Writing About Writing

So you’re ready to be a writer, eh?

You’ve got your drafts, you’ve met a beta reader or two, and you’re ready to hear criticism. You’ve found a writing group, online or off, and you think they’re a great fit for you. Now it’s your big day: you’ve traded stories with a buddy and made a date to get together and discuss your work.

Only… now what?

How do you talk about writing? Not about the writing process, about the writing itself. Most beginning writers are perfectly comfortable talking about sitting down to write, what writer’s block is like, and how it feels to finally say “I’m a writer” when someone asks them what they’ve been doing in that coffee shop for three hours. Even experienced writers, though, can struggle with the vocabulary of writing, the words they need to identify and explain what’s going well in someone’s work and what’s maybe not so successful.

For this month’s Technique Toolbox we’re going to put some of that vocabulary in your own toolbox, so that you can give and receive productive, meaningful critiques. Next month we’ll give you some additional terms to use, talk about what you’re looking for as you read, and offer you a couple stock sentences to play with or modify to describe some common problems.

What’s my job again?

When you’re reading and editing, you should know what the author wants from you. Similarly, if you’re asking someone to look at your work, you should be able to articulate the type of edits you expect back. Here are some terms you should be familiar with to make sure everyone’s on the same page (pun intended).

Developmental or Structural edit – This kind of edit involves organization, major plot or thesis points, and (as the name suggests) the overall structure of the story or essay. There’s no real point in wasting time on niceties of grammar or language because the developmental editor will generally be returning the work to the author for a complete restructuring and a lot of rewriting. At this point, the reader should spend more time on “the cousin from chapter two turned into an uncle, but neither character was actually in the country when the murder took place so maybe this part of the plot needs to be rebuilt” than the difference between “lay” and “laid.” The one exception is that if the writer has a significant repeating grammatical error like missing articles or verb tense agreement it’s useful to point that out to them so they can be aware of it in the rewrite.

Line or Stylistic edit – What most people think of when they think of editing. By the time a piece is ready for line edits most structural issues should have been addressed. At this point grammar is cleaned up, style is smoothed out, and sentence and paragraph structure is revised for clarity. Writing is tightened up and unnecessary digressions are deleted. Your line editor is the person who will murder your darlings for you.

Copy edit – Sentence by sentence and word by word analysis of a piece, working for consistency and clarity. This edit usually involves a style guide (does one character never speak in contractions? which names are italicised? which titles are used for alien nobility?).

Proofread – This is the last edit before publication, whether on a blog or in a book. At this stage typos and spelling errors, punctuation and capitalization are cleaned up. The extra the between the the and the is deleted.

Beta read – A combination of line edit and proofread, usually by a nonprofessional. Beta readers may also point out structural issues and make suggestions for resolution. Because a beta reader is attempting to resolve several levels of editing at once, one solution may create an unanticipated problem at another level, so generally a beta read is not a substitute for getting that last focused copy edit or proofread in.

First impressions matter

The first thing you’ll want to do in a critique is give a mile-high description of the piece overall. You don’t need to do a really deep read here, just skim through and form some impressions of the writing style, the plot or thesis, and the characters or supporting information. In doing this, you’ll need to make some sweeping generalizations. But casual statements can come across as thoughtless or fail to convey the information you need to communicate. Let’s play a game of “instead of this say that and why.”

So what do I say?

Before you can start talking about the parts of a story or essay you have to be able to recognize them and know what they’re called. So let’s go through a little vocabulary. Some of this is going to seem super basic, but it’s all important so consider it a reminder to use this basic terminology to discuss writing so that people know what you’re talking about.

Clause – The smallest grammatical unit that can contain a complete idea. Several clauses may be strung together in a sentence, separated by commas, or a sentence may consist of a single clause.

Conceit – In writing, “conceit” is a derivation of “concept” rather than a judgment about how hoity-toity the writer is. The central “conceit” of a story can refer to an extended metaphor or to an unlikely situation or imaginative structure on which the plot hinges. The “locked room” is a central conceit of many detective stories; “boy who can’t speak falls for boy who can’t hear; they’re the only ones who understand each other” might be the central conceit of a romantic comedy.

Denouement – the point at which it all comes together. In classic detective stories, the scene where the Master Detective gathers everyone in a room, murderer included, to explain the plot.

Draft -an unfinished piece of writing. If you’re asked to critique a draft, expect to make substantial changes depending what version the writer is on. Ask how many people have seen this work before you, to get a sense of what you’re in for. Don’t be That Guy: if you’re asking for a critique of a draft, even a first draft, you still should edit it yourself first.

Grammar – The set of structural rules governing the composition of language. Grammar comes in many flavors, from formal to casual, and not every piece should be written in full formal never-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition and don’t-include-contractions-in-your-writing grammar. Familiarize yourself with alternative grammatical and syntactic structures like AAVE/AAE.

Hook – a brief and memorable phrase or idea that makes the reader want to know more. It may be a literary quote, an original phrase, or an early point of suspense in a plot, but the hook is what makes you want to push the “read more” button.

Phrase – a group of words with meaning. Usually not the same as a sentence; may be contained with in a sentence or contain several sentences.

Plot – what happens in a story. Each part of the plot is caused by the previous portion. In Western writing, plot is usually described by being broken into a few sections. One way of discussing plot is a three-act structure: Setup, Confrontation, and Resolution. This can also be expanded into Exposition, Rising action, Climax, Falling action, and Denouement. The second “Structure” basically adds an explanation at the beginning and end of the three-act plot (that is, it introduces characters and builds worlds before launching into the events, and then has a character or narration at the end recap the plot to make sure the reader understands what happened).

Sentence – Words grouped meaningfully to express a complete thought. The thought doesn’t have to make sense out of context.

Syntax – The order words and phrases go in so that they make sense when you read or hear them. This is a desperate oversimplification, but it’ll get you where you need to go.

Thesis – the central “point” of a persuasive essay. What the writer is trying to present as the best answer or most plausible truth, based on the supporting information in the essay.

Transition – a device used at the point a story or essay changes. This change may be a flashback, a scene change, or the “on the other hand” moment in a persuasive essay. Transitional phrases or visual devices like *** are used to indicate these points. If you have to stop and read back to figure out that someone has moved or something has changed in the story, it’s likely that a transition is missing.

Let’s talk about writing

Now that you know what kind of edit you’re expected to do, and what the parts of writing are called, how do you put that together to talk about the writing?

There’s an incredibly simple three-step process that will get you through everything but a proofread. You can ask and answer these questions at a macro level (the whole story) or a micro level (take it down to a sentence or even a clause level) and they work equally well.

What was the writer trying to do?

Were they successful?

Why or why not?

What does that look like on the macro level? Well, let’s consider one of my favorite books, Stephen King’s Misery, which I often refer to as the best-disguised writer’s manual ever written (his On Writing is also a fantastic and accessible craft book, not in disguise).

Q: What was King trying to do? A: Tell a scary story in which a writer is kidnapped by his “biggest fan” and forced to write a book to save his life.

Q: Was he successful? A: Yes. (Important fact: Not everyone will answer this question the same way, and that’s totally fine!)

Q: Why or why not? A: He wove together realistic details with horrific ones and kept the pacing varied enough that the reader could remain immersed in the world, which adds to the scares. The writing is plausible and the book isn’t so long that a reader gets overwhelmed. It’s basically a locked-door mystery from the inside of the locked door, which is an interesting conceit.

Now, that’s fine as far as a review goes – it would also work if I’d answered the second question no, because then I could explain what about the book (the weirdly racist subplots for the book that the writer is writing?) isn’t working for me. That’s good feedback to be able to give.

Let’s see what our questions give us when applied to this sentence from last year’s Bulwer-Lytton awards. For purposes of this post, we’re going to pretend that the writer was not trying to generate the worst possible sentence, and was instead sincere. (This is kinder than finding a terrible sentence on the internet and making fun of a stranger. Please don’t do that when you need to give examples for your writing classes.)

Our protagonist, whom we shall properly introduce in due course, Dear Reader, leaned far into the maelstrom, his body horribly assailed by wind and rain, as was his mind by his predicament (more of which anon), but suffice it to understand, that the current tempest was of such catastrophic proportion as to place it beyond the ken of the most ancient denizens.

Q: What was the writer trying to do? A: Write a suspenseful hook to draw the reader into a full-length adventure novel.

Q: Were they successful? A: No.

Q: Why or why not? A: I’m counting at least nine clauses in this monster sentence, which means that the reader is going to feel like it drags on no matter what’s happening in it. Shorter sentences would have helped untangle the syntax here. In addition, the alliteration and archaic language choices make the whole thing seem singsong and outdated instead of the tension the writer hoped to generate. The repeated use of dependent clauses like “more later” “no really there’s a book coming” and the fourth wall break of “dear reader” are continual reminders that this sentence is telling you what’s happening and begging you to keep reading about it, rather than simply diving (all my puns are intended) into the storm.

See how using a few vocabulary words let us discuss what’s happening in the sentence and why it’s not working? That’s why it’s important to be familiar with the language of your craft.

Try using these three questions to draw out what’s going on in any piece of writing you read, and we’ll be back next month to discuss what problems you might be seeing in writing and how to make suggestions for improvement.

One very important note

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no such thing as “good” and “bad” writing. Or at least, it’s not helpful to talk about your writing or anyone else’s that way. It doesn’t promote improvement and it doesn’t really do anything but give the writer a feeling, whether that’s positive or negative.

Similarly, “I liked it” and “I didn’t like it” are not useful feedback, because they’re about you and not the writing. The writer may love you dearly, but making you personally happy was probably not the first thing on their mind when they sat down to write, so do them the courtesy of addressing their writing rather than talking about yourself.

You’ll give and get better critique if you stick to “is the writing successfully doing what the author intended it to do?”

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me