You’re not as good a writer as you think you are

16 June 2015 Scott 0 Comments


image by writeaboutdragons.com
Scott Ashton runs a writing blog at writeaboutdragons.com where he also makes available a YouTube writing course from filming NYT bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. 

It's true. You're not as good a writer as you think you are. Most writers figure this out sooner or later and what’s interesting is that you’ll often hear the very best writers at the top of their game express as much. Some examples:

“I aspire to someday write a book half as good as any of [Guy Gavriel Kay’s]. The man's a genius."
-Brandon Sanderson

 “Wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm [e.g. impossible].”
-Neil Gaiman 
And they’re not just being humble. Because here’s the thing: there a million different literary skills which go into being a good writer. If a book has a couple of hundred, it becomes hugely popular; a couple of thousand, a classic.  No writer on earth has all of these skills.

So what’s a writer to do? Well, pretty much exactly what Brandon Sanderson and Neil Gaiman themselves have done: get really good in a relatively small subset of that million plus universe of literary skills.

In order to aid in this process, for my blog Write About Dragons I created a rubric writers can use to evaluate their writing. Drawing upon the belief that there really are a million skills in the universe of writing skills, the rubric consists of several hundred questions focused on the science fiction and fantasy genre.

It includes stupid specific questions like:

The first several sentences of the novel clearly communicate at least one of the following: an unanswered question, a dramatic and vivid scene, an intriguing logical disconnect, a strong character voice, or a promise of interesting action to come. 

Some conflict or unanswered question is introduced and resolved within each scene, giving each scene a satisfying sense of closure.

The characters thoughts reflect their circumstances and seem appropriate given the time and place.

The dialogue reveals the character's personality without forcing the character to spell it out explicitly.
And so on. You get the point. The idea is that slowly, bit by bit a writer can progress from mediocre on only a couple dozen of these aspects to being excellent in a couple of hundred of them. And at that point although you won’t have mastered all million of the skills, you will have a couple hundred which will be enough to actually have fans and perhaps reach that elusive goal of making a living off your writing…

Good luck writing!

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