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Ursula K. LeGuin: The Art of Writing

by Ursula K. LeGuin

Why is story more important than plot? Should you write what you know? Or write what you don't know to activate your imagination? Ursula K. LeGuin is perhaps best known for her brilliant works of fantasy, science and utopian fictions but she is a gifted teacher on the art of writing. Dmae Roberts talked with Ms. LeGuin in her home about the new production and about her thoughts on the art of writing.

LEGUIN: I do cross genre boundaries constantly. I write realistic fiction, which is a genre. I write science-fiction, which is another genre, I write fantasy which is yet another genre. I mix them up – I write magical-realism, which is sort of a genre, I write stuff that there really don’t seem to be many names for, partly because I think all these boundaries are breaking down. It used to be that literature was realism, right? You know, sort of like, I don’t know, Henry James or something, and that just is no longer true. The style of the piece depends on what the piece is about and what its subject matter is. One does write and read realism differently from science fiction because they’re talking about different things; the metaphors are different. The whole imagery of the piece is different. I like moving around that way – I also write both poetry and prose, which in some circles is a no-no too. You can’t possibly write fiction if you write poetry or vice-versa. But that’s silly. Just because some people don’t doesn’t mean that other people can’t.

ROBERTS: When you start writing, do you know what you’re going to write?

LEGUIN: I have to at least believe that I know the trajectory of the story – kind of where it’s going and where it’s going to end up – but no, I don’t plot and plan ahead of time. I’m not a plot writer, I’m a story writer, for one thing. And I have learned to trust the story to take me where it’s going if I’m very attentive on the way.

ROBERTS: There seems to be a lot of focus on plot-driven material, especially with novel-writing, screenwriting, plays. You say that you’re not a plot-driven storyteller?

LEGUIN: I think there’s a difference between plot and story and plot is… one reason you hear so much about it and you know, in creative writing courses they’re always talking about plot and conflict and stuff, it’s easy to talk about. It is, actually you can rationally extract the plot from the story and tell it. You can’t extract the story from the story. I’ve been talking about this a bit lately because the kind of emphasis on plot. We don’t read Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” for the plot. Let’s face it – we read it for the story. There is a difference. Whether “War and Peace” has a plot, I really don’t know. It has a beautifully constructed, enormous story. That’s what I’m interested in and that’s what I read for and that’s what I write for. Is to find out what happened.

ROBERTS: It’s hard to distinguish between the two anymore because I think people use both phrases as the same.

LEGUIN: They use it the same, but there is a kind of built-in mistake there, because ‘story’ is much larger, older, and deeper than ‘plot’, at least to my thinking. ‘Plot’ is a kind of manipulation of ‘story’ to make it more suspenseful, more immediately effective, more patterned. Some of, I mean there are beautiful plots. I’m not saying plot’s a bad thing at all. I’m just saying it’s not the basis. It’s kind of an added thing that we talk about because it’s way easier to talk about than what makes a good story a good story. That’s a kind of mystery.

ROBERTS: A great deal has been written about your work, but I found this quote from ‘The Nation’ to be the most interesting, or one of the most interesting: “She is the kind of writer businessmen hate most – producing challenging, unpredictable books whose meanings are too elusive to be easily controlled.”

LEGUIN: That’s nice. It’s kind of hard on businessmen. I don’t know why…actually, I wonder why they put down businessmen.

ROBERTS: Well, that’s ‘The Nation.’

LEGUIN: They should have just said “unimaginative people.” Which is not true of all businessmen, by a long shot. Some of them have too much imagination.

ROBERTS: Is it hard from you when people are quoting, not necessarily your work, but things that have been written about you?

LEGUIN: Yeah. It’s sort of you know, being a private sort of person it seems slightly unreal, that’s all.

ROBERTS: I also read – here’s another one I read, okay, was actually you saying that especially the old adage “write what you know” is not necessarily the right thing to do in your writing.

LEGUIN: Well, the trouble with it is it’s good practical advice for somebody who sort of doesn’t have the faintest idea what it means to be a fiction writer. But for a fiction writer it’s saying “don’t use your imagination.” What kind of directions is that? We’d never have any stories at all? The imagination is where fiction comes from. And so I think a little practice in writing what you don’t know about is a good idea. What those directions really mean is, for instance, if you’ve never been to France, don’t speak French, and don’t know any French literature, don’t have a French character. Or don’t try to set your story in France. If you’re writing realism, it’s better to stick to something you know fairly well. But that cuts out so many kinds of even realism, imaginative realism, magical realism, so on where the imagination takes over and tells you things you didn’t know.

ROBERTS: So write what you don’t know…

LEGUIN: Yeah. But write it as if you knew.

ROBERTS: Yeah. So live it, in other words.

LEGUIN: That’s so often the gimmick in science-fiction is when we’re really writing about stuff that could not exist, that is really fantasy, like faster-than-light travel and stuff, but we act as if we knew all about it. It’s partly just a shell-game, but it’s a very good game. People enjoy it.

ROBERTS: Well, you enjoy it.

LEGUIN: Yes, I enjoy reading it and writing it. And a lot of people do. It’s a…science fiction is a fairly intellectual form of fiction. And it does exercise the mind. And that’s good too.

ROBERTS: Well, I know you’ve had a lot of adaptations, it must be hard sometimes and often frustrating prospect to have one’s work translated, particularly for the screen. And I know that Earth Sea Trilogies is coming up in December and I’m really excited about that. How do you choose which project, because I’m sure you get a lot of offers. How do you choose which project is the one to go with?

LEGUIN: Well, it starts with an option. And if the person who wants the option on the property, that means an option to develop it as a script, you know, as a screenplay and probably to raise money on that and sell it, you try to find somebody who is serious and trustworthy who might find a good place to take this film and that’s a gamble. And one makes mistakes. At this point I have two films in development. One far along is the first two books of Earth Sea which will come out on the SciFi Channel as a miniseries in December. And I have not been invited into the making of that movie or the scripting of it at all. I’ve been shown the script and so on but input was not wanted – input from the writer of the original property usually is very much not wanted by Hollywood so they’re just running true to form there. The other thing is a little company called Ziolux (?) Productions has optioned “The Left Hand of Darkness” and that’s kind of exciting to me because I always thought that would make a good film and indeed, with my friend Paul Price I wrote a screenplay for it, which we never could sell. Ziolux will probably find their own scriptwriter, but they seem to be serious people who really do understand what science-fiction is about so I have hopes of that one going somewhere. I think it could be a lot of fun to make into a movie and it could be a really beautiful movie. With a lot of pizzazz to it.

ROBERTS: Well, I’m glad to hear that, I am. What is the most important message, especially with emerging writers or developing writers, that you leave your students with when you’re teaching?

LEGUIN: Often when I do workshops and so on they tend to be people who are more experienced, more motivated already, but I think what a lot of people want to be writers and they’re young and they haven’t done much yet, I tell them to read a lot. Read whatever it is they want to write – read that kind of literature. This is awfully simple. Write. You can’t be a writer unless you do a lot of writing. You can’t be a tuba player unless you really play the tuba a whole lot, you know? And writers write a whole lot. They don’t write a story and then rush out and say where is an agent? They come to an agent with a box full of stories usually, or a novel or two. It takes practice.

ROBERTS:I think especially with young people there’s a product-oriented mentality now versus process and learning. That they want to get results, they want to be a star or they want the goodies.

LEGUIN: Yeah, and of course there are enormous illusions about the goodies involved in being a writer. I wonder if the number of writers who support themselves purely on their writing in this country is more than a hundred. Very very hard to live by writing alone – almost all writers either have a spouse that brings in money or a job. The fame and fortune is way down the line for almost all people and doesn’t occur, the fortune part doesn’t occur for most writers, so there’s a lot of mythology about it and people like our dear Jean Auel are, you know, unintentionally, because Jean was a housewife who suddenly wrote this enormous best-seller. People think that’s the way it happens. Well, it happened to Jean and god bless her, but it doesn’t happen to most of us, and don’t think it will. Keep rubbing away. It’s a job, it’s work. Like being a musician, like being a dancer. You work at it every day and sometimes it pays and sometimes it doesn’t.

ROBERTS:: Did you ever feel like you had a choice in being a writer?

LEGUIN: In being a writer or not being a writer? No. It was either be a writer or be dead. It’s pretty much like that, still like that.

ROBERTS: Well, Ursula K. LeGuin, thanks so much for a great conversation today and it was wonderful meeting you.

LEGUIN: Nice to meet you.

To find out more about Oregon writers and the art of writing contact Literary Arts, Inc..

Also, check out Ursula K. LeGuin's web site.

about Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. LeGuin is perhaps best known for her brilliant works of fantasy, science and utopian fictions. Over the past 50 years she’s published 20 novels, 11 children’s books, more than a hundred short stories, and has received the national book award, five Hugos, five Nebulas, the Kafka award, a Pushcart prize, and several lifetime achievement awards.