On the craft of writing

I’ve been fascinated with books for as long as I can remember. I began my journey by reading the full works (at the time) of Wilbur Smith. I have my dad for giving me such a light entry into the world of literature… Fast forward a few years and cue a growing portfolio of teacher concerns as I sauntered into class with yet another hefty tome of fiction. I remember one ‘incident’ when I brought in my dad’s tattered and well-read copy of Smith’s Warlock. The graphic depictions of ancient Egyptian death and torture were clearly not on the menu in a reading class for seven-year-olds.

I loved that stuff. It was like crack for my tiny child brain, and far more interesting than hanging around with the other children—most of them concerned with their copies of The BFG or Charlotte’s Web. Not that there’s anything wrong with those. (The BFG is a favourite of mine).

It is only in the last few months that I have even considered taking on writing as a new hobby. Most aspiring writers, well, aspire. I’ve always liked the idea of writing, but never enough to sit down and dig into the craft in any meaningful way. I can’t even explain why. Perhaps it’s a time thing. After all, who has time to write? Certainly not with a full-time job, a mountain of decades-old hobbies and a young son. But here I am, fifty thousand words (edit: now 125K @ 6 months) into my first manuscript. It has taken roughly three months to get to this point, so it seems to me as good a time as any to reflect on what the journey has been like so far.

The first thing to point out is that only at the start of 2024 did I discover that I had a neurological “divergency” called aphantasia. You might have heard of it. In simple terms, I cannot visualise anything in my head—no sounds, images, ‘mind movies’, smells, touch, or any other senses. This means I can’t picture my wife’s face. I need to be looking at an actual photo to know what she looks like. I can vaguely describe her, but there are no images in my head for reference. I also have no inner monologue, or intrusive thoughts.

Why is this important? Because most people read by visualising what is written on the page. I can’t do that, so my own experience of reading is vastly different. When people watched the Harry Potter movies and said: “Oh, that’s not how I pictured Ron!”, I simply thought: “Oh, so that’s what Ron looks like.” I was only able to hold the concept of Ron and his…Ron-ness in my head. I never pictured anything at all, so it was no shock or surprise to see the character on the big screen. The casting of Rupert Grint in no way conflicted with the concept of “Ron” in my head.

This is really interesting stuff because, as I began to write, I was painfully aware that I was crafting a story that over 99% of people would interpret in a completely different way to myself. How can I balance these differences in reading experience as a writer? I am drawn to beautiful prose—rich and detailed descriptions can bore some people and get in the way of their brain painting the picture but, as I’m not able to do that, long descriptions help me understand things and hold a clearer concept in my head. Equally, as much as heavy descriptions can help me, I need to cater for the 99% of other readers who might find this a bit much.

This has led me to critically examine the craft of writing from this point of view. One of my priorities when writing is to do it in a way that will create a compelling brain-video for readers. Knowing that, ultimately, that’s how they will judge the book. Was this “mind film” good? To do this, I write as if I was a movie director. I focus on things that would work well if filmed (assuming I had perfect visual effects, the ability to cast anything and anyone I liked and an infinite budget). This way of thinking about it naturally creates a great reading experience. Whenever people don’t enjoy a book it’s usually because something the writer has done “takes them out” of their brain-movie. Perhaps some dialogue was stuff, or a character makes a cringeworthy, uncharacteristic choice. Maybe an action scene is difficult to follow, or perhaps the pace of the narrative jumps all over the place. Most writers will actually advise against writing as if it were a film because you’re writing a novel and not a screenplay. True. However, I get around this by paying close attention to where the camera is. Most of the time, I want it in the POV character’s head. I also pretend that my special camera is able to record thoughts and emotions, otherwise overly cinematic writing tends to downplay (or totally ignore) the elements of a novel that make it, well…a novel. Deep characterisation is ultimately the best lens to tell my stories through, but pretending that this psychological lens is a real camera helps me to write without a minds eye.

Further to this, I also self-edit as I go. I can’t work by writing any old thing down, blasting out 100K words of fluff and then parsing through several rounds of edits. No chance. Instead, my brain works much better when I complete each chapter and refine it as I go. From talking to many other writers it is clear that a large percentage of them write down what they are imagining in their heads. What they see in their heads is coming to them faster than they can make sense of it or write it down, so you end up with many early drafts being a rushed mess. My brain works much more slowly in terms of crafting stories and narratives. I can’t visualise my world or my characters, so I have to think about them in terms of concepts. Think of it like this: the “normal” way of writing is jumping into a game of Uno for the first time and seeing what happens. Probably chaos. For me, it’s like I can only read the rule book of Uno, and have to deduce what the experience of playing the game is like from only that. There’s a distance between me and my world and characters, which gives me the time to consider everything in greater detail at a slower pace.

When I am writing, I am focused on the sentence or paragraph in front of me. My thoughts aren’t able to dash around, nor wonder about seventeen different outcomes this chapter could have. I think about the story as one super zoomed-out narrative, one where I already just know the key beats and plot points. It kind of feels like taking dictation, in a weird sort of way. Like my mind is, by lack of a visual imagination, compensating by rendering what would have been imagined into a memory instead, and then I just write what I remembered. (Also note, that I can’t recall or replay any memories, nor reexperience the emotions that come with those, and many aphants have a condition called SDAM, or Severe Deficient Autobiographical Memory).

In terms of planning, I have a rough idea of where things are going, the major plot points and character arcs, but my chapter outlines are extremely light. All I need are a few bullet points, perhaps a breakdown of scenes in a chapter, but that’s it. Here’s what an outline looks like for chapter 4:

The golden hall

Scene 1:
Willbearers meet the Orythals [1500w]

Scene 2:
Carriage journey to the Hall of Resonation [1000w]

Scene 3:
Arrival at Hall of Resonation [500w]

Scene 4:
Preparation and intro to ceremony [1000w]

This is literally it. Within this framework I let the characters make their own decisions, interesting events unfold and conflicts arise naturally. This lets each chapter feel fluid while retaining a sense that the plot is always driving forward. Sometimes events will just…happen. As I write, I’ll look back over the last few paragraphs and think to myself, “Huh, didn’t see that coming”. As I already know where everything ultimately leads, I never feel like I’m not in control of the overall plot, but the surprises and twists throughout each chapter do feel spontaneous and exciting as I write.

I’ll wrap this up here, but I’ll do some more posts shortly which focus on my approach to dialogue, action, emotion, and other interesting areas of narrative writing, as well as talk about some of my influences. Broadly, I love the emotional depth and characterisation of Robin Hobb, the dark philosophising of R. Scott Bakker, the grimdark violence of Dan Abnett and the readability of Brandon Sanderson.