By John Gilstrap
John Miller’s excellent post last Saturday got me to thinking about the process of writing; specifically, how little of it I truly understand. Like John, I’ve seen some reasonable success over the years, but I’ll be damned if I understand anything about the process.
Case in point: My next book, Damage Control (June, 2012) was written under impossible circumstances, under a ridiculous deadline that had me writing madly for two solid months. I actually submitted it to my publisher without going through half of the quality control steps that I normally do. I was so worried about it that I sent the manuscript to beta readers for the first time in my career. The resounding chorus from those readers was that this is the best book I’d ever written.
Having just finished with the copy edits, I confess that I’m a hell of a lot happier with it than I thought I would be when I was writing it. I broke every rule I had ever set for myself. I wandered from my outline (actually, it was the outline that got me into trouble in the first place), I didn’t listen to the music that I normally do (that was a luxury that I couldn’t afford), and I didn’t obsessively proof read as I went along. Yet somehow, I was able to churn out over three hundred pages of material in just a little over two months.
I don’t get it. I don’t get any of this stuff.
We talk a lot here in the Killzone about the woo-woo of writing, that romantic crap about muses and attitude and characters talking to us and taking over the story. In my experience, all of that is bullshit. Writing is about tying your butt in a chair and letting fly with the story that’s screaming to come out. Motivation doesn’t matter, and neither does background music. If you’re a professional, you produce solid work to the deadlines that are assigned. The rest doesn’t matter.
I teach a few writing courses every year to reasonable acclaim, but I start every one of those courses with a PowerPoint slide that reads, “No one can teach you to write.” I put that up so as not to be a fraud. One learns the principles of writing the same way one learns the principles of reading or golf: You practice. As you read material that you love, you become a better reader, and if you’re wired to be a writer, you instinctively try to decode what the writer did to get into your head.
Can a pro help? Absolutely. Where there’s basic skill and a desire to learn, a teacher can help you hone. A teacher can coax you from the 80th percentile that you earned on your own, and maybe bring you to the 90th percentile. But from there, you’re on your own again. The last ten percent is about storytelling skill and voice and pacing and all that stuff that I believe you either get by birth or through osmosis or you don’t ever get it at all.
A frequent contributor here at TKZ attended one of my classes, and I could tell from the material that she submitted for review that she had talent, but that she was getting in her own way with details that no one cared about. I believe I helped her a lot by showing that the terrorists in the mall were way more interesting than the outfit the protagonist was wearing. I think I saw a lightbulb come on in her, and that was one of the magic moments of writing workshops. In that case, though, I still didn’t teach her to write. Instead, I showed her a way to improve her talent and craft.
I think that every successful writer has a handful of those moments in their past, those lightbulb conversations where someone encapsulates in a few words what you’ve been wrestling with on your own but have been unable to nail down. A dear friend named Brie Combs did that for me. She was the one who told me how my writing voice was so close, but that I loved the passive tense too much. Bingo. I got it. Nathan’s Run followed about six months later.
There’s a famous screenwriting teacher who blathers in his classes about how the secret to a successful screenplay is to have the first turning point occur before page X, and for the turning point for the second act to happen by page Y. With all respect, I think this is madness. But students eat it up with spoons the size of shovels.
Do you really think that Ernest Hemingway or John Grisham or Tom Clancy or Stephen King or Danielle Steel or god knows how many other wildly successful writers gave a rat’s patootie about someone else’s formula? I suspect that they started out to tell good stories well, and in the process created formulas for others to follow.
So here I am, on the brink of another book. It’s under contract and it’s therefore going to happen. I think I know where it’s going, but I’ll never know for sure until I’m on the other side of it.
At the end of the day, here are my words of advice for those of you in Killzoneland whose woo-woos keep evading you: Quit waiting for the muses or your characters to lead you. They’re all imaginary, and they reside exclusively in your head. They’re lazy and they’re recalcitrant, and they won’t do a damn thing to help you if you don’t grab them by the nose and tell them what to do.
As for motivation, think like a professional: Show up for work and make it happen.
21 thoughts on “There Is No Woo-Woo in Writing”
There Is No Woo-Woo in Writing
By John Gilstrap
John Miller’s excellent post last Saturday got me to thinking about the process of writing; specifically, how little of it I truly understand. Like John, I’ve seen some reasonable success over the years, but I’ll be damned if I understand anything about the process.
Case in point: My next book, Damage Control (June, 2012) was written under impossible circumstances, under a ridiculous deadline that had me writing madly for two solid months. I actually submitted it to my publisher without going through half of the quality control steps that I normally do. I was so worried about it that I sent the manuscript to beta readers for the first time in my career. The resounding chorus from those readers was that this is the best book I’d ever written.
Having just finished with the copy edits, I confess that I’m a hell of a lot happier with it than I thought I would be when I was writing it. I broke every rule I had ever set for myself. I wandered from my outline (actually, it was the outline that got me into trouble in the first place), I didn’t listen to the music that I normally do (that was a luxury that I couldn’t afford), and I didn’t obsessively proof read as I went along. Yet somehow, I was able to churn out over three hundred pages of material in just a little over two months.
I don’t get it. I don’t get any of this stuff.
We talk a lot here in the Killzone about the woo-woo of writing, that romantic crap about muses and attitude and characters talking to us and taking over the story. In my experience, all of that is bullshit. Writing is about tying your butt in a chair and letting fly with the story that’s screaming to come out. Motivation doesn’t matter, and neither does background music. If you’re a professional, you produce solid work to the deadlines that are assigned. The rest doesn’t matter.
I teach a few writing courses every year to reasonable acclaim, but I start every one of those courses with a PowerPoint slide that reads, “No one can teach you to write.” I put that up so as not to be a fraud. One learns the principles of writing the same way one learns the principles of reading or golf: You practice. As you read material that you love, you become a better reader, and if you’re wired to be a writer, you instinctively try to decode what the writer did to get into your head.
Can a pro help? Absolutely. Where there’s basic skill and a desire to learn, a teacher can help you hone. A teacher can coax you from the 80th percentile that you earned on your own, and maybe bring you to the 90th percentile. But from there, you’re on your own again. The last ten percent is about storytelling skill and voice and pacing and all that stuff that I believe you either get by birth or through osmosis or you don’t ever get it at all.
A frequent contributor here at TKZ attended one of my classes, and I could tell from the material that she submitted for review that she had talent, but that she was getting in her own way with details that no one cared about. I believe I helped her a lot by showing that the terrorists in the mall were way more interesting than the outfit the protagonist was wearing. I think I saw a lightbulb come on in her, and that was one of the magic moments of writing workshops. In that case, though, I still didn’t teach her to write. Instead, I showed her a way to improve her talent and craft.
I think that every successful writer has a handful of those moments in their past, those lightbulb conversations where someone encapsulates in a few words what you’ve been wrestling with on your own but have been unable to nail down. A dear friend named Brie Combs did that for me. She was the one who told me how my writing voice was so close, but that I loved the passive tense too much. Bingo. I got it. Nathan’s Run followed about six months later.
There’s a famous screenwriting teacher who blathers in his classes about how the secret to a successful screenplay is to have the first turning point occur before page X, and for the turning point for the second act to happen by page Y. With all respect, I think this is madness. But students eat it up with spoons the size of shovels.
Do you really think that Ernest Hemingway or John Grisham or Tom Clancy or Stephen King or Danielle Steel or god knows how many other wildly successful writers gave a rat’s patootie about someone else’s formula? I suspect that they started out to tell good stories well, and in the process created formulas for others to follow.
So here I am, on the brink of another book. It’s under contract and it’s therefore going to happen. I think I know where it’s going, but I’ll never know for sure until I’m on the other side of it.
At the end of the day, here are my words of advice for those of you in Killzoneland whose woo-woos keep evading you: Quit waiting for the muses or your characters to lead you. They’re all imaginary, and they reside exclusively in your head. They’re lazy and they’re recalcitrant, and they won’t do a damn thing to help you if you don’t grab them by the nose and tell them what to do.
As for motivation, think like a professional: Show up for work and make it happen.
Lotta truth in your post, John. and in Miller’s from last week.
The more I try to put the formulas into practice, the breakdowns about page X and Y, the more that paralyzes me.
It’s fantastic to read what other writers say about what they do and how they got there, and I’m grateful for all our discussions here and abroad.
But that sweet-spot that drove you to do that work under pressure is where I really love to be.
Sit your butt in the chair and write the story.
Thanks for your raging bluntness.
And congrats on your contract and your new book.
Paula
Raging bluntness. My wife will love that.
As luck would have it, I’m currently in Vienna, Austria, representing the United States at a meeting sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (sometimes, my Big Boy job is pretty friggin’ cool), and just yesterday I launched a bout of raging bluntness.
More on that in next week’s blog . . .
John
http://www.johngilstrap.com
The butt in chair thing is my goal for this year–writing consisently (because my first drafts are even messier when I have gaps of time between writing sessions.).
And you know what? It just feels better working on the same project consistently day after day.
I love those Aha moments. They come both when people give you advice on your own personal work and also, when reading a few good blogs on writing, which is why we’re all so addicted. 😎
John, I think you can teach someone to write, just as you can teach someone to act, sculpt, paint, design a building, take photographs, or dabble in any of the other “arts”. What I don’t think anyone can do is teach someone to “be” a writer, sculptor, painter, architect, photographer or “artist”. I think that has to come from the roll of the dice at birth. There’s definitely a big difference between a snapshot and a photograph.
Personally, I love talking about the craft of writing. Like you, I don’t really understand everything that happens when I write. It just happens. But if I go back and analyze my writing, or anyone else’s, I find that certain things tend to occur that make a story good or even great. Those same things are usually absent in stories that don’t work. And talking about them can be fun and even eye-opening to other writers, especially those just starting out. The good news is, you can find all that and more here at TKZ. Have fun in Vienna.
There are two extremes to avoid. The first is that writing narrative fiction is only a matter of applying rules or formulas. The other is that there is never anything to apply. Between these extremes a good writing teacher can help enormously.
Gilstrap’s Golf Analogy (GGA) is instructive. If a 10 year old kid says he wants to become a professional golfer, the worst thing you can say is, “Kid, this stuff can’t be taught. You just go to the range and hit balls, and keep on hitting ’em.” That kid will start ingraining bad habits and eventually quit in frustration. Even if he has natural talent, it won’t do him a bit of good when it comes to the fine arts of chipping, putting, sand play and so on. (In fact, can anyone name a professional golfer who did not take thousands of hours of lessons? Indeed, who does not still employ a swing coach?)
A good writing teacher, like a good golf instructor, can teach the things that make people better. Even more, can coax out of the student the good natural talent and help it flow in the most effective way. To this, the student has to add hard work.
John Grisham was mentioned. Funny, but after The Firm hit, Grisham told an interviewer that he read Writer’s Digest religiously, and that he got the tools he needed to finish The Firm from an article in WD called, “Ten Rules for Suspense Fiction.”
James, John (Grisham) wrote A TIME TO KILL before the firm. A lot of people argue the first is a far better book, which was written before he read the ten rules.
I agree that someone can be taught to write, but not to write great or even good books. Teachers bring out the best in some and sometimes destroy the best in a person’s writing. Not all teachers understand an artist and some are jealous of real ability and a real spirit.
There are good books on writing and there are far more mediocre ones. Process is different for everyone and minds work differently.
I can’t explain how I do what I do or even why I do it, but perhaps it is teachable. We adhere to formulas because the “experts” say we have to stick to the tried and true. The agents and editors say the same thing and blame the buying public for wanting the formula (The every McDonalds in America argument. Readers want sameness with differences. I don’t believe it. I don’t like knowing what to expect when I read a book.
The better stories I have written don’t follow any particular template. They start where they start and end the same way. I don’t really follow any rules, including my own. I’ve never taken a writing course and probably never will.
I like that raging bluntness line, too.
A lot of us authors follow one set of “THE” rules or parts of several. Most us have read the rules and adopted the ones that fit into our comfort zone or made sense to what we were doing or hung up on. I write the types of books I write because they fit me. They are shallow by design, but any depth is more accidental than purposeful. My characters are as real as I can make them, the action as believable, the settings familiar to me. As far as I my process is concerned, stories come harder, settings and characters come to me without effort.
I look at “the rules” more as guidelines, like those white lines that keep me on the blacktop and out of the cornfield. There are still countless places that road can take me, but the blacktop is there for a reason. I don’t have the experience, skills, and most importantly, the patient readership who will stick with me when I flail and go off into the mud on my own.
I’m building a small staircase right now. First thing I did was get a book on how to build a staircase. I have a degree in engineering, I could have figured it out on my own, but why re-invent the basics? I’m adapting the fundamentals to my particular need and will end up with a workmanlike structure. Then I can freestyle on the details.
And those “lightbulb” moments are worth their weight in platinum-coated plutonium to get you out of a rut and back between the white lines.
Austria? I haz a jealous!
Terri
Joe, no one loves talking about the craft of writing as much as I do. I think that other writers’ processes are fascinating. Hell, I made a special two-hour trip to Key West one time just to look at Ernest Hemingway’s writing studio. It’s all pure effing magic.
That said, I’ve lost track of the number of panels I’ve sat on with authors who spout pink wingend sunshiny bullshit to roomsful of people who want to know The Secret. As if there were a secret handshake or maybe a password that will open the doors to publication. I’ve heard frustrated writers complain that their characters never speak to them they way they hear other authors waxing on. Puh-lease. Some people seem to be willing to anything to become successful SHORT of working hard.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
Jim,
Carrying the GGA a little farther, I in fact believe that great golfers are in fact not made, but born–as are all great athletes and artists.
To be sure, lessons can make a young person the star of his high school golf team, and first pick on the company tournament, but that’s not fine, gifted golf. That poetic coordination and rhythm, the sense of the course, the continual feel of the X-factor that defines all athletic competition comes from a place deep inside.
I think it’s the same among writers. The problem is that we’re not born with the appropriate labeling. Thus would-be great writers struggle to become the great basketball players they can never be, and vice versa.
You’ve got to try if you have a hope of succeeding in any endeavor. But through all the lessons and all the instructional books, it’s important to remember that formulas at best lead to mediocrity. In fact, if I pull to mind some of the truly successful formula writers I know, it occurs to me that their success likely derives from having invented the formula.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
I love the last sentence –
As for motivation, think like a professional: Show up for work and make it happen.
It’s not always easy, but it is the only way anything will get written. That’s why I haven’t written anything in three weeks! I hate this time of year in the UK. I can feel myself about to pull out of this slump and I fully intend to some serious arse sitting down in the chair.
The best teacher I ever had says no one can teach you anything. Teachers can guide, encourage, point out pitfalls, and recommend the most likely approach to something, based on you collection of talents. You still have to figure it out for yourself.
Grab the muse by the nose? That’s where I went wrong!
I’ve been grabbing her by the … well … not the nose.
Guess that’s why I’ve got more kids than books out there.
So true, John: There is no greater inspiration than the deadline!
John, I don’t dispute the place of natural talent, not at all. But there are very few natural geniuses. Mozart, for example. But every other piano student needs lessons.
Great athletes are both born and made. Especially in golf. Again, there is not one you can name who doesn’t credit a teacher for teaching the fundamentals.
That’s true of any sport, BTW. The fundamentals. That’s what good writing instruction is.
And also, there are innumerable accounts of “less gifted” athletes and artists who have surpassed the “naturals,” through a combination of coaching and hard work. Ben Hogan comes to mind. And he wrote one of the definitive books on the swing, still used today. He had the idea you could teach this stuff. I’m not going to argue with Hogan.
The one “natural” in golf I can think of was Sam Snead. Snead was an amazing athlete, and apparently picked up the game by watching others and then hitting hickory nuts with sticks down by the crick. Everyone who saw him was in awe of his poetry with a golf club.
Ben Hogan, OTOH, was not as gifted physically, but no one worked harder studying mechanics and perfecting a swing.
I say without hesitation, Snead was the exception. Hogan is the model for most golfers who’ve had any success, and most artists, too.
Interestingly, in the early 60s there was a show called Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. It paired up star golfers for a one-on-one round. And one of these pairings was Sam Snead v. Ben Hogan, both a bit past their primes, but still playing great golf.
Hogan prepared for the round by hours of practice, studying the course and so on. Snead showed up, feeling his usual loose and relaxed self.
I watched this episode on DVD. Ben Hogan won. He hit EVERY fairway. He hit EVERY green in regulation. When it was all over the host of the show, legendary golfer Gene Sarazan, said that was the most perfect round of golf he had ever seen, anywhere.
There are fundamentals that are there for a reason: they WORK. And they help put natural talent where it needs to be. The books and movies that succeed are a combination of talent, originality and a form that enables a reader to relate.
I’ve seen a lot more mediocrity in works that ignored storytelling principles and thought putting down words was enough. I’ve read books by very talented authors that would have succeeded instead of failed if they had only accepted the fact they might be able to learn something once in awhile. I’ve also been privileged to witness many, many writing students who caught on to these things and went on to get published.
I call one of these as my expert witness.
James,
My issue is not with the inherent value of instruction. Quoting “Animal House,” Learning is Good.
Every professional golfer in the world is made better by good coaching. But the best coach in the world could not make me a championship golfer. But in all fairness I’ve got a better shot at championship golfer then I do at chanpionship basketball player.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
James,
My issue is not with the inherent value of instruction. Quoting “Animal House,” Learning is Good.
Every professional golfer in the world is made better by good coaching. But the best coach in the world could not make me a championship golfer. But in all fairness I’ve got a better shot at championship golfer then I do at chanpionship basketball player.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
Well now, John, I think we’re getting closer on this (do you want to be closer? Give us a kiss!)
There are “championship” athletes and artists who are there because of natural giftedness and instruction. Michael Jordan, for example. Gretzky.
Yet, if we take it down a peg from “championship” level, there are scores of professional athletes making a good living anyway. There are golfers you’ve never heard of earning a million bucks a year. Most of them have worked hard and, via instruction, taken whatever they’ve been given, physically, to the max. They may never win a major championship. But they get to make a living doing what they love. Somebody showed them how.
And that’s what a good writing teacher will do. Take a writer, wherever he or she is, to the next level.
Thanks a lot for quoting “Animal House.” Now I picture you in a toga. Not good.
Congrats on your amazing writing accomplishment. I agree with you in that formulas don’t work for me. While I may do character development sheets and write a synopsis beforehand, doing too much analysis of the story process would wipe away my creativity. I tell wannabes that writing is a career choice and should be approached as a job. You sit down and do it.
Thank you John! Great advice and very helpful. Good luck with your new book.
Mario