The Way of the Storyteller

In this essay, I explore the following questions: (i) what’s the point of storytelling, (ii) what are the elements of great stories, (iii) what’s the ideal writing lifestyle, and (iv) how do I get my stories noticed?

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What’s the point of storytelling?

I’ve been writing stories since I could hold a crayon, but in college I began a more focused study of the craft. I had to struggle through a lot of uncertainty in those early years—uncertainty about what makes great stories great, sure, but also a deeper uncertainty that went something like this:

Why are you wasting your time imagining fake people doing fake things and writing about it? Shouldn’t you be doing something practical?

It didn’t help that several people implied or outright said as much. So, let’s begin with a gateway question: what’s the point of storytelling? Or, put differently, what difference does storytelling make? Why have Homer’s epic tales and Aesop’s fables remained in steady circulation for millennia? Why did Jesus teach via parables? Why is the TV industry booming?

The answer seems to be that stories allow us to explore new worlds, consider difficult choices, face our fears, and experience loss—all without any real risk. In stories, we are inspired by the heroism of heroes, appalled at the villainy of villains, and intrigued by the complexity of “gray” characters whose inner conflicts make them heroic or villainous depending on the situation. As the characters face new challenges, we wonder how we would act in their shoes. For as long as history can remember, stories have been a central feature of humanity’s moral, philosophical, and entertainment life.

In exploring these universal human themes, stories inevitably change people, often more than they realize. C. S. Lewis argued that stories bypass the inhibitions that many feel about ideas they would otherwise resist:

But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world . . . one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?

Taking these “watchful dragons” to be a person’s consciousness of the philosophies and morals they entertain, stories can be viewed as a means of sneaking by and engaging the subconscious. When I first read Lewis in college, it was his Space Trilogy I began with; and although he didn’t overtly teach anything, I found that I had stumbled upon an entirely new way of thinking. It profoundly changed me.

The characters in stories are always pursuing something, and it is the storyteller’s job to decide how that pursuit resolves. The storyteller must pull from their beliefs and experience to make that decision, and in doing so, their understanding of the world will come through and influence the reader. There’s no way around that. Even the litany of modern stories that leave the “moral” of the story neutral are a predictable result of our culture’s recent postmodern climate, which holds tolerance as its highest virtue. Moral neutrality is the moral.

The influential power of storytelling has even shown up in my law practice, where storytelling is regularly touted as the number one skill a trial attorney should have. Speak legalese to a jury, and you’ll bore and confuse them; take the reality of what happened to your client and explain it as a story organized around universal themes—safety, personal responsibility, loss of freedom, etc.—and the jury will engage and do the right thing. In jury trials, effective storytelling can be the deciding factor in whether justice is done.

So, what’s the point of storytelling? Stories change people. The great ones change them deeply. For those hoping to make their mark on the world, storytelling can be a powerful way to do it. And even if you aren’t per se seeking to “change the world,” the process of exploring interesting ideas and themes can, even just for the writer, be satisfying and enlightening. Sometimes the art is an end in itself.

What are the elements of great stories?

Persuaded that storytelling is important, there remains a tougher question: what makes great stories great, and how can I reproduce it?

If you’re hoping to write great stories, the first and most important thing you can do is read great stories. You can’t write well if you don’t read well.

But the storyteller can’t stop there. As a craftsman, you will need to understand the elements of those stories (i.e., the tools of the craft)—otherwise, you’re at risk of adopting “rules” that aren’t really rules while missing the essentials.

You might read The Lord of the Rings, for instance, and get the notion that any great fantasy story will begin with a humble villager being guided by a wise and powerful mentor out of their village and into the big wide world—a trope that has been beaten to death and that most publishers will reject on the spot. There is so much more to learn from Tolkien’s masterpiece than its plot structure, lessons that won’t be immediately obvious without a deeper knowledge of the craft.

Fortunately, there’s never been so much information as there is now available to those seeking to understand storytelling. The sheer breadth of information can also be overwhelming, but here are some excellent resources to begin with:

• Brandon Sanderson’s free college course on writing speculative fiction is an outstanding primer on writing fantasy and sci-fi stories.

• Similarly, the Writers of the Future free online workshop offers wonderful advice on several aspects of speculative storytelling.

• The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White is the gold standard on writing clear, accurate prose; and On Writing Well, by William Zinsser has much to teach on style as well.

• A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver, explains how to put readers in the scene and have them feeling what you want them to feel rather than the clumsy but far more common approach: telling them how they should feel.

• The Literary Devices website is essentially an encyclopedia of devices, many of which you will recognize, even if you didn’t realize when you first saw them that they were devices. Think of it as a bag full of tools that you can pull from depending on the needs of your story.

• And for some less practical and more philosophical work concerning the purpose of speculative stories, there are two masterful essays: On Fairy Stories, by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Fantastic Imagination, by George MacDonald.

I cannot begin to scratch the surface of all the great work there is out there on writing—Stephen King’s On Writing, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, and on and on—and it won’t hurt to read as many of them as you can. That said, the ones bulleted above are enough to give us a framework to work from, a framework that can be organized around five key elements: characters, style, themes, setting, and plot.

We’ll take them one by one.

1. Characters

Although these elements aren’t otherwise listed in order of importance, characterization is by far the most important. Stories are, above all, about people—people with goals, fears, traumas, relationships, etc.—and failing to populate your story with compelling characters is the fastest way to lose your readers. Conversely, failures in other elements can be forgiven if the story has compelling enough characters.

That’s not to say a writer should slack in the other areas and focus exclusively on characterization; it’s only to say that compelling characters, more than any other element, can make up for deficits in other areas. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the most difficult element to master.

The most important feature of your character is desire. An interesting character wants something, and the pursuit of that something is what drives the story. It’s even better if the character wants multiple, conflicting things and must choose between them; the crossroad at which this choice is made will often be the most engaging part of that character’s story.

Ender Wiggin from Ender’s Game wants to protect the people he loves but also wants to avoid hurting anyone. As he walks the tightrope between these two desires, he is one of the most captivating characters in all of literature. The overall aim of the story—rescue humanity from the aliens—is a useful aim to organize the plot around, but it is Ender’s inner conflict that really brings the story to life.

Gollum from The Lord of the Rings wants his precious ring but also wants to be faithful to Frodo, who’s shown him such kindness. As we watch Gollum quite literally split between two sides of himself—one devious, the other noble—we are eager to see which side will win out. And again, while the overall aim of the story is to destroy the ring and thereby stop the ascension of the dark lord, it is the inner drives of the characters that engage our hearts and pull us forward.

I won’t go so far as to say your characters must be split to be interesting. Sherlock Holmes simply wants to solve cases, and he wants to be the smartest guy in the room. His excessive competence is fascinating in action, and we gladly keep coming back to see if he can outsmart the next crook and solve the next case. Many detective stories follow this model, and it works just fine. Comic book heroes are often single-minded as well, and whatever conflicts they face come from the outside, not from within.

That said, to live with inner tension is a universal human experience, and I doubt any character has ever been made less interesting by the introduction of such tension. Do with that what you will.

It's not always easy to craft believable characters with believable desires, but there are tools that can help. One such tool is personality psychology, and I’ve found the work of Carl Jung especially useful—two concepts in particular:

• Cognitive functions. Jung postulated that people navigate the world via eight different functions. The base functions are thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensing, and each of these four can be used in either an introverted or extroverted way, hence eight functions. He postulated that different people emphasize different functions, thus providing a framework for the distinct styles and choices of various personalities. Jung’s functions are expertly discussed in Dr. A. J. Drenth’s book, “My True Type”; or, for a free resource, Dr. Drenth runs the Personality Junkie website discussing much of his research. For those familiar with the Meyers-Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI), Jung’s functions are the foundation of that personality model.

• Archetypes. Jung also described twelve personality archetypes that are part of what he considered the collective human unconscious. Those archetypes are caregiver, ruler, artist, innocent, sage, explorer, outlaw, magician, hero, lover, jester, and everyman—each with unique traits and tendencies. See, e.g., this commonly used chart, identifying the archetypes and their underlying drives and desires:

The Enneagram, another personality model, can also be useful for understanding various people’s inner drives; and The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut is my favorite work on the subject.

When looking for unique characters to populate your stories, personality psychology can help you avoid falling into a rut of recycling the same old characters you always use.

That said, some of your best character models are, incidentally, the characters that already exist. These can be fictional characters, or they can be actual famous or historical figures, or even people you know firsthand.

Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Indiana Jones, Tony Stark, Rocky Balboa, and Sherlock Holmes were all modeled on real people. In the words of Sherlock himself, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” Stories certainly don’t suffer from a lack of originality merely because the characters populating them are based on real people. Often, quite the opposite.

As for learning the art of introducing your characters to the reader, helping the reader understand them, and making the reader care about them, this is a complex endeavor. Look to the masters of characterization—Shakespeare, the Brontës, Austen, Dickens, etc.—and take note of what they reveal about their characters and when and how. Dig deeper and try to ascertain why these masters chose to use the methods they did; or, relatedly, ask why so many readers have found their characters so engaging. Read the character analyses of famous characters on Sparknotes, and go find university lectures about them on YouTube or podcasts. Resources abound.

As with any art, be it painting, music, or photography, the art of characterization requires a constant loop of study, practice, and feedback; and if you’re doing it right, this loop will continue throughout the rest of your writing life.

2. Style

Style can mean a number of things, but here, we’re talking about the way you construct sentences and paragraphs. Just as everyone has a unique way of talking, every writer has a unique way of putting sentences together, a unique voice. Think of your style as the individual strokes used to paint your tapestry of scenes, characters, dialogue, and exposition.

Some aspects of style are objective. There are “rules” that all writers should follow, and books like The Elements of Style, On Writing Well, and A Poetry Handbook (mentioned and linked above) lay out those objective rules very nicely.

The subjective side is much more challenging to navigate, precisely because it’s subjective. Wuthering Heights, for instance, is among my favorite books, and part of why I love it so much is because of its lush poetic style. Others, however, have told me that they struggle to get through it because of what they deem “purple prose.” In other words, the style that keeps me reading and rereading the book is the very same style causing others to struggle through it. It’s not as though anyone is right or wrong here; you might as well say I’m wrong for liking cilantro. Beyond the basic rules, style is indeed a matter of taste.

So, in search of your writing style, here is the best order of operations I can suggest. First, master the basic, objective rules. Learn to properly structure your sentences and jettison unnecessary words and phrases. Don’t ever say, “It is I who will ascertain the way that leads our group out of this state of affairs” if you could just say, “I’ll get us out of this.” The most important early lesson in prose is to cut the fluff and get to the point. That alone takes lots of practice.

Learn also to place your reader in your scenes rather than telling them about them. For instance, we don’t say, “Bob was mad” but rather, “Bob’s face flushed red, and he clenched his jaw.” Similarly, we don’t say, “The garden was beautiful” but rather, “Moss-covered steppingstones led through the ivy archway and into a garden of irises, dewdrops glittering like amethyst on their lavender petals.” In short, we should not have to tell the reader that the garden is beautiful; the reader should experience the garden as beautiful so that we don’t even have to say it.

The same often goes for other adjectives such as scary, incredible, repulsive, sad, etc. Don’t say something is scary; describe something that scares the reader. Don’t say something is repulsive; describe something that makes their stomach turn. Don’t say someone is overjoyed; show them someone behaving the way an overjoyed person behaves. It’s always better if you can guide the reader into feeling those adjectives without ever having to state them.

Second, read far and wide, and identify the styles you appreciate. Great writers, though distinctive, tend to be influenced by earlier ones. For example, J. K. Rowling’s favorite author is Jane Austen, which is easy to see when you’ve read both: Austen’s playful wit and irony are pervasive in Rowling’s work. Ideally, you will find several writers whose style you enjoy, and you can adopt what you like about each as you grow into your own unique style. I love the precision of C. S. Lewis, the poetic brilliance of Shakespeare and Milton, and the lush descriptions of Tolkien and the Brontës; and I seek to incorporate elements of all of it into my own writing. Emulate what you love, and your own style will emerge in the process.

Third, grow thick skin. Feedback is essential, and you should seek it out, painful as it often is. During this process, there will inevitably be readers who dislike the style you’re developing. Listen carefully to what your reviewers offer, but keep always in the back of your mind that two sophisticated readers can hold totally opposite opinions about the same piece of writing. The art of style is as subjective as any other art, and you can’t be everyone’s ideal writer. The simplest safeguard against being confused by this subjectivity is to get feedback from multiple readers, that way you can cross-reference their suggestions and identify what’s objective and what isn’t. If multiple readers, even readers with differing tastes, identify the same problem with your writing, they may be onto something. Criticisms that come from only one reader (or type of reader), on the other hand, more likely reflect a difference in taste and are thus safe to ignore.

As with characterization, you will find your style improving as you continually cycle through study, practice, and feedback.

3. Themes

 I said earlier that storytellers must pull from their beliefs and experience in deciding how the characters’ pursuits resolve, and that is where themes come in. The theme is the story’s overarching point or message—the central idea that the story conveys.

There are numerous themes to choose from: justice, good versus evil, self-discovery, nature versus civilization, and so on. A quick internet search for “list of literary themes” will give you plenty to work with.

The power of themes lies in their universality. It makes no difference that the story is fictional; the themes touch on something true, something fundamental to the human experience—and here is where the real power of a story lies. A source of power, yes, but also controversy since we don’t all believe the same things.

Consider the difference between J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin. Both write sweeping fantasy epics, and one might thus assume that the two are essentially the same. When Martin rose to prominence, one writer for TIME even dubbed him “An American Tolkien”—which is what I like to call “An Unfortunate Misnomer.” You might as well say Tim Keller is “An American Dawkins” or Alvin Plantinga is “An American Hume” merely because they write on the same topics. The fact is, Martin and Tolkien are popular epic fantasy writers with two consecutive Rs in their pen names, and that’s where the similarities end. Beyond that, they might as well be from different planets, and the crux of the difference comes down to themes.

Tolkien’s themes include loyalty, good versus evil, leadership, and self-sacrifice. Tolkien is Christian, and his writing reflects that. He may have “gray” characters with inner struggles (Bilbo, Boromir, Gollum, and even Sauron if you dig into the lore), but he does not hold moral grayness as a fundamental truth; good really is good, and evil really is evil in Tolkien’s world. There are higher powers, both good and evil, but it is taken as established that even with the current darkness, the good powers will prevail in the end. His themes are consistent with a Christian worldview.

Martin, on the other hand, is an atheist whose work came out of a postmodern social climate. He centers his work on such themes as political power, moral ambiguity, brutal violence, and brazen sexuality—understandable themes from a writer who believes our material world is the first and final stop. He thinks his works are faithful portrayals of the messy realities of life.

Given that Tolkien lost his mother at age 12, fought in the World War I trenches, and was a world-class intellectual before ever becoming a novelist, it would be naïve to assume Martin’s grim, hyper-sexualized stories are a sign that he understands something about the world that Tolkien wasn’t aware of. The difference between the two, again, comes down to themes, i.e., their differing beliefs about the world that cannot but be woven into their stories. In some sense, they truly are writing as though from different planets: in their minds, they do live in wholly distinct realities. Tolkien writes from the belief that we can face dark times with hope, whereas Martin writes from the belief that darkness is simply a part of this brutal life. Far from being irrelevant to their stories, these beliefs define their stories.

In the same way, your story—whether you want it to or not—will end up being something of a sermon on how you see the world. Even if you make a point to avoid “preachiness,” your story will still reflect your beliefs. Your characters will be pursuing or avoiding something, and you will decide how their desires get fulfilled or thwarted. In deciding this, you will be making a statement to your readers, and therein lies your greatest power as a storyteller. When it’s done well, the depth of your impact can be profound.

Lewis put it this way in his review of The Fellowship of the Ring:

As we read we find ourselves sharing their burden; when we have finished, we return to our own life not relaxed but fortified.

So, consider the stories you keep going back to, the ones that comfort and inspire you. Ask yourself what themes they convey. When I did this, I discovered that one type of story I gravitate to are the stories featuring smart, tough-minded protagonists who, though misunderstood, trust their vision and refuse to let skeptics or naysayers distract or dissuade them—a theme you might call “courageous leadership.” This is just one example of many, as there are innumerable common beliefs and experiences that make for compelling themes. For every new story you read or watch, ask yourself what the storyteller is trying to tell you about the world. You may be surprised by what was previously being snuck past your “watchful dragons” and fed to your subconscious.

In summary, great characters may engage readers, but it is great themes that change them. Your beliefs will invariably come through in your stories, so you might as well pay attention to which beliefs you’re conveying and how. Thematic punch can be the difference between a mildly entertaining story and a story that utterly captivates people and keeps them coming back again and again.

4. Setting

Think of a story you enjoy, and once you have it in mind, answer this question: what did you just see with your mind’s eye? When I think of The Lord of the Rings, I see hobbit holes, snow-capped mountains, and fiery wastelands. When I think of Wuthering Heights, I see a desolate house on the moor beneath a stormy gray sky. When I think of Ender’s Game, I see zero-gravity battlerooms, fleets of spaceships, and monochrome military uniforms. When I think of Treasure Island, I can hear the decks creaking beneath my feet and feel the sea spray on my face.

If you’re anything like me, you find such mental images exciting. One of the great joys of reading is the opportunity to explore new places, and one of the great joys of storytelling is the opportunity to craft vivid settings for others to enjoy. I’m not just talking about fantasy or science fiction, either, where worlds are often built from the ground up. Wuthering Heights is set in a real place; but it’s a place I’ve never been, so my only experience of it comes from Emily Brontë’s poetically brilliant descriptions. Because it’s so well described, the setting of Wuthering Heights, though not invented by the author, is as memorable as any fantasy setting.

Now, a word of caution. Your setting, while exciting and important, will not make up for deficits in other, more crucial areas of storytelling. An intricately built world or beautifully described setting that is populated with cardboard cutout characters going through the predictable motions of cliché plotlines will not engage your readers. If all they wanted were vivid portrayals of fascinating settings without an otherwise interesting story, they would just go watch BBC’s Planet Earth, or peruse the stunning images on NASA’s Hubble website, or read an encyclopedia.

Even so, don’t let this dissuade you from building extravagant worlds. The world of Malazan spans seven continents and innumerable cities, races, gods, and point-of-view characters. The breadth is staggering. Erikson began as an anthropologist and archeologist before writing his stories, so he had a vast knowledge base to pull from. Though few could ever replicate such an impressive feat of worldbuilding, there remains a lesson in it for the aspiring worldbuilder: build as much as you want! Almost certainly, there are bigger, more complex worlds out there than whatever you’re working on: Middle Earth, Hogwarts, Westeros, Arrakis, the unnamed Wheel of Time and Malazan worlds, and many others are rich with page after page of history, lore, and distinct races and cultures. There’s really no reason to hold back on worldbuilding.

But another danger with worldbuilding worth noting is the temptation to do what some call “info dumping” and flood your reader with information about the world that does nothing to advance the story. “But—” you protest—“the setting is part of the story!” And that is correct—somewhat. It would be more correct to say, “The story must happen within a setting”; a small but important distinction. The former implies the setting is coequal with other elements of the story, whereas the latter subjects the setting to the needs of the story.

Your characters don’t live in a vacuum; we meet them in some place within some context. Often, the history or geography or political structure of this context affects your characters’ goals, and so you’ll need to tell the reader about them. Other times, the history, geography, political structure, etc. were just fun to research or build, and because you love your world, you want to tell the reader about it. Typically, you should resist this urge. Drowning readers with facts about the setting that have nothing to do with the storyline is an easy way to lose them. It can be difficult to accept, but the person who most loves what you’ve researched and built is you. For everyone else, you will need to earn their affection, and info dumps are almost never the way to do that.

I do, however, have to admit that masters of the craft have, at times, managed to get away with info dumping—Tolkien not least among them, though he was practically inventing the high fantasy genre and has such elegant prose that every sentence is a delight. Moby Dick dumps info on the reader like nothing I’ve ever seen, yet it’s consistently held out as one of the greatest novels of all time due to its wit, expertly woven variety of styles, and (small wonder) accurate portrayal of the whaling life. In short, it’s not necessarily “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” for the aspiring info dumper, but it’s certainly “Enter at your own risk.”

One final point on setting. When possible, it helps to know a setting before writing about it. Going to the setting or something comparable in person is ideal since you get to experience it with multiple senses. Watching videos or even just reading about it can be useful as well. If I’m writing about a trip across the ocean in a full-rigged ship, for instance, it may not be feasible to go take a voyage across the Atlantic; but I can take a ferry ride across the Puget Sound, watch a few YouTube videos of people on sea voyages, and read a few accounts of such voyages. However you go about it, writing from experience is an excellent way to build depth into your setting and make your story feel more realistic. Though your setting alone won’t save your story from deficits in other areas, it can absolutely contribute to a captivating overall experience when properly subjected to the needs of the story.

5. Plot

If your characters and themes are the heart and soul of your story; your plot is the skeleton, giving it structure. As with themes, there are many plots to choose from: Quest, Revenge, Mystery, Romance, Coming of Age, Heist, Rags to Riches, etc.

It can seem challenging to conjure new plots, but it may be helpful to think of your job not so much as inventing new plots as putting fresh spins on old ones. For example, in a literary landscape inundated with “Quest” plots, Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings to be an “Anti-Quest”: whereas quests typically involved leaving the safety of home in search of some extraordinary item (a magic sword or spell book or whatever), Tolkien twisted this common plot into something new—leaving home to destroy an item. Wuthering Heights took the usual “happily ever after” Romance plot and turned it into a wild sort of Shakespearean tragedy. The Avengers movies, Infinity War and Endgame mirror one another in clever renditions of the “Heist” plotline (a team of diversely gifted people works together to steal or otherwise accomplish something): in Infinity War, Thanos performs the heist to retrieve the infinity stones, then the Avengers perform the same heist in Endgame to reverse what Thanos accomplished in the first one.

Harry Potter is a great example of creative plotting, as it splices several established plotlines: “Portal” (à la Narnia and Wonderland), “Rags to Riches” (Harry goes from orphan in a cupboard to world-famous wizard), “Chosen One” (Harry is the “boy who lived” and the only one who can stop the dark lord), “Coming of Powers” (Harry discovers he’s a wizard), “Self-Sacrifice” (Harry must face pain and death to accomplish victory), and “Mystery” (every book in the series is driven by solving some central enigma). In this impressive mixture, Rowling even sets the stage for a new fantasy subgenre—the Magic School—which has, in itself, become a common plotline (i.e., magical kid runs off to magical boarding school). The creative mixture of old plots used in fresh ways makes Harry Potter a famously unique and delightful story.

One final concept here is what I call “earned” moments. There will often be some moment your plot is racing toward, some epic event, unforeseen twist, revelation, or emotional punch that you’re guiding the reader toward. But scenes like this must be earned. The first kiss of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcey in Pride and Prejudice hits home because of all the banter, uncertainty, and thwarted “almosts” that led up to it; by the time they finally kiss, the reader is dying for them to kiss. The twist at the end of the Hunger Games series is satisfying in its irony, seeming to run afoul of everything Katniss and the rebels were fighting for, yet it features Katniss acting with the same bold opposition to oppressive authorities that she showed from the start. As a rule, if you want some crucial moment in your story to strongly affect the reader, you will have to set the stage for that moment ahead of time. Done properly, these “earned” moments can bring your plotting, characterization, and themes crashing together into something truly unforgettable.

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So much for the elements of great stories. With these in mind, you can go back and analyze the stories you love, asking what makes them great; and you can analyze stories you don’t love, asking what didn’t work. You can analyze popular but polarizing stories (such as Twilight) and ask why some people obsess over them while others insist they’re terrible—what is it that attracts so many and repels so many others? With these tools in mind, every story you run across can be a learning experience.

Perfecting these elements is a lifelong growth process, but practice makes progress, which leads naturally to the next question—a very practical one.

What’s the ideal writing lifestyle?

The most accurate answer to this question is, there isn’t one. You might as well ask what’s the ideal shoe size; and trying to shove your personality, style, and circumstances into someone else’s writing process will indeed be about as painful as trying to shove a size 13 foot into a size 8 shoe. Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals is a fascinating book outlining the daily routines of various well-known figures (scientists, novelists, painters, mathematicians, etc.), and if I learned anything from Currey’s research, it was that world-class work comes out of all sorts of lifestyles.

I point this out because there are some great writers out there who sincerely but mistakenly believe their productivity system is the One True System. The fact is, the One True System was inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece, and it goes like this: “Know thyself.”

In other words, you’ll have to find a system that works for you. Perhaps this sounds trite, but the truth in it is unavoidable. Anthony Trollope wrote from 5 to 8 every morning before going to his demanding full-time job, and this system enabled him to produce 47 novels and 42 short stories, among other works. Tolkien, a professor by day, generally did his writing late at night after his wife and children were asleep, and he often wrote into the small hours of the morning. I tried both of their systems and nearly died of exhaustion. The point is, it would be immensely dubious to insist on some “right” way to structure the writing life. There will be times you work best or simply times that are best available to you, and you’ll have to learn yourself well enough to tailor your system to your unique needs. No one else can do that for you.

That said, there are productivity ideas that have universal applicability. It’s sort of like healthy diets—they can diverge widely and still be healthy, but everyone needs water; and if I were to identify the “water” of the writing lifestyle, it would undoubtedly be focus. Numerous books based on decades of research establish the importance of focus and explain how to cultivate it, but some of my favorites are Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Daniel Goleman’s Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and Anders Ericsson’s Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.

Though these books each approach the topic from unique angles, the same idea runs through all of them: to accomplish complex and difficult tasks (say, writing great stories), one must learn to push aside distractions and focus deeply. The ability to focus is becoming rare as our society is increasingly inundated with social technology, but focus is a muscle that can grow with effort, and it is a muscle aspiring writers must build if they hope to produce anything of value. No one haphazardly writes great stories.

Another universally applicable concept to be culled from these books is the concept of “deliberate practice,” which is widely regarded as the gold standard in attaining expertise. Put simply, deliberate practice is a strategic, purposeful form of practice that emphasizes pushing beyond your current skill level. The opposite of deliberate practice would thus be mere repetition, which, though significantly easier, does not bring much improvement.

Deliberate practice involves an interplay of study, performance, and feedback; and because it stretches you beyond your current skill level, be warned: it is extremely demanding. A musician, for instance, might work on playing something more difficult than they’ve ever played; or a chess player might study a new system and seek to implement it in new games. If the musician or chess player were to practice by simply repeating what they already knew, they would perhaps incrementally improve but wouldn’t make the gains necessary to take their skills to the next level. Deliberate practice is how that happens.

For writing, deliberate practice involves the same interplay of study, performance, and feedback. The writer hoping to maximize their growth and improvement must:

• Study. Analyze great literature and stories in other mediums, and read books on the craft.

• Perform. Write! Every established writer will tell you that putting words down as often as you can is vital. It’s especially useful for growth if you do “stretch projects,” i.e., write outside your comfort zone. Like the musician learning a new song or style, you become a more diverse writer with more available tools if you learn to write beyond your current skillset.

• Seek feedback. In writing, we tend to be blind to our weaknesses (otherwise they wouldn’t be our weaknesses), but others can see them just fine. Painful as it is to have your brainchild battered by someone who doesn’t love it as much as you do, getting feedback is a crucial step toward growth as a writer. But given the subjectivity of storytelling, it’s better to get feedback from multiple sources so that you can cross-reference them. Getting feedback from only one reader can be confusing and disheartening—or worse, they merely praise you and therefore do nothing to help you grow. Having a group of trusted writing companions to exchange work with is truly invaluable. My favorite example of this principle in action is the “Inklings,” a group at Oxford University who shared and critiqued one another’s writing every week for the better part of two decades. Two works that emerged from that group were The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Several members of the group became well-known writers, even if their fame did not endure quite like Tolkien and Lewis. Who knows what the world might have missed out on had the Inklings never come together!

Thus, to conclude this section, while it may be tempting to simply write a bunch of stories reflective of your current skill level and hope one of them eventually gets noticed, this is a poor strategy that likely won’t take you far. Deliberate practice, on the other hand, will help ensure that every story you write is better than the last and set you on the road to excellence.

How do I get noticed?

And now for the final question, though for many I suspect it is the question at the forefront of their minds: how do I get my writing noticed?

I’m afraid I won’t offer much on this topic. Some will tell you to evaluate the current market and write what the market is selling. I strongly resist such advice, as I would feel like too much of a hack if I followed it. My philosophy is that if you build yourself into a writer whose work is undeniably great, then you will, sooner or later, transcend the market and, in the words of Cal Newport, “become so good they can’t ignore you.” My favorite novels typically did just that in their day—transcended the market. After all, the market in some sense could be seen as nothing more than the organizations that have grown around popular stories to profit from their popularity. By its very nature, the market is fickle and isn’t always a reliable gauge of what the audience is really craving. If you manage to tap into something timeless that captivates readers, the market will have to adjust to deal with you rather than the other way around.

So, if you were hoping for something more practical on the marketing side, I’m sorry to disappoint; but thankfully, there’s plenty of it out there from folks who sell lots of stories if that’s what you’re looking for. As for me, I didn’t approach this article with an eye toward exploring how to sell stories so much as tell stories. If I’ve helped you improve your storytelling, even just a little, then I’ve done what I came to do. Your great stories, like many of history’s greatest works of art, are valuable whether or not the economy has noticed them yet.

Happy crafting, friends!