A new chapter, slotted in before the others

All right, y'all, we have a new chapter in the artist development workbook. I'm gonna be real with you — I'm a maniac, I've been creating a lot of things for a lot of time. I had two chapters written that I was pretty, pretty happy with, and while I was finishing them up, I was like, "No, we need to go backwards and put this one in," and then tweak those other chapters to reflect the work done.

So that's what happened. This new chapter is called Positioning Comparatively, and it's a framework I've been seeing really help artists lately. I thought I was gonna put it later in the book, and then I realized it actually has to go earlier.

The exercise: defining traits and their opposites

Pick five or so artists you really like — ideally, ones you're likely to be compared to. For each one, write down a defining trait in the left column. It doesn't have to be a 10 out of 10 at that trait. You could argue that a black metal band like Mayhem or Behemoth was the scariest group ever, but Marilyn Manson was just scary enough for the public to ingest. You could make an argument like that. The trait doesn't need to be a thing where they're the most extreme version of it. It just needs to be a defining trait that comes to mind when you think of the artist.

Then write the opposite of each trait. If you get stuck, just type "opposite of [that trait]" into Google, pick a word that means something to you, and move on. Simple as that.

Plotting on a scale

Once you have your traits, you make a scale. For example: 1 being raw, 10 being polished/overproduced. Plot where those artists fall on it. Then plot where you want to be comparatively.

What you're trying to do here is look at the groups people are going to compare you to, since you don't wanna be the mid version of any of them. You wanna be who they think of in a world where there's differentiation. If all those groups are a 7 on that scale and you feel like you're a 7 too, well, that doesn't leave much differentiation. But if other things set you apart, you can start to see where you wanna create from.

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