The Moment Of Clarity

I don't know about you, but I can't count the number of times I've realised what a bad writer I am.

I would bet you all the money in your pockets that if you've read some advice on writing I've read it too. We've all been overwhelmed by writing tips. There's no shortage of them. And thank goodness. I wouldn't want to have to invent the rules of fiction; I don't have that kind of time. The rules are out there in videos, in blogs and in books. I've read it all and seen it all. I reckon I know it all.

I thought I did. Until I started to notice the Oh! Shit! moment.

I look for writing advice when I'm writing. I read that advice with a certain fear that I'll realise I've forgotten some golden rule. I'll realise the manuscript I'm working on is fatally flawed. Reading about writing when you should be writing is walking the tightrope for me.

Then I'll read some lesson, some advice, some rule of fiction and apply it to my story and think: Shit! I can't belive I'm 40 000 words in and forgot that.

Shit.

That's what I say when I realise that the tragic murder I thought was the end of my story is, in fact, the end of Act One, and the source of the protagonist’s primary motivation. That's what I say when I realise that cowboy spends no time on the land before the story forces him into the big city. That when my protagonist’s plan to rob the bank fails the reader must know what was supposed to happen, but when she hands back the money in Act Three, the reader must be drip-fed her plan lest they become bored.

How could I have missed all that?

Let's clear something up. I'm not saying I'm a good, great or perfect writer. But I once thought I'd heard all the big lessons and knew what they meant. I might not be perfect at establishing character motivation, but I knew you were supposed to. Yet here I was having a regular series of dramatic epiphanies. Lightbulb moments started to come more regularly. In fact, they've become my method. I now write like Hemingway. Re-writing as I go. Fixing my structural and character mistakes along the way. My first and second drafts are written concurrently.

But why? I thought I was past that. How could I have forgotten the rules of character? Motivation? Arcs? Rising tension? Raising the stakes? Time pressure? Catharsis? Denouement? How could I have failed to include them in the first draft? Aren't I better than that?

(That reminds me I must find my copy of The Poetics.)

Somehow there's a difference between intellectually understanding a rule or concept or technique and actually mastering it. Maybe it's the 10 000 hours or the Dunning-Kruger effect. I guess being able to realise you have a weakness is healthy. If we didn't come to know our failures or blind spots as writers we'd never take the time to fix them. (That's assuming they can be addressed.) If we don't rectify those weaknesses in our skills and knowledge, our manuscripts can't help but embody them. Your book won't be any good.

And no agent or publisher wants a piece of that.

A good way to find weaknesses is to listen to the "experts" and use that advice to analyse your own work. The alternative is just get it all right the first time. Well, I don't believe even the best outliners write perfectly to plan. Maybe if you're an AI you can implement exactly what was intended. And I have no idea how pure pantsers do it. The rest of us re-write. We smash out a first draft, review it, then fix it.

I guess I was afraid of the ah ha moment. The Oh! Shit! exhortation. A good writer should never need one, right?

Many writers use the second draft of a story to reshape its structure. Its beats, pacing, character arcs, even character motivation. Perhaps some writers focus on the prose first. Finding the right tone. Or perfecting that prose style. But sooner or later we must all fix the structural and character problems.

A lot of people use readers. Beta readers are supposed help do that for a writer. Even Stephen King has his family and friends read his manuscripts before he sends them off to Scribner. Finding someone to point out the flaws can obviously help a writer fix them.

But I also believe relying on Beta readers can be counterproductive. So too the apparent explosion in hiring editors to help struggling writers prepare for publication. Surely a good writer is one that can edit their own work. And which writer seeks to be anything less than good? Using readers and editors as a crutch means you'll never stand on your own two feet.

Personally, my aim is to continually grow as a writer in skills, knowledge and experience to the point I don't need readers and editors to point out major flaws. Readers will always have an opinion, so will always have a role. But the reliance on readers and editors absolves writers of responsibility for their own craft.

My advice: don't fear the Oh! Shit! moment. Secretly I'm quite thrilled when I have one. It's an opportunity to make my work better. Not-so-secretly they make me realise I'm still not the writer I need to be. Not yet. Yet I look forward to the day I have less. I will have crafted that structure and story from the get-go. That, I think, comes from experience. The 10 000 hours.

I honestly wonder if Faulkner had those moments. Did Steinbeck have two or three Oh! Shit! moments when drafting The Grapes of Wrath? If I shut my eyes while sipping my Beaujolais I can just about picture Hemingway camped in the rear of Le Select with a wry grin on his face. Maybe Pynchon had them and thought, 'Nah'.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if a writer has mastered their craft they have a lot of 'Oh! Shit!' moments when they realise the solution to a problem they're having. Maybe a great writer just has more of them than you and me.

(Unless the 'you' in that sentence is Cormac McCarthy and you're the one reading this. In that case, you wrote Blood Meridian, so I won't presume to tell you how you did it.)

Or maybe it's just that when you and I have Oh! Shit! moments, it's because we stumbled on a solution we didn't even realise we needed.

J.K. Rowling probably knew there was an issue. And fixed it.