NK Jemisin On Writing

NK Jemisin is among the titans of fantasy and science fiction writing today. Her Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo award three consecutive years, and is the first trilogy ever to have every volume win a Hugo. She is a deeply successful author who combines fantastic elements with the themes that inspire her most. 

Not all of us can win a MacArthur Fellows Genius Grant, but all of us can learn from what the best authors in the world have to say about the craft and profession we have in common with them. Here are some of the best pieces of wisdom, experience, and advice Jemisin has chosen to share with us. 

20 Quotes on Writing From NK Jemisin

It’s human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn’t make any sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you’re doing something extremely small.

I think this is extremely important in the current political atmosphere. In a profession where a lot of people are telling us to only write people who look, sound, and act like we do (lest we become guilty of cultural appropriation), a BIPOC voice telling us to write outside ourselves is important. 

Of course, when we write outside our own experience it’s vital that we do so with respect and accuracy. If you haven’t yet, check out this blog post we assembled with advice about how to do just that. 

I tend to write society as I see and understand it. 

First, it must be said that if you read Jemisin’s work, this sentence should scare you more than a little. Her worlds tend to be brutal, dystopian, and lethal. Beyond that, though, she points out the most important paradox of fiction: although fictional stories aren’t technically real, they absolutely must be true. 

What Jemisin (and others) mean by that is that the best fiction works because, through the fictional story, it explores universal truths about what it means to be a human being. Our tales are far from “escapist”. They look fundamentals of human nature in the eye, and at their best do so with a courage and accuracy that resonates deeply.

With epic fantasy, there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack.

Here, Jemisin is speaking to the politics of fiction (something she does eloquently and often). He point is that, in most epic fantasy stories, the plot begins with some being or force changing the world from what it was to something else — or at least trying to do so. The journey of the protagonist is usually to set it right again, whether the change is incipient or has lasted for millennia. That is, by classic definition, a fundamentally conservative mindset. 

There’s nothing wrong with that. However, for authors who support liberal thought and ideas, it’s a tendency you might consider taking steps to remedy. It’s one of those things that’s fairly easy to avoid once you’ve been made aware of its existence. 

I think most fiction focuses on uncomfortable settings because that’s interesting. 

This underscores my favorite description of how to write fiction. Step One: Put your hero up a tree. Step Two: Throw rocks at your hero. Step Three: Eventually the hero comes down out of the tree on their own. 

Fiction needs to make your protagonist uncomfortable, in peril, suffering loss….as Jemisin says, because that’s what’s interesting. The cozy movement notwithstanding, peril and discomfort are simply more engaging than comfort and safety. 

It’s hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there’s these “rules” I’m supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make he do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines.

Think back to the last fantasy novel you loved so much your significant other got tired of hearing you talk about it at parties. Did you love it because of all the ways it was the same as the other fantasy novels you read that year? If you’re like me (and I think most other fantasy readers), not even a little bit. Instead, you loved it because in one way or another it defied your expectations while still remaining “fantasy enough” to scratch the itch that made you pick up a fantasy story. 

Of course, you still need to know and understand the rules before you break them — but as Jemisin says, nobody’s kicking in your door when you do. 

This is magic we’re talking about. It’s supposed to go places science can’t, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own.

Magic is at the heart of fantasy — even in low-magic settings, there are supernatural elements that keep the people, places, and plot moving. Although most good advice on building magic systems tell us the rules must be consistent and have a degree of internal logic, that advice sometimes underscores the value of wonder. 

Whether you have a wizard casting fireballs, an oracle divining prophesy, or a pointy-hatted gentleman mastering the lost seeing stones, such tasks shouldn’t be workaday or normal, even in a world where they are relatively common. The ability to do such things is why readers show up, and we should serve that. 

I’ve always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.

I am so glad Jemisin said this out loud. There’s a cultural image of the writers as a solitary laborer, scribbling (or typing) words in a garret someplace and eschewing the company of humans in favor of their craft. There are even a few successful authors throughout history who managed exactly that. 

But good writing (like good art) succeeds because of how well the writer (artist) understands the humans who move through and read their stories. You can’t do that if you don’t spend enough time with people to develop that understanding.

See also: modern book promotion means talking with people about what you write, in person and over social media. That’s equally hard to do if you don’t take and make time for personal contact. 

Reactionary movements can’t sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on. 

I can’t tell how much this is a commentary on how to write fiction at the societal level, and how much this is leveled at today’s politics, but it can apply to both. 

The thing about reactionary movements (and reactive action at the protagonist scale) is that it must react to something. That reaction must make sense for the reaction to begin, and must be sustained. As the reaction counteracts the thing it’s reacting to, either the story ends or it must find a new thing to react against. 

This may be one of the best points I’ve ever seen about how to solve a sagging middle. 

It’s possible to make it in this business. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all going to be bestsellers and make a million dollars and sell the next major million dollar movie franchise. But you can sell stories, you can get your work and artistic vision out there and enjoy it. 

You can aim this at a lot of things about the business and craft of writing, but for me the most important application is in how we define success. Too many of us don’t feel we are “real” writers until we sell x number of books, or get on a bestseller list, or until we get that perfect review, or until we stop writing what we love and put out something you might read in a college lit class, or until we get paid, or….

It’s nonsense. Only you get to define what “making it” means for you and your writing. Nobody gets to tell you otherwise. So decide what it means in your heart to be a “real” writer, then go do that thing.

I don’t believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. 

This hits on two levels. To start with, avoid the trap of procrastination through preparation. Even if you’re writing detailed historical fiction, at some point you reach a point of deeply diminishing returns. Your job is to recognize when you reach that point, put down the books, and pick up your pen. 

On another level, it’s a reminder that one of the joys of fiction is you get to make stuff up. Although (like I mentioned earlier) you must make your story true, you should never let a quibbling fact prevent you from crafting a beautiful, engaging, and meaningful scene. 

When I start a new novel, I often write “test chapters” in different tenses and from different points of view in order to figure out which is best to tell the tale. 

You’ve read advice like this before. Test chapters. Short stories. Character profiles. All of these short sojourns into your main text can help you figure out the best way to write it when the real work begins. It’s like A/B testing for your writing. 

Be warned, though. There’s a tendency to want to find homes for those exercising in the finished manuscript. They almost never belong, no matter how much we want them to. 

I write for myself – but it is nice when other people like it, too!

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a clearer or more succinct expression of why it’s important to never self-censor our writing. Write the beautiful, hilarious, thrilling, sexy story you wish you had read, and make it uniquely your own. If you write something that’s true to yourself, you will unavoidably write fiction with that truth we’ve established is so important. 

This works at the business level, too. It’s better to have 1,000 “true fans” than to appeal a little bit to 100,000. By writing for yourself, you reach the people who will naturally resonate with who you are, and become the “true fan” we need so badly. 

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period.

There’s not much more to be said. You get better at writing by writing. You get better at submitting by submitting. You get better at beating writer’s block by writing when you don’t feel like it. 

You even get better and defending your writing time from friends and family by politely insisting that it’s important. 

So get out there and practice. 

So here is why I write what I do. We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it – we all get to dream. 

This one’s a bit maudlin, but that doesn’t make it less true. Dreaming is a fundamental part of why humans value and experience art. By sharing your dreams – your fiction – with the world you help your readers experience and celebrate this. You are leading by example, telling adults that it’s okay to imagine, to dream, to indulge in flights of fancy. 

Especially in times as stressful and dark as the ones we’re living in right now, that’s an important task. Good for you for taking it on. 

If you’re not good enough yet, work harder. If you’re not where you want to be yet, keep trying. Keep honoring your craft and don’t give up.

I love it when successful authors say things like this. There’s too much emphasis in our craft on talent — by which I mean a proficiency that seems to have been naturally gifted, that a writer was born into and didn’t earn. That’s clearly a thing. Talents and gifts exist in all pursuits, and ours is no exception. 

But skill — proficiency developed through practice with the intent to get better — is more powerful than talent. And it’s more accessible, since anybody can put in the time and effort and grow in whatever they set their minds to. Keep at it, and keep at it some more, and keep at keeping at it. Just see to it that the pages you write tomorrow are just a little bit better than the ones you write today. 

I (still) have those first novels, but they will not see the light of day while I’m alive.

All of us have to write at least one really bad book before we can write a good one — and if we’re very, very lucky it’s the same book. For most of us though, we end up with a small cache of manuscripts we recognize are so awful we can never show them to anybody. 

I don’t know about you, but the fact that somebody on the level of NK Jemison has that stack to give me a lot of comfort. 

I usually have no idea what the book’s plot will be. I imagine where it begins, and where it ends, but how to get from A to Z takes more time to develop.

Good news for the pantsers in the audience: Jemisin is a highly successful writer who doesn’t cotton to the whole plotter narrative. Go forth and do likewise. 

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you know it hurts my feelings to write this. I’m a plotter, and have gone so far as to suggest that “pantsers” are really just plotters is denial. But Jemisin would beg to differ, and who am I to say she’s wrong?

Write with the intention to help your readers feel less alone. 

This thought underscores why truth is so important when we write fiction. At the end of the day, humans want to feel connected to other humans. Back in the neolithic period, our connection to other humans was how we survived. In the modern age, that thirst for connection is what drives the juggernaut that is social media. 

When we read something true, we read something that reminds us other people have the same feelings, desires, pains, and pressures that we do. That’s connection at a deep level — and helps us all feel less alone. 

Do extensive research yourself, but acclimate your readers quickly. 

This “research” might be time online learning about a period, skill, or event that’s central to your story. It might be scrawling a notebook worth of details about the fantasy world you’re creating, complete with a thousand years of history and three unique alphabets. It might be watching the hundred movies you want your book to most feel like. 

But whatever it is, your reader only needs to see the parts that are directly and meaningfully related to the action on the page. The rest informs and directs what you write, but never gets said “out loud.” That’s for your notes file. Ignoring this advice is one of the quickest ways to end up with a bloated story boasting an enormously sagging middle. 

Of course I feel anxiety about (writing). Writing is hard. But then I do it anyway, and I make it better through revisions, and I send it out to readers anyway. 

I’d go so far as to say that feeling anxiety about your writing is the best way to tell that you’re improving in your craft. If you’re not trying something new enough to scare you a little, you’re rehashing the fundamentals of what you wrote last year. 

Your readers can tell when you do that — you know it’s true because you can tell when your favorite authors start doing it. So be bold and get better than you ever thought you could. 

Jemisin Leading By Example

One last piece of advice I’ve gleaned from Jemisin isn’t something she’s said out loud (to my knowledge). It’s just a way she lives in her craft. Jemisin’s work is deeply and delightfully weird. She creates worlds, people, systems of magic, and situations that break the mold time and time again — because that’s what she wants to write. 

Give yourself permission to be just as offbeat, just as boundary breaking, just as transgressive as NK Jemisin. There’s no reason to be less than everything you can be.

Photo Credits: Laura Hanifin (headshot, 2015) and N.K. Jemisin (covers), remixed CC BY-SA 3.0.