Why Writing Is Like Sculpting: Drafting and Revision

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. Episode 16. On today's show, we'll be exploring a metaphor for looking at our writing process. How is writing a novel like sculpting a statue? We're about to find out.

Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Brad Reed, and thank you so, so much for being a listener of the show. Before we get into today's topic, a couple of notes. First of all, I'd love to hear your voice on a future podcast. If you've got a comment about a previous episode, a request for a guest speaker you'd like to hear, a suggestion for a show topic, or anything else you'd like us to know, you can give us a call. Feel free to mention your website or Twitter handle as well if you'd like.

Again, that number is, and you can find that on our website as well at bradreedwrites. com. Speaking of Twitter, you can follow me there at my Twitter handle at Brad Reed Writes as well.

Introduction to the Metaphor

All right, on to today's topic. How is writing a novel like sculpting a statue? As creative writers, we have a lot of tools of the trade at our disposal. Characterization, symbolism, subtext, all the other stuff we talk about on this podcast. One of the most common tools we use is figurative language, writing things that aren't literally true, but that capture the feeling or moment better than literal language ever could. That's what I'm going to attempt to do with today's podcast.

I'm going to try to get you to see the process of writing and revising in a new way, a way that might help you gain a better insight into what we're trying to do as writers. I know it's an insight that has been vital to my writing process, and I hope that it will be for you too. The metaphor is so important to me, in fact, that I'm working right now on a book about the craft of creative writing using this metaphor as the foundation. Essentially, the metaphor goes something like this. Writing a novel is like sculpting a statue.

Now, before you call or write to inform me of my error, I realize what I just said is actually a simile, right? Comparing two things using like or as. But it sets up an extended metaphor. The point is that we can learn a lot about the art of writing by exploring other art forms. And for today's metaphor, we're choosing the art form of sculpting.

Now, a few things to get out of the way before we dive in. I kind of hate the word sculpt. Just listen to the way it comes off the tongue, maybe even say it and you'll feel it, right? I think it's something about the way the U-L-P-T is all kind of shoved together like that. It's almost like the sound of a person gagging or something. Sculpt.

It's just not a pretty word. I really think we need to come up with a better word for such a beautiful and compelling art form. The other thing I need to confess right up front is that I'm not actually a sculptor, right?

The last time I remember actually trying to sculpt something was probably when I was, oh boy, 8, 10, maybe 12 years old and I was in Boy Scouts. So, you know, picture me as an 8 or 10-year-old kind of out in the forests of Idaho at the scout camp surrounded by prepubescent boys in uniform. And there's this older man, I remember him. He looked very, very artistic, right? Long ponytail, gray hair. And he's teaching all of these young Boy Scouts how to sculpt.

So he hands out these bars of ivory soap and we get out our little pocket knives. And he teaches us how to draw the outline of this whale on the side of a bar of soap. And the instruction is simple, right? Remove everything that doesn't look like a whale.

So he kind of showed us how to whittle down the outline and to begin to massage it to look like a whale. I really think this is where some of my perfectionist tendencies started to come out because I remember being dissatisfied with this whale at every step, right? There would be a chunk that shouldn't be here, there, be there in one spot.

So I'd take my pocket knife to it and I'd shave that away. And then I'd notice another chunk that shouldn't be there and I'd shave that away. And before I was done, I ended up with basically a pile of shavings and the tiniest, tiniest little thing that did not look like a whale.

So I am not a sculptor. With all that in mind, though, it doesn't take an in-depth understanding of the art of sculpture for this metaphor to be effective. So I hope you'll follow me with it.

Initial Idea and Medium Choice

So here we go. A sculptor gets an image or idea in her head and makes the commitment to bring that idea to life. So this is like our little nugget of a story idea. It might be a simple what-if statement. This is actually a technique we'll talk about on an upcoming show, writing what-if statements. Or it could be a theme or a character.

Or maybe we're inspired by a news story or whatever. So this is just the initial inkling of the idea, right? The sculptor gets the same thing. They want to create or she wants to create this particular image or idea. The sculptor then has to make a choice about medium or what we're going to call material. They ask questions like, is this idea best brought to fruition through stone, maybe through marble or bronze or wood or clay?

Each medium or each material offers advantages, disadvantages, different textures, different possibilities that the other forms don't. Now the writer, too, makes a choice about their medium or their material. Is there inkling of an idea best expressed as a poem, a short story, a novella or screenplay, maybe a novel or a stage play? Each of those choices offers different possibilities, right? Different textures that you can bring out in a story. This is a step that I think a lot of writers actually skip.

If you're a novelist, everything kind of looks like a novel. If you're a poet, everything kind of looks like it should be a poem. But I think it's important that we give at least some initial thought to the medium of our art. This step of the process is vital. And it's worth taking the time to explore your inkling of an idea to see kind of what it wants to become. If you discover that your idea is better suited as a novel, but you're a screenwriter, you have a decision you have to make.

You could either pass on the idea, decide it's just not for you. You could write it in a medium outside of your comfort zone, or you could figure out a way to modify the idea to make it a better fit for your medium, for your material. In a future podcast, we'll actually explore the different forms of storytelling and talk about how to identify what makes a good novel or a good screenplay, stage play or other writing form.

Creating the Rough Shape

So now the metaphor really springs to life. The sculptor has chosen her medium. Let's go with a giant piece of wood for our example.

So the wood provides the size the sculptor envisions for her creation and it allows for the kind of detail she wants to imbue it with that can only be accomplished in wood. So now she transfers her rough idea to the block of wood, just a rough outline of the most basic shape. Essentially what I did with that bar of ivory soap, right, and the outline of the whale.

So it's like a simple drawing on a flat side of the thing. And this step is really about just getting rid of the giant chunks of material that definitely won't be part of her sculpture. And once that's done, the real work begins. She takes a brute tool, maybe even a chainsaw, and begins to hack away everything that isn't needed for the rough shape is creating. There's actually an artist just a few miles south of me here on the Oregon coast that does his art, his sculpture this way. I've been able to watch him do this and it's an amazing process to watch as he dawns all of his safety equipment and holds this chainsaw in the air and just goes at this huge chunk of wood.

It's tough, sweaty work, right? It looks more like construction, actually more like deconstruction than it does artistic creation. The wood chips fly, huge chunks of wood fall to the ground and the sculptor just is covered in dust and grime and filth. It's dirty, brute work. And at the end of that process, something very rudimentary stands before our artist. It's a roughly cut, oddly shaped creation that's a long way from what she intends it to be.

It might look roughly like what she's after, but it's miles away from being finished. Now, our artist is exhausted, sweaty, but excited about what she's creating, right? She feels that initial sense of accomplishment of a huge, difficult step having been achieved.

So now let's take a look at the writer at the same stage of creation because the writer does something similar, right? The writer begins to construct the basic shape of the thing he is creating as well. Now, for some writers, this is plotting, planning, outlining, hitting the beats.

But for both pantsers and planners, the words eventually begin to flow on the page, right? That rough draft, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. Now the pantsers get there quicker than us planners, right? They haven't been delayed by that planning process.

But once we're writing, it essentially looks the same, right? Words fly like wood chips thrown from a chainsaw. Chunks of language drop onto the page and sometimes chunks of language fall to the floor.

Now, age that fills you with that exhilarating sense of accomplishment. So the writer's actually written a novel at this point, something that most people only talk about. So of course the writer wants to share that accomplishment with the world.

The Importance of Revision

Now this is perhaps the most important moment in the journey from an idea to a finished novel. And we can take a clue here from the sculptor. So the sculptor knows she is not done at this step. In fact, she knows that the real work has only just started.

So instead of contacting art galleries or finding a place for it in her showroom, the sculptor cleans up, she changes her clothes, and she gets out an entirely new set of tools. Now, these are not the tools of brute creation. These are the tools of detail work.

Now this is a daunting task, right? Every inch, every centimeter of the scraggly block of wood must be touched, massaged, polished, carve a little here, smooth a little there, tooth marks from the chainsaw blade must be lovingly, intentionally erased. Subtle contours must be formed out of the jagged lines of the brute blade. The detail work must sometimes drive her crazy. It must seem absolutely overwhelming. Can you imagine the voice in her head as she carves away at each minute curve of the wood?

Right? Ah, it's good enough now, she could tell herself, or you don't really need to do all this work, or certainly accomplished sculptors don't have to do this kind of reworking. They must get it right the first time. Or, you know, nobody will notice this little imperfection, or surely nobody else takes this much time detailing their work. Or, actually, maybe the most enticing, this rough version is probably just my style or my artistic voice. She must always be tempted with the idea of just being done, right?

The work being good enough. This is the situation for the writer as well, or at least it should be. Just as the sculptor must massage every inch of her work, the writer must examine every plot point, every page, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word. He must work it and rework it, write it and rewrite it, imagine it and reimagine it until it feels like it could have been written no other way, until it looks like the thing it was meant to be.

Now this work seems daunting, exhausting, overwhelming. I mean, it took months or maybe years just to get the rough draft done. How can I possibly have time and energy to look at every sentence, right? Every word. He tells himself, maybe it's good enough already, or nobody will notice this little imperfection here, or surely no other writer goes into this much detail when they're revising. He, too, is tempted to say that the rough drafting he did in his draft is just his style, right, or his voice, so it's not worth changing.

But this is what revising really is. It's not checking for spelling errors or changing a word or two here or there. This is where the thing from your imagination really becomes the finished thing. Our sculptor only has a vaguely shaped block of wood until she's reworked and polished every inch. And it is exactly this level of detail that causes people to stand in awe of her work once it's finished. And a writer only has a great novel after he's reworked every sentence to do the work in his story that it was meant to do.

The Concept of Polish in Writing

This is what causes a reader to sink so deeply into a story that it becomes part of his reader's self. Every sentence, every word invites the reader into the life of his protagonist. I think of this stage of writing, the revision stage, as polish. I'm going to use one more metaphor here to another art form, to music. One of the clearest examples of polish that I can remember happened at a little community concert.

Now years ago, actually decades now, back when I was primarily a songwriter, I helped organize a performance of up and coming singer-songwriters. We rented a beautiful little amphitheater. We hauled in a bunch of speakers and cords and put on a show, right? It was the kind of show actually where the performers enjoy it more than the audience, to be honest. We were all pretty much amateurs at performing, which I'm afraid was pretty apparent watching us on the stage. You know, I can't even put my finger on what it was exactly that made us look like amateurs up there other than an obvious lack of experience.

But then came an artist on stage to close our little show that had been making and performing music for years. He toured the country, recorded multiple albums, and even shared the stage with musicians big enough that I couldn't even imagine meeting them, let alone sharing a stage with them. But it was like magic when he took the stage. And I mean that literally, right? It felt like a kind of magic took over when he took the stage. He just oozed confidence and poise and experience.

His songs were little pieces of art, right? Each lyric haunting and beautiful and perfect. His hands moved across his guitar as though it was a limb he'd been born with that the rest of us hadn't. That word polish was the only word that came to my mind as I watched him. It was absolutely clear that this magical aura he had come from something similar to what I described with our sculptor, right? There had been no shortcuts, no haphazard race to the finish line for him.

He'd put in his time to truly hone his craft. He had written, rewritten, and rewritten his songs over and over again until they vibrated with polish. And he delivered them with a poise born of repetition and persistence.

In other words, he had put in the hard work. That kind of polish isn't a thing you can define. You only know it when you see it or experience it. And readers can sense the same thing in our prose.

Now, they probably can't point to a misplaced word or a cheesy cliche or a predictable plot point and say, there, there is the rough spot that's bothering me. But they can sense it. They can feel it. And the only thing that gets rid of it is experience or writing a lot. Learning through reading other great writers and studying the craft and revising, right? Real revising, deep word by word revising.

Avoiding the 'Lucky' Mindset

So one last thing I want to talk about since it's related to our topic today. It's something I've noticed in almost everything I've ever tried, especially artistically. I think of it as the maybe I'll get lucky voice in my head. When I started writing songs and honestly, didn't really know what I was doing. I remember thinking, well, maybe I'll get lucky and accidentally write a hit song. I mean, there's a chance, wasn't there?

I could stumble into a catchy hook, a driving chord progression and write the next huge hit without really even knowing how I'd done it. Right. The maybe I'll get lucky happened again when I opened a recording studio a few years later with, honestly, very little training.

But perhaps I could just get lucky. Right. And stumble into the perfect settings on the mixer, the perfect microphone setup, the perfect mix. It was possible. Right. I mean, it wasn't impossible.

The feeling came again when I wrote my first screenplay for a college screenwriting class. I'd learned a bit about structure, plot points and dialogue for film, but not enough to attempt the story that I was trying to put on the paper. But still, that voice was there. Right. Maybe I'll get lucky and just accidentally get everything right. Right.

Maybe my dialogue will vibrate with subtext, even though I didn't really know how to get it there. Or maybe my plot points would accidentally strike that delicate balance between being too abstract and too obvious. Or maybe my ending would somehow stumble into something profound, moving and memorable. I've become very aware of and wary of this feeling of maybe I'll get lucky. It sneaks in when I get in over my head or when I'm not sure what I'm doing or when I get overwhelmed with the amount of work or revision I need to do. It tells me that I don't really need to do the thing I need to do or learn the thing that I need to learn or change the thing I feel like maybe I need to change.

I want to give you an example of it that I'm actually dealing with right now in my work in progress. I'm going to be writing a few scenes where my protagonist deals with Red Cross volunteers after an earthquake. Now, I've looked at some pictures of Red Cross volunteers online, so I kind of know what they wear in such a situation and what a Red Cross station might look like set up in a situation like this. And I also know that they have supply trucks and resources on hand for just such a situation. And I had just about convinced myself that I could probably guess close enough at what these things would actually look like in real life.

So in other words, I could write the scene without doing the research and probably just get lucky. Right. And either get it right or have no one notice that my details were off.

In other words, that little inner voice was telling me that I didn't have to do the research, that maybe I could just get lucky and write something that felt authentic anyway, even if I got the details wrong. Now, this is a sure way to destroy polish. It would be like the sculptor getting to the point of detailing the suction cups of an octopus, but not researching what they should look like. I mean, sure, there's a chance she gets lucky and they look authentic.

But more than likely, there's enough of a miss there that the entire piece is rendered less than it could have been. I've actually seen this over and over again with tattoos. So look at a friend's tattoos because obviously any that you might have are perfect, of course.

But see if you can find that one detail that throws the whole thing off. Now that needs the time, attention, and research to make it truly polished. Now before we call it a day, every metaphor eventually breaks down if it's pushed too far. And it's worth exploring where our metaphor today quits working.

The Flexibility of Writing

Now the good news here is that the way it fails actually favors us as writers and revisers. Here's what I mean. When our sculptor removes too much wood, she can't go back and undo it, right? She can't add wood or stone once it's removed.

But as writers, we can do that all day long, right? There's no limit to how many times and how many ways we can rework a sentence or a scene to get it just right. And this too is part of revision, part of polishing our work, massaging it until it has just the right balance of information, brevity, voice, and style. Since the show has been entirely about a metaphor for writing, I thought it fitting that we get a wise word about metaphors. Today's comes to us from Marty Groth, I hope I'm saying that right, author of I Never Met a Metaphor I Didn't Like.

Now besides the obvious pun of the title, I Never Met a Metaphor I Didn't Like, it's a great quote here. So here's what she says. A metaphor is a kind of magical changing room, where one thing, for a moment, becomes another. And in that moment is seen in a whole new way. As soon as something old is seen in a new way, it stimulates a torrent of new thoughts and associations, almost as if a mental floodgate has been lifted. If you have a favorite quote about writing, I'd love to have you share it with the show's listeners here on the podcast.

Weekly Writing Challenge

You can go to bradreedwrites. com and click the Talk to Us link to find out how to do that. Our weekly challenge this week grows out of this episode's topic. My suggestion for you this week is to spend some quiet time in reflection about the story that you're writing right now. Think through your story, plot point by plot point.

In other words, tell it to yourself. Now while you're doing that, listen for that nagging little voice trying to convince you that you just might get lucky with that section. It might be a plot point that isn't sitting quite right. It might be a character trait that doesn't feel authentic. It might be a choice that one of your characters makes that feels a little too forced or predictable. Or it might be an idea inspired by another story that might be more copied from than inspired by.

Pay attention to this little nagging feeling and use it as a signpost of where you might need to spend some time reworking and polishing your story. Yes, it'll take time and yes, it'll be frustrating and tedious at times, but your story will benefit from it. You'll end up with a true work of art instead of a haphazard lump of wood showing its scars from a buzzing chainsaw.

So until next time, I hope you'll drop in at bradreadwrites. com and start a conversation with your fellow writers about today's topic. And please consider joining the Patreon team. In this week's real-time revision for Patreon team members, you'll get to watch as I work to polish the draft of my own work in progress. You'll get to see how I shape that lump of wood into something recognizable and hopefully artful. You can find out more about that at www.

patreon. com slash bradreadwrites. As always, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same.

Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again soon for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing podcast. Tell your friends and consider giving us a review on iTunes. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing podcast with your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.