Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26652
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26652
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Writing is definitely a craft, and as a craft it definitely has technique, and technique can be described and taught.

Writing is also all surface. There is nothing hidden underneath. All the techniques that an author uses are there on display, and so you can figure them out for yourself by reading with attention. You don't need the classes or the books, but they may help.

But the real question is not whether writing is a craft. It clearly is. The question is, is there an element to successful writing that is not craft? And I think it is pretty clear that there is. That element is seeing. A great writer, in the end, is someone who has seen something that the rest of us have not seen, and has the writing skills to show it to us.

I have read a lot of work by aspiring authors and very few of them lacked adequate writing skills. They simply had not seen anything worth telling. Their stories were not told badly, they just had nothing to tell. This, it seems to me is the limit of writing classes, critique groups, and sites like this. They may improve your writing technique, but they can't teach you to see.

So, the writing books may not be bogus, exactly, though some of them surely are, but they may not be enough, because they can only teach you technique and technique is not enough.

Original score: 9