Micro craft skills vs. macro craft skills, which do you favour?
During my MFA program, I purposely didn’t take any poetry classes, even though they were available to me. I knew I wasn’t any good at poetry. I wasn’t good at coming up with beautiful images or smart sentences to ellicit emotion from readers. I liked reading it. Absolutely. But writing it was terrifying. Now I regret not taking a poetry class. I’ve realized that it’s okay that I wasn’t ‘good’ at what I call micro craft skills: writing skills that begin at the sentence and scene level. I was much better at macro skills: big picture skills like story structure, characterization and plot. But what we really should do, instead of avoiding them, is to seek out opportunities to develop areas of craft that don’t come easily to us.
When you’re learning creative writing there are multiple skills to build and balance. Some skills come naturally to us, while others take a lot of time to hone and develop. All writers are going to be good at some skills and have to work more intentionally to develop others. When looking at writing skills, I find it helpful to divide them up into macro craft skills and micro craft skills. Some writers are good at both, but many writers favour one over the other and have to work hard to develop the one that doesn’t come easily. It’s also important to note that some genres favour one over the other, so depending what you’re good at, it could help you decide which genre best suits you as a writer.
If you’re good at micro craft skills, you may be especially good at aesthetics, writing beautiful turns of phrase, descriptions and clever dialogue. You probably excel at short stories, flash fiction or poetry. I define micro craft skills as sentence and scene-specific skills. You can tell immediately after reading the first chapter of a book, whether the writer excels at micro craft skills. Novel genres that are well suited to micro craft skills include literary fiction, literary YA and some forms of fantasy.
Macro craft skills have to do with structure, overall plot, pacing, characterization and themes. If you’re good at macro craft skills, you have a keen sense for story structure and what makes a compelling plot. Macro craft skills have to do with the shape of the story, the development of a character and they take the entire story to be able to see fully. If you’re good at macro craft skills, you probably excel at writing novels, screenplays and plays. Novel genres that are well suited to macro craft skills include mystery, romance, commercial fiction and YA.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to box yourself into one or the other! All genres blend and cross over into both types of skills. What’s important, is to know where your strengths lie and what you have to intentionally work on. I find structure, plotting and character development easy to understand and fairly intuitive - of course I still had to learn a lot, but it’s always felt much easier than writing beautiful sentences.
It makes me wonder about the query process I’m going through right now. When agents are only asking for a first chapter, they have no idea how strong the plot and characterization is in my story because they are only seeing the micro skills!
But now that I know where my weaknesses are in writing, I spend a lot of time seeking out workshops, readings and classes that will help me develop the skills that are most challenging for me. Luckily for me, the opportunity to take a poetry class with Ian Williams (one of the profs in my program) through the Eden Mills Writers Festival came up after I finished my MFA. I decided to try it out, and it turned out to be one of the best classes I’ve taken! I got to hone and practice my micro skills, without any pressure to ‘be good’.
