Review of Steering the Craft
Steering the Craft, by celebrated speculative fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin, is a workbook for advanced writers on elements of storytelling craft. The elements of craft covered in this book are: the sound of language; punctuation, syntax, the narrative sentence and paragraph; rhythm and repetition; adjectives and adverbs; tense and person of the verb; voice and point of view; implicit narration; crowding, leaping, focus, and control. While this list of topics may appear rudimentary at first glance, Le Guin’s exploration of each is anything but. Rather, these familiar aspects of writing-- which many avid writers may have stopped consciously thinking much about after their first creative writing 101 course-- are reinvigorated as complex tools that ought to be used consciously and judiciously to craft effective narrative.
To this end, each area of focus in Steering the Craft includes examples and writing exercises (which can be completed in a writing group or independently) to raise a writer’s awareness of the fundamental tools of the craft. The book’s aim is to “make you temporarily superconscious, and forever conscious” (47) of the way you use every tool in your writerly toolbox.
Ursula K. Le Guin brings her wealth of expertise to this text, both as an author and as a teacher of narrative writing. Her writing on craft is witty, clarifying, and often beautiful. The author’s distaste for “rules” (with few exceptions) was refreshing and respectful of her audience without condescension. Rather than supplying lists of dos and don'ts, she frames the importance of craft as less about whether the writer writes in a particular way (follows rules) than that they do so with adept intention attained through focused practice and conscious consideration of what choices will best serve the sort of story they want to tell. To achieve this, the provided prompts are often exercises in contrasts to illuminate the impacts of making different authorial choices.
As Le Guin identifies in the introduction, this is not a book for beginners. It is for people who have already put a lot of hard work into their writing and (I would add) into their reading. The excerpted examples Le Guin uses are typically old, often challenging, dense to work through, and potentially alienating to writers who don’t come from a literary background. Excerpts of more contemporary authors might have given the workbook additional zing as a “21st century guide,” but inclusion of recent authors was not feasible due to copyright permissions. That said, the included passages, however aged, are also very well-chosen to represent particular aspects of craft. Slowing down to read them well would be beneficial to any writer who is interested in sharpening the tools of their craft. And the ability to read for craft is in itself a skill worth practicing for every writer.
Steering the Craft is an excellent workbook for advanced writers who want to resensitize themselves to the critical skills of their craft. I would also recommend it to curious readers who enjoy noticing the details of how a narrative is put together.
Personal Reflection on Steering the Craft
I personally benefited the most from the section on adjectives and adverbs. The topic’s exercise directed the reader to write a passage without using any adjectives or adverbs. And I was surprised to find that I liked the results! It forced me to explore alternative ways to make a scene vivid and situated. But more than that, it really did sensitize me to something that I’d begun to do thoughtlessly. In the work I’ve done since reading Steering the Craft, I’ve paused more before adding adjectives and adverbs, not omitting them entirely, of course, but taking a moment to decide if a leaner sentence will do the trick, or if I’d prefer something plump and luscious. I like the intentional contrasts this creates in my work, and the way those contrasts help give my purposely fuller passages the richness I want.
The section I think would be of greatest use to most writers is Le Guin’s discussions of tense and point of view, two elements of writing craft where writers often thoughtlessly give in to trends rather than pausing to consider what best serves their story. The use of tense in particular strikes me as a choice that writers should pause on and really think about why they want to write in the present and whether or not their reasoning actually holds water.
Writers often assume that the present tense gives their writing a sense of immediacy and intimacy, which makes sense on the surface, as the present tense is literally situated in the immediate now). The claim is so often repeated that it’s practically a universally accepted truth. Yet, as a reader, I have never found that past tense writing holds me at a distance. Nor do I feel more immersed by narratives told in the present tense. If anything, there is an artificiality to the “now” of a narrative (particularly a long narrative) told in present tense that pushes me out rather than pulls me in. This reading experience makes me suspicious of claims concerning the immediacy of the present tense, and I was over the moon to see Le Guin deal with this point directly (37).
Le Guin writes about what the present tense actually does:
"I see the big difference between the past and present tenses not as immediacy but as complexity and size of field. A story told in the present tense is necessarily focused on action in a single time and therefore a single place. Use of the past tense(s) allows continual referring back and forth in time and space. That’s how our minds normally work, moving around easily. Only in emergency situations do they focus very tightly on what’s going on. And so narration in the present tense sets up a kind of permanent artificial emergency, which can be exactly the right tone for fast-paced action." (37)
This passage gets completely at the heart of the question of tense. I imagine far more writers would make the choice to write in past tense if they didn’t take claims of present tense’s immediacy for granted. Certainly, the present tense can be used well, but only when it is used judiciously with an attention to the appropriate pace and field for the narrative.
I was less wholly on board with Le Guin’s sour take-down of the word “fucking,” which she calls a bloodsucking tick that will “weaken, trivialize, and invalidate” (33). This is about as close as Le Guin gets to making a rule, so it’s not surprising to me that it’s also the point when I felt the most resistant to her advice. My counter argument would be that words are not fixed things, and any rules about the power or lack of power about a given word taken out of their context falls apart. Instead, like everything other choice covered in Steering the Craft, the use of “fucking” ought to be considered with judicious attention to the context and desired impact.
I use “fucking” in my writing. Usually it’s in dialogue (which Le Guin grudgingly allows), but not always. I don’t use it a lot, and I don’t use it thoughtlessly, but I do absolutely use it in ways that Le Guin disapproves of. Sometimes I use it because I want to weaken, trivialize, and invalidate (that in itself can be a powerful choice). Sometimes I want the characters’ voices to bleed into the narrative voice with all their particularities of speech and feeling (which is always at least part of my motive for using it in narrative). And sometimes “fucking” really does feel powerful within its context.
Audience context matters here too, and I can’t help but wonder if Le Guin’s opinion of “fucking” is in part generational. It reminded me more than a little of the time a highschool English teacher told the class that swearing makes people sound stupid, because if they had a better vocabulary, they would choose a better word to communicate their meaning. To this I (who never swore in class) raised my hand and said, “Sometimes a curse word is exactly the best word to communicate a tone or meaning. ‘Darn you’ means something very different from ‘F you.’ And I know that because I’m pretty [fucking] smart.”
Le Guin is, of course, absolutely right that the effect of “fucking” is very different in narrative than in dialogue. But her general advice to use adjectives and adverbs with conscious intent applies regardless of which word we’re talking about. “Fucking” isn’t, in my opinion, a special problem that needs to be addressed apart from other choices a writer might thoughtlessly/thoughtfully make. It certainly doesn’t need to be banished from the page.
“Fucking” (and a few too many excerpts from Dickens) aside, I adored Steering the Craft. I borrowed a digital copy of the book from Hoopla through my local library, but I’m tempted to purchase a hard copy that I can mark up and revisit again and again.
Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929-2018. 2015. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-first Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. Boston, Mariner Books. (E-book copy)
