Yesterday someone came to my blog to tell me he had finished his first novel but before he committed himself to keep writing and improving is there some way he can tell if he has talent.

This happens every so often, and it always brings a snarling response in me, which might be less useful than it could be.

For the purposes of this exercise you should imagine me as a curmudgeonly 70 year old guy, wearing a suit and a smashed-down fedora, taking a chewed-out cigar from my mouth and snarling “What talent, kid? There ain’t no talent.”

But the truth is that this is both right…. and wrong.

It is true that there ain’t such a thing as “novel writing talent” or “short story writing talent.”

But it’s also true that no two humans are alike, and in mental disciplines as in physical ones, we all have “gifts” we get for free. For instance, my mom is good with balance and coordination. She could never understand why I couldn’t skip rope at first try. Or ride a bicycle. In fact if I hadn’t been the second of her kids to disappoint her this way, it would have been rough. But for both my brother and I these things were — still are, with me in my sixties and him in his seventies — unobtanium.

Or take my husband: he’s mathematically, visually and spatially gifted. I can do the math, though I need a head start, because I’m out of practice, but I have NO visual memory and absolutely no sense of direction. The first years of our marriage, he thought I kept moving things in the cupboards to gaslight him and not because I couldn’t remember where things went. He still periodically comes to me and asks “Why did you change where the pitcher goes?” and is befuddled when I say “Did I?”

At the same time, I have a gift for words. I very rarely have to look a word up (though my spelling is interesting) and I usually say precisely what I want to. I had to get used to the idea that he sometimes uses the wrong word and that doesn’t make him stupid. It’s just he doesn’t think in words. I do.

So, in writing, some people are better at words, some are better at story telling beats, some are better at characters, some are better at plot.

None of these, by themselves, is sufficient to be a “writing talent.”

If, like me, you came up through school with your English (eh, Portuguese, in my case) teachers laying a carpet of rose petals for you to walk upon and telling you that you’re such a good writer and you’ll be a great ornament to (eh, Portuguese) letters someday, chances are your primary gift is the same as mine: words.

This is what the lay person interprets as “great writing.” Your grammar will be perfect (most of the time, if you account for the fact that, say, these posts are written in colloquial mode) and your imagery poetic, and you can hide a lot of weakness under the great turn of phrase. The man on the street sees the words, is dazzled and says “Wow, you write beautifully.”

You do. And if you’re doing poetry or even essays, this can carry it. Even in short stories, if you dance fast enough no one will see the wires beneath.

The writer par excellence of those who run on a word talent is Ray Bradbury, and note most of his writing is short stories. But even he, from what I understand from Heinlein’s occasional veiled snark, had to learn the other components of writing. Before that he had pretty words over nothing.

I know that feeling, because it’s how I started. And you’d finish my short shorts with the idea that something momentous had been narrated, but underneath there really was nothing. And you can’t write novels or even fully functional short stories on nothing.

Words is the most common gift or at least the one people talk about the most, but I think that’s just because the people who are told they have talent usually have word talent.

It’s also the most useless.

Oh, I also have characters for free. I get my characters fully formed, alive, sweating and bleeding. Which is great. I’m not looking down on it.

The problem is that characters by themselves cannot live on the page. It’s like keeping a pet goldfish when you don’t have any water. To describe a character and let them live and breathe, you need a plot, a situation, problems for him/her to test himself against. Barring that, you have nothing.

Now I hinted at other gifts. Some people are naturally gifted at plot. They will create riveting stories out of the most trivial circumstances.

Others have the ability to carry the story in a narrative voice so strong and assured that it’s days after you closed the book that you go “but that didn’t make any sense” or “But that’s impossible.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs had narrative voice and plot, and on those two he built an empire.

Heinlein had such a strong narrative voice it took me years and careful analysis to realize he does actually have a lot of exposition and “narrative in the character’s head” in passages I remembered as non stop action.

So, do you have talent?

Undoubtedly you have one of the talents above, or perhaps another I’ve never thought of, such as the talent to make the most outlandish things seem plausible or… who knows?

You can have a talent in any of a few of the elements that go into making a story a story.

I was about to say I never met anyone that had a talent for all of them, but that’s a lie. I met one. He never finished his novel.

The rest of us get one or two, and sweat and slave for the others. And let me disabuse you, right now, words is the least important of them and often is counterproductive because you get distracted chasing words and lose track of the action and character. In fact, it’s the hardest because your beta readers are more likely to respond to words than anything else, so they might not catch what you’re doing wrong.

However, some of the writers I know who are now bestsellers started with no talent. You work at it and you improve. Slowly. Sometimes painfully.

I made every possible mistake. Twice.

This is where a writers’ group can help. Unless it hurts. A good writers’ group with people who are aware of what writing needs will save you years of struggling in the dark. A bad one will snuff out your writing.

In the end the only critic you can listen to is you. You’re in a fight with yourself.

Anyway, it’s easier to assume there is no such thing as talent. You’re going to have to learn to tell stories the hard way, step by step.

I don’t get a kickback from this, but you need Dwight Swain. You need Dwight Swain in your life:

Techniques of the Selling Writer

Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

And there’s audio if you prefer it. Be aware he swears a lot.

Will it help you? Well, I have read hundreds of how to write books, and sometimes gleaned a kernel or two I needed from them, But Techniques took me from unpublished to selling everything I wrote. And then it did the same for my then 13 year old son, and my husband. It’s also one of those books that if I re-read it now (I’m about due) I find new things to learn and perfect.

So, do you have talent? I don’t know. And neither do you. And even if you did have one of the writing talents you probably lack the others.

How do you become a good writer: Like Juan Valdez, one bean at a time.

I was going to say all I can promise you is toil sweat and tears, but that’s not true. Once you get about halfway good, and you look at the thing you made, and other people see things in it that are undoubtedly there but you didn’t think you’d put in? Once you see the story, in its shining perfection, pulled from your head, living and breathing on its own?

There is nothing like that feeling. Nothing. It partakes the glory of Creation and puts you in a very small club.

So? Get going. Work, work, work. Get good.

I believe in you.