Are You a Writer or a Storyteller?
“I am a writer!”
This is one of the most important and freeing statements any of us ever makes. It’s almost a rite of passage. The moment you can look your banker/hairdresser/pastor/aunt in the eye and tell them (without mumbling) that you are writer, hear you type—well, then, congratulations, you’ve crossed an important threshold in claiming your power as an artist.
However, not to complicate your victory or anything, but what you may really be trying to tell Pastor John and Aunt Lucy is that you’re a storyteller. Or maybe you’re a storytelling writer. Or is it a writing storyteller?
Or maybe I’m just nitpicking, because aren’t they basically the same thing? Aren’t “writer” and “storyteller” pretty much interchangeable?
Yes and no.
Yes, we pretty much assume that if someone is a fiction writer, then they’re also a storyteller. And vice versa: if they’re a storyteller, then, more than likely, they’re writing those stories down.
But also, no: because “writing” and “storytelling” are, in fact, totally separate skill sets. One does not automatically come as a BOGO with the other. Even though we are all interested in both, most of us still gravitate more strongly to one or the other. One of them was the reason we started creating novels, and the other was something we learned along the way.
Understanding whether you are more naturally a writer or a storyteller can help you take better advantage of your strengths and address your weaknesses in the most holistic way possible.
What Is Writing?
Definitions first, please. If there’s such a big difference between writing and storytelling, then what is it?
Writing is, well, writing. It’s the art of putting words on the page in a pleasing way that accurately, efficiently, and sometimes artfully conveys information. It’s what I’m doing right in creating this blog post. What I’m not doing is telling a story.
Writers come in all stripes and sizes. Some of us do indeed tell stories. Others report facts, offer inspiration and encouragement, or create technical guidance. However, for our purposes, we are, of course, interested in those who create stories—specifically, fiction.
The moment you put words on the page to evoke a story, you’re a writer. But just because you’re telling a rip-roaring old yarn doesn’t mean your writing is, perforce, equally riproaring. You can be a fabulous storyteller and a downright awful writer.
Writing is the skill of evoking the reader’s imagination. It’s wordcraft. It’s the mastery of narrative technique. Following is a sample listing of skills that fall under the heading of writing:
Grammar
Voice
Description
Dialogue
Pacing
POV
Word choice
What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling, on the other hand, has no inherent connection to writing. Storytelling is the tradition of discovering and portraying the dramatic patterns of life—and if you’re a good storyteller, sharing them with enough suspenseful emotion and resonant truth to steal the hearts of your audience.
Storytelling happens across media. We find it not only in novels, but in movies, television, poetry, song, painting, photography, even dance. Humans, by nature, are storytellers. We seek to translate our experiences into cohesive snapshots—both to capture them as memories and to discover any deeper meaning they might offer.
Storytelling is the skill of finding the universal truths of human experience and translating them into cohesive drama. When we talk about any of the following, we’re actually referring less to writing and more to storytelling:
Theme
Character arc
Plot
Story structure
Suspense
Conflict/tension
Story theory
How to Develop These Two Different Skill Sets
Story, by itself, is little more than raw emotion and imagination. Transforming it into a medium others can appreciate and understand requires a skillful translation technique. By the same token, writing alone is nothing more than sensible, and possibly pretty, words strung across the page. To tell truly great stories, we must master both skills.
So which is your strength—writing or storytelling?
One clue may be your preferred approach to your books. Do you prefer to discover your stories in an outline before writing the first draft? Or do you prefer to discover your stories while actually writing the first draft?
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, all successful writers must use a mix of writing techniques: plotting and pantsing, logic and creativity, storytelling and writing. Each of us organizes these processes differently within our own approaches.
My experience in teaching outlining to thousands of writers over the years has shown me that much of the resistance to outlining is simply due to writers not having yet understood outlining for what it really is—brainstorming—and/or not having yet found a flexible system of outlining that works for their creativity and lifestyle.
However, something I realized about myself recently helped me see this from an even better perspective. I realized what I love most about the craft is not actually writing but rather storytelling. In turn, this is one of the main reasons I love outlining so much.
Outlining allows me to separate and further focus my two necessary skill sets. In outlining, I get to focus on the storytelling without having to simultaneously worry about creating a perfect narrative technique that will convey that story to my readers. Once the outline has afforded me a complete and solid story, I can then focus on using my writing stills to bring that story to life for readers in the most evocative way possible.
This isn’t to say this is the only way, or even the best way, to balance these two very different skills. But it’s important to at least be aware they are different. If you’re struggling with trying to tell your story from scratch in the first draft, or wondering why you always end up with messy first drafts that require a lot of revising, it may well be because you’re trying to do two things at once: discover the story while telling it to readers.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter at all whether you were first drawn to fiction out of your love of story or your love of wordcraft. What matters is that you learn to perfect both.
3 Ways to Become a Better Storyteller
1. Learn to View Story From Both the Inside and the Outside
The psychology and technique of story is vast and complex. It’s like a massive diamond. You hold it in your hand and turn it every which way, trying to see all the different ways the light catches its facets. And even then, you still don’t see all there is to see; you have put it close to your eye, maybe get out your magnifying glass, and look deeper, all the way to its glistening heart.
Storytelling is like that. To truly understand and master it, you can’t look at it from just one perspective. You must move back and forth, looking at it from afar to see the big picture of how all its pieces fit together, then closing in to consider the beat-by-beat cause and effect of how it develops paragraph by paragraph.
Arguably, a good story’s most important qualification is cohesion. The halves must align. The questions asked in the first half must find their answers in the second half.
This is where outlining can prove a valuable aid (and why I’m so excited about our brand-new Outlining Your Novel Workbook computer program!).
By stepping back from the story and first considering its big picture, you’re able to make sure its questions are finding the right answers, and that its answers are paired to the right questions. Outlining allows you to address the throughline of your story’s structure, so you can make sure the big pieces are all in their proper places before you start sorting through the little pieces and trying to figure out where they go.
2. Look for the Story Beneath the Story
What is story? It’s many things, of course. But if we strip it down to its beating heart, what we find is theme. A story (no matter how casual or puerile) is a statement about the world.
When you start out by looking for that statement, you will be able to immediately identify what your story is about. This, in turn, allows you to choose the right plots and characters to best support that story.
You can then use this knowledge to see your story clearly. You can strip away the pieces that don’t belong or that are resulting in dead ends, and focus on creating a story that resonates thematically in the most powerful way possible.
3. Study Story Theory
Ultimately, storytelling is really all about story theory. If you start studying and perfecting any of the subjects we mentioned above (plot, character, theme, etc.), you are learning how to be a better storyteller.
Storytelling is a creative art form that wells up, instinctively, from the human psyche. As a result, perfecting its conscious mastery is, in fact, a pursuit of human psychology. It is a perfecting of our veneration and respect for life itself. It is a study in awe and humility. It is a search for Truth.
You can’t be an excellent storyteller without first being a devoted student of life.
3 Ways to Become a Better Writer
1. Learn How to “Show”
If storytelling is about gathering and organizing metaphoric interpretations of life, then writing, in its turn, is about more than just sharing these gleanings. Rather, it is about bringing them to life.
Writing fiction is the art of dramatizing. We don’t just want to tell readers about our story; we want them to live it.
This is why perhaps the most fundamental tool of narrative writing is “show versus tell.” This is the technique of dramatizing, rather than summarizing events. It is the skill of choosing vivid nouns and verbs and parsing them in active and immediate sentence constructions.
It is also, arguably, the single most challenging aspect of writing excellence. That’s as it should be, though, since if you can master the balance of showing and telling, you will have mastered the ability to go all Inception on your readers and bring your visions to life in their own imaginations.
2. Practice the Art of Information Dissemination
What are you doing when you’re telling a story? You’re sharing information, right? But anybody can do that. The trick to good writing is disseminating that information in the most aware and artful manner possible.
This, too, ties back into an awareness of psychology. Basically, what you’re wanting to do is create an intricate dance that mesmerizes readers into allowing you to temporarily control their minds. You give them just the right bit of info at just the right time to help them visualize the scene, to nudge their emotional reaction to a character, to inspire them to ask the right questions.
This technique works hand in hand with that of “showing,” and like showing, we might say it is the whole art of writing all to itself. Although certain of its principles can be taught (e.g., “scatter descriptive details throughout a scene” or “share backstory only as it becomes necessary” or “use action beats to ground your setting during dialogue“), this is ultimately a skill that must be developed through personal experience.
Which is why it is so important to…
3. Practice
The art of storytelling can largely be learned without practicing. All you have to do is study stories and study life. (There are many excellent students of story theory who are not, in fact, particularly skillful conveyers of those stories.) Writing, however, you must practice.
The rhythm and flow of good prose, the ability to choose evocative details that “show” readers, and the instinctive understanding of what info to share and when—these are all largely skills that cannot be taught. Rather, writers learn to perfect them through, first, a conscious observation of the techniques of other writers, but then, most importantly, by actually getting down and dirty with the words on the page and learning how to control them.
This is yet another reason, I prefer to separate the storytelling and writing processes, via outlining. If I can get the largest of the vital storytelling questions out of the way before I start writing, this frees my focus in the first draft so I can concentrate on the intricate task of narrative wordcraft.
Perhaps, like me, you were a storyteller from your earliest memory, and it was this love that led you to the companion love of words and writing. Or perhaps you have always been a logophile, addicted to the rhythm and grace of words on paper—and this love gave you the further cathartic and enlightening gift of storytelling. Either way, both gifts are ours to explore, to expand upon, and to use in writing amazing stories. Recognizing the differences in these two skill sets can help you improve upon both, as you optimize your writing process to best suit your creative needs.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Were you drawn to fiction first as a writer or a storyteller? How do you think this propensity has shaped your personal process? Tell me in the comments!
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