More Writing Advice: Is it a craft issue or a story issue?

This is a post to archive some advice given on twitter, and also to further elaborate on some of my thoughts!

My evergreen advice to all writers: learn to understand the difference between writing and storytelling, so it’s not as upsetting when they don’t perfectly mesh for you. Writing is a craft, a tool to be used however you like. Storytelling is an art form that you can express with writing.

Writing is an inherently slow craft. You can only really do that as fast as your brain and body allows you to. There are rules to learn that will help you, like grammar and structure, and tricks you can teach yourself so prose feels fresher, but writing is a lot like hiking. You’ll get there when you get there, one step at a time.

Telling a story is difficult because you have to marry your craft of choice with the art of storytelling. The same is true for comics and plays and video games and novels. If you’re able to identify the difference between a craft issue and a story issue, it will help you so much! This is how people can more effectively self-edit.

I often think about stories like a graph with both X and Y axes. Craft and art should theoretically be functioning together to get your optimal results. That’s a real fuckin’ boring way to talk about the beauty of art, but you need to work with the tools you have in order to get to that “holy shit that was so cool” moment. You need to understand the difference between the failure of a boring sentence and the failure of a boring character. Good craft can only get you so far if your storytelling instincts haven’t been honed enough to recognize how best to implement these tools you have.

Is this scene not working because the prose isn’t doing a good job of conveying the emotions of the story? Or is it that the content of this conversation doesn’t function as a good bridge between this scene’s emotions and the last? You need to see both levels to diagnose problems. The writing supports the story! These two things can harmonize through style, but they can also work against each other when you’re unsure about either element.

In my experience, it is a thousand times easier to fix prose/craft issues than story issues, so I always advise people to figure out their story issues first. I’m also a writer who tends to let stories evolve as I write them, but even I have notes and outlines. I have a vision for what it is I want to accomplish. Sometimes I have to do some writing to figure out the best way to build that story, but I always know what I’m trying to build. I know the skeleton. The way the muscle and fat sits on the body is much easier to adjust than the bone structure beneath the skin.

If I’m writing a scene that I know is important to the narrative, but the prose is coming out too weak to realize my original vision, I will simply leave it in its minimized form, continue on to a scene I’m better prepared to write, and then come back to shore up that weak scene so it can better match what’s around it. Editing is easier when you have those highs and lows to work off of. It’s a very good skill to be able to say, “this part of the piece is weaker, I’ll come back and fix it later” and not drive yourself mad trying to perfect it right then and there when you don’t even have the end written.

If I begin writing a scene and I have a character opening their mouth to say something important, and then I have no clue what they need to say that’s going to solve the plot problem, I will stop and go back to my story notes to better understand the emotions I’m conjuring. This is a moment that I don’t want to skip over and come back to, because it is substantive! This line may get referenced later on by another character. I don’t want to write more load bearing scenes reliant on this one if I don’t know how this particular scene is actually carrying the emotional weight. Substantive problems are far more likely to create more problems down the line if you don’t straighten them out.

I am deeply, deeply against perfectionism in every form. Perfectionism kills art, it stalls your process, it gives you art blocks, it makes you miserable with impossible standards. Stories get written one word at a time! They are simply too long and too much work to get correct on your first try, and pretending like anyone can be perfect on their first try is doing yourself and literally all other artists a disservice. Which is why it’s super important to figure out what kind of problems your piece is presenting with.

There’s a time to just keep writing, and there’s a time to stop and consider what you’re doing. Boring prose does not need to be addressed right away. That can wait. Oftentimes, I find it’s way easier to punch up past scenes after I’ve finished a first draft, because I suddenly have clarity on how the emotional weight is being distributed across the whole piece. I know what comes up at the end, so I can pull those threads back to the beginning. I know which scenes are unbalanced and which scenes are strong on their own.

My general rule of thumb is this:

Is this a substantive-story problem? It’s okay to stop and figure that out.

Is this a craft-prose problem? Put it off. Fix that in the editing stage when you have a completed first draft that can support its own weight.

Plenty of people, myself included, will reread pieces when we come back to them, to re-familiarize ourselves with the piece before starting on the new prose. When I do this, I intentionally limit myself so that I’m not rereading the entire piece every time. I will read roughly a page at most leading up to where construction stopped. I don’t want the new prose to feel totally out of alignment, but I also can’t agonize over every single detail. There is so much work in writing that you can safely put off for later!

For first drafts, it’s good to focus on the parts that make a piece sing: the characterization, the action, the emotion. Figure out your full vision for the piece, get a good skeleton down, and then go back in and use your craft tools to elevate the writing to match the story.