Le Guin's Craft | Research

The sound of the language is where it all begins. The test of a sentence is, Does it sound right? The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make, the sounds and silences that make the rhythms marking their relationships. Both the meaning and the beauty of the writing depend on these sounds and rhythms.

A good writer develops a mind’s ear, learns to listen to the writing. The common faults—dull, choppy, droning, jerky—these are all faults of sound. And the virtues—lively, well-paced, flowing, strong, beautiful—these too are qualities you hear.

Sentence Variety

There is no optimum sentence length. The optimum is variety.

Prose consisting entirely of short, syntactically simple sentences is monotonous, choppy, irritating. If short-sentence prose goes on very long, whatever its content, the thump-thump beat gives it a false simplicity that soon just sounds stupid. I call this Macho Staccato—a lot of contemporary prose sounds like it. Short sentences. Very short sentences. Tough sentences. Like this. See?

And prose consisting entirely of long, complicated sentences will tire even the most determined reader. The mind needs variety the way the body needs it, and the way a piece of music needs it.

The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence—to keep the story going. That’s all. That’s the music.

Crowding and Leaping

Here is what John Keats meant when he told poets to “load every rift with ore.” Crowding: to use only vivid, exact language, never flabby and vague; never use ten words where two will do; avoid clichés, seek the vivid phrase, the exact word. This is crowding.

But also: what you leave out is infinitely more than what you leave in. There’s got to be white space around the word, silence around the voice. Listing is not describing. Only the relevant belongs. This is leaping.

Crowd with meaning. Then leap over what isn’t necessary. Both together.

Adjectives and Adverbs

I refuse to tell you not to use adjectives and adverbs. Many writers will tell you that. They are wrong.

Adjectives and adverbs are rich and good and nourishing. They add color, life, immediacy. They cause obesity in prose only when used lazily or overused—the same is true of all words.

Here is what’s true: if you can put the quality in the verb itself (“they ran quickly” becomes “they raced”), or into the noun itself (“a growling voice” becomes “a growl”), then the prose will be cleaner, more intense, more vivid. Often you can. So try.

I will banish one adverb. “Suddenly” seldom means anything at all; it’s a mere transition device, a noise. When you write “Suddenly she saw a red light,” we are not surprised; we are merely bumped into the next moment. Cut it out.

Punctuation

Punctuation is musical notation. It tells the reader how to hear your writing—how fast to go, where to pause, what to stress. Periods, semicolons, commas: these are to a writer what rests are to a musician.

A writer who doesn’t know the difference between a semicolon and a comma is like a carpenter who doesn’t know a hammer from a screwdriver. You can bang nails in with a screwdriver but it takes longer.

I love semicolons. I don’t have a gun and I don’t have even one wife and my sentences tend to go on and on and on, with all this syntax in them. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there’s one.

On Exposition

Thanks to “show don’t tell,” I find writers in my workshops who think exposition is wicked. They’re afraid to describe the world they’ve invented. They rely far too much on dialogue. They restrict themselves to limited third person and present tense.

This is foolish. Showing is wonderful, but you cannot build a story with nothing but bricks. Sometimes you need mortar. Exposition is the mortar. Break up the information, grind it fine, make it into bricks to build with—but you must have it.

The narrator’s voice, ponderously called “omniscient,” does not distance the story. It is the most intimate voice of all—the one that tells you what is in the characters’ hearts, and in yours.

Distance lends enchantment.

On Tense

Writers flee the past tense because they fear “distance.” So they cram themselves into the present tense: tight-focused, inflexible.

The difference is like a narrow-beam flashlight and sunlight. The flashlight shows a small, intense, brightly lit field with nothing around it. Sunlight shows you the world.

The past tense includes past, present, and future. It is vast. The present tense shows only now. Use it when you must, but know what you’re giving up.

Overuse of present tense has made much contemporary prose sound alike. Bland. Predictable. Risk-free. McProse. The wealth and complexity of our verb forms is part of the color of the language. Using only one tense is like having a whole set of oil paints and using only pink.

”Write What You Know”

I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 2200.

I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.

On Being a Writer

When people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no. I always was a writer. I didn’t want to be a writer and lead the writer’s life and be glamorous and go to New York. I just wanted to do my job writing, and do it really well.

Making anything well involves a commitment to the work. And that requires courage: you have to trust yourself. It helps to remember that the goal is not to write a masterpiece or a best-seller. The goal is to be able to look at your story and say, Yes. That’s as good as I can make it.

The Teaching

To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.

Play with sentences like a kid with a kazoo. Read your work aloud. Cultivate your mind’s ear. Vary your rhythms. Master the rules and then, only then, break them when you must.

Other writers are not your competition. They are your sustenance.

There is no reason why your next book can’t be your best yet, no matter how old you are allowed to become.

What to Read

Steering the Craft — my manual for writers
The Language of the Night — essays on fantasy and science fiction
Words Are My Matter — essays on reading and writing
The Left Hand of Darkness — where I tried to put it all into practice