The Big Lie About Writing Compelling Fiction
By Guest | July 4, 2017 |
Please welcome author Larry Brooks to Writer Unboxed today! Larry is the author of six novels and three bestselling books on fiction craft, including Story Fix and Story Engineering. A little more about him:
Larry is a career writer from the corporate sector who, like most of you, had nourished the fiction writing dream the entire time. When he isn’t writing, he’s involved with workshops and conferences at the behest of writing groups and clubs, and operates a story coaching service through his website, Storyfix.com. He also offers fiction craft videos through Vimeo.
We’re so pleased to have Larry with us today to drill down into what he says is the big lie holding writers back from actualizing their work in a timely, efficient, and full-bodied way. It’s a long read, but we think you’ll find it well worth your time. Enjoy!
The Big Lie About Writing Compelling Fiction
There’s a quiet rumor circulating among newer writers that professional authors know something they don’t. And that those famous A-listers (B-listers, too) aren’t giving it up.
This may very well be the case. Not so much as a conspiracy, but from a lack of an ability to convey—or a willingness to admit—that what they do can actually be explained, or that it can be taught and learned.
Too often they say this instead:
“I just sit down and write, each and every day, following my gut, listening to my characters, and eventually the magic happens.”
And so, hungry writers who hear this may lean into the belief that the craft of writing a good novel is inexplicable. That it’s something we are born with, or not. It is purely an issue of instinct. Maybe even that your characters actually talk to you.
The nights can get pretty long if you’re waiting to hear voices.
The real dream killer takes wing when writers conclude that there really isn’t anything to know at all. Rather, that you get to make it all up as you go.
And thus the Big Lie is born.
There actually is an enormous wealth of principle-based learning to be discovered and assimilated about how to write a novel that works. And there are folks out there teaching it, albeit with different models and terminology… all of which tends to coalesce into a singular set of interdependent truths.
Maybe it’s not a lie when someone repeats what they believe to be true. But belief, especially about the underpinnings of writing fiction, doesn’t make something true.
It may indeed be true for them. But not necessarily true for you.
Clarity requires understanding the differences.
There is no default best way to write a story, nor is there a prescribed path. Anyone who tells you that organic story development is superior to structured, principle-driven story development, including outlining, is wrong, regardless of their belief in that position.
And vice versa. Both are issues of process, and only that. They are choices, rather than an elevated version of conventional wisdom.
But with finished stories, any division between process and product vanishes. At that point, when you deem a draft to be final, what is true for one writer is suddenly true for all.
Clarity awaits in understanding the difference not only between process and product, but between rules and principles, as well. Rules apply to neither, while principles empower both.
Whether by intention, as a product of instinct or pure blind-ass luck, the efficacy of fiction is always driven by a set of core principles. They are not something you get to make up as you go. Rather, they are discovered as you progress along the learning curve.
Not all authors recognize the inherent opportunity in that moment of discovery. Sometimes they need to see the principles at work within someone else’s story… which is the most validating teachable moment of all.
The Author Who Can’t Tell Us Anything
In a recent author profile appearing in Writer’s Digest Magazine, an 11-million-copy bestselling author confessed she has no idea how she does it. Clearly, after two movie adaptations on top of her book sales, the numbers prove her wrong.
But not knowing how she got there isn’t saying she doesn’t know what it needs to look like when she does. The numbers prove that, as well.
So what is she hiding? Is she lying, is she confused, or is she truly without a clue?
Probably none of the above. Rather, her contention is simply proof that, as it is in many forms of art and athletics and academics, doing and teaching exist as different core competencies, only rarely shared within one practitioner.
One might also cynically suggest that this actually proves one doesn’t require any core knowledge to knock a story out of the park. You just need to put in the time, and eventually your instincts will kick in.
Maybe. It happens. But usually it is more complicated than that.
Whether they know it or not, teachers who never circle around to the core principles of fiction as a part of the creative process are peddling the Big Lie.
They will defend their seat-of-the-pants blind process vigorously from behind a keynote podium, yet they have no explanation beyond the principles—which they aren’t talking about—that led to their own writing success.
It’s like your kid designing a paper airplane. It flies, even though Junior knows nothing about aerodynamics. And while you might think this proves the other side’s point, it doesn’t. Because the complexities of a novel that works are more like a Boeing airliner than a paper airplane from kindergarten.
As writers, we don’t know what we don’t know.
When I started writing about writing, I ran into a guy on an online forum who proclaimed this: “I never outline. It robs the process of creativity and the possibility of discovery. It takes the fun out of it.”
So says… that guy. Who is in it for fun.
This may be true… for him. This absolutely is not—it never has been—a universal truth you should apply to your own experience… at least until you should.
The things we don’t know become the learning we need to seek out and discover and understand before we can begin to truly wrap our heads around fiction as a profession. Writing itself is certainly a viable part of that journey, but it is not what unlocks the secret of that journey, in and of itself.
That forum guy was talking about his process, irresponsibly framing it as conventional wisdom. But there are no universal truths when it comes to process, other than it needs to take you somewhere, and that yours might indeed be what is holding you back.
Story doesn’t trump structure. Just as structure doesn’t trump story. Because they are the same things. Both are extreme ends of a process continuum that, if and when it works, takes you to the exact same outcome. Anyone telling you differently is actually talking about their own preferred process, and if they don’t clarify that context then they are propagating the Big Lie.
And thus a paradox has been hatched.
So if not everyone agrees, how then do we pursue the core craft we need to write a novel that works, whatever our process? Even if the folks we admire and look to for answers claim they don’t?
Take the common advice to just write.
Depending on the degree to which the writer commands the core principles, it may be like telling a medical student to just cut. “Just write” is half of the answer, for half of the problem, applying to half of the writers who hear it, sometimes long before they should even consider it. Any more than a first year medical student should consider removing a spleen from anything other than a cadaver.
Because just write is advice about process, not product. Yet when Stephen King advises us to do it, who dares question him… even when they should?
Such advice, framed as truth, becomes yet another part of the Big Lie.
Welcome to the writing conversation.
This seems to be how the entire writing conversation—blogs, books, how-to articles, workshops, conferences, keynote addresses, famous writer profiles, writing groups, critique groups, and (God-help us) writing forums—is framed. And yet, collectively, combined with practice and a seat-of-the-pants ability to assimilate skill and truth as it collides with what we would rather deem to be mystical and elusive, there are things that actually do define the journey of learning to write a professional-caliber novel.
Look in the right places and you will indeed encounter specific principles, propositions, processes, expectations, categories, models, trends and risks that the more experienced writer understands and weighs—perhaps only at an instinctual level, but they exist nonetheless—and that over time the effective writer builds their work upon. Most of them being issues with which the newer writer struggles.
Knowing where you stand relative to these core truths can save you years of exploration and untold buckets of blood seeping from your forehead. Some writers toil for decades without ever truly hearing these truths, or assimilating it if they do.
This is because The Lie is loud, downing what it is you truly need to hear and understand. Because even within The Lie, those truths are at work behind a curtain of hubris or ignorance, sometimes both.
Here is a framework for your learning curve, in a nutshell.
These six things rationalize the consideration of craft itself.
- Not all story ideas are good story ideas. Not all of them work. You can’t sit down and write anything you want and expect it to be saved by your brilliant prose. A worthy story idea needs to seed the landscape for the things that do, indeed, cause a fully formed story to work. There are principle-driven criteria in this regard that will inform your story selection instincts, which in turn will help you sort out which is which.
While I have no data for this other than a collective consensus among agents, editors and those who do what I do… consider that half of all rejection can be explained with a recognition that the story idea, at its most basic conceptual level, may be inherently weak. Regardless of how well the story is written or how talented the writer.
- A manuscript that seeks to discover the story enroute is at best a draft, and almost never a fully-formed, publishable novel. To label such a draft final, without rewriting it from the context of a fully-discovered story, is to condemn it to compromise.
There’s nothing wrong with using drafts as a search and discovery process. It’s called “pantsing,” and it works for many. It also sends many others to an early writing grave, because they don’t recognize it for what it is: a story search process, one of many that are available.
When the story is finished, and when it works, process ceases to count for anything. The exact same criteria for excellence apply to the end product, regardless of the process. You need to write with an ending in mind if you want the journey toward that ending to work.
- Genre fiction is not “all about the characters.” Some gurus say this… they are wrong, or at best only partially right. Genre stories are about how a character responds to a calling, to the solving of a problem, via actions taken and opposition encountered, thus creating dramatic tension that shows us the truest nature of who they are.
In other words, genre stories are driven by plot. And a plot doesn’t work without a hero to root for and an antagonistic force to fear. In any genre, conflict resides at the heart of the fiction writing proposition.
- It isn’t a story until something goes wrong. Carve this into the hard plastic that surrounds your computer monitor.
- A story isn’t just about something. Rather, it is about something happening. Theme and setting and history and character need to be framed within the unspooling forward motion of the narrative along a dramatic spine, driven by things that happen, rather than a static snapshot of what is.
- Structure is omnipresent in a story that works. Structure is, for the most part, a given form, not a unique invention to fit the story you are telling. This is the most often challenged tenant of fiction, and the most enduring and provable. Exceptions are as rare as true geniuses.
Structure is not remotely synonymous with formula. But the lack of structure is almost perfectly synonymous with finger painting.
The sooner you get these six truths into your head (among others, including the drilled-down subsets of each principle), the sooner you can truly begin to grow as a storyteller. And when you do, you may find yourself saying this: “Dang, I wish I’d have understood this stuff earlier in my writing journey, instead of all these years of sniffing around the edges of it, believing the wrong things from the wrong people.”
The truth is out there.
But not everyone is talking about it. Because the truth is less mysterious and glamorous and self-aggrandizing than the notion that successful writing is a product of suffering for one’s art.
Hiding beneath the under-informed meme of “there are no rules,” some writers, in the pursuit of that suffering, settle on accepting that few or none of those truths exist. That truly, good storytelling is simply the product of possessing a sense of things. That there are no criteria or expectations.
The only part of this that is true is when a sense of things refers to the degree to which the writer has internalized those six principles and all of the subterranean layers of them that exist.
Let me just say it outright: before you sit down to write a novel the way that Stephen King or James Patterson or the author giving the keynote address writes one, make sure you actually can do what they do and know what they know.
Intention is not the primary catalyst of success.
Some of the best novels, and novelists, are outcomes of a process that makes too little sense, and/or takes decades of blood, sweat and tears, and even stretches the boundaries of the principles themselves.
Rather, it is in the application and nuanced manipulation of what is known to render a novel compelling. Talent is nothing other than an ability to see it when you finally land on it, and to pursue it with awareness. Within genre fiction especially, this set of story forces is established and easily visible. It explains why James Patterson and Nora Roberts and a long list of other novelists can bang out six or more novels in a year, even without a co-author… because they know.
Principles can be taught, and they can be learned.
And certainly, there are gradations in the application of them, in the midst of contradictory opinions about all of it colliding loudly within in the writing conversation itself.
Those gradations and shadings are the art of writing a story. The raw grist of what makes a story tick, however, comprises the craft of writing one.
Know the difference, and you’ll begin to see through The Big Lie.
Thoughts to share? The floor is yours.
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
The Big Lie. Hmm, interesting slant on what seems if anything to me a common misconception. Success = magic in writing is as fallacious as believing Einstein discovered general relativity by sheer luck. True, many labor and chase themselves in circles, while others labor less than half the effort and have ten times the success. There’s always luck, lots of it, but then there’s perseverence. For those who must put in a lot to make good fruit from the passion that underlies their storytelling practice (myself included), it’s inevitable that at a certain point, we become metacognitive. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. To me it’s not a big lie perpetuated by writers and writing culture, just a choice by individual writers to look only to the surface and not actively question how they can learn today to become better now, in the scene they’re working on, and apply this every time. This path, at least to me and many in this camp, leads to innovation and outsourcing, habits like coming to great hubs like this, for instance. Constant, constant growth, learning, improving. Innovating how we innovate. We are relentless.
Your mention of story trumping structure and vice versa brings to mind Story Trumps Struture, by Steven James, another great book. Thanks for sharing your perspectives!
John – thanks for your thoughtful and well-crafted response today. Rather than a “lie” I supposed I could have framed this proposition as The Big Conundrum, relative to what is true or not, what works for some, or not. Thanks again for adding to this conversation.
If the concept is that craft must shape content, I concur. I write for a living — albeit blog posts and press releases — and I know there’s a certain mechanical aspect to it. But I also got myself hung up on story structure — 12.5% of the way into the story, such and such happens, and so on. I see all these writers with their plot boards, talking of inciting incidents, and then I see all the popular fiction that I can’t bring myself to read because it feels utterly formulaic. Is there a balance, perhaps? Some flexibility to this? I started looking at story structure hoping for a scaffold, and it felt like a straitjacket.
Hey Susan – I agree, many writers struggle with the proportional nature within the principles of story structure. It’s like, in golf or batting or serving a tennis ball, the conventional wisdom of one’s stance before swinging… the principle optimizes it, and yet, not everyone is comfortable assuming the position.
Then again, when someone gives us feedback and “I just couldn’t get into your story,” or, “nothing happens for so long, I lost interest,” that becomes a consequence of not abiding by the proportional nature of structure. And in that case, the writer much choose between their comfort level and the efficacy of the story.
I wish you great success, and applaud your visiting Writer Unboxed to continue to study the underlying craft that serves us all.
So very true. I always thought as a writer: write and it will all unfold on its own. But 3 years into editing my novel I have discovered there is a phenomenal amount I did not know. From the specific purpose of a character’s name, to limiting the amount of characters so as to focus a reader’s attention. I agree: debunk the Big lie, understand the journey requires eyes open, and maybe just maybe, the writing will be that much easier. Thanks so much for this.
Paula – thanks for sharing your story. It’s exactly the “need” that my post today addresses… we can go years believing one thing, simply because we’ve never heard of given credibility to the very thing that will unlock our progress. Thanks for contributing!
Craft vs. inspiration. Structure vs . story. Process vs. Scrivener. Reading fiction vs. reading how-to. Genre Rules vs. There Are No Rules. The dichotomies are endless.
The one thing that remains true, I agree, is that many successful writers don’t really know how they do it. Lacking explanations, they fall back on the language of the magical. The only things worse are musicians and actors trying to explain performance.
Truth is, even the magical part of writing fiction–inspiration, flow, whatever-you-call-it–is reliable in a way that one can trust. That is because story feel is so internalized that one will not fill the blank screen with typewriter-monkey gibberish, but with what one senses is right. Maybe even with a hero’s journey.
Jazz improvisation is similar. It feels to listeners freeform, spun out of thin air, but that’s not true. Jazz musicians learn how to improvise. There are textbooks! It begins with riffs on pre-established themes, embellishment and comment, putting your own spin and take on what already exists.
Like fiction. Learn the basics, have a genre or at least a structure, a foundation, then take off with your own improvisation.
Like you, Larry, I do not like the Big Lie that writing great fiction is pure magic. My books and teaching aim to reveal how advanced magic is really done. Use the tricks deliberately, or internalize them and use them unconsciously, and the result is reading that feels magical, but actually isn’t.
The art, ask me, is in embracing the dualities. Learn the craft until it is your core, but a certain point forget the craft. The Big Lie is that you can improvise before you’ve learned song structure and melodic progression.
Patience, grasshopper. Rivers flow, yes, but only over a riverbed. Nothing wrong with basics. Appreciate your passion for them, Larry. You make them easy, which in turn makes art possible.
“Rivers flow, but only over a riverbed.” Yeah!
Hey Don – your words are always rich with truth and inspiration. Like all of us reading this and other blogs, and like all of us writing books on craft, we look up to you with admiration and gratitude.
Hope you had a good experience recently in Las Vegas. As you may have heard, I did the keynote there last year, and they were already promoting your appearance a year out. Hope our paths cross again soon. Larry
Likewise, Larry, and thanks.
Larry Brooks’ “The Big Lie About Writing Compelling Fiction” does a good job of summarizing what other how-to writing gurus have said at Writer Unboxed. For me, the essence of his post is that “there is no default best way to write a story,” and “not all story ideas are good ideas.”
He’s also right in correcting himself: he says others in the how-to-write game may not actually be lying to their students so much as peddling firmly held but incorrect opinions.
But what few writing gurus take up is what I’d call the true Big Lie related to writing. It doesn’t have to do with how to write a compelling story. It has to do with why so few successful stories ever see the light of day, whereas the great majority don’t.
Does anyone believe that those few stories “make it” strictly on the basis of merit? Of mastery of craft wedded to talent?
No. They make it because of mentors. Friends in the publishing business. People with contacts who take an interest and give those few writers a hand up.
Of course the mentors and powerful friends will smile on those who write well. But how do they choose? I think the answer is clear: they choose on the basis of personal taste, the publisher’s needs of the moment, being charmed by the writer, etc.
Playing down or sidestepping this truth is not a lie. But it is how writing experts stay in business. The best ones offer solid guidance on how to improve what you write. But they can’t teach luck or charm. Unless or until a person with serious cred in the publishing world takes an interest, a solid story is no more publishable than a poor one. Leaving room, of course, for the notable few self-published writers with a flair for both writing and self-promotion.
Hope is the mother’s milk of writers. Without the hope of being read, nothing but navel-gazing journals would get written. That’s why good writing coaches and teachers earn what they’re paid. They’re not just teaching craft, but selling hope for future publication. But hope shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the truth. In my opinion, the truth of writing success has mostly to do with a writer’s personal ability to charm others, and her luck in terms of market timing. And that’s no lie.
Hey Barry – good stuff here. I call what you describe as “the X factor,” which is an ability to sense what the market hungers for, where the influencers are, and how one aligns with it all relationally. You make great points with this on fronts today. Thanks much!
I read, I read, and I read. I take courses, engage, write, get critiqued and on and on. I do all of this and still, when I write an inspired sentence, I KNOW it is inspired. I really don’t know where it comes from. I wish I could do it every time, but it doesn’t work that way–besides, doesn’t everyone want to do that very same thing?
There are no magic number of classes or formulaic guidelines about learning this art of writing. DO this, get that, then do this and get those. It just doesn’t work that way. Yes, doing it every day makes you better, courses make you better, critique partners help, flash fiction and challenge groups help some people, but at the heart of the entire process there is still a sprinkle of magic, maybe a lot of it for some people, but magic none the less.
Therein lies the seduction of the art of writing. There is magic in everything you love, and hate, doing. And writing IS a love/hate relationship…sprinkled with magic.
Hi Muffy – I’d like to slightly disagree with you today, because I don’t think you are giving YOURSELF enough credit. You read and read and read, you take class after class… and so, when you sit down and write that sentence that you KNOW is inspired, it is precisely because of your ability to hear and assimilate what you recognize as truth — as criteria — that contributes to your core instincts as a writer. (Sidenote: writing the inspired sentence is a wonderful thing… but the real difference-maker in the teaching resides in how to write the inspired STORY, which is much harder to learn and less reliant on instinct – and more on prinicples – than sentence-smithing.)
Some folks hear and don’t let it in.
Clearly, you do let it in. Like they said on The X Files, the truth is out there, and you’re hearing it, even if you aren’t sure where your wisdom and instinct comes from. Embrace your continued learning as part of your growth, and you’ll continue to feed that instinct as you go. Thanks for helping out today!
Larry, thank you for all you have done over the years to help writers. When I was struggling to understand story structure, a friend sent me to Storyfix.com. I’ve learned so much from you and now always recommend your work in my writing classes.
In this piece, I like the way you distinguish between process and product. While there are many different ways to organise one’s process, they are all paths to the same end.
I also agree that there are principles and craft techniques that can be taught and learned, just as there are in any profession. Much that I have learned–from you and here at Writer Unboxed–I wish I’d known earlier in my writing career.
Good to see you here at WU, and I hope you come back to share more of your expertise with us.
Barbara – thanks for this, you’ve made my day. Thanks for getting it, and sharing it. Larry
As Donald said, “… embracing the dualities.” That’s the mature skill leading to discernment in any endeavor. I choose to be a pantser right now, because it’s fun! That’s where my discernment leads me at present. Who knows where it will lead in the future, as I continue to embrace all my options?
Mia – you’re so right in quoting Don on that point. Combine it with what I said in the post today, about understanding the differences between process and product, and between rules and principles, and you’ll have a strong basis for your continued growth as an author. I wish you well on that journey.
How to speak to this article? Suffice to say that I was relieved when the ‘list’ arrived, as I hoped to finally get beyond swollen opinion and into some straight talk that defined some ‘truths’ per this writer.
The Big Lie seems to be that established writers don’t give out the secrets to their success, and possibly mislead listeners/readers of interviews to keep their processes covert.
I was waiting for the Big Truth, but had to wade through dizzying, and needlessly so, compound sentences I usually only encounter when editing academic tomes.
The information offered is intelligent and useful, but to me, was presented with the same obtuse approach as that of the Big Lie.
If established writers and writing craft educators are wrapping the craft of writing in mystical terms, muzzling the truth of what needs to ‘be’ in order to produce a successful story, then I expected a grand reveal that pushed aside all the fluff and opinion and sleight-of-hand.
The writers I work with aren’t interested in ‘dreams’ of writing a great book, but are working hard to actually produce a great book. They ask for solid support in learning the tools and the processes that will help them reach that goal.
They seek justified, proven writing techniques they can successfully employ, and are disappointed when they receive opinions instead.
To forward this article to my author clients, as I do with many such articles, I will need to preface it with a note to take a highlighter to it, so they can pan the gold nuggets from the river of words.
Thank you for your post. I will also encourage my clients to visit your site and consider purchasing your fiction craft writing books for their continuing education.
So sorry to hear that my sentences challenged you. I went over it all again… I’m confident that the reading level here on Writer Unboxed wasn’t confused or irritated. I hope you didn’t miss the life raft amidst what you frame here as choppy water.
Just to nail it down – the point of this, and the counterpoint to “the lie,” is this: “The sooner you get these six truths into your head (among others, including the drilled-down subsets of each principle), the sooner you can truly begin to grow as a storyteller.”
The rest is context. Which is one writer’s framework, while it is sometimes another’s challenge.
Excellent post. I think what you’re trying to say is this: deep inside the premise of every “big lie,” exists a one-act structure or formula that must be followed in order for a story to hold a reader’s interest. My takeaway? I’m a pantser. When a story premise overpowers conscious thought, I should manipulate the idea by subscribing to your six questions. I won’t have a complete story outline but will have a better starting point with the middle and ending better defined. Hopefully, this would assist my productivity, too.
Shelly – if I could send out gold stars, I’d send you a couple. You really got the point of this today… which I find really gratifying. I wish you much bliss and success going forward!
Welcome to Writer Unboxed, Larry. I read Story Fix when I was really stuck with my work-in-progress and it made a huge difference. Your emphasis on the need for a writer to develop the concept and the premise at the outset made me understand where I went wrong with my story. I gave much thought to the concept and premise of my work-in-progress and, once I figured it out, it helped me to lend focus to my story. I realized that just diving into a story without understanding the concept and the premise meant going down a lot of rabbit holes without really knowing what the story is. I’ve always valued your advice and I’m pleased you are sharing your wisdom with the WU community.
Thanks for your kind words today, CG. Good to be here, and I’m so glad to hear the concept/premise proposition has helped. I’m not saying that a slice-of-life concept/premise can’t fly, but I do maintain that some measure of conceptual appeal within any premise will always serve the story, because it serves the reader first and foremost. Thanks again!
Excellent blog post. There is no magic, as Don says, but one needs to understand the rules before we can break them. Thanks for such thought provoking material. Back to work.
Carol – thanks for showing up today. Actually, Don and I and others who preach this gospel need to credit Pablo Picasso for coining it, thusly:
“Learn the rules like a professional so you can break them like an artist.”
If we can swap out “rules” for “principles” in our case (as authors), then this becomes pure gold.
Thanks again, I wish you much success!
Very good writing advice, thank you. I will seek out your books.
Thanks David, hoping you find them helpful.
Larry, one of my favorite movies is Ratatouille, and just as Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” my motto is “anyone can write.” I’ve learned so much from reading books, both how-to and story, and then by writing a lot. Not blindly, but with some guidance. Also, I’ve discovered that to really learn something well, you must teach it. And I enjoy teaching writing.
My garden is overflowing with cucumbers so I’ll be learning how to pickle. Many thanks to all my cooking and writing teachers, you included.
I actually like this as a metphor: pickling. We begin with the fruit (an idea), and we marinate it within the expansion of the idea into something tasty, tart and wonderful. Thanks for chipping in today!
Twenty some-odd years ago when I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I was most frustrated by “what I didn’t know,” and that I didn’t know enough to ask the right questions. With everything I learned, my head would take another spin around the block when I tried to wrap it around what I was learning. I don’t recall ever being fed the “big lie,” but I can understand the reference. I’m trying to remember how it was when I wrote my first book because I did outline it, and it did suck really bad. :) Oh the woes of being a fledgling writer.
I think it just takes time for writers to absorb all the nuances of the writing craft and how those tools are used to create a novel. Without the tools, it would be like building a house without a hammer, nails and a saw.
I’ve always been big on craft, and once those tools are learned, there’s a whole other level of writing to explore. Maybe that’s the magic new writers want to know; the next tier of storytelling that can only be achieved through experience. I’m not sure it can be taught so much as it can be explained, and achieving it will be different for every writer. Even trying to explain it to someone who is not already well-versed in craft will likely result in failed communication.
There’s always more to learn once a writer gets past the fundamentals, and that’s what makes storytelling so exciting! The “aha” moments never stop when you push yourself to the next level.
Very well said, Karen. I think you’ve encapsulated the first footsteps into the writing experience very well here. And how that experience leads us from one thing to another, hopefully like ascending a staircase. Well done!
Bravo. Great post, Larry.
Thanks much!
It’s a constant question, how do successful writers do it? But I think the main theme I’ve found is persistence. The more persistent, open-minded, and willing to commit to hard work you are, the more possible it is that you’ll get where you want to go, as in anything in life. I think a lot of new writers are afraid to hear that you do need to work hard to achieve your goals. This myth that you can just sit down and churn out a novel…well, it doesn’t work for everyone.
In the end, I say take Chuck Wendig’s advice: You do you.
Wow! How did I not know you appeared on Writer Unboxed till now, Larry? Busy summer, I suppose. Loved the post, loved (mostly) the comments, loved all your writing books, loved each and every one of your thrillers. Thanks for another amazing post on craft.