Art vs Craft

What do we mean by craft, in relation to writing?

I’ve been thinking about this ahead of my new course, Craft Lab: Interrogating Fiction-writing Techniques, because there’s often a distinction made between art and craft. Sometimes it can feel like an illegitimate one, especially when it comes to the craft of making beautiful objects. But for writers, there is a difference between our dreaming imaginations and the more practical, problem-solving part of our brains that figures out how to express what we dream up.

Teaching creative writing is a funny idea – often critiqued by those who point to something in the creative soul and deny that it can be taught. That’s probably true, but we can certainly sharpen up our tools and techniques to better serve that creative soul. For me, that’s the craft bit. By far the most I have learned about how to get my words expressing what I want them to has been through close reading of fiction by other writers. I confess I don’t read ‘how to write’ books, and never have – partly out of fear of deadening a process that is, at least to start with, quite instinctive.

Close reading as a writer is quite different from the sort of close reading many of us did at school in the name of ‘comprehension’, or even the kind of close reading of English literature required at degree level. We are analysing in a different way, digging for clues as to the conscious and subconscious decisions the author made, thinking about the choices they had and why they chose differently from another author. We imagine, or even try, making a similar choice in a piece of our own writing, and compare the effect. We learn new tricks that can be not just detected, but applied. Some of this happens through discussion; some of it happens unconsciously. Both are extremely valuable.

Teaching creative writing for many years has meant that I have spent lots of time reading and selecting short stories to share with fellow writers. It has also meant that, when repeating courses, I have returned to those stories again and again. Magical things happen over multiple readings of a single short story. The structure begins to unfold and reveal its secrets. We develop an intimacy that allows more and more noticing, so that patterns emerge and symbols stand proud. What we see on a third or fourth reading of a story is wildly different from the first read. Talking about what we see as we go only enhances the depth of discovery, and gives us the chance to observe which techniques work for some readers but not others.

I’m glad that teaching has returned me to the same stories over and over again, since otherwise I might not have found this level of intimacy and insight. It is this experience that led me to create my new course, during which we will read two short stories at least five times each. On each reading we’ll be pulling on different thread – for example, looking at the function of setting, or rhythm at the sentence level, or choices of metaphor – and talking about what we’ve found. We’ll think together about using the techniques we’ve identified, or indeed how to do the opposite.

The stories I’ve chosen for repeated reading are by Katherine Mansfield and Sarah Hall. Mansfield was a musician as well as a writer, and was known for reading her stories aloud as part of her editing process. Sarah Hall began as a poet. In their stories, every sentence and every word has been considered, not just for how it contributes to a story told, but for its aesthetic contribution to a beautiful object. They have very different approaches, but both combine art with craft, intense imagination with meticulous attention to detail.

Those who’ve been coming along to our Short Story Club on Zoom will already know how revelatory even an hour’s discussion of a story can be. How quickly that hour flies by! If you’d like a taster of discussing a single short story, the next London Lit Lab Short Story Club will take place on Zoom at 6-7pm on Tuesday 11^th June. We’ll be reading a Nabokov story, ‘Signs and Symbols’ (also alternatively titled ‘Symbols and Signs) which plays with the idea of referential mania – the idea that, for a central character, everything around them contains meaning directly related to them – and explores what this would be like in reality. You’ll be able to find to Zoom link and the link to the story in our calendar on Substack very soon.

Courses now open for booking:

Craft Lab: Interrogating Fiction-writing Techniques - online (Zoom), Wednesdays starting 19th June

Enchantment in Fiction - online (Slack), starting 24th September

Creative Nonfiction: Compelling Memoir - online (Slack), starting 10th September

Happy writing,

Zoe

PS: Find more information about upcoming courses and free online events via our calendar post, which we update regularly.