Words are tools.
I’ve been at this writing thing for a while with some degree of success, so I feel confident (more or less) in my technique. When I was about to work with James Patterson, one of my editors told me, “He can probably teach you something about plotting, but I don’t think he can teach much about how to write.” Which I thought was a nice thing for her to say.
Unfortunately, plotting is a part of storytelling, and whether you write extemporaneously or with an outline, you’re plotting. The former involves plotting on the fly, whereas the latter involves laying out the story framework ahead of time. I may talk about why I outline at some point, but not today.
Patterson didn’t teach me anything about plotting, though he did teach me something about characters, advice I will probably also write about at some point. Today, though, I want to touch briefly on technique—the actual craft of writing.
When I was younger, I tried to emulate Ernest Hemingway because I thought, and still do, that he was one of the most outstanding prose craftsmen of all time. But I mistook simplicity and brevity as his trademark, even though he didn’t write that way. He knew when to punch and when to caress. That’s the lesson. Learn when a short sentence works as punctuation combined with lush phraseology. Dissect language to understand what sounds right when read aloud or read silently. Learn words because words are your tools. They are your craft.