Craft writer. How to learn to write?

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The writer is not much different from a carpenter: one teaches boards, the other - words. I will try to prove it. For all the time of my work, my work was somehow related to writing texts. It was necessary to learn to write. I will try to share my experience in obtaining skills in this matter.

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On my way there were a variety of people writing professions: from editors, copywriters, writers just to real writers. Pestering everyone with the request to teach writing, and a sensible answer, how can he write? - I did not hear, but all the answers can somehow be ranked.

"This is not given to everyone ..."


This answer is the most terrible. There are two reasons for this (at choice): a) consciously or not, the person sees you as a competitor; b) the person does not own the technology, but uses techniques at the level of intuition.

“Well, that's art ...”


Any creativity or art, call it what you want, can be called a process, and how a process can be called technology. It is the technology of writing that few people own, and few speak about it. No, this is not art, the artist has paints, equipment, does he draw with air?

“Well, read something as an example ...”


You can read all your life, and when to write? And if you read “Faust” - how can you write something after that? You feel like a mute, which you only need to be silent and listen, that is, read. There are lots of examples when a person who has nothing to do with writing becomes a writer.

By happy coincidence, I met a writer who earned his living by writing. He directed me in the right direction that writing is the same profession or, more precisely, craft.

Where does mastery begin?

With exercises. For the writer, the most important and first exercise is writing an essay. This is a short literary form - the basis for the construction of large novels. For example, we open Remarque “On the Western Front Without Changes” - they sit in the trenches - an essay on half a page, half a page - an essay about the memory of the house, then half a page on the bombing - from these essays Remarque made thick novels. Anything can be a topic for an essay - a pillar, thoughts of a homeless dog, or even a lived day - the essay will be a diary entry. The size of the essay can be from a couple of sentences to several pages. An essay for a writer is also a sketch for an actor, like plays or vocals for a musician.

I will try to state several principles that helped me in mastering the craft:

1. Do not lie. Write only the truth. It is difficult to explain - but you cannot lie to yourself, otherwise people are not fools - they will see a hoax. Here you need the skill not to lie even to yourself, and not to others. There are 2 extremes: a) striptease (the negative subconscious also enters here) b) fear of generally saying something, because we often do not hesitate to time. No, write as sincerely as possible, even if you are sincerely mistaken, this will be your truth. But if you betray the truth that is within you - this is fraught not only for your texts, but also for your head.

2. The harmony. Writing harmoniously. Consonances should be pleasant for external and internal hearing. “Game or business - eat Mars boldly” - a combination of deaf and hissing is not the most pleasant thing in Russian. It is better to avoid such combinations: “Design is beauty in functionality” - this phrase is not functional, because of the monstrous combination of sounds. So you need to look for other options - they are, you just need to search. It is easy to check the harmony - read what you wrote - if it cuts your ears - rewrite.

3. Seven words in a sentence. Yes, yes, I know, a lot of people will come running now - they say, we have a bogaty and powerful one, that there are complex and complex sentences. Thank you, I am in the know - complex offers are wonderful, I do not argue, but we are talking about the beginning. Immediately write / play symphonies, immediately think / write with complex constructions, and readable, moreover - to make them pleasant to read - no one takes it - it will not work. First you need to learn how to burn bricks, and then take on something more complicated. Writing in long sentences is aerobatics, not every writer can do it. I’m not sure that these phrases inspire everyone to recall the kilometer offers from Tolstoy in War and Peace. I advise you once again to listen and count the words: "my uncle has the most honest rules when he was seriously ill ...", etc.

4. No inspiration. This word is so raped that it’s just embarrassing to use it. There is an objective reality, and it’s naive to think that something “from above” will fall on our heads, or on our heads. We have a huge and powerful machine - the subconscious, it needs to be loaded correctly, and it will produce high-quality and necessary things. I mean this: what questions are you asking? What are you thinking about? What are you reading about? What are you dreaming about? How do you look at others, at the world? What is “brewing” in your head? - It depends on what and how you will issue on paper. A person “under inspiration” is like “high” - he doesn’t understand anything, is seized by his condition and does not see anything around - you can drive a bicycle for a long time, or you can safely ride a truck. Inspiration is the schizophrenia of a creative person, less inspiration.

Discover any memories of recognized classics about how they wrote. You will not find a word about “inspiration” there. You will find information on how they set up the process. It is the technological process: how thoughts were written, how they worked with drafts, how and when they returned to the text, how they found writing topics, how the text was processed and refined. This is what we are talking about, and not about inspiration that you will never see. You need not wait, but work - and not inspiration comes, but write the text - there will already be something to which you can return and finish, and there will be no empty thoughts.

Usually, everything that was recorded when the stream was flowing requires a harsh and tough check. After that, you need to calm down, and choose all the most valuable when you are no longer under the “inspiration”. Like that "oh! I wrote such a cool thing! Wow, what a cool thing! ”You call a friend to read his creation to him, and he, as luck would have it, does not pick up the phone. Damn it, but it’s a masterpiece, but with ... it’s not picking up the phone! Then you get up in the morning, you go to the toilet, your creation catches your eye, and you think how good it is that you did not pick up the phone yesterday ...

5. “Any fight begins with the first blow” - as my coach said, any text starts with a shock phrase. Embed in one sentence everything you want to say and more. Make it a tagline of your text. With a percussion phrase, you put a point and draw a line - you illustrate / expand / decipher the percussion phrase. For example, in the shock phrase to this text, I laid down everything that I prove, showing that the craft of the writer is as earthly as all other professions. An stressed phrase can consist of several words, or one word: “Moscow. How much in this sound, for the heart of the Russian merged. " Shock phrase - Moscow. If you’re trying to put all this in one word in a conversation with the right intonation, feeling, then everyone will understand the meaning that you have invested. And here is only paper and a reader, you are not around to comment - so you need to put everything in the first sentence in such a way as to set the right tuning fork for the reader to read your text. He already belongs to the reader, and he is free to read it as he wants.

The stressed phrase, by the way, solves the eternal dilemma - “What to write about?” And “Where to start?”. Come up with a stressed phrase - and that’s it, it’s up to the technician to write this stressed phrase in the text.

6. During the writing of the text you must make a discovery. If you haven’t done so, throw the text into the trash. Learn something new for yourself, even, it would seem, from everyday objects. If your text is sheer banality - throw it away.

7. Going beyond the limits of the form. Words in the text must be used so that you go beyond the ordinary meaning of words. It seems like in poetry - when the same words get a new meaning and sound. This point is difficult to explain, you need offline work and examples. In a word, this is linked to the previous one: there is no opening - that means, if you have not gone beyond the limits of the form, have not gone beyond the limits of the form - there will be no opening.

8. Appreciate paper. In our terabyte age, this is difficult to explain. Paper has become not only cheap, but generally free. And you imagine that the paper on which you want to write something was made from the skin of an antelope for a month. So, one or several people worked for a month so that you could write something there, or is it even better you worked hard for a long time to make this paper? After that, you will not write garbage, and you will think many, many times, practice on the sand before writing something on such paper. And so! Sat down! He hit the keyboard - and voila! Bam! Weakened, but what are you, here you go, everything is ready. The word is discounted along with the paper. So for training it is better to write on paper, and not on a computer - you will appreciate paper more, and words, respectively. Habr, in this respect is also a very good thing - wrote something wrong

Please do not be surprised at the primitiveness of these principles - but they work. This is only the beginning, only the start, for the writing person, so that he knows where to start, so that he has in his hands the technology for doing something. It is clear that it is impossible to become a great master observing only these principles, but it is quite possible to start mastering the craft.

Brain exercises



Another important exercise for the writer is the translation of abstract things into concrete and vice versa. Those. if you are in a good mood - you should write in what concrete it is expressed (heart palpitations or in something else), or something happened to you, you did something - you have to express yourself to draw abstract conclusions, generalizations on this occasion. Speaking the language of the Internet - online (thoughts) need to be translated offline (specifics), and offline translated online.

Speaking of philosophy. Whether you like it or not, your philosophy will be visible when you write. Therefore, most often writing is a discipline of the mind. If there are no harmonious judgments in your head, then do not have illusions - they will not be on paper either. If there are failures somewhere, then on paper they will be so clearly visible that he himself becomes sick of these errors. But then there is a big plus - we can work with it.

Need to carry a notebook. Overlaid with pieces of paper. As one philosopher said: “If you didn’t write down your thought at the same second, then you will never write again.” And do not console yourself with the illusions of a full head - check yourself, write on paper what you think - immediately everything will become clear.

What are the mistakes of beginning writers?



The very first and foremost: to be a writer. I mean - it will be a mistake to constantly remember "that I am a writer" and pretend. No, you just need to write. Otherwise, this posturing is very quickly read and annoying. If you ask current writers who they feel they are, many will simply say that I write everything and they pay me for it.

A good way to check your writings is to go to the editorial offices with them, if you pay at least 10 dollars, then it's worth it. If not, you still need to continue.

Once again I will say that these recommendations are not a panacea, this is what helped me personally to start writing, and I sincerely believe that if a person wants to learn how to write, he should treat writing as a craft. Of course, not all artisans become masters, but without becoming a craftsman, you will not have a single chance to become a master.

I do not want to pretend to be smart, and to say that these are all my ideas - this will not be true. books and sources are given where some ideas for this article are taken from. But I can’t give exact links - I don’t remember where mine is and what I rethought and pass off as mine. So just the links:

Ayn Rand. The art of fiction
Gustav Vodicka. Writing courses
Nora Gal. The word living and dead
Ditmar Elyashevich Rosenthal. The practical style of the Russian language

UPD from commentators (I have not read it myself):
Mario Vargas Llosa. Letters to the young novelist
Yuri Nikitin. How to become a writer
Leonid Kaganov. A lecture on ideas is
He. HOW TO RELIABLELY DESCRIBE THE IMPOSSIBLE
Vladimir Mayakovsky. How to do poetry by
Stephen King. How to write books

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