Writing Advice: How do you DO it?
“I don't really know how to word it, but like, just what is your thought process when you come up with these stories and art? […] These people have made a whole world that makes the reader angry, makes them cry, makes them laugh, and puts them through everything the characters go through. Just how do y'all make that possible?”
This is from Twitter and was originally posted as a question for the historical fiction panel, but we had a lot of other questions more directed at historical fiction particularly, so I thought I would save this one for a newsletter reply. If you would like to ask a question to be answered in future weeks/months, you can ask me on Twitter or in the comments on this (and future!) posts. Where the writing advice was previously bundled with the newsletter, I’m breaking it out into its own post now.
So anyway, this is a very broad question, but it’s got a lot of interesting facets. There is the “how do you come up with these stories at all?” part, and the “having come up with the idea, how do you write it down in such a way that it gives people feels?” part, and then maybe a hint of some mystical property that allows us (myself and Rukis specifically but also writers in general) to make books that you love (and thank you for all of the compliments in the question, too)?
Coming up with stories is maybe the easy part. I have a list of novels I hope to get to write one day, and I’m not quite at the age where the novelist starts comparing the “to write” list with the “life expectancy” charts (sorry, that’s grim, but it’s a reality!), so there is a chance that my to-write list as it stands now will all one day become a reality. Ideas come from things you want to say to the world, whether it’s “be true to yourself even if your family tells you being gay is a sin” (Waterways) or “be careful around idealization of love, teens!” (Green Fairy), and then you have to figure out a way to say your thing with a cast of characters that you care about.
Stories are not usually about just one thing, of course (Dave Barry, in a column I cannot find now so you will have to take my word for it, scoffed at the notion that Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov to ask the question of whether there is a God, saying that if that’s all he wanted to say, he would’ve just written, “Dear Reader, Is there a God? Beats me. Sincerely, Feodor Dostoevsky.”). But that kernel of the thing you want to say is what sits at the heart of it. Green Fairy, for example, is also about power, and predators and prey, and a little about art, too. But at the heart of it it’s about a couple young people who fall under the sway of powerful predators because they believe in an ideal love and can’t see the reality before them.
When it comes time to build a story, what I’m trying to do is shaped by all the stories I’ve read. I devoured books in my childhood and still try to read new books (with varying degrees of success; I’m no longer a book-a-week person), because that gives me an idea of what kind of shape a story can have. A lot of my stories have fairly Western-conventional shapes, by design. They’re well-studied, they don’t get in the way of the story, and I’ve had a lot of practice with them now. Sometimes (most notably, I think, the Dangerous Spirits series) I’ll get a bit more daring with the form. But you don’t have to! The point is, if you read a lot, then you will develop a sense of what is and is not needed in a story, and as you write you will make your thing feel more like what you believe is a story.
This is where I point out that besides the Western conventions of storytelling, there are many others, and experimental forms even in the West. Seek out the ones that speak to you. We have more access to different stories now than any people ever have.
As for the second half of the question—how do make these relatable to people?—the answer is similar. I’ve read characters in stories and interacted with people for a long time, and I have a sense of what makes a character feel realistic. In a story, you’ll often (not always) want to punch up the drama a little; my stories are usually about a character making a change in the way they act toward the world or in their beliefs about the world (“I understand that love is complicated”), and making such a strong change is not easy for us humans (nor for animal-people). It requires a lot of pressure, and that’s why stories are so dramatic. The well-done superhero stories take familiar motifs like “family can be found as well as blood” and throw it against a backdrop of planet-destroying danger (Guardians of the Galaxy) so that you really understand the importance of letting other people into your life. Your book doesn’t have to have a villain with an Infinity Stone threatening your hero, but your hero does have* to be in unusual circumstances that require a big decision.
Most of us can’t relate to “what if our planet was about to be obliterated in an instant” (well, if you lived through the eighties maybe), but we can relate to “how do you find a family when you don’t have the people you were born with/to?” So Guardians works on that level while carrying us along into the planet-destroying stakes. Similarly, I’m sure many people at this point have struck up a relationship online of one kind or another, but few (hopefully) had theirs take as dramatic a turn as Sol’s did in Green Fairy.
Lastly, one of the most important elements in building a real, complex world or character is details, small concrete things about a world or person. Finding those details that are relatable to people and mapping them onto the story you want to tell is something you’ll learn with practice. Read other books, see how other authors accomplish this task, and keep trying it on your own.
That’s the long way of arriving at the short answer: read a lot and practice a lot. Stick with it! I didn’t write a very good story my first time out, or even the second or tenth. But eventually, you get better, and if you’re determined to keep learning and improving your craft, you’ll make something good.