storywriters

So the old “writer vs. storyteller” argument is popping up again at Rachel’s blog. Every time this topic comes up, I’m inspired to write something, and then every time, I decide that I don’t think I really agree with what I’ve written.

I like stories. I like them in movies, in books, in ballads, in art, in little kids playing pretend in their backyards. I have always liked stories. I think that even if there was no such thing as writing, I would be a storyteller. I’d tote my lute from town to town and sing stories about great battles or something. I’m wrired to make stories out of things. Even my journalism is storytelling-based. When I was working as a food critic, I would tell the story of what it was like for me to go to dinner at a particular restaurant. I got the job because my editor liked my narrative style.

Rachel says:

There’s a difference, at least in most cases. Occasionally I run across a book that has a wonderful, compelling, well-written story. But I categorize most of the authors whose books I read as either one or the other. Either as writers or storytellers.

and

A storyteller cares about (and concentrates on) the story. The plot. The whos, whats, wheres, whens, and whys. The twists and turns, the passion, angst, and ecstasy. A good storyteller will grab you so hard and so fast that most readers (though not typically most writers) won’t notice the flaws (anywhere from slight-and-forgivable to glaring-and-unconscionable) in the writing.

Alison Kent says:

Telling the story is who [the storyteller] is. Writing a story is who *I* am. I *hear* my writing. The rhythm of the words as I put them on the page.

I think it’s the dichotomy of the way this argument is set up that disturbs me most. “Storytellers write badly. Writer’s write boring stuff.” Blah blah blah. (To be fair, Rachel does say, “one is no good without the other. Every writer is at least part storyteller, and every storyteller at least part writer.”) But of course that’s not true. Just those that are novelists.

The thing is, I think that all the storytellers who write novels must also be writers. If not, they’d be making movies, or painting pictures, or something else. Conversely, all the writers who write novels must also be storytellers, otherwise, they’d be writing cookbooks, or non-ballad song lyrics, or presidential inauguration speeches. There are just better writers and worse writers, just as there are better storytellers and worse storytellers, better plastic surgeons and worse plastic surgeons, better and worse racehorse jockeys. And when a novelist is a better storyteller than she is a writer, or vice versa, people start up on this dichotmy thing, as if they are more interested in one than the other. I said above that if there was no writing, I’d still be a storyteller, but I don’t live in a world like that. I live in a world where I always knew that writing was a very viable way to get a story out, but where I can tell stories in a variety of ways. I can write novels, or direct films, or make tapestries. But I write novels, because I am as interested in writing as I am in stories. And it’s not from lack of exposure to movies!

But these arguments always digress into bizarre definitions, because if we are going to set up false groups, we much further make a list of what things each group cares about. Like rhythm, which according to both Alison and Rachel, falls within the “writer’s” domain. I think that a good storyteller is as obsessed, if not more obsessed, with rhythm than a writer is. Rhythm is of utmost importance in a story. The rhythm of a scene, of a beat, of a plotline, of a character arc. Comedic timing, suspense, everything is about rhythm. But I digress.

Last spring, I met a woman who’d been working as an editor in the publishing industry for decades, and she called me “a natural storyteller.” That was a great moment. But then, as Holly Lisle says:

Generally when editors and agents refer to you as as storyteller, they mean you aren’t literary.

Which of course brings us to another false dichotomy that gets bandied about a lot: that of genre vs. literary. And I think it’s just about as worthless as the other.;-)