Some Thoughts on the Craft of Writing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 16, 2016

Back in high school, I thought I was pretty good at writing. I have one surviving example from that era. I used it as reference for an article I wrote for The Escapist several years ago on my first LARP experience (before that was even a term). I winced a lot when I read my old manuscript. It was painful, but it provided me with a lot of details that I had forgotten. When I was younger, I thought it was one of my best writing examples.

My younger self had no clue.

To be honest, from my perspective here in 2016, the article I wrote in 2008 kinda sucked, too.  I could do a much better job today, but I don’t think The Escapist wants to pay me to revise it.

I hope that means that I’m growing and improving as a writer. I thought I’d share some thoughts on how this growth happens.

It feels like there are a humongous number of rules / guidelines / techniques for writing a good story. Some are pretty iron-clad and universal (like spelling and grammar rules). Some are pretty loose guidelines and may vary by genre, audience, time, or even our personal process. So guess what? Nobody knows all of these rules, guidelines, and techniques. Any of them can be broken by an author who knows what he or she is doing, but not out of ignorance. Which… is tough, because starting out, ignorance is high, in spite of best efforts.

When a writers are first starting out, they probably don’t know most of these rules. Of the ones they think they know, they have forgotten many of them or don’t think about them while writing, and aren’t sure how to apply many of the rest. And then they allow themselves to violate some others because they think they are special snowflakes for whom exceptions can be made. Eventually this may be true, but beginning writers, in spite of sometimes considerable raw talent, often fall prey to Dunning-Kruger bias.

A new author can find themselves screwing up on accident a lot. They think, “Oh, man, I’d never do that!” and then later discover (or have it pointed out to them) that they managed to do exactly that.

With lots of reading (which trains the brain to recognize certain structures and rules), studying, practice, and maybe formal training, things get better. A lot more of concepts are not only learned, but internalized. That’s a big deal. A writer quits making so many newbie mistakes to begin with, and moves on to a plethora of other mistakes.

And eventually the writer who keeps at it, keeps learning, and keeps growing achieves a state of relative competence. I’m still just aspiring to that. They can crank out a first draft with fewer problems than inexperienced writers have in their final. Their editors may not have to squint so hard to see the gem inside the uncut stone.

Of course, good writing is more than just writing that just follows good structure, obeys guidelines and rules (where appropriate), and employs good technique. That’s all the craftsmanship – the science of writing, I guess. There’s still a huge creative / artistic element as well. I think this can also be trained, or at least learned, but a lot of it is innate as well. But until we get our skills up to that level of competency, it’s like driving a sports car along an unpaved, overgrown, rock-laden dirt road. There’s just nothing there but unused potential.

I think this pattern follows just about every creative endeavor, although for some (like game development) things are a lot less understood, and much more has to be learned the hard way. Since my improvements in writing have been pretty dramatic over the last couple of years, it has been easier for me to see.

I still make plenty of n00b mistakes in game development, too. Maybe one day I’ll be competent there, too.

Filed Under: Books, Writing - Comments: 5 Comments to Read



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