Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”
By Lisa Cron | July 14, 2016 |
photo by Meena Kadri via Flickr
Here’s a scary thought. When it comes to writing, you may have done everything you’ve been taught to do with utter perfection, and precisely because of that, it turns out you’ve written something that is flat, boring and uninvolving. This all too common phenomenon is something I’m going to be deconstructing, myth by myth, for the next several months in my columns here. I’m beginning this month with the overarching granddaddy of them all – the myth that derails otherwise riveting stories before they’re even created.
It’s this: The myth that beautiful writing is what makes you a real writer, and (an even more damaging belief) that the beautiful writing comes first, before everything else. Beautiful writing is often equated with talent, and without talent, why write at all?
It is heartbreaking how many writers suffer from the deep rooted, often crippling fear of not “writing beautifully” from the very first iteration of the very first sentence on the very first page of the novel. We’ve been trained to be so fearful of penning anything that feels like “ugly writing” that we often end up creating something far worse.
To be very clear, by “writing ugly” I don’t mean writing about hard things, painful things, or any kind of “ugliness” – which is utterly crucial to good stories. Otherwise, you’re basically Hallmark, which is to say, irrelevant, cutesy and dull. Story is about the exact opposite. In fact, story is often about how to dig out from under the sugar coated, stifling straightjacket of the status-quo, which almost always means diving into what polite society has deemed to be ugly, unseemly, and uncomfortable.
So hold on to your hat, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do right now – dive into something that is decidedly uncomfortable (yes, actually wearing a hat, so this isn’t really two metaphors).
The point is that surface beauty is not what it’s cracked up to be. And in order to write well – to create a story worth reading, a story that can be beautifully written – you have to first write ugly. It’s part of the process of creating a story.
You have to write ugly every single time you begin writing a story, even if you’re already well published. Even if it’s your tenth novel. Because, as we’ll be exploring over the next several months, the first step in creating any story has absolutely nothing to do with “writing beautifully.” It can’t.
So why do we think that it does? Part of the problem is that the things we’re wired to crave – the things we innately expect in every story (and beautiful writing isn’t one of them) – are tacit expectations. Chances are we aren’t even consciously aware of our hardwired expectations when we’re reading. After all, it’s not like we approach each new novel with our trusty list, and once we’ve checked off each expectation we think, Okay good, this is a story I can enjoy!
I mean, can you imagine your mom sitting you down at the age of five and saying, “Now sweetie pie, I’m going to explain what a story is, and what you need to expect in every story, and how they will make you feel, and what you should look for, so be sure to take notes.” If it worked like that we’d probably hate stories, because that sure sounds an awful lot like work.
No one ever has to teach us how to get lost in a story, for the same reason no one had to teach us how to melt into a hug. It’s biological. Ditto our innate response to story, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain very specific, very clear, and very concrete things that are triggering that biological response.
However, because we aren’t consciously aware of what our actual hardwired expectations are when we read a story, when we write a story we tend to substitute in what we’ve been taught those expectations are, which revolves around what we can see on the page – yep, the beautiful writing (among other things that we’ll be debunking in the coming months). This isn’t to say readers don’t like beautiful writing – they do. But beautiful writing is not what has us enthralled when we’re reading.
It’s not about the words, it’s about the story they’re giving voice to – which is why often “bad” writing has the power to captivate us: it’s the story that has us by the throat, not a bunch of million dollar metaphors. Without an actual story, “beautiful” words are empty, devoid of meaning.
It boils down to this: a big part of the reason so many writers believe that “beautiful writing” is the defining trait of a “real writer” is because while our love of story is innate, writing is taught. And from kindergarten on, that teaching tends to focus not on the story itself, but on the words used to express it.
Who among us hasn’t heard people talk reverently about their “love of language.” Let’s think about that for a minute. Words. Language. What is language?
Language is nothing more than sounds when spoken, visual symbols when written. By itself language is merely a conduit, an empty vessel. The goal of language is to convey meaning, and meaning comes from the story itself. Which, by definition, means that you have to unearth the meaning – the story — first. Then and only then do the words matter. Otherwise it’s like trying to hold a conversation when you have nothing to say. And so matter how beautiful the language, it’s meaningless – and it soon stops being beautiful and becomes annoying, as the person you’re talking to madly sifts through the verbiage, trying to figure out what the hell your point is.
And yet, we all tend to fall prey to wanting to “get it right” even before we know what it is. I didn’t realize just how insidiously damaging this is, and how constantly writers must battle against it, until recently, and that’s why I’m hitting so hard on it now.
Here’s when the full weight of it hit home for me: Book coach and author Jennie Nash and I teach an online course based on my upcoming book, Story Genius, and as part of the course, we host several live online Q&As. That’s my favorite part of the class — there’s nothing I love more than talking story with writers, because I always learn something new (plus it’s fun). But during our beta test of the course, what I learned caught me off guard.
A writer began talking about a problem she’d been having — a problem that had dogged her during the class as she worked to dig deep into her story. She said that it was a problem she’d been fighting throughout her entire writing life: the debilitating fear of “ugly writing.”
She believed she had to hone, polish, and present everything in luscious prose right out of the starting gate — and since what we were asking her to do had nothing to do with the kind of “beautiful prose” she’d been taught mattered most — she felt that what she was writing was too ugly for, um, words. Every week she questioned her ability to write at all. She was distraught.
Several other writers chimed in, saying, “Me, too.” They all thought there was something wrong with them.
There was a deep collective sigh of relief when we said, “Writing well is not the point – not by a long shot.” The first step in developing a great novel is to develop a story that does what all stories are meant to do: instantly grab the reader’s brain, pulling them out of their “real reality” and catapulting them into the world of the story – so that when they emerge on the other side, they see their world a little (and sometimes a lot) differently. The irony was that each writer had developed exactly what would allow them to then create a novel with the potential to have the reader at hello. It turned out that the “beautiful writing” they’d been striving for was what had, in fact, been standing in their way.
After all, how can you write beautifully when you don’t know what, exactly, you’re writing about? It’s kind of like if you were mining for diamonds by keeping an eagle eye out for exquisitely cut, honed, and highly polished gems. Sheesh, talk about missing the pay dirt! After all, diamonds in the rough look like big clunky hunks of rock. In other words, they’re kind of ugly when compared with the sparkly diamonds you see gleaming in a jewelry store window. But here’s the thing: there’s actually a strange, hypnotic beauty in the raw material. Same with the “ugly writing” these writers were worried about.
It’s the story that spawns the beautiful words, not the other way around. And ironically, when you have dug deeply into your story, expressing it in the simplest words is what often conveys the most meaning. In other words, beautiful writing is often the direct byproduct of the story itself, rather than the other way around. Just like out here in real life, it’s not the external “beauty” of the writing that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.
As proof, the next time you’re lost in a novel that has you up long past your bedtime because you just have to know what happens next, ask yourself: am I ever thinking, “I can’t wait to find out what exquisitely beautiful sentence this wordsmith will serve up next!” or “I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for a glimpse of the next lovely, luscious metaphor. Be still my heart!”
The answer will always be no.
So, my advice? It’s time to stop trying to get a gold star from your seventh grade English teacher for writing the world’s most “perfect” sentence (or maybe that’s just me). Practice silencing the “pretty writing” voice. You know the one. That shaming little voice that whispers, “You think that sentence is good? Seriously?”
Writing pretty comes last. Creating a story comes first. Otherwise, it’s like trying to frost a cake you haven’t baked yet.
Now the question is: how, exactly, do you bake the cake? What are the foundational ingredients, if what we’ve been taught they are is wrong? That’s what we’ll begin talking about next month.
Meanwhile, what’s your experience with “writing ugly”? Do you have any advice on how to make that remarkably resilient passive agressive voice in your head shut the hell up? Do tell!
Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers From the Very First Sentence and Story Genius: How To Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste 3 Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). Her video tutorial, Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story, can be found at Lynda.com. Her TEDx talk, Wired for Story, opened Furman University’s 2014 TEDx conference, Stories: The Common Thread of Our Humanity. A frequent speaker at writers conferences, schools and universities, Lisa’s passion has always been story. She currently works as a story coach helping writers, nonprofits, educators and journalists wrangle the story they’re telling onto the page; contact her here.
Lisa,
This topic covers my biggest obstacle when writing — the need to create beautiful sentences right out of the starting gate, as if I were Man O’ War or American Pharaoh or some other history-making thoroughbred, when in reality, I’m nothing but a nag. Or, should I say, my first draft scribblings fall embarrassingly short of a Win, Place, or Show. Most times, I’m still at the gate chawing on that same bale of hay long after the race has finished.
So I’ve pinned “Just Write the Damn Story!” and “Story First, Aesthetics Second” to my bulletin board. Now, to remember they’re up there. They’ve been there so long, they’re written in Aramaic.
Of course, I still get trapped in that old mindset of edit-as-I-write, but it’s just a matter of practice, practice, practice to break the old habits and make new ones.
Can’t wait to get my hands on Story Genius! Thanks for your continued guruosity. :)
My favorite line, when discussing this with a new writer is: we’re not writers, we’re storytellers.
And there’s a significant difference. A journalist must write a column with tight, perfect sentences. A storyteller is expected to add elements of her own experience and worldview (although, journalists have gotten pretty good at that, too…enough said on that subject).
When I think of great stories I’ve heard–I mean the ones old guys tell around the campfire in deer camp–they are as rough and ugly as you could well imagine. But those are the ones that make us laugh the loudest and feel the most feels (forgive me, I write YA and middle grade).
And if you read the best-sellers, you find that there’s really nothing spectacular about the prose (except for Jodi Picoult). If you slow down long enough and pull out of the story, you see that the author is writing as plain and simple as any high school student.
The genius is in the story. And it takes a storyteller to do that.
I’ll be a storyteller.
Thanks for the post! Great as always.
Lisa, we have a tendency to compare our raw story with the published ones that have gone through several revisions and with a professional eye. When a story *tingles* it’s so great to be able to put it down on paper. And you are right that what gets in the way is our expectations. I draft best when I am a little bit tired; that’s the only time my internal editor isn’t on. Of course, I love having an internal editor because it comes in handy while revising. And I admit that I prefer revising to drafting, seeing the story on paper come closer and closer to how I envision it in my head. Thanks for a great essay.
Lisa–You are a shrewd student of neuropsychology, and this is evident in the way you frame the discussion by repeating the key words ugly and beautiful.
I certainly agree with you when you say the following: “…you have to unearth the meaning–the story–first, then and only then do the words matter.” True. The dilemma you describe has happened more than once to me–becoming mired in sentences as a way of avoiding coming to terms with flaws in my story.
Except for this: unearthing any story is only possible through language.
But instead of some white hat-black hat shootout between good and evil (ugly-beautiful), why not something less rigid? How about UPS? No package (story), no UPS. But no UPS, no delivery of the package. Or good old Marshall McLuahan schooling us to always remember that “the medium is the message.”
And one more thing: don’t forget the reader. We may all be “wired” to respond to story, but nature is only half the equation. Nurture–life experiences–shape how we hear and respond to stories. Often, the package Philip Roth has on offer in a novel is sexist, obsessive, even annoying. But the UPS aspect–the sentences–is so amazing that I’m often hooked anyway. Dan Brown is everyone’s favorite conspiracy theorist. The first page of The DaVinci Code’s delivery system told me all I needed to know. I read no further.
Thanks for another thought-provoking, serious post.
Your points here, Barry, are excellent. Absolutly agree that life experiences shape our responses to stories far more than anything else going on.
I’m with Barry here as well in reframing Lisa’s excellent advice with the power of prose style to pull us deeply into story as well. I think of stylists I admire—Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy—and know that their singular language is part of why their works move me.
But no argument that the beating heart of the story has to make our pulses race.
The idea is that you can write beautiful sentences, AFTER you’ve nailed story.
Reading your post made me think of 2 things:
1) It strikes me that a good idea for writer’s groups when they meet to actually have an exercise in story telling, verbal, in this case, to help them get over that hump of story-telling. More so than in written form, there is often a clear cut line between those who feel they can tell a good story and those who feel they can’t. Something like that would push people out of their comfort zone and I think it would aid their written stories.
2) I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone back to read old material I wrote (one or many years ago) and as I at first start reading it seems ordinary but then I hit a passage, where paragraphs or pages just read wonderfully. I sit back in awe and think, “Wow! I wrote that?” Those passages are where I just got straight down to the business of story. The ordinary parts were the sections where I was laboring over the burden of avoiding ugly writing.
For me, avoiding ugly writing is partially contributed to by time constraints. I have so little free time that I don’t like the thought of having to re-write my story 5 times. I want to write it right the first time. Which is utterly stupid because, for me at least, getting it right the first time is impossible.
It’s a hard chain of bondage to break.
Hemingway said: Write drunk; edit sober. I think he meant let the story out and then fix it later. Writing is art and craft–the art is telling the story and the craft is making it pretty/publishable. I think fiction should be written fast and badly–in the first draft. Get the story out and edit later. A new story is a learning process. At first you have an idea who the characters are but you don’t yet know them, That comes with living with them for a few months. So why edit the first few chapters? Invariably by the time you get to chapter 40 the characters have evolved and are now very different folks. When you go back to chapter 1 you will inevitably say: she wouldn’t do that or say that. That’s not her. So why waste time editing until you have the entire story at hand–and really now your players? The truth is that writing is rewriting. Also, you can edit crap, but not a blank page. So get out of the way, tell the story, and then fix it.
Actually, Hemingway never actually said that. It’s a misattributed quote.
My favorite thing in grammar school was the ‘use this word in a sentence’ exercise because it always got me a gold star. But when I started knuckling down to write fiction, I found out that this ‘talent’ of mine was really a problem. I had to unlearn the tendency to craft pretty sentences- a tendency that actually blinded me to story. The revelation that beautiful writing comes from story, and not the other way around, has been a game-changer for me. I’m reading a novel right now that has some extraordinary sentences in it, but I’m struggling to care about the characters. So, point taken. Without a compelling story, gorgeous writing is lipstick on a pig. Thanks for this. I look forward to more!!
Fascinating post here: beautiful writing vs. ugly writing. I’ve not thought of it quite that way. I like your advice to become more conscious of the differences because it opens up the pathways. You mention being hardwired a lot. I’m not a subscriber to the theory that our brains are ‘hardwired’ for this or that, or that we are ‘wired’ to certain expectations. As a writer, this idea is too limiting and predestined for me.
I’m more a believer in the science of neuroplasticity of the brain and how our personal experiences, memory, even genes alters us and our expectations to constantly rewire our brains. Especially during the creativity of storytelling. Robert McKee says “We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.” I like Vijaya’s idea about when the story “tingles.” Yes, that’s a feeling we all know, beautiful or ugly.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
“…language is merely a conduit, an empty vessel.”
Exactly. Beautifully written. ;)
So why does beautiful writing by itself sometimes engage us? This is the question that hangs up literary writers. “If Karen Russell can do it…”
The effect of beautiful words and deft imagery is that it catches us by surprise. Makes us see anew. We are struck by recognition. We nod. *Yes, I see.*
The shortcoming is that such recognition in readers is only one very limited response to the page. It does not have great emotional impact. It does not convey what makes story truly story.
Not much to add here, except that beautiful writing isn’t per se bad. It’s just not story. As you say.
As I so often tell my students and clients: “Fall in love with your story, not your words.”
Excellent post!
I agree with Lisa and Don. What keeps me reading is a good story but what thrills me is the writing — the singular sentence — that surprises me and makes me hope for more.
It was reading Wired for Story that taught me the power of writing ugly, and I’ve never looked back. Spending two years of labor and obsession to craft a “beautifully written so what” taught me not that writing should always be ugly first or else it’s no good, but that obsessing on beautiful prose first is beside the point. Love your diamond in the rough metaphor, because sometimes I find in my writing, even though in the early stages of capturing story, there are some parts that jut out polished and beautiful, I don’t concern myself with those bits; I’d rather get everything just right so that when the time to polish comes, every single aspect of the final work will be worth it.
Just today on Twitter someone posted a quote “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” It was attributed to Hemingway. Seemed highly appropriate in light of your awesome post, Lisa. I have to constantly remind myself, “It’s the story, stupid.”
Lisa, this is so encouraging. Thanks for the reminder to tackle my next scene without self-consciousness about the awkward phrasing. Instead, I’m focused on conflict, tension, and what my character really wants.
I don’t hear you saying that beautiful writing doesn’t matter, just that it can come later in the process of getting the story on paper.
I will admit that I’ll put down even a promising story after two pages if the writing style is awkward, the dialogue stilted, and the prose sprinkled with effusive adverbs. I hate reading a book that constantly irritates me.
So after I enter the dark tunnels of my imagination to mine the next scene and hold up a clunky, ugly jewel, only then will I set down helmet and pick axe and take up the magnifying glass and chisel.
That picture is a fresh reminder that I can’t do both at once.
Several years ago I took a drawing class. I have no skill at drawing, so I had nothing to lose as I launched myself into each class and each exercise. Another member of the class had obviously been praised for her skill at drawing since she was in grade school. Guess whose efforts were fresh and interesting, though awkward? Guess whose drawings were well executed but lacking in heart? The moral of this story…oh, there’s no moral. It’s only a story.
How to get that passive aggressive voice in my head to shut the hell up? Hmm, I think that voice is more aggressive and a little less on the passive.
For me its the whole: gotta be perfect thing. My husband nailed it when he repainted the bathroom and changed the fixtures. He did an amazing job, but when I came over to inspect … I mean tell him what a great job he did … the only words out of my mouth were about the chipped wood above the door’s handle. He looked at me, smiled and said 90%. We’re not going perfect with this house, just 90%.
The synapses in my head fired like crazy and that little ‘voice-of-Gollum’ fell into shadow. THAT’S how I solved my writing block/phobia/little voice … whatever you want to call it. Now I just say: I don’t care if it’s perfect, I’m just going for 90% (In reality we’re looking more like 50%, but at least it’s on the page now. Gollum and I will worry about the rest on the revision).
And I think I learned this from your book or one of your posts along the way: When you know where the story is going, and you can comfortably sit inside of your character’s skin (knowing how every character sees their world with the colored lens of their own flaws and desires), funnel your story through those eyes, and the story will basically write itself… I don’t think I’m doing justice to this advice or maybe even explaining it correctly, but between that and telling myself it only has to be 90% there (which for me is more positive and thus more effective than repeating ‘it doesn’t have to be perfect’), I’m chugging along on all three rails a lot faster than before.
Your theory is fascinating, but again there’s so much to consider. For me, I am never facile when asked to play the let’s-make-up-a-story game, where we build on a story one person after another. My mind goes blank. I even consider I am not very creative. Yet, put me at the computer and allow my fingers to work the keys and story appears. Is it beautiful story or ugly story? I would say a little of both. And like some of my fellow commentators above, often beautiful writing can leap off the page while the work is initially being done. Basically, I agree with your overall concept, but I think there are individual barriers and open spaces where the language becomes the story AND the beauty all at once.
Thank you, Lisa. This is a timely post. I’m just embarking on a new story idea and it’s great to have the reminder that story comes first. And it’s such a waste of time to craft and recraft sentences, paras, scenes before I’ve captured the story and the possibilities, and depth, of that material. And writing “ugly” can help draw them out.
As you know, I’m right there, Lisa. I think so often we emphasize the prose when we say “find your voice,” that we forget the best voices intend to say not merely any old thing, but something specific. Your piece reminded me of “A Defense of Ugly Things” in a roundabout way and hit home pretty hard — as you know, I’m wrestling through this right now.
The struggle I’ve found in my own work is that though I can sell short stories, screenplays, and smaller narrative poems / children’s books, I’ve had serious problems with the novels — when it’s small enough, there’s not enough room to worry about the prose and the story sings. But with a big enough canvas, it falls apart for me.
I’m looking forward to your upcoming pieces since I’m right on the ground floor of something new and plan to plan out every beat before I write a word.
Thanks for this.
I’m with you! The first novel I wrote had beautiful sentences and description but when I went back and read it years later, it was boring. Things happened but the pacing was terrible and the ending felt false. I’ve since spent a lot more time learning about the craft of story and telling myself I can fix the sentences later. Thanks for this!
Great post, Lisa. No argument here.
Sometimes, though, that perfectionist does clear her throat and start whispering in my ear. When that happens there are two things I can pull out of my toolbox:
1. Close the computer and start writing longhand. Somehow that doesn’t carry the same weight of expectations for me.
2. Do writing sprints. Come up with a few prompts related to where I am in the WIP; choose one to start with; set the kitchen timer for 10 or 15 minutes, and go–no stopping; just keep writing. Ditto for another prompt, and so on.
I love a beautiful sentence. I’m easily beguiled by an amazing voice. Sometimes I’ll open a novel, read the first page, take a deep breath, and start over, reading more slowly, savoring every morsel.
I ache to produce sentences and pages that might begin to approach that level of beauty. But you’re right about story taking precedence. Without story, there’s only so long a great voice or gorgeous prose can hold even my attention. So story first. Beautiful sentences can come during revision.
Would love to hear any tools other writers have for placating the perfectionist. And I look forward to reading about your foundational ingredients in future posts!
I like to start ugly by free writing what s on my heart. Once it is all over, I let it sit for a while. Days later, I search through all the dirt for the diamond that somehow forms within the pressure of it all. This allows me a passionate write and pulls more emotion from the readers.
This is a fantastic and important article that I wish I could send to every beginning writer. And perhaps tattoo on my arm.
I discovered the essence of your wonderful article in a quote by Hemingway when I first tried NaNoWriMo back when we still chiseled stories in stone: “The first draft of anything is Sh*%t.” A master writer said that, and it was an absolute revelation for me at the time.
I wasn’t writing professionally yet, but I was enjoying writing some short fanfiction just for fun. I wanted to write something longer, but I was so concerned with making sure every word was exactly perfect, I was losing the story in the process. When I finally realized that it was OKAY to write crap on the first (or second, or third) pass, that I could tell that nasty internal editrix to shut up, I actually finished my first novel-length piece.
Since I came to the world of “original” fiction, that quote has been stuck to my wall, and every time I trip over myself with agony over grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, etc. I remind myself, “You’re going to have to go back and kill your darlings anyway. Just let it all fly right now.”
Thank you for this!
I was just on the phone with my husband expressing frustration about my writing. Thank you for this!!!
One or two readers may have said that I always write ugly, but I don’t listen to them.
Thank you for writing this. This very topic has been on my mind a lot lately. I feel like I’m reading words stolen from my thoughts. Ha. I’m getting ready to address it on my blog too.
Good writing is sometimes bad writing in the sense that it can punch you straight in the teeth and put your heart through the wringer and it can be ugly and full of so much rawness, normal rules and structure and five dollar metaphors are worth zilch. So thank you.
Looking forward to reading your continued thoughts.
My biggest challenge stems from perfectionism in the writing, and criticism for fan fictions I’ve written and posted. Now, granted, it’s material I can’t sell, or be entirely serious about, but it gives me a chance to try different story angles, plot angles, and genres.
I guess my question is this-I tried planning a story out, but I find my characters tend to run away with the story, and I barely recognize it in the end. It’s the fleshing out I guess I have the biggest issue with, but complaints on wordage and grammar are the majority of the criticism I receive in my writing in the fandom realm. I am aware the comments are not from literary critics with degrees, but how does one tackle the ugly writing complaints when you ‘mean’ for the dialogue and flavor to reflect a character’s personality or voice?