I Guess I Should Get a Writing Process Icon

[akirlu]

In case you don't already read the blog, I wanted to note that Teresa over at Making Light points to an excellent essay [NB: pdf format] of advice on writing -- it's aimed specifically at critiquing novels in progress, but it has lots of sound advice which applies to writing at any length. Mary Kay and Mris will presumably hate this piece of advice: "If you're not naturally a visual thinker, learn to be one." But for me as a reader, this is dead on. On the other hand, "Some new writers love to withhold information so they can give the reader a surprise later. This [...] might [...] mean you’re relying too much on the idea of surprising the reader later instead of entertaining the reader now," hits close enough to the bone to be an owie.

Also hitting home for me at the moment: "Good writing does more than one thing at a time," -- the insight here being that if you have a scene or paragraph that does only X (scene setting, character, plotting, whatever) and the feedback you get is that it has "too much" X, it may be that it isn't really too much X, but rather that there's not enough of anything else.

A number of the observations by various vetted pros in the comments section are good stuff on process,too. Though you may want to skip over the back and forth about Why People Hate .pdf Format. (I did.) I was particularly interested when Elizabeth Bear weighed in on revising process, possibly because I suspect my process mirrors hers, and I love to be validated by writers I admire.

Edit: The HTML version of the piece is now available here. [Scroll down past the giant, irksome YouTube screen]

Comments

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

The "Show, Don't Tell" section is something of a relief to me. Every now and then I'll intentionally tell rather than show, and be racked with writer's guilt: "I know I shouldn't tell...but...but...this works better!" Ultimately I'll leave it in (unless I figure out a show that does indeed work better). Glad to know I'm not the only one who occasionally sees a need for telling.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think that it's stunningly bad advice to tell people that they have to be visual thinkers to know where everything is. This is advice that works for visual thinkers who are not thinking, not for non-visual thinkers. I can see that I would have to step over a bookstore bag and dodge the corner of my desk to get to my dog from here, but I can also smell the plastic of the bag and the paper and ink of the books, the wood of the corner of the desk, and, of course, the said dog. Think things through thoroughly, sure; know where everything is and how it gets from place to place, great. But putting that in the realm of the visual is just plain stupid. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how non-visual thinkers work. We don't go blundering into the walls (or if we do, it's not due to being non-visual!).

But advising people to learn to work around their readers' biases is not at all bad advice. So I'm only half-annoyed with the "learn to be a visual thinker" advice. Well -- let's call it three-quarters, because I don't have to stop being a scent person to learn to write visual stuff, thanks very much.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I did *say* you were going to hate it. But however you phrase it, it shouldn't be apparent to the reader that the writer didn't think things through, and sometimes knowing how things look is a necessary part of thinking things through. And like any minority, I think non-visual thinkers who write will have to take visual thinking into account to a far greater degree than the reverse.

So, just out of curiosity, are you any more likely to walk into walls and furniture with your eyes closed than open?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Are you any more likely to walk into walls and furniture holding your nose?

Okay, so the analogy isn't exact, and one of the places it breaks down is in crowds. This is why I don't like crowds, or at least one of the reasons.

But a lot of times when my eyes are open I am not taking input from them particularly. Obviously this is not true of something like reading or driving, but if I'm walking around my own house or playing with the dog or cooking or something, I'm doing like most visually oriented people are doing with their noses: the sense organs still working, but it's not registering all that strongly with the brain.

I absolutely do not think that "it shouldn't be apparent to the reader that the writer didn't think things through" differs from "learn to think visually" by a matter of phrasing.

And as for non-visual thinkers taking into account visual thinking to a far greater degree than the reverse: um, yah. Isn't that what I said?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I notice you don't actually answer the question about walking into walls. I guess it could be my sensory dominance bias, but I have a hard time believing that you would be as unaffected in terms of ordinary tasks by being blind as I would be by having a cold. You say you leave your bills out on the desk so they will bother you enough to pay them. Is it the smell that's bugging you when you do that?

I absolutely do not think that "it shouldn't be apparent to the reader that the writer didn't think things through" differs from "learn to think visually" by a matter of phrasing.

No, especially once you leave off the "and sometimes knowing how things look is a necessary part of thinking things through." part.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do I use my sense of sight? Yes, of course; I don't, for example, "read" entirely audiobooks. The calendar by my desk is not just there to make it smell like the paper Aunt Mary uses. And so on. But in fact, my calendar does make that part of the room smell like the paper Aunt Mary uses, and the fact that I have next year's calendar sitting next to the computer and this year's hung on the wall is slightly discombobulating for me. I can smell that there is a bill there now -- the envelope glue isn't the same as my own envelopes' glue -- even though I can't see it under a packet of Christmas package labels, so it keeps driving me crazy.

The question is not whether one uses sight at all, but whether focusing on sight is the best way for non-visual people to make sense of scenes they're writing, to check them. And I would say sometimes, but not nearly as often as you and this person both seem to think. Have you ever watched a kinesthetic person making sense of a scene in a similar way? They move their bodies around, often with eyes closed. They may have holes in their perception this way, but so do the visually oriented (overwhelmingly so, sometimes!). Knowing how things look when the occasion demands it is not at all the same thing as becoming a visual thinker, and focusing on "picturing" a scene as the ultimate arbiter of scene logic is a very bad gap indeed.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I keep feeling you're trying to argue with a position I haven't taken. It seems to me that "ultimate" and "often" and "best way" are coming from you and your sense of ill-use by visual-preferers, not anything I've said. For that matter, I don't think learning *how* to be a visual thinker is tantamount to *becoming* one, or that anyone has asked you or anybody to do the latter. It's a tool in the tool box. One that is useful. One that, yes, will sometimes prevent you from dumb writing mistakes, as with the idiotic description of a stained glass window from the outside of the building, passim. But God knows it's not the only tool, or the best one for every occasion, or a substitute for logic, good research, and a couple of really sharp first readers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But since you feel I didn't answer the question: I walk into walls most often when I have a cold or an allergy problem, whether my eyes are open or closed. I am often conscious of compensating in those circumstances, of trying to use my sight more, so it's not that I walk into everything when I have a cold.

Very few people use one sense exclusively in their lives, but if anyone can in this culture, it's visual people. Reinforcing that doesn't give us more vivid writing or more interesting worldbuilding or any of a number of things. And it doesn't even give us the scene logic it purports to.

[noteon.livejournal.com]

I hope you all don't mind my butting in (seeing as I'm the one who wrote the piece--and thanks for the link!).

That's a letter to my writing students, not a book on writing. Actual students--not just an ideal notion of studentness. It addresses problems I've repeatedly encountered with their manuscripts; it's not a manifesto or a prescription. A lack of visual thinking is one place where I see a lot of their manuscripts break down. Quibble with the theory if you want, but in practice, there it is. It's a recurring problem.

"Putting it in the realm of the visual" is the best solution for any sighted student. I haven't had any who weren't. "Best" in this context means "a combination of most efficient and most effective."

Scent is underused in writing. You have an advantage if you're naturally attuned to it. But I think you also have a disadvantage if you're not attuned to the visual, whether for reasons of blindness or just stubbornness. Why would you intentionally avoid using a powerful tool?

For myself, it was stubbornness.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You're totally welcome to butt in; I was happy to provide the link. And thanks for posting the original letter. It's given me a lot of food for thought.

I doubt very much that mrissa is actually disputing the usefulness of being able to put story-telling in the realm of the visual per se, so much as disputing that telling non-visual thinkers to think visually is likely to actually work for them.

Me, I find it useful to have these discussions about how much she lives by sense of smell, because I find myself noticing and verbalizing my olfactory experience much more explicitly afterwards and *noticing* is, for my money, basic to what writing is about.

[noteon.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd dispute that disputation. Thinking visually is just a skill, which means it can be learned. Since it's a skill that's inherently suited to some of the basic goals of writing, I don't see a way to avoid accepting it as an important one.

We all have things we're naturally good at. By definition, they're not the things we need to work on. We most need to work at the things we most resist. I wasn't naturally a visual thinker either, before I learned how to do it. The writing got better when I did.

I'm not suggesting it take the place of anything else. But if you're weak at it... there's something you're weak at. And this one's important to almost all readers, whether they're aware of it or not.

Human readers, anyway. Moles, I dunno.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all offended, nor do I feel you've butted in, but I don't have the time or energy to continue an in-depth discussion of craft and how much of what we're each expressing here is meaning vs. semantics this time of year. Sorry!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That text is full of good advice, but it's good advice that I can see writers pursuing badly.

For instance: some writers are visual to the extent that they're not much of anything else. They would take the advice of learning to be visual while ignoring the part that says writing should engage all the senses.

For another: he advises thinking of your writing in terms of scenes and figuring out each scene's purpose. That's good advice for revising, which is where he says it belongs. It's not good advice for the initial creative spurt. A lot of good writing isn't clearly divisible into scenes (though you can try to analyze it that way).

This time I have an example: Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Not only is it clearly divided into scenes, but every scene had a clear, blatant, and obvious purpose for being there. By some standards that would make it an ideal work of fiction. But I found the doggedness with which the author pursued this contributed to making the book tedious and plodding.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

That text is full of good advice, but it's good advice that I can see writers pursuing badly.

*Shrug* I've yet to meet a piece of writing advice, or any other kind, that can't be misused, misunderstood, pried out of context, or ignored by people claiming to be taking it. The writer ultimately has to decide what works for them -- I just provide the pointer.

Or, as Hemingway said it, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector."

[tnh.livejournal.com]

It's now available as HTML. I've redirected the link.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Teresa. I've added a link to the HTML version as well.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting both the PDF file and the HTML.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting the link.