Evan Christopher Burton

photo credit: Patrick Buckley

A posteriori

What is craft? What is writer's jargon (voice, structure, character, plot, tonality, symbolism, etc.) for? Does good writing require purposeful inclusion of these elements or are they the inherent qualities of good writing? Does good writing beget them organically or are they the contrivances of others after the fact?

I suggest these measures of fiction are byproducts rather than beginnings. A voice is developed and honed through the act of writing. The writing, and by that I mean the selection and manipulation of language, gives such qualities to a story. In another sense, that which is planned is flawed.

This seems an obvious point—words and their ordering are the base determinants—but the implications are broader. Too frequently fiction is discussed as being written with these properties, when it is not. When a story fails, it is the words that fail, not the character development, or the plot, or the inconsistent voice.

If these terms, this writerspeak, are really hindsight observations, whether made by authors themselves or their critics and fans, rather than spawn of the writer, then what does that say about our common method of writing (and thereby of teaching)? It implies we approach the system backwards, encouraging writers to think about these ideas instead of what informs them.

So, what then is craft? I might say a distraction, the discourse of the deconstructionist. Writers should work with the original matter, not the tools of the critic.