I understand that making a marble sculpture is easy. You know, stuff like that fellow Michael Angelo used to do. No, listen, I have it on good authority.
The easy gimme formula is: you take a big hunk of marble. And then you remove everything that’s not the statue you want.
Writing a novel is the exact same thing. You take a hunk of events/experiences and a bunch of characters. And you remove everything that isn’t story.
The problem, of course, is knowing what story is.
Here I’m going to take a parenthetical break — I know, I know. You’re shocked, dismayed and perplexed that so concise and focused an essayist as myself would digress from the main point. Me too. For the record — to explain that regardless of your method of removing what isn’t story/telling the story, you still must know what the story is. There are several methods for that.
All the methods start — always — with READ EXTENSIVELY in the genre and subgenre you are writing in.
Also, no matter how much you think that current blah blah isn’t representative, do not make the mistake of reading only, say, 19th century horror. Or early 20th century science fiction. Or, heaven forfend, 19th century romance. Look, all of those things might be great, and heaven knows it’s not hard to be better than current trad pub books, in the majority. But there are pitfalls there. The narrative style is often adapted to a society where there was hardly any other form of narrative entertainment. And writing is as much as anything else a collaboration between writer and reader. If you don’t know the communication signals with current day readers, you’ll fail. (This doesn’t mean you should read the wokest of the woke. If possible concentrate not on the “pushed” authors, who give an illusion of success, but on those who have a visible fan following/interest in the worlds.)
Though frankly, I assume if you want to be a writer, you’re already a voracious and indiscriminate readers, and your wish to write is in the genres and subgenres you like best and read most. Yes, there have been exceptions. Yes, some are even readable. But not the vast majority.
So, that’s step one: Read.
Step two is write a lot. “But how is that supposed to work?” you ask. “If I don’t know what’s not part of the pattern, how can I sense the pattern?” “If I have bad habits, won’t I multiply the bad habits?”
The answers are “It just does.” “You will.” And “Maybe.”
So, here’s the thing: if you have read a lot, you already have a subconscious sense of how the story goes. No, shut up, you do. There are exceptions (I’ll explain why and when. They are two obvious subsets.) but not the rule. You will have the pattern of storytelling you enjoy — which presumably other people do, if you can feed your habit — in your head. You might be falling super-short of it, but you’ll know what you’re aiming for.
So… you’ll feel it before you can articulate it. There are stages to it, and it’s why writing A LOT helps.
It is entirely possible to train bad habits, though it usually needs specific reinforcement to go really far astray.
For instance, if you train in fanfic, or once you break in you write a lot of work for hire, it’s easy to train yourself to not knowing how to introduce a character and cue the reader to love or hate him/her. This is because in both cases, the introduction of the character comes freighted with what everyone knows about them. Do it long enough — or read exclusively fanfic long enough — and you’ll train your inner sense out of the feel for establishing characters and showing who they are beyond a name.
I’ll note I see a lot of “But why don’t you love him/her” characters in newer writers, and I think it’s because most writers nowadays are trained in fanfic.
I refer to this as “but he’s the hero, throw him a ticker-tape parade.” Because that’s often what happens. We’re introduced to a character, TOLD how great he is/everyone admires him (even if he’s objectively doing despicable things) and suddenly voila! they’re throwing him a ticker tape parade for existing.
If you see this in your own writing, I recommend reading older stuff, like mid twentieth century, before this syndrome became prevalent. And note what they do to establish character.
Anyway, here’s the thing, listen, and it’s fairly wild: if you read a lot and train your inner sense, at some point you’ll realize what you’re doing wrong.
No, seriously.
Some of us take longer than others, but it’s like this: At first you’re so impressed you’re doing it at all that you’ll think everything you write is golden.
After a while, you’ll start noticing errors.
After another while, everything you write will seem like drek.
Here’s the thing: by the time you hit that third stage, you’re actually already on your way out of drek. It’s just that your critical faculty has outstripped your ability to create properly.
Turn off that critical faculty while writing (Yes, I DO as a point of fact know how hard THAT is, thank you) and write through it.
After a while you’ll hit “everything is golden” again. This might or might not be true for anyone else, but you’ll be performing at a higher level than you were before.
And then you’ll start noticing small errors… And then everything you ever wrote is drek….
The one thing I can tell you is that after three/four years of this, both the errors and the “everything is drek” might be invisible to ANYONE ELSE AROUND YOU unless they are trained to the same level. So, you’ll have to go it along anyway.
How to shorten the journey:
To an extent, yes, writers’ groups can shorten the journey. If it’s a good writers’ group. A good writers’ group is defined as everyone being more or less at the same level, and working as hard as everyone else. We managed this for a while with a group of raw beginners, and a requirement for a short story a week, miss more than four weeks without serious illness, and you’re out. Even then, the half life of such a group is about five years, after which you’ll have progressed at such different paces the group will be more or less useless for everyone. Even without toxic personalities (a big if) or such problems, writers tend to give critiques that reflect what they, themselves, are struggling with, which means disparate levels cause major issues. So, if you find a group that work, cherish it for the time it works, but know when to cut bait.
How to write books can help too. Particularly if you’re a plotter it gives you the vocabulary to think about it, if nothing else, and some structure.
There is one book I’ve found universally helpful: Techniques of the selling writer, by Dwight Swain. It’s or you’ll think it is a very basic book, but every time I re-read it I discover or re-discover things I’m falling down on.
There are other books that have helped, or parts of them have, but it is very important to read the book for what you came to learn, not in general. One of the best books on hooking the reader, in the middle goes into a rant on how all genre fiction is drek. Be ready to ignore vast portions of books. Particularly, since how to write books older than yesterday are likely to point you at traditional, and trust me, the processes of appealing to editors/agents/publishers, and appealing to readers are completely different. (Which is telling, yes.)
And yes, getting critiques from professional writers can/does help, but there are several caveats.
1- First catch a writer. We’re notoriously elusive and hate giving critiques.
2 – Even if you catch a writer, it might not be the right writer. I spent a lot of time coming up being told my space opera was completely unrealistic, due to things like there still being a human civilization in 500 years (didn’t I know the Earth was BURNING UP?) or because women wore high heels, or… In this cursed age where some people see everything through a political lens that they don’t even realize is political (everybody knows!) the critiques you get might be useless or harmful.
2.a. It might be harmful anyway. A lot of writers came up in isolation and know “one true way” to write. So, you, a pantser, might be advised to write fifty pages of outline, and if you don’t do that, you’ll never write anything worthwhile. Or you, a plotter, might be told you should just be writing disparate scenes as they occur to you, and then stitching it all together at the end. Or your writer might have an obsession with “action verbs” or eschewing pronouns or whatever the religious-like solves-everything belief was when they broke in. It’s very common. Writers are more superstitious than actors, and a lot of our superstitions gravitate toward process and how to.
So, if you get a professional writer critique, again, as with books, be ready to figure out when it doesn’t apply to you, and cut bait. And for the love of heaven, if you’re like me and take everything you’re told to heart and believe it, particularly if it’s bad DON’T DO THAT. I mean, avoid the whole situation.
But most of all and above all, keep writing.
It might seem futile, and like you’re not getting anywhere, and like it’s not improving, and–
But it is. And eventually it will pay off.
Trust me. I also didn’t believe it, but the process of writing eventually refined itself.
Now, more often than not, I can see what’s dross and where the story runs clear and true.
Mad Genius Club 
29 responses to “Seeing the Unseen”
Make sure when you catch a writer, to wear good gloves and have a handy supply of their favorite treats available, so you can reward good behavior and not get bitten…
Oooh, THAT is one of the things that annoys me in a lot of modern writing!
Not new folks, either, but– “here’s the demographics, love them.” Or hate them, doesn’t matter, whatever their demographics are tell you how to relate to them.
Last I heard that’s being enforced by trad pub (except Baen!). It’s …. wokism fanfic.
Took me years to realize that’s why so many of the TV shows just didn’t work for me, and a lot of those were late 70s.
Sure, but like a Russian story “It got worse”
And *everywhere*.
Before finishing the read, A story.
Great Uncle was an animator and director, then producer for Walter Lance among other places.
In his retirement he got Macular Degeneration, and turned to Marble Sculpture for his artistic release, as he worked as much by touch as sight doing that. Anyhow, he decided on a bust of an African woman based on someone he knew (not with a model, just from memory and what) and as he worked found a blemish. iirc in the cheek area. As he worked to remove the blemish, more and more changed and he ended up with a Fish. So his saying was How do you carve a fish? Start carving a lady.
Not successful enough to offer much sound advice on how to rite guud, but I can say that the first book I liked well enough to want to self-publish came after about six years and 330,000-350,000 words of attempting NaNoWriMo style challenges, and the second came three years and another 100,000 words after that. (I did not publish them in that order). I don’t know that the half-million-word and million-word benchmarks some gurus throw around are inherently helpful to everyone, but there is truly no substitute for learning by reading and then learning by doing.
There are prodigies who manage to sell their work before turning twenty – Margery Allingham, Georgette Heyer, possibly John Dickson Carr, definitely Jane Austen (although the novel in question was not published at that time, and she had buy back the rights using her brother as an agent). But these were all people who were writing and story-telling from a very young age, generally with supportive families.
One of the greatest things about writing fanfiction is the feedback. I can get multiple comments on each chapter as it goes which tells me what works and what doesn’t, how people are taking the plot, and misconceptions. As an example, I had one story where the POV character went magic-nuts and got tossed out of the city in the process. She *thought* she killed her parents in the rampage. Even though I showed the parents alive and well in the next chapter, that misconception stuck with the readers even chapters later after multiple parental appearances. It helped remind me that “Show don’t Tell” sometimes really needs to be “Show AND Tell clearly.”
Yes. Of course. that’s why I went into Austen groups for a while, and it taught me a lot. Including how to write serials. BUT you need to be aware of the downfall.
It teaches you how to accept criticism (my major weakness), not get a fat head from praise (my other weakness), recognize trolls (of which I am occasionally), and improve the resulting product as a result. Not all advice is good advice, not all good advice gets recognized at first (or second) glance, and some people don’t care about giving good advice at all, they just want to see the world burn and they have a book of matches.
Some of the advice is very silly, but when you have a wall of silence, back in trad pub days, feedback is feedback.
The unreliable narrator trope is really hard to pull off. I have a character who is essentially a by-the-book, must-not-deviate-from-orders-in-the-slightest-way cop, and she’s becoming friends with someone her society considers a criminal. Naturally, she’s in serious denial about this fact, and every time she thinks about the criminal, she always insists that it’s certainly NOT because they’re friends, she just wants her around/is worried about her for other reasons, which most definitely have nothing to do with friendship.
The trouble was that my beta reader, who’s ordinarily very discriminating and capable of seeing things that even I miss, keeps taking the character at her word, keeps analyzing these bits assuming that the narrator is telling the truth, and they aren’t friends. She keeps saying, “This doesn’t really make sense….” and I’m thinking, “Well, yeah, that’s the point.”
But, of course, if she didn’t get this, other people won’t either, and I can’t personally email all of them to say, “No, really, she’s an unreliable narrator….”
How very true. I find it helps if the narrator is clearly telling, or writing, the story, so I am aware of the choices made, but that doesn’t always work.
“I assume if you want to be a writer, you’re already a voracious and indiscriminate readers…”
Oy. I am very much extremely extremist discriminating! And I don’t mean just according to the rabid barking moonbattery leftists. I discriminate *against* crap constantly.
Like the kind of crap that thinks I, the reader am a moron (a non AOSHQ moron, of course). The crap that is full of LGBBQery, racisss, sexisss, Orange Man Bad, and unscientific doom saying or murder cults. I discriminate against those. They show up entirely too often in fiction such that it makes me wonder if trigger warnings *might* be necessary…
“After another while, everything you write will seem like drek.”
I think I’ve been in that stage for a very, very long time…
“1- First catch a writer. We’re notoriously elusive and hate giving critiques.”
Fact check: TRUE.
The biggest issue is after being exposed to the good stuff, the bad stuff seems so VERY much worse…
Before: yeah, I really need to fix that sometime.
After: SO BAD I CANNOT EVEN.
Yep.
But the story must go on.
Try going into B&N and picking up a new book at random and wanting to throw it with great force at the nearest wall, because in the first three chapters, you’ve found six different writing errors.
When the only thing readable on the shelves is a John Scalzi novel, and if that isn’t damning with faint praise…
When you pick up a “YA” novel and realize it was written for bitter, aging lesbian wine aunts with the obligatory Strang Waman Prataganaist that has already chosen the boy she wants to lock her chastity cage onto…
I swear, there are days when the temptation to burn the place to the ground gets worse and worse…
The best revenge is living well. Many of those LARPing fantasy gendered head case writers are bitter, angry, depressed people. They have no joy in their lives.
That’s one of the things that keeps me writing. I know they will hate it. Spite it may be, but spite might keep you going sometimes.
And yeah, I’ve had that irritated “must not burn the place down. Must not…” that I’d never follow up on. Those folks are let down by their editors. They are supposed to be pointing out those things, not passing them on to the customer.
I know, I know. Editing is hard. And I want world piece and a new shotgun for Christmas. But when you can’t go six pages without being kicked out of the story multiple times for egregious faults, that’s pretty bad. Especially in a book that’s made it past multiple eyeballs whose job it is to detect such things.
I wouldn’t trust most big publisher editors these days to edit a grocery list, let alone a novel. Too many of them are a part of looking for the Big Lottery Win novels, not a steady supply of decent mid-listers that give them a good amount of money every month.
written for bitter, aging lesbian wine aunts
Well yes, because that’s the demographic who decides which commissions get picked at the publishing houses.
Remember, the story goes that Harry Potter was rejected by every publishing house it was submitted to except for the one where the executive’s kid got his mitts on the book and said “Hey dad, this is cool.”
That should have been a big SIGN in flaming letters in the sky that something was wrong with the setup as it was working.
Especially when you get into the habit of reading to edit — like, your own work — you can’t just turn it off.
I can to a limited extent…but when stuff leaks through my filters, I know it’s terrible.
sure. But you know, I’ve read everything from novels to medicine inserts for meds I’ll never take.
And back of label legal information in a language I don’t even speak (but can use translation programs to get by in).
Not being able to read would be torture.
I’m finishing my second fiction book and it is miles and miles better than number one. That doesn’t translate to great book, just saying, but … better.
I got a semi-professional critique on an entirely different piece of writing years ago and it was so harsh that I shut down for several years. The writing was half bad, as in, the first half was really awful. And it took up most of the critique. I took years to internalize the point where he said, *and then all the writing starts to flow*. So now I begin writing and when the writing starts to flow I go back and cut like crazy.
I’ve been more concerned of late with unseeing the seen. I’d like to see the pictures and videos of the Hamas 07 October attacks but from the brief reports I’ve read it isn’t likely I’l live long enough to forget those images.
~
Rgrds,
RES
I haven’t been able to forget the words I read, and they’re bad enough. Nightmare fuel.