Complicated Systems (Like Writing)

When faced with complicated systems (especially really complicated systems that they didn’t invent themselves), people nearly always try to simplify them. There are two common approaches: Either they break the complicated system down into smaller, less complicated parts; or else they go looking for rules and recipes that other people have used to successfully deal with the overall system and/or the less complex pieces.

Writing fiction is complex. The writer has a bazillion things to pay attention to: big things, like plot arcs and characterization, setting and theme; middle-sized things like action and dialog, chapter/scene openings and closings, description and narrative; small things like word choice and syntax, sentence variation and punctuation. All of it has to fit together to create the effect the author wants.

Much of the time, these two approaches (either separately or used in tandem) work really well. It’s useful to break the complex idea “fiction” into “dialog,” “description,” “plot,” “characterization,” etc. so that the writer can isolate each element and figure out what they’re doing right or wrong. One can continue breaking down most of the big stuff – plot, characters, structure – into smaller pieces. Plots and subplots. Beginning, middle, end; rising action, turning point, wrapup. Linear and nonlinear. Scenes and chapters. Protagonist, antagonist, major supporting character. Viewpoint type and viewpoint character.

The catch comes with putting all the pieces back together. Focusing on one element of writing means not focusing on anything else. Writing two pages of nothing-but-dialog may polish up the writer’s ability to write realistic-sounding dialog, but it doesn’t usually do much for their ability to integrate description or action with dialog.

Likewise, it can be helpful to look at what other writers say about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. (That is, after all, why many of you are reading this blog, I expect.) I do not know any writers who have never wished that they could find a faster, easier, more effective way of getting words onto paper/screen, and looking at what others do can give one new ideas to try out. Some writers find it helpful to talk out specific writing problems with other writers; those who can’t talk about their WIPs without losing the ability to write them may need to hunt through a lot of other writers’ accounts of what they do and how they do it in order to find something that sounds similar, from which they can extrapolate a solution.

The thing to remember here is that no matter how successful a particular technique or way of working has been for some other writer, it may still not work for you or for the particular story you are working on. A really good writer can make even the most bizarre working method sound as if it would be a great thing to try (“Make a giant Mobius strip and write your plot summary in green ink in a single continuous sentence without using any punctuation!”). A really confident writer can make ridiculous pronouncements sound right and necessary (“Do your first draft without using the letter ‘e’!”) When a writer one admires or trusts makes a reasonable-sounding suggestion, it is all too easy to take it onboard as a hard-and-fast Rule. Which is where a lot of “writing rules” come from.

I can think of four different approaches to the necessity of learning to do multiple elements of writing at the same time. The first, and for many writers the hardest, is not to break them down in the first place. That is, one simply writes entire stories, improving every story element a little bit with each new project. While this can be a hard way to learn (like learning to juggle by starting with ten juggling clubs instead of two or three), and a bit slow (because you’re trying to get a handle on everything at once, and the first umpty stories probably won’t be that great), it means the writer learns to integrate everything from the very start. This is the “million words of crap” approach.

The second approach would be the opposite of the first: break everything down as far as one possibly can, then practice each aspect in isolation (e.g., writing something that’s pure dialog [or description, or whatever] until one is satisfied, then something that’s pure description, etc.). Once one is satisfied with one’s ability to write each element, write something that involves two of them at the same time. Then three, and so on. This would be insanely slow, and I don’t know many writers who have the patience for it.

The third method is layering, and I know at least one writer for whom it’s their normal process. They start by writing out just the dialog for an entire scene. On the second pass, they add something else (could be any element, but let’s say description of the environment). Third pass is another thing (again, anything, but let’s make it the POV character’s thoughts/emotions). And so on, until they have as many elements as they can fit in and the scene feels complete. With each pass, some of the previously-written sentences have to change to fit the new element being added. This is also slow, but not as slow as method #2.

The final way to learn is a hybrid approach – usually starting by writing entire stories, but doing focused practice or layering when the writer realizes he/she is having trouble with a particular area or scene. In some cases, the writer starts with focused practice or layering but becomes impatient and moves to writing whole stories before they have “finished” the whole method they started with.