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greygirlbeast said something interesting today, about people talking about craft of writing and how it seems to her to be a search for the magic button. (We've talked about the magic button here before, I think.)I talk about--and think about--craft a lot. An enormous amount, really. And as I can only speak for myself, in my case, it's not a search for the magic get-published button. I've got that, after all. What it is for me, actually, is an attempt to break away from the magic get-published button. To move away from what I do by rote, automatically, and into a wider space. To hone the craft that makes the most of my talent, in other words.
Here's what I think about talent. It's true: some people have more than others. And I suspect if one is going to make it as a writer, one walks in with a free card. One thing you can do coming out of the gate. One aspect of the tremendous interwoven craft of writing that you're naturally good at. It may be worldbuilding or plot or voice or language or structure or theme. Something you do right, from day one.
Here's a secret. Once you reach a certain level of competence, books and stories sell because of what you do right, not because of what you don't do wrong. You want to talk about what J.K. Rowling does wrong? We can talk all week.
It doesn't matter. Because of what she does right.
But here's another secret. The more things you can learn to do right, the more people will like your work.
I got characters for free. I earned pathos next. Grounding detail. Then I learned how to plot. Theme after that. Then voice. Started selling stories about then. What's that, six?
Worldbuilding... um... still working on that one. Sentences too. Getting better at sentences. Worldbuilding. Heck. This is complicated by the fact that "you can't cut one clean." Like a cobweb, every thread affects the shape of every other thread. Cut one, they all shiver.
Ideally, you do them all well.
Realistically?
Surgeons specialize.
Doesn't mean I can't dream.
Progress notes for 15 August 2005:
Carnival
New Words: 1,631
Total Words: 38,288 / 44250
Pages: 177
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Mammalian Assistance: Marlowe came and was huggy cat for a bit. I am persona non grata to the dogges because yesterday was toenail day, and I did poorly. Three bleeders. One on the Dane that would not quit.
kit_kindred is a hero of the revolution, as he handled most of the deck swabbing.Stimulants: Seltzer, Rumpleminz
Exercise: none today. Previously, walking and gothercise
Mail: nomail, unless you count a Locus
Today's words Word don't know: entangler, surplusing, Siddhartha, branes, mistressed, consciousnesses, burdenless
Words I'm surprised Word do know: illation
Tyop du jour: n/a
Darling du jour: If we can't be trained, we can be broken.
Books in progress, but not at all quickly: Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet War Effort, 1941-1945; David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe; David Crystal, Pronouncing Shakespeare; Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade
Books read: China Mieville, Iron Council; Peter Watts, Blindsight; Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?; Constance Brown Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life
Interesting research tidbits of the day: n/a
Mean things: Sneaking up on Vincent figuring out just what Angelo did. Bad Angelo. No biscuit.
Other writing-related work: I should probably read this slush.
***
Fear Death By Fanfic. Just gorgeous. via
rutemple- Mood:
if you ain't scared, you ain't - Music:Patti Griffin - Rain
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Comments
(Except where we choose to interpolate explosions and/or conclusions, of course.)
;-)
Where did you get that magic button? I want one!
You get it free with fifteen years of practice.
Uncannily true. Thus far, I've got exactly one thing going for me: I can do inner monologues. Everything else is a painful grind.
I'm adding this entry to my memories for present and future reference. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words about Hammered/Scardown in Your Other Blog, BTW. *g* There's one more set of covers to rip off, I fear....
*sulks*
Like, Diana Wynne Jones probably walked in with the characters card and actually, I think she was lucky and also walked in with the plot card. But she's got them ALL by now.
I walked in with the plot card and maybe half of the world building card, but I HAD NO CHARACTER card. Woe. My journal is named after the first character I wrote who felt alive. I'm still working on it. So occasionally I steal other people's characters and write fanfiction about them to get a feel for what alive characters feel like. Then I put them back and try my own again.
Mad.
Mad, I tell you.
You know, you could just change the names. ;-) it's okay to cheat as long as you don't get caught.
This is very, very interesting, because I can think about my writer friends and pinpoint a Thing (or two) that each one does naturally. I got plot and characters for free. Grounding detail is coming along nicely, thx to a certain fuzzy bear who took some time a while back to sport me a heads' up.
Still working on the other stuff. *sigh*
Brilliant.
Hee. I once got a comment in a workshop about how well I did a main female character's youth and immaturity. Thing is, Kalian's only a year or so *younger* than me. I hope that since nobody's mentioned the male characters in their mid-to-late-thirties, that means I got them reasonably right.
Most people write teenage girls realy badly. *g*
Thanks for the post, that's a lot of how I feel. I'm not sure which card I got when I came in, and I'm not sure which I've collected since then... but hey. I can write lots of words :)
And I liked the bit about Rowling. I get into snits with friends all the time about "blah blah blah famous author X can't write blah blah blah" and I defend that for all they are doing wrong, they have to be doing something right. Something that appeals to the audience, no matter what one's opinion of the audience is.
Me, I just want to do something right that appeals.
Thanks again, this is a topic I've run into so many times. There is no magic button, and what works for one author, is not going to work for all of them.
The bits where my brain is chewing away on stuff are like the moments in a fight where the combatants fall back and stare panting at each other, waiting for the shift that will tell them what to do next.
Seriously, I like how some of these skills look like they nest or have prerequisites. Sentences is (are) a part of Language. Voice is a part of Language, too, or maybe Sentences contribute to Voice, like, if you have Sentences down cold, you get Voice for half price. Structure helps with Plot, which helps with Theme, which helps Structure. Grounding Detail contributes to Characters.
Described like this, learning writing as a craft is like my experience learning history. Once you've got one element pinned down, like really knowing about the Napoleonic War, or really knowing what women's skirts were shaped like in Europe for the last 400 years, you can pin everything else relative to that. If you walk in with one writing skill solid, it's that much easier to learn the other bits, because you have a stable place to stand. Now all you need is the lever of insanity and the fulcrum of dedication and 99% perspiration.
Sorry for the horrid mix of metaphors. I'm up past my bedtime. Just had to comment.
Or rugmaking, tapestry weaving.... whatever.
If I got anything for free, it was plot. And the basics of grammar and spelling, which I wouldn't count except that after critting so much awful stuff I'm grateful that no matter how bad anything I write is, it's at least not incomprehensible gibberish.
But everybody's process is different. Specifically, for some people it's *very* black-box. They put stuff in, they get stories out, and what happens in the middle is a bit mysterious.
And dude, what works. You know?
(I'd say something about the card needing polishing, but I think that metaphor just collapsed on me.)
In my case, it's probably an instinct for how narration and viewpoint interact at the sentence/paragraph level; what makes a particular narrative immediate, or detached; what details and sentences work and don't work in omniscient present tense, or second person past, or so on.
But just because I was good at this for a thirteen-year-old novice writer, doesn't mean I was any match for someone, who lacking the instinct, had spent the past five years learning how to do viewpoint right.
PS. What's your verdict on Iron Council? I tend to find China Mieville's books something of a challenge to get through - a rewarding challenge, but a challenge, nevertheless.
Yes, yes. Very yes.
It didn't come right away, though. I struggled for a while, not really feeling things very well, writing from a pretty shallow POV. Then The Monk showed up, and random things started happening around him, and the most wonderful human things would pop out of his mouth. And the other folks interacted with him, and not only were their doings in his vicinity more alive, but they were more there when they weren't around him, too.
So I've got the voice, I've got the world. I'm working plot. I've got the characters, that's for sure. If that's the one thing I do right, and I'm counting the number of people who are on my flist just because of Yoshi . . . and that's before they've met his sister, and his sister's bodyguard (who's absolutely delicious, so says Yoshi), and their father the Monkey Emperor.
Now I just gotta finish the damn books!
Ahem.
Sorry.
I think conflict is my free card. Characters and voice next. Still wrestling with the plot and theme cards. But oh, the grounding detail card continues to elude me!
...listen to Garrison Keillor. Or read his books. He *ROCKS* it.
I started out wanting to tell stories. And it turns out that I'm still not, after everything else I've learned, a particularly good story teller. Plot, in fact, is the last big thing that I need. I got good at dialogue first, then characters (who for me are strongly driven by dialogue), then setting and finally emotion. Emotion put me into more publishable than not range. I still really need plot.
I'm not totally convinced i started out with any talent at all except wanting to have talent. Maybe this explains why I started late, why I am slow to finish anything and why I have been doing this far longer than many other people.
*g*
And you seem to be doing okay, you know?
Walt
Sorry about the metaphors, can't get my head out of that space awake or asleep lately. While Margo's been having fun with that, I'm a coiled spring with a trigger lock.
The other thing, I think, is that in a way it may be a sort of magic-button search. I can't speak for everyone. Sometimes I can't even speak accurately for myself! But I know that sometimes when I get going on craft stuff, I am looking for a button. The one that clicks my brain over to understanding a new bit of whatever it is that I'm talking about. And I talk about it to get there because that's one of the ways that organizes all the ideas so that I can get my head around them.
It's not a big overarching magic get-published button. But maybe, sometimes, like one more digit in a combination lock.
(Sometimes it's an intellectual exercise, though. And often times, I'm just curious to see what people will say.)
I like the combination lock thing.
It's kind of right. Kind of like the trading cards thing is kind of right.
ou're welcome!
This strikes me as one of the most open secrets out there. Secret because it doesn't seem to occur to a lot of people (it didn't to me until relatively recently), but on the other hand, we keep reading authors we enjoy no matter, usually, what they do wrong.
But it's a hard one to master from the writer's perspective.
You've given me much to ponder. :)
Does the ability to keep people interested count as one of the magic gifts? Imho, it doesn't reduce to anything more specific.
Rowling does that, Tom Clancy used to, once upon a time....
The one thing Rowling does really well, for me, is pile up little snippets of information into a whole. She writes thriller plots, after a fashion.
My thoughts related to this (and these are far more personal than they are universal) are that:
A) I wish writing were more like riding a bicycle for me. Twelve years ago when I sold my first three stories, I felt as though I was hitting my stride. Then I let the day job get in the way. Now I feel as though I'm learning my craft all over again. Things come back as I work through the process, but the pain of learning the process again is pretty acute—when it's not deadened by losing myself in it and producing work I feel is pretty good.
B) I seem to have trouble being a writer at the same time I'm earning money as an editor. This is a problem; one needs a roof in order to write. But one also enjoys the editorial process and, well, writers are fun to work with. What this has meant is a deliberate choice not to edit fiction for a while. But I miss it. So the dilemma becomes, do I pursue midwifery or motherhood? Lately I've chosen motherhood, which I'm digging. A lot. But if midwifery calls, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.