There is a great dividing line that runs through the art of writing.

Many people have sold many books, and even been bestsellers, while staying on one side of that line.

Their writing is often craftsmanlike, and has good stories. A lot of the bestsellers — not in genre, unless it be romance or thriller, which are these weird genres that can be almost main stream if done in a certain way — that used to litter the shelves every summer, and crowd the trashcans of hotels where Americans stayed were of that kind. They used to be called and perhaps still are “beach books.” I used to rescue them from the trash cans, because books in English were very expensive, and I wanted to practice English. I’d long ago found out that the best way to learn a language is to first memorize basic vocabulary and grammar, then grab a dictionary and start reading books published for the natives of that language. After the fifth or sixth you’re more fluent than not, and colloquial grasp comes eventually.

What I’m trying to say is that I read a lot of those books. I remember only two, because I hated them with a passion due to their plot and characters hitting my buttons wrong. And that’s the thing. They have only one failing: they’re unmemorable. Enjoyable enough to read while on vacation, lying in a foreign beach, in the times when there were no radio stations or tv in your language you could access. But not memorable enough to spend the weight ration to bring them back home.

Yeah, maybe some of those who discarded those books went home and bought the hard cover version. I’m going to beg leave to doubt this, because, honestly, I’ve found the same kinds of books — often the same books — when we visited people’s beach houses, or stayed in rented rooms not in hotels (or in very small hotels) around the country. There’s always a shelf or two of these books left behind because people don’t care enough to take them. And they’re put in a shelf, so the desperate visitor, all out of reading material, can read them.

I think I’ve admitted I have a problem, so I sometimes read these books.

Most of them aren’t UNenjoyable. They’re merely unmemorable.

The sin they partake is partaken by many to various degrees.

That line that gets crossed is not bright or hard or fast, but a sliding scale, like a color slide from dark to light. But at the dark end, when they’re full in it, the book will never get published. And at the darkish end they’re… unmemorable.

Now you think I’m going to tell you that you have to put meaning in your books, some grand philosophy, some great insight on the condition of man.

People, if we were meant to be some kind of philosopher king that would be our vocation. But it’s not. Most of us want to tell rip roaring tales that hold people spell bound. We want to take that story in our heads and put it in other people’s heads, as compelling as it is in ours, so that when they close the book they go on thinking about your characters and your world, and the struggle you narrated and the grand feelings it evoked. The very best of stories then become part of the reader, change the reader and go on to change the stories they tell. If they’re storytelling people.

[The writer wishes to thank Robert A. Heinlein for Friday without which there would be no Darkship Thieves, and for The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, without which there would be no A Few Good Men. If Mr. Heinlein is somewhere where he can read this, he should either cringe in horror or laugh at the idea that given enough time this writer will get around to doing something with the pieces of Stranger in a Strange Land lodged in the person behind her eyes. The writer has no idea what it will be, but she can guarantee it will make her cringe and cackle, and would be likely to do the same to Mr. Heinlein, possibly in different proportions.]

Or perhaps that you ought to put a piece of yourself. Bleed on every page, or something like that. There’s something to that last, but perhaps not as much as people think. Only so far as there must be a sense you care enough for your people to make them live. Which takes not just writing the enjoyable parts while the movie plays out in your head. And it takes making the characters itch and sweat, and feel the rain on their faces, and drink coffee, and….

Your characters must have bodies. And they must move those bodies through a world they perceive through their senses, and which they fight against with those bodies. Unless your character is a disembodied spirit living in a platonic ideal, but I ask you to think twice about that. I’ve never seen it done well, not even by the Author.

You should thank for this post several anonymous writers whose story ideas were great and whose dialogue was very enjoyable, but it was just past the line of being JUST dialogue. So, usually by the end of the Kindle Free Sample, it was too tedious to go on.

This sin used to be called talking heads, but I’m afraid of giving you guys the wrong idea and giving the Karens (not our Karen, understand, but the platonic non-ideal Karens) of writing groups the bright idea that this is a stick to beat other people’s writing with.

It is okay to have the occasional page or two of talking heads. In fact, there is a skill to making dialogue spin and live with only the occasional speech tag or touch of stage business to keep it rolling.

It’s when the book is nothing but that, as though the writer is watching a movie in his/her head and thinks we can see the whole thing if we just read the dialogue that it becomes irksome.

Or when the feel of the world and the characters is so lightly touched upon that in your mind it becomes utterly generic and means nothing.

The good news is that it’s a problem that can be overcome with craft. The bad news is that like with all crafts you have to practice, practice, practice, then practice some more just to stay in craft.

I don’t know how much art you have, you still need to have craft. Because sometimes you’ll be sick, you’ll be tired, you’ll be out of it, and your art will fail. But the craft becomes second nature. It arguably comes through more when you’re exhausted and barely functioning.

How much feeling of a body and description of place is needed to make the book live?

I don’t know.

Wait, what? Shouldn’t I know

Well, it’s art expressed in craft, but more importantly it varies greatly with each book.

Say you’re writing a contemporary romance, or something in the workaday world. How much do you need to ground the reader? Well, something, for sure. But if you wax poetic about the hotel lobby, with gleaming counters and brochures of local attractions, people will yawn. Unless you’re Kate Paulk, doing it with a barb, through the eyes of her vampire in the Con series, because then everything that ever annoyed you about a con hotel, when you arrived tired and itchy and feeling like all the gleaming and looking down their noses from employees was entirely too much. But see, that’s different.

For contemporary romances, for instance, I’d put the emphasis on the unique that relates to the romance. Just how his eyes look. The touch of his hand, which is just a certain way. The way he always smells like the best brandy, even though you know he doesn’t drink much. That sort of thing. (You can tell I don’t write contemporary romance. That last one brought up a giggle worthy image of a chiseled and ripped man splashing brandy on his face as aftershave.)

I’ve seen a thriller series that did very well and which all readers rave about the descriptions and scene setting and how sensual it is. I looked at it as a craftswoman, and it turns out that what he did was insert a paragraph of description, heavy on all five senses at the beginning of each chapter, and the rest was rapid fire dialogue with interspersed action tags. It worked, because he also conveyed a sense of what was happening around in his dialogue. You know, if someone says “Stop aiming that gun at me.” Well, you see the gesture. Doing all that with dialogue without sounding forced and stilted, though, is a craft in itself, and frankly not one I feel the need or interest to engage in.

And I’ve seen heroic fantasy or even urban fantasy where the strange in the every day was conveyed through detailed descriptions that stopped all action for two pages to describe the bite in the air, the massing armies, the rising palace. Whatever the heck it actually wanted to do.

And then had more description in the dialog stage business used as tags, so you knew precisely how goopy the stew was, and how hard the hard tack, and–

Historical fantasy is often like that, because people reading it would like to live in a past time, and it is therefore important to give those people the sense of the past that they crave. To let them live in it for the length of the book.

But if you use the historical feel in, say, your contemporary romance, you’re going to put people to sleep. And if you drop long lyrical descriptions of your corner convenience store in a contemporary novel of any kind, and there isn’t a sorcerer hiding behind the chip packages, you’re going to make the readers really tired.

I find however — pardon me — that if you’re young in the business, and new to this storytelling thing, you tend to go the other way. You put us in alien worlds where people are drinking Mglaag in their coderth cups, and we have no idea what Mglaag of coderth is because it goes something like this:

“Good Mglaag this morning, Patrack Konner.”

“Not bad at all, Erxa Beflon. But so hot I’m afraid it will eat through the coderth in the cups.”

“You’re a funny man, Patrack. I hope you don’t die in the battle.”

“I hope so too. And I hope you live too.”

This could go on for pages, and it should be riveting. Two comrades, preparing for battle. Perhaps some shipping between them. But longer than what I put in, it becomes incredibly tiresome. It is actually difficult for me to write, because I need to know more.

So, how do you cure that? Try this:

“Good Mglaag this morning, Patrack Konner,” Exra said.

She looked bright eyed and bushy tailed, her short hair held in place by her communicator helmet, her nysteel armour gleaming. She held the cup of Mglaag in her hand, having just got it from the Mglaag distiller.

Patrack felt less than awake. His eyes seemed gritty. The band of the communicator was too tight inside his helmet, or felt too tight because of his headache. He could smell the earthy scent of the brew from where he stood, like walnuts with just a hint of chocolate. Women seemed to love it, but for his money he preferred coffee, and wished Earth produced enough that he could afford it on his trooper pay.

He got some Mglaag into the flimsy cordeth cup, wishing they could afford plastic onboard ship too. These things felt like paper and not good paper at that. He took a sip of the Mglaag and after the stimulant made his way to his brain, managed to smile at Erxa. “Not bad at all, Erxa Beflon. But so hot I’m afraid it will eat through the coderth in the cups.”

She giggled, a careless sound. Too careless for the day. “You’re a funny man, Patrack. I hope you don’t die in the battle.”

She was beautiful young woman, and if they both survived this… That she laughed at his lame jest that wasn’t even that was helpful. They moved away from the distiller, as the press of bodies in armor pushed them away, but stayed together.

From outside the mess hall, they could hear the sound of the ship being prepared for transition. They wouldn’t know the size of the force they faced till them.

Near the distiller, there was the smell of fresh baked bread and scrambled eggs, but few of the troopers would have a stomach for food today.

He could smell the sweat and the stress in his fellow troopers. The enemy was rumored to be invencible.

Exra seemed to be waiting for Patrack to say something else, but his tongue felt stuck to the top of his mouth, suddenly, and his mouth too dry despite the Mglaag. He swallowed and managed, “I hope so too. And I hope you live too.”

She gave him a fugitive smile over her shoulder, as she hurried towards her duty.

Now, this level of detail would be either at the very beginning of a novel or in a short story. Because after that you’d know they’re in a troop ship of some sort, that the beverage comes from a distiller, what it tastes like, etc. So you just need a touch now and then to remind you it’s still there.

Like the dialogue tag saying something like “He had to speak louder, because the muted roar of many voices was still too loud this far from the mess hall.”

Once the story is good and rolling along, you don’t overburden it with exactly how your barbarian’s fur jockstrap (ick) feels. You just let it roll and keep it in play with minimal touches. And you make sure any heavier details you give actually advance the plot… or serve some purpose of mood, or, in a mystery concealment.

(Mystery is tricky that way. If I lovingly describe the dagger, you can bet that what actually killed the victim was the poison I mentioned in passing. It’s sleight of the hand.)

A general rule of thumb when the story is rolling (unless it’s a short story and/or you want a certain feel) is that between two pages or so, you should hit all five senses.

And be aware that describing something as “chocolate colored” will evoke the sense of taste. So will “heavy perfume of gardenias” just not the same way. Be careful what you are evoking and make sure it is what you want to do.

I know you’re now staring at this and going “What? How even?”

But it’s craft. Craft almost looks like magic, until you learn it. Once you learn it, it’s a little sad, because some of your favorite pieces will now show their armature to you. That’s life. It’s the price you pay.

How do you get craft? Well, don’t you run out and try to get first drafts full of crunch and bodies, and feeling of bodies, and taste and stuff. You’ll just block yourself completely or infodump so much you stop the whole thing.

For now, your adding of feel and body and world should be as minimal as appropriate to the genre you’re writing, and added strictly in second or third draft. (Depending on how many you do.)

Go through and try to be in the character’s head, and feel what they do. To be in their bodies, and experience what they do. And try to figure out what you left out that your reader actually needs to remember this as an experience, not a radio play overheard in passing.

Also take the occasional bit of dialogue and practice adding EVERYTHING that’s going on around it. This is not a bit of dialogue you’re going to use, and it might even be SOMEONE ELSE’S dialogue. It’s just something to play with and practice. (I used to go to diners and write people’s conversations for this purpose.) Overload it as much as you physically can, then let it rest for two weeks or a month. Then come back to it and figure out how much is too much.

Practice, practice, practice.

If you want to embroider, weave, or draw, you can’t do it without teaching your fingers the craft.

Just because what you’re teaching the craft is your word shaping brain, it doesn’t mean it’s not a craft or that you need less practice.

You should do something for practice of some aspect or other of your writing that is bothering you every day. Because craft will get you through times of no art better than art will get you through years of no craft.

And somewhere along the line something magical happens. Your character has a body and a rich world around him/her. And you’re hitting just the right notes so that all of this can go live in another head.

We should all try for that.