May I invite you to think back to a time before you started seriously writing and were just an avid reader. Did you ever think about the author’s craftsmanship? When you were asked about the book you had just read, did you talk about the style or the skills? Or did you enthuse about the characters and story?
I’m guessing it was the latter.
We read to escape, to meet new people within new worlds and to explore and experience new places and adventures within the pages. The author isn’t there. The world and its population created by the author are the only things we see.
I mention this, because I had the pleasure of mixing in the company of a great many writers over the weekend, including a group of yet-to-be-published writers who were discussing their feeling of not yet being ready to start a project. I made a simple remark that sent visible shockwaves through the group. And I do mean visible – I saw them shrink back into their chairs and freeze in utter horror mid-stir of coffee.
“Your writing doesn’t improve,” I said.
But then I continued, “your confidence and ideas grow stronger.”
We have all read debut novels by authors we’ve loved. What was their second book like? Did you personally enjoy it as much? Or more? How did you feel about their third book, or sixth? Agatha Christie was fairly prolific, and Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon, to name but three. Did we see their writing improve or do they have a consistent Voice throughout their collection?
The chances are, you will have to re-read their debut novel to answer, as you can only remember the plots and characters and your favourite story. Because, newsflash, readers don’t actually care about our craft! When we read, we don’t care about Rising Tension, Low Point and Character Arc. Most readers don’t even know what they are! Readers care about a good story, not the ingredients that made it good, and you can’t be a good writer without being a keen reader. We have only to read a book to learn our craft, without even being aware of our classroom.
We can get too caught up in the craft of writing that we don’t take that first step into actually writing something. If we’re well read, our storytelling skills will come naturally. Structure is ingrained. The craft of writing is not rocket science or brain surgery upon which life and death depends. We should be writing for sheer pleasure, and fear ought not to be a part of the process at all.
There have been very rare occasions when I’ve really noticed the quality of writing, the tight style, the choice of deliberate punctuation, the “negative space” of what’s left unsaid that tells me more than any words could have done. Sometimes those skills have been absent in the subsequent novels. Sometimes still there, but I no longer notice. I no longer notice because I’m busy reading a good story and I’m already used to the author’s Voice.
Maybe if the nuts and bolts of the writing itself grabs our attention then the story and characters have not been enough to hold it.
My advice? Relax, stop thinking about the tools needed for your project. Just let the story have life and allow it out into the world. You might find your craftsmanship was better than you thought…