To build a career as a novelist you’ll need at least
four pillars: life experience, craft, talent, and luck. The first two supports
must be acquired; the final mainstay, luck, is beyond your control; while the
third pillar, talent, is something you’re born with or not.
No amount of real life adventures or writer’s
workshops can earn you more talent. By definition, talent means gift, and every aspiring writer
must face the scary question: Do I have the knack—am I gifted?
One way to answer that question is to see how
closely your personal muse matches a collection of traits that most successful
novelists possess. As an obvious example, just as painters and photographers
are engrossed by light in all of its moods, natural storytellers are fascinated
by language in all of its voices. A person who is not easily enthralled by the
power and grandeur of words probably lacks a true gift for writing.
What follows is a quick test for gauging your
writing aptitude. Okay, it’s utterly unscientific—but a high score shows you’ve
got a lot in common with the best storytellers.
The D.I.P.S.T.I.C.K. Quiz
(Do I Possess Sufficient
Talent Independent of Craft or Knowledge?)
How to score: On a scale of 1 to 5, mark whether you
strongly agree (5), or strongly disagree (1), with each statement as it relates
to your own character traits.
1. YOU MAKE UP STORIES ABOUT
PERFECT STRANGERS. That silver-haired executive-type in the theater seat in
front of you ditched his wife half a year ago for the trophy blonde now
clinging to his arm. His new sex life is hotter in some ways, but lying awake
tonight he’ll remember his first wife and ache for all he traded away.
2. YOU OFTEN PLAY THE
IMAGINATION GAME, “WHAT IF? What if
you had the secret power to heal people by stripping off your clothes in churches?
Would you be willing to use it?
3. YOUR CURIOSITY HAS BIG
MUSCLES FROM CONSTANT EXERCISE. Curiosity could get you killed, as it did the
cat, but perhaps you’ll die as a bestselling novelist. A jetliner passes
above—Who are the travelers? Where are they going? What are they doing right
now?—that’s the way your mind works.
4. YOU’RE NOSY ABOUT THE
WRITING PROCESS. If you receive a letter with some words crossed out, you’ve got to snoop and see what it said before
revision.
5. YOU’RE NOSY ABOUT BOOKS.
You’ve got to see what that
tough-looking teen-age girl in the leather jacket and spiky hair is reading.
6. YOU STUDY PHOTOS OF CROWDS,
FACE BY FACE. A crowd in Grand Central Station surrounds a busker playing
cello. Inserting yourself behind each set of eyes, you try to imagine the
experience from the viewpoint of the old man, the little girl, the
custodian—every person in the scene.
7. YOU SPY INSIDE OTHER
PEOPLE’S MINDS. You can’t keep yourself from wondering about the psyche of others;
not only the horror of a murder victim, but what the hell was going on in the
killer’s head.
8. YOU’VE GOT A “WEAK EGO
BOUNDARY.” This term, coined by Freud, describes people who have a hard time
telling where they end and another person—or the whole planet—begins. At its
worse, this kind of fuzzy self-border makes you loony. At its best, it gives
you the intuitions and sympathies of a damn fine novelist.
9. YOU HAVE AN ARTIST’S EYE FOR
DETAILS. Most will notice that the shed roof is rusty; but you see that the
orange rust on the steel roof branches as it runs to the porch eaves like a
river fanning into a delta.
10. HEARING = BELIEVING.
Listening to a radio drama or a story read aloud can move you as much as
watching a dramatic movie; often it sways you more.
11. YOU WRITE FOR THE EAR.
You’ve got to like the sound of the words, not just their meaning, so you often
read your writing aloud to yourself.
12. THE DICTIONARY IS YOUR
READING COMPANION. You never let an unfamiliar word pass by and remain a
stranger. Word origins are especially revelatory. (You do have a good etymological
dictionary, don’t you?)
13. YOU’RE A COMPULSIVE READER.
Of billboards, cereal boxes, T-shirts—whatever. You tailgate so that you can
read the bumper sticker up ahead. (It says, “Don’t tailgate me, or I’ll flick a
booger on your windshield.”)
14. SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE
TIME. Since childhood, you’ve devoured books of all kinds. Walking into a
superb library or bookstore is like entering a temple of earthly delights. For
you, life without reading would be like procreation without pleasure: entirely
possible, but what deprivation!
15. YOU CAN’T BEAR TO
SPEED-READ. Try as you might to read faster, you automatically slow down with a
good book—like a gourmet hovering over steaming Peking duck—to savor the
rhythm, the nuance, the mouth-feel of the words. The more brilliant and
satisfying the writing, the slower you read.
16. YOU ENJOY WORD GAMES.
Crossword puzzles, anagrams, Scrabble™, puns, acronyms, palindromes—you name
it.
17. YOU ACE VERBAL TESTS. On the
verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, you scored in the high 600s or
better (a perfect score is 800). If you took the Graduate Record Exam, your
reading comprehension/verbal skills score was in the top 20 percentile or
higher.
18. YOU WRITE WITH YOUR WHOLE
BODY. Books on the craft of fiction advise you to include aromas, textures,
flavors and sounds in each of your scenes—not just what the eyes perceive. If
this has to be learned, it is mere technique. For a sensualist it comes
naturally, and is, therefore, a gift.
19. A GOOD STORY KIDNAPS YOU
INTO ITS WORLD. According to genetics researchers, of all inheritable
personality traits one of the strongest is called “absorption,” the ability to
become lost in a book, a film, a creative project. This trait is thought to be
about 75 percent based on your genes, not your upbringing. So, thank mom and
dad if you can easily abandon yourself to fiction—reading it, or writing it.
20. YOU EXTEND OTHER’S STORIES
BEYOND THE FINAL SCENE. Fictional characters linger in your imagination and
show you their further adventures. What does Scarlett O’Hara do after Rhett
Butler delivers what the American Film Institute voted the top movie line of all time: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t
give a damn”?
21. YOUR FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
TAKE ON A LIFE OF THEIR OWN. You make up story people, plop them in the middle
of an intriguing conflict, and they quickly become so real to you that you get
the feeling you’re simply a reporter, observing and describing what they say and
do and what happens as a result.
22. YOU’VE GOT TERRIFIC
PERIPHERAL VISION. You aren’t just interested in the football game down on the
field. What about the teen-ager selling popcorn? That grandmother over there
who’s sipping from a hip-pocket flask? You hear a cat mewing somewhere under
the bleachers. You risk boring your readers into a coma if you include too many
details, but it helps your characters come alive when you notice surprising
little things in your fictional world.
23. YOU SHRINK FROM CLICHES LIKE
A SLUG SHRINKS FROM SALT. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” That’s
wonderfully vivid language, or at least it must have been when it was first
used back in Chaucer’s day. Now it’s weaker than three-time tea.
24. GETTING THE WORDS RIGHT IS
SATISFACTION ITSELF. Maybe you’re not as obsessive as Ernest Hemmingway, who
rewrote the last chapter of A Farewell to
Arms 119 times. But in your own writing you strive for something very close
to perfection.
25. PEOPLE OFTEN TELL YOU, “YOU
OUGHTA WRITE A NOVEL.” Hear this enough and it means there’s something special
in the way you sling words together. At the least, it means you’ve got the
storyteller’s knack. At best, it means you not only tell stories well, but
you’ve got your own voice. The crucial advice: write the same way you talk.
26. YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO
WRITE FICTION. Maybe it’s because you are
a novelist; it’s your fate to write fiction, and in your heart you know it.
INTERPRETING THE F.Q. TEST RESULTS:
Add the score and give yourself bonus points for
being brave enough to take this silly test.
·
101 to 130 points: Spectacular. You may be the next Nora Roberts. A worldwide
readership awaits you; topnotch literary agents cry, “Me! Pick me!”
·
86 to 100 points: Excellent. You’ve definitely got what it takes. Begin that novel
now. Never give up until you see your byline in the bookstores.
·
51 to 85 points: Good. You’ve got some pizazz. But read everything you can on the
craft of fiction to bolster your talent.
·
25 to 50 points: Average. What you need here is a life so large it would read like
pulp fiction. For example, it would help to be Col. Jeannie Flynn Leavitt, the first female commander
of an Air Force combat wing, with thousands of male fighter pilots under her
leadership. Just be sure to hire a talented ghostwriter.
USAF Col. Jeannie Flynn Leavitt
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