a young writer, I was more elitist than this. In grad school, unlike grad writers today, we thought outside-in writers were hacks. Times have changed. It's been years since I've had an inside-out writer in my class. Everyone today seems to want financial success and popularity, not self-discovery and a tad of wisdom. There are very few contemporary writers who can hold my interest ... I should say American writers, because European and Third World writers still do more soul searching than our popular writers do. There probably are many inside-out writers hidden in cyberspace. Maybe one day someone will discover them.
