Should It Stay or Should It Go

We’ve finally made it to the end of the Steering the Craft series: the last chapter! Stretching out this re-read has been so different from my initial read in 2020 because it’s 1.) taken much more time and 2.) made this tiny, little book seem like it’s chunkier than it is. My edition isn’t even 150 pages, but the time I’ve spent with it it might as well be 500 hundred.

So, what last tidbits of wisdom and guidance has Le Guin passed along to us before we close?

Our last lesson revolves around the idea of a story’s focus and trajectory. As authors, we must have a firm grasp on what we’re looking to convey—in other words, what’s the story about—and the arc everything is traveling in. That requires maintaining a dual scope. You gotta keep an eye zoomed in on specific scenes, the mood you’re building in a specific chapter or with a certain character, and generate the emotional build-up at the small scale. At the same time, you can’t get so in-the-weeds and sucked into what’s happening at that lower level to then lose your overall, grander direction.

In Le Guin’s words, she calls this balance as “crowding and leaping.” When you’re crowding, you’re packing your paragraphs with gems and the exact phrase that’s going to effectively sum up what you want to say. It’s “keeping the story full…keeping it moving, not slacking and wandering into irrelevancies; keeping it interconnected with itself, rich with echoes forward and backward” (118). 

Leaping, on the other hand, is when you’re purposely omitting content, making the sometimes difficult decisions over what is necessary to the story and what’s fluff. Essentially, “[w]hat you leap over is what you leave out. And what you leave out is infinitely more than what you leave in” (118). A narrative’s momentum is absolutely crucial, and how you leap is how you navigate the ins and outs of your story to keep the reader plugged into what’s propelling the story. 

For example, if you’re introducing a new character and have to provide some of their background, you, the author, are going to know that whole biography and are going to extract the relevant bits. You, personally, may find this character’s life, from birth to wherever they are in your story, super interesting, but just because you find it interesting doesn’t mean all the information is necessary. Once you pull out the relevant snippets of backstory—making leaps here and there—you can then artfully crowd that character’s introduction with the vocabulary, sentiments, ambiance readers need to pick up on to know who they are. Just as the larger story has a general arc so, too, do each of your characters, and you must keep an eye on their trajectory. 

It’s important to note that first drafts are not meant for too much deep thinking about what’s relevant and what’s not. You may not know that until you’ve finished it and can see the thing in its entirety. Whatever drafts succeed that initial one are where you get nitpicky and critical about “what merely pads or repeats or slows or impedes your story” (118). And, when it comes to assessing that and then cutting out what’s better left omitted, you must do so with confidence and boldness, even if it pains you to take it out. 

Editing, revising, and cutting are not always the easiest pieces of the writing process, but, oh, are they important. Remember: with every draft you’re undertaking, you’re aiming to refine your work to be better than it was before. You’re growing and sharpening your skills with every attempt. And just because you cut something when writing the second draft doesn’t mean you won’t find it necessary to drop back in when writing draft three. Your ideas are never squandered; they build upon each other, and you never know when one is going to demand to be reincorporated into your story. 

This chapter’s exercise (which we’ll get to in a minute) isn’t asking us to write anything. Rather, we’re being asked to cut, to get practice minimizing our words through narrowing in on the focus of our writing and hanging onto what’s really communicating meaning. Out of all the exercises Le Guin’s given us throughout this book, this one may be one of the more challenging because you have to make tough decisions. Yet, not only is it good practice to try this out, “it’s also a real act of self-discipline…Forced to weigh your words, you find out which are the Styrofoam and which are the heavy gold. Severe cutting intensifies your style, forcing you both to crowd and to leap” (125). 

The idea that each step of the writing process is about self-discipline is key, to Le Guin, and I think that’s what she wants to leave us with, why this chapter is the very last one. Carving out time to write is not always convenient. You might not always feel rested (physically or mentally) to lock in and get the words out. You may feel stuck about where your story’s going. So, in some ways, the art we make is “a matter of self-control,” doing what needs to be done as we can, “having the skills, knowing the craft, so that when the magic boat comes by, you can step into it and guide it to where it wants to go” (126). You are a chief participant in bringing a story to life, which is a process less about how much control, as the author, you have and more about understanding that a story tends to take on a life of its own. 

Le Guin has an excellent collection of essays, The Wave in the Mind (2004), that addresses this concept—that a story, at a certain point, becomes a being, in its own way, that makes demands on where it wants to go and how it needs to be told—so if this series through Steering the Craft hasn’t been enough for you, I recommend checking this one out, too. And, of course, the exercises provided to use through each chapter can be revisited as many times as you find them helpful. Consistent practice, after all, is the best way to develop any skill, writing included.

So, without further ado, let’s get to our last exercise!

EXERCISE TEN: A TERRIBLE THING TO DO

Instructions: Take one of the longer narrative exercises you wrote—any one that went over 400 words—and cut it by half.

If none of the exercises is suitable, take any piece of narrative prose you have ever written, 400-1,000 words, and do this terrible thing to it.

This doesn’t mean just cutting a bit here and there, snipping and pruning—though that’s part of it. It means counting the words and reducing them to half that many while keeping the narrative clear and the sensory impact vivid, not replacing specifics by generalities, and never using the word somehow. 

If there’s dialogue in your piece, cut any long speech or long conversation in half just as implacably.

Like I said, this one may be more challenging than the others we’ve done, but it’ll be a good test to put yourself to. Best of luck and happy chopping!