: What kinds of skill does writing require? I legitimately don't know the answer. Background I said something a little silly today, and was told I was incorrect: Writing requires no skill.

Vote Up Vote Down

Even bad writing requires skills. I read my earlier efforts and think how badly I suck, so I edit and move on. Often, I return to revise my revisions only to wonder why I had changed my initial draft because my revision sucked worse than the original. I finally decided writing is like a bucket of sand. You hand the bucket to an agent and they pour out mainly grit. But, just as they were going to toss the bucket back at you, a small precious stone is spotted amidst the silicon grains. The agent pours another handful of sand and spots a small emerald. And again, now a ruby. He looks you in the eye as he hands you back your bucket and says, "You are right, you do generally suck; but not always. Your problem isn't that you are a bad writer, it is that you are inconsistently a bad writer, occasionally you produce a gem. So, go through that bucket and get rid as much sand as you can and work hard to add a few more precious stones and we can talk again." Writing is like prospecting in your mind; and prospecting is back breaking tedious work that produces damn little for hours of effort. But, occasionally a few miners stumble onto the mother lode. That is what keeps most of us digging through sand.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

"Write what you see in your head"? That first takes observational skills. What are you seeing? Are you seeing all of it? Are you also listening, smelling, tasting, feeling? Are you observing your (or the character's) heart rate, blood pressure, nausea, backache, muscle fatigue, excitement?

That all takes descriptive skills. Can you use words to capture all those observations and sensations in a way which reproduces them for your reader? "I was cold and sad" is a description, but so is "The raw December wind blew through the Arthur-shaped hole in my soul and left me numb, only a dull ache remaining where my heart used to be."

The words need semantic skills. Grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, turns of phrase. If you can't form a coherent sentence, nobody will understand you.

Above all, you need a story to tell, so you need plotting skills. "The cat sat on the mat" is not a story. "The cat sat on the other cat's mat" is.

Your plots need people (loosely — anything sentient, so intelligent animals, machines, nonhumans, et cetera), so you need characterizing skills. Are the characters rounded, real, believable, flawed, interesting? Do we root for them? Do we care?

Once everything is down on paper, you have to make sure that other people are getting the effect you want. That requires editing skills. You have to be willing to accept and use criticism to make your work better.

So basically, your correspondent is absolutely right.

(0)