In a previous life, I taught freshman composition and undergraduate creative writing. The two courses had one thing in common: every cohort contained a handful of students who desperately wanted to improve their prose. Those students were equally desperate for straightforward rules they could follow to achieve this noble goal.

Unfortunately for them, writing isn’t one quantifiable skill that can be honed by strict adherence to a litany of guidelines. But it isn’t entirely magical, either. There’s nothing ineffable about effective fiction, but its component factors are complex enough to frustrate most undergraduates.

I like to break down fiction writing into two skills, or rather two bundles of skills distinct enough to justify the dichotomy. Prose is the ability to chain words together in a clear, evocative, and inventive way. Storytelling is the ability to convey information in a curated sequence to achieve a dramatic effect. Our canon contains many examples of successful writers who neglect one of these buckets. Literary fiction is rife with well-trained writers who craft beautiful, crystalline prose, but who seem to lack even the barest storytelling sensibility. On the flipside, writers of imaginative fiction manage to climb the bestseller charts with novels that tell compelling stories through lifeless, leaden prose. 

Whether you’re writing imaginative fiction, reportage, or memoir, I’d argue that a great writer needs to master both skills. This might seem counterintuitive, but I’ve found that storytelling is the more teachable craft. We have an entire lexicon of tools and heuristics to analyze the quality of a story. Character, setting, motivation, pacing, dramatic tension–these are all elements of story that transcend media. The path to clearer prose isn’t quite so well defined. It requires dedication and practice. Through reading, writing, and repetition, any writer can make gradual gains in their prose style, provided they engage these undertakings with intention and a critical eye.

For that reason, novice writers are often hungry for bright-line rules–switches they can flip to improve their prose. Nature abhors a vacuum, and this desire has conjured a reciprocal list of dubious workshop maxims to meet the demand. You’ve probably encountered some, if not all of them; Eliminate adjectives and adverbs; Incorporate modifiers into stronger verbs; Avoid simile in favor of metaphor, and those metaphors should be inventive and precise; Use as few words as possible to convey an idea. Eliminate ambiguity. Don’t shy from the word “said”.

It’s all fine advice in the abstract, but experience renders each of these “rules” incoherent. Rigid adherence to this guidance will help improve the prose of a novice writer, but once you reach a certain threshold of maturity, they start to hold you back. Take this textbook example illustrating the evils of the adverb.

Bad sentence: The boy secretly listened to his parents’ conversation.

Good sentence: The boy eavesdropped on his parents’ conversation.

Such a strong verb. Do you see how “eavesdropped” incorporates the adverb, thus eliminating the verboten part of speech?

The second sentence is stronger…except when it’s not. “Eavesdropped” is not a perfect substitute for “secretly listened”. “Eavesdropped” has a different and altogether more deliberate connotation. It implies intention, perhaps nefarious. Maybe this boy really was eavesdropping on his parents’ conversation, but maybe he was secretly listening. Maybe he stumbled into earshot by accident. Or maybe his parents knew he was listening, but they were all keeping his audience a secret from some third party. Word choice depends on myriad elements of character, scene, and context, and sometimes the adverb is okay.

Here’s where I’ll give the old wisdom its due. Choosing the adverb in this case is fine as long as the author is making a reasoned decision based on those contextual factors. If your scene comes out redolent with unintentional modifiers, then you might need to fix things by the book.

In my own work, I tend to iron out the prose style in the second draft. I use the first draft to nail down the sequence of events without bleeding out each sentence line-by-line, but that blood does need to be let before an editor digs in. I’ll share an example of how this process shakes out.

Sharing even a few lines from a first draft is a little bit like distributing nudes. Nobody wants to see that, I promise it’s not your best look, and it will come back to haunt you if you ever run for office. But we’re all fam here, so I’m going to reach deep into the Google Drive and spill a few verses from the first draft of The Girl Who Woke the Moon.

Draft 1:

Gita screamed loud enough to wake the Nereids from their millennial sleep at the bottom of the sea.

She’d been holding them back with admirable tenacity, but this one boiled out of her unbidden. The women from the Order of Haiyan warned her that the pain would be unimaginable, but in a good way, they swore. This wasn’t good. This was wrong.

     “It’s a terrible thing to bring a child into the world on a moonless night,” Veda muttered. She was one of the midwives attending Gita’s delivery.

       “Hush, Veda.” Navilo’s voice, like a soothing balm. “Now is not the time.”

       Gita’s voice returned, and the violence of her screaming drowned out the argument. Her azure eyes rolled up to the spiral ceiling of the Granta, climbing the giant conch shell’s porcelain folds. What a beautiful home for this child, she thought. Then the pain returned in great oceanic waves and she screamed until her throat went raw. Outside storm winds howled with ghostly virility. The roar of the surf warred with Gita’s delivery, but she refused to be outdone.

        “We’re almost there, Gita,” Navilo said. “I can see the child’s head. One more push.”

        “Fetch me the pure water,” Veda screeched.

        “No…” Gita’s protests were too weak to be heard over the storm. The delivery stole her breath, hid it away and only returned it to her in drips and drabs with each pained contraction.

         Navilo turned to retrieve the water, and Veda leaned over Gita, tickling her face and nose with the frayed ends of her thin, white braids. Veda scowled, flashing two crooked rows of yellowing teeth. “This child will be cursed,” she hissed. “We warned you not to give birth on a moonless night.”

What a mess. That first sentence makes me cringe. What the hell is a Nereid? And who cares how long they sleep? Pro tip: worldbuilding is a terrible way to start a story.

Below you will find the second draft of this same scene. You’ll notice the occasional application of the guidance I just maligned. Ideas condensed into fewer words. Verbs tightened. Tenses activated. In other places, I plow straight through the guidance. I even added a simile–the horror.

Draft 2:

Gita screamed.

She’d been holding them in for hours, but this one boiled out of her. The women from the Order of Haiyan warned that the pain would be unimaginable, but in a good way, they swore. This wasn’t good. This was wrong.

“It’s a terrible thing to bring a child into the world on a moonless night,” one of the midwives muttered.

     “Hush, Veda.” Her attendant, Navilo, rose to Gita’s defense. “Now is not the time.”

     Gita’s cries drowned out the argument. Her azure eyes rolled up to the spiral ceiling of the Granta, spinning along the giant conch shell’s porcelain folds. What a beautiful home for this child, she thought. Then the pain returned in great oceanic waves, and she screamed until her throat went raw.

Outside, storm winds howled like spirits risen to call upon the birthing chamber. The roar of the surf warred with Gita’s delivery, but she refused to be outdone.

     “We’re almost there, Gita,” Navilo said. “I can see the child’s head. One more push.”

      “Fetch me the pure water,” Veda barked, gentle as a hatchet.

      “No…” Gita protested too weakly to be heard. The delivery stole her breath, hid it away and only doled it out in drips and drabs with each pained contraction.

       As Navilo turned to retrieve the water, Veda leaned over Gita so that the frayed ends of her thin, white braids fell against Gita’s chin and tickled her nose. Veda was scowling, flashing two crooked rows of teeth tinted with rot. “This child will be cursed,” she hissed. “You were warned.”

Hopefully this glimpse into the revision process is helpful or at least interesting. Writing fiction is a complex intersection of disparate skills, but like any trade, it can be taught.