Story Versus Craft, in a Cow Pasture

We’ll consider story and craft first, then relate them to a cow pasture.

Impetus

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I read Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, hoping to learn to become a better writer. The book’s second half helped with that. The first half, which I read first, differed. It enumerated a list of grievances with a writers’ workshop that the author attended.

To understand the gist of his complaint, let’s start with definitions.

Story

For our purposes, let us define a ‘story’ in broad enough terms to encompass all human cultures across all human history. We could say a story is a text narrative featuring one or more characters in one or more settings, in the course of which, one or more events occur.

Craft

Craft, we’ll say, is the way a writer writes a story. It includes the techniques the writer employs, the story aspects the writer emphasizes, the words the writer chooses, etc.

The Universal and the Particular

We’ve defined ‘story’ in a universal manner so it includes campfire tales told by prehistoric tribes, Gilgamesh, The Story of Tambuka, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and King Lear. ‘Craft,’ by contrast, varies across cultures and time periods. A particular technique, word cadence, or plot structure might resonate in one country but not another, one century and not another.

Controversy

A difficulty might arise when a writers’ workshop or Master of Fine Arts (MFA) course teaches craft suited to its culture, but a student accustomed to another culture’s craft attends.

That occurred when Matthew Salesses, a Korean-American, attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. To him, the workshop seemed too prescriptive, too intolerant of other approaches.

My Take

Never having attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I can neither validate nor dismiss Salesses’ experience. That workshop, founded in 1936, produced graduates who went on to earn Pulitzer Prizes, Booker Prizes, National Humanities Medals, and MacArthur Fellowships. Five graduates went on to become U.S. Poets Laureate.

Matthew Salesses has written six books and dozens of essays, been named one of thirty-two Essential Asian American Writers, and received multiple awards and fellowships for his writing. He runs his own graduate-level workshops in creative writing.

Perhaps the Iowa Writers’ Workshop had been teaching craft suited for modern-day tastes of U.S. readers. Perhaps Salesses found that approach too rigid and inflexible, based on his experience with Korean literature. If so, his dissatisfaction appears understandable, despite the success and staying power of the workshop.

As I’ve noted, though, craft changes, often based on reader whims and sudden fads. A given formula works well for a while, then readers tire of it and it becomes stale. A different kind of novel catches on, perhaps one from a foreign country, or one written in a foreign style, or a nostalgic return to a previous style from long ago. Other authors then write in that vein to capitalize on the trend, to catch the wave. In time, that style fades in its turn, soon replaced by another.

Why do these fads, these literary waves, occur? The fickle nature of readers doesn’t explain it all. I suspect some influential readers, eager to experience fresh books, seek something unusual, find it, and enjoy its newness. They see beyond craft to the underlying story. They spread the word, sparking a trend.  

The Cow Pasture

Permit me a silly, Iowa-based simile. Think of story as a cow pasture, one of vast size with grass growing in every acre. Readers are the cows, gathering to devour grass/stories in a particular area. We’ll call that particular patch of grass the craft. In time, the cows consume the grass in that place, and have deposited cow-pies there, rendering that grass less desirable.

One cow moves on, finds a fresh patch with tall, tasty grass and begins munching there. Other cows notice and join the loner.

The process continues, cows moving from zone to zone. They drop fertilizer as they go, so previously grazed parts grow and become fresh again later.

Takeaway

Writers generate stories. They grow the grass, but don’t control the cows. Writers can create stories using currently successful craft. Or they can write stories outside that craft and hope a straying cow notices and draws the herd. A writer might dislike the popular and crowded area, and might fume that his favored grass zone attracts no cows. But cows go where they go.

Hey, cows! Over here! The tastiest grass is grown by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Quit and Start Over?

Songwriter Robert Lopez once wrote, “The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I’ve ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.” Let’s analyze this as it applies to writing fiction.

First of all, I think we can agree Mr. Lopez speaks with some authority about the creative process. He’s won multiple Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, the only person to have done so.  

I suspect nearly every fiction writer knows the experience he alludes to. You get partway into a story, then pause and reflect on what you’ve done so far. Your story looks terrible now. You think it would be better to abandon that draft and start fresh. You’re torn between the fear that no amount of editing will improve the current version and the fear that a new draft won’t be any better.

It’s appropriate that Mr. Lopez used the verb “infects,” invoking the metaphor of viruses and sickness. The temptation to start over does seem like that—spreading inside you, overwhelming your immune system, and making you miserable.

We’ll get to the frustration, boredom, and self-doubt soon. First, let’s examine what happens initially in the process of creating a short story or novel. You come up with the idea, then add to it in your mind. Enthusiasm takes over as the mental picture of the finished work crystallizes. It’s going to be great.

You begin to write, but you find out enthusiasm is a tough emotion to sustain, certainly for a novel, but sometimes even for a short story. The words you’re writing don’t match the gloriously perfect story in your mind. Compared to that ideal vision, the real version stinks. That gap in quality between real and ideal causes the frustration.

As your enthusiasm continues to fade, you lose interest in the story and become bored with it. Your muse moves on to shinier objects and even the thought of continuing the story becomes too much to bear. You’ll do anything to avoid working on it, including the most hated household chores. In this way, boredom has fueled your self-doubt.

Now that Mr. Lopez has put his finger on a very real and universally experienced problem with the creative process, is there a solution? When these negative feelings overcome you, should you edit the draft you started with, or abandon it and start over?

I suspect it’s a very rare occasion when the right answer is to quit and start over. The real problem is, you are no longer in the right frame of mind to write well. What the situation calls for is a break. You should stop editing that story and do something else. Look at the story the next day with fresh eyes and a sunnier mood. You’ll see some things wrong with it, but just maybe the original enthusiasm will return, that zeal you felt when the story was just an idea.

Maybe you’ll decide the problem isn’t a gap between the ideal vision and the faulty reality. Perhaps the vision wasn’t so ideal after all. Don’t be afraid to alter it and work to capture the new vision. This isn’t starting over; this is making a change in light of a new realization.  

Even though writers aren’t immune to the problem Robert Lopez identified, and self-doubt is bound to infect you at some point, you can pull yourself out of it. Most likely, you can salvage the draft you’re working on and won’t have to abandon it to start over.

That’s been my experience with the creative process of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 13, 2019Permalink