Writing: Talent vs Practice

[paranoid marvin]

I’m of the opinion that both talent and hard work have their place in any undertaking. I think it’s possible for a person to improve in any field through hard work. They might never become a viruoso at their craft but it’s certainly possible to make great improvement.

The biggest thing about improvement through hard work is to know where your weaknesses lie and to work on the areas for improvement. As was mentioned in another post, people can play golf all their lives and never improve. Perhaps better than simply playing all the time would be to improve on their weakest areas of the game and then apply that improvement when it comes to a full game. Translating that into writing, this is where constructive criticism can be invaluable. Through critique, a writer can learn where the weaknesses exist and work to improve.

One thing that I think needs a mention is passion. You could be the greatest wordsmith or storyteller in the world but without the drive that passion provides, you could spend your whole time looking for excuses not to do the hard work.

I agree. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that the 75/100/300 word Challenges have helped to improve my writing, both in the practice of writing them, the reception (in terms of voting/shortlisting and feedback) and in the reading of the entries of others. Whilst far from perfect , I do think that my entries are better now than when I first started entering 10 or so years ago. I've also found that (at times) I enjoy writing poetry more and that often my poetry is better than my prose. Something I would never have known if I hadn't entered the Challenges in the first place. So for me, practice has helped to improve my talent.

 

[DLCroix]

Without talent there is nothing to do. The good thing is that the talent to write can be compared to the gunpowder, it is not difficult that it exists in at least one of every two people. It's actually about the ability to tell stories. There we already talked about gunpowders of different weights and they all need to explode, but that need for fantasy is what is already beginning to engender a narrator. That enthusiasm, that spark, to return again and again to read the same pages that have been written, obviously, as the boys have already said, has to be accompanied by a reading not only for the pleasure of reading, but also critical. In fact, you learn an awful lot just by reading bad literature. It is easier to detect what not to do or how you could write it yourself. But don't be obsessed either. You never have to lose that sense of play, of enjoying what you are doing. That energy can be transmitted, deep down. Explode into something alive and vigorous.

 

[Guanazee]

I'm not sure. I have a critique partner who I know tries hard. She writes a lot, takes classes, pays for professional editorial assistance...yet her writing never seems to improve without extensive critiquing.

 

[sknox]

Writing is an art, and talent figures into all art forms.

There is with writing as with all art, an aspect that is the craft. Mastering the tools of the trade, be it sculpting, architecture, whatever.

Both matter, but the one doesn't improve the other. Practice can improve the craft, but it doesn't make one more talented. And even great talent will not carry one very far without practice, without working on the craft.

There's another aspect to all this, though. With writing, there's such a thing as instinctively knowing how to tell a story. Some people are born with this; most are not. Some natural-born storytellers never get beyond regaling their fellows at the local bar or dinner table, but some very few are born *writers*. These are the people who got published at fifteen, that sort of thing. Or even if they didn't get published, they wrote complete stories from very young. And continued to do so their whole lives.

While you can call it practice, the fact is the born artist cannot *not* write (or paint, or whatever). They're compelled to it. The word "practice" implies a division between performing the artistic act and doing exericses in preparation for that. So, the musician practices because there's a clear separation between performing and practicing.

That line is less clear for writers. We write. Heck, even this post is writing. Am I practicing, or am I performing? Neither word really applies. I'm writing, and in so doing I am practicing the craft (for I have edited even these very lines in writing them). In a sense, we're always practicing and we are always performing (the act of writing).

The closest I can think we come to what the op meant by practice would be the editing of stories for publication. That is, there comes a time when we've written The End, but of course it's only the end of the story narrative, not the end of rewriting the damn thing. But even there, late in the editing process, we're still being creative, even if it's only a word at a time.

Ah foo, I'm wandering. Talent and craft are both important. Nurture the one, work on the other.

 

[Dragonlady]

I think you have to be very careful when talking about talent. I was always called a talented writer, when I was a child and teenager. I wish more people had pointed me to those with the expertise to tell me how much work it would take to turn that into a decent story (I am not there yet). Growth mindset all the way here...

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Twelve years ago I wrote a good book that came close to getting agents and publishers.

However, I am glad it didn't because twelve years on, a creative writing degree, reading and study has made me capable of so much more. The cap is the time and effort you are willing to put into it.

Having said that not even autotune can save my singing.

 

[DLCroix]

That is why I say that not all writers, understood as explosives, have the same octane or explode the same. An elementary school teacher can detect the ability in a boy, but it is only known that he has that explosive quality, it remains to be seen what can be done with that, which can be developed through workshops, courses or writing groups.
But there is also the subject himself understood as the sender of a message, inserted in a society. There we already entered the field of semiotics and symbology. Ideally, the writer is aware of his capabilities but should also know what he is saying in his messages or stories. This makes the difference between someone who, sometimes without realizing it, only does written psychoanalysis or even pamphlet writing. A writer cannot say, "Oh, I didn't realize it." Being aware of that increases the capacities to give messages on different levels. Tolkien in the background makes an analogy with evil that has a direct reference in the world wars, for example.

 

[Parson]

I believe that there is talent and that talent is amplified by hard work. I'd boil it down to a axiom. (Parsons are prone to this!)

"Hard work will beat talent that doesn't work hard but nothing beats a hard working talent."

I think the movie Amadeus shows this in a wonderful way. I love the way Mozart is able just to effortlessly create music, while Salieri has to strain over each note. That he gives God thanks for each note really seals the deal for me.

 

[DLCroix]

Still, no matter how hard it may be, no matter how hard a writer puts in, the level of talent, added to other factors, determines that many are destined to reach only a certain level and will not go beyond it. It is for the same reason that I am always saying that it is not worth obsessing, the important thing is to enjoy the game.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I believe that there is talent and that talent is amplified by hard work. I'd boil it down to a axiom. (Parsons are prone to this!)

"Hard work will beat talent that doesn't work hard but nothing beats a hard working talent."

I think the movie Amadeus shows this in a wonderful way. I love the way Mozart is able just to effortlessly create music, while Salieri has to strain over each note. That he gives God thanks for each note really seals the deal for me.

I think this is why Salieri hates Mozart so much. Because he has talent with no effort at all, whilst Salieri himself strives night and day; yet knows that ultimately he will never achieve music of the quality of Mozart.

But then again Mozart was brought up in a relatively wealthy household filled with music. In part his talent was down to opportunity and circumstance of birth.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've got this vague feeling that a lot of people can be trained to be creative (if not very original) to a reasonable level. I could be trained to paint a picture: it wouldn't be high art or even very inspired, but I could produce something quite nice. Many people can write a paragraph of acceptable text and could probably be trained to produce a mediocre, formulaic novel that wasn't obviously wrong (whatever "wrong" means in this context). Of course, they'd have to actually want to learn to write it, and to spend the time and energy writing it, but that's another matter. Hard work, practice and persistence count for a lot.

On top of that, some people are naturally very talented, which is a very useful advantage. It's very hard to compare people from previous eras to our own, but I suspect that you couldn't train someone to become like Shakespeare or Mozart: they were just born that way and happened to get the chance to use their talents. There are also, I suspect, a small percentage of people who are the writing equivalent of tone-deaf: for whatever reason, what they produce just won't ever sound right. But I reckon that if you can put a half-reasonable sentence together, you could probably write a coherent book if you put the hours in.

 

[Aurora Nights]

There's writers who claim to write a perfect first draft, it's possible but is it from absolutely nothing they do this? Are they gardening the whole thing from nothing?

Likely they have collected ideas over the years, maybe even used parts of other unpublished stories, and from this they have fashioned their perfect first draft.

In a perfect first draft there are the drawing upon thousands of words of plot ideas, original scientific ideas, new creatures, magical items etc compiled over the years.

I find it highly unlikely anyone isn't using a journal of ideas they have built over the years.

There are two realms: imagination, plots, new ideas, characters, philosophies etc etc, these can be never written down and just be highly entertaining thoughts and arise in conversations, but once you do write them down you have a trove from which you can use in your writing.

I have journals full of ideas, I find it very easy to note down my thoughts and ideas on yellow sticky notes than actually write a story, but there's something very special for me about crafting something very complex with the aid of all those ideas.

The other realm is actually writing fiction, there's authors who say they find this part horrible, one way round this is to use speech recognition software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking.