say it’s the journey if you want but at least take the integral
i still feel yet to arrive anywhere, and that’s fine, but in the last three years i’ve learned a lot about writing and critiquing.
with the caveat that this post will, by necessity, be limited in depth, i want to outline the major things i’ve learned about books and craft since starting my novel-writing journey. now, i’m one of those people who has been “writing a novel” since early childhood, so i’m limiting this to what i learned in the last three years. why? because in summer of 2019 i got serious about drafting “that novel idea” and getting it to query stage. of course i want to get an agent and publish my book as well, but those things are less in my control. i did, however, draft and re-draft this book; i joined multiple writing groups, then left some of them, and stayed in the good ones (shoutout to BSFW and Hopefully Writing). i got good feedback, great feedback, and terrible feedback. i beta read over a dozen books. i read craft books, attended talks with authors, asked questions, assessed where i agreed or disagreed. and now, i am querying that book.
does any of this count as a destination? who fucking knows. what i know is this: i’m really excited to write the next book with all of this learning under my belt, just as soon as my dream-brain is ready. i hope to one day know even more, so much more that this blog post seems funny or that these hard-won lessons feel obvious. some of them already feel obvious! but they weren’t, once.
i’m breaking this list down into sections: Process, Drafting, Craft, Editing, Critique, and Heart. i will not be going into deep depth about any of them here, though i may use this list as a topics-list for future posts. if i’ve already covered something, i will add a link.
Process
everyone has their own creative process. what works for someone else may ruin the experience for you. therefore, all process advice — even from the masters — should be evaluated with a squint.
the rest of these notes apply to me:
while drafting, writing almost every day is critical. if I cannot write every day, i’m not ready to draft.
if i’m not ready to draft, i need to refill the well: read, watch, dream. experiencing creative play is a must.
if it doesn’t feel like play, something is wrong. this doesn’t mean all scenes are easy to write or that every writing session is easy to get into. what i mean is, creative flow should be accessible — with discipline and a little time (and, you know, proper hydration, sleep, blood sugar). if i continually cannot get into flow, either i’m not ready to draft or something in my plan / story / outline is wrong.
yes, outlines are good! i will deviate from them, but i do better with them.
creating something as big as a novel is a process of continual resolution. things come into focus slowly. let them. an outline cannot resolve what is too deep to come forward, it can only resolve what i currently know. that’s fine!
Drafting
every draft is a first draft if you do it right.
maybe not like that.
all i mean is: for me, every draft has an element of discovery — even my late ones. this is better explained by…
practice non attachment. sometimes in the process of writing you realize something you thought was essential is actually getting in the way. let it go.
drafting will teach you more than craft books. just let yourself write many drafts.
Craft
the primary tension should be married to main character’s arc. what do they learn? why is this plot the one that teaches them that?
the primary tension and stakes are different things. the stakes are what stands to be gained — or lost — depending on how the primary tension resolves.
if you can summarize your book’s primary tension and stakes as well as signal the character arc together in one sentence, you’ve probably got the correct upper bound on scope. (this was VERY VERY VERY HARD for me to swallow!)
characters who do not take action are boring. there’s been discussion recently about how not everyone can have agency. sure. but i bet they can still assert agency in ways that are interesting, possibly self-destructive, or which lead away from their goal. these things are still more exciting than a character that waits and reacts.
a character must want something. it’s okay if that thing isn’t what they want partway through the book, or at the end, but they must want something. readers should know if they’ve gotten it or not. the gap between what they want and what they have is good tension.
there must always be tension. every scene needs local tension. sure, some scenes are mostly set up or retrospective — the character has to react to what has just happened, etc, but there should still be some question driving the reader, even if it’s only “omg what will they do now?”
not every local tension points the exact direction of the primary tension, but they have to cohere. a local tension that has nothing to do with the primary tension feels contrived.
“show don’t tell” means: humans are neural networks that need unlabeled examples to learn. anything new and interesting about this world or these characters should be taught to readers that way. in general, it takes about 3 such examples (cause-effect pairs). humans like figuring things out! they love noticing patterns! engage reader’s fun little mystery-solving drive!
speculative elements usually mean something. sure, give us rules, i like rules (I see you Sanderson fans) but even then they mean something. (am I going to write a blog post about how Mistborn let me down despite its potential? maybe.) if they don’t cohere with the character arcs, it’s going to be confusing.
i need to know where a character is starting and why in order to be interested in where they’re going.
a book isn’t real life; a lot of “real life” details can be left out! people who point out plot holes like “they would have needed to go to the bathroom!” are huge nerds* and you can ignore them.
i mean unless your book is about how inventing better sanitary systems changed society, or the sci fi equivalent of that (hi Samantha) in which case I expect your realism to play in fun and interesting ways with your character arcs and background tensions lol
the reason I point this out is because: fewer named characters are better. if a character doesn’t have something meaningful to say about the primary tension, or isn’t actively demonstrating one of those show-tell-patterns, why are they there?
Editing
craft books may not be able to teach you how to write, but they can teach you how to edit. this is especially true for matters of pacing.
actually that’s it that’s the only thing I know about this process, i am terrible at editing and am more likely to just rewrite and feel like i’m playing the whole time.
Critiques
giving critique to others will teach you more than craft books
critique the text, not the person.
reflect back what the text is currently doing, as best as you understand it. this is more helpful to the writer than whether you, subjectively, enjoyed it.
DO NOT CRITIQUE BOOKS YOU DISLIKE. you’re doing a disservice to the writer and yourself. if it’s so far from your taste that you are struggling to read it, learn how to politely decline and do so. maybe establish that this is an okay thing to do beforehand! this is such a recent and hard-won lesson that i’m considering beginning every new CP relationship with an exchange of 50 pages and if we want to continue we will, otherwise we won’t.
on the receiving side, good critique feels exciting, like an “ah ha!” moment. critique that is so negative that you’re struggling to read it probably means one of two things: this work wasn’t really ready to be shared and needed more time alone with the author; or, it just really wasn’t to their taste, in which case they should have taken the advice in the bullet above.
if you’re getting wildly diverging critique feedback, you probably need to examine whether something you think is obvious is actually too subtle.
Heart
readers can tell when there’s no heart in a book
so follow your heart
that’s it that’s the post
okay i think that’s all for now! a lot of these could probably use a lot more depth than i’ve gone into here. let me know if something in particular looks interesting to you!
footnotes
*it’s okay for me to say this because i am a huge fucking nerd