Writing tips with Nikesh Shukla
Shovel that sand
Nikesh Shukla is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. He wrote the 2023 Spider-Man India miniseries Seva for Marvel, as well as numerous television projects. Nikesh recently released the first book in his kids’ series, and is the author of three YA novels. He is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award), Meatspace and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny. Nikesh’s new book, Brown Baby: A Memoir Of Race, Family And Home was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. He has also written a book on writing called Your Story Matters and teaches through Faber Academy.
Top tip for those embarking on a long form writing project?
I’m going to fold a bunch of tips into one umbrella tip. So the umbrella tip is, plan it but allow the plan to be emergent, flexible and iterative. No one expects you to know everything about the characters or world before you start, and sometimes a plan can help you have a north star, or a direction of travel, or a story/plot arc that’s important to you, so knowing that direction is important and having the sacred, important moments in a character’s journey are important to plan. But as you write, you get to know the characters better, so give yourself time, space and energy to adjust and edit and pivot as needed. You can adjust as you move. What’s important is keeping your intention clear. What is the story you want to tell, what are the themes that are important to you, and what is it about the way of telling this story that matters. So always leave room to be emergent, flexible and iterative. It’s also important to know you won’t nail a long form project on the first draft. Someone else said it best when they said, a first draft is like shovelling sand into a box from which you’ll eventually make sculptures. So shovel that sand, edit and edit and edit.
What have you learnt about writing from teaching it?
That structure, craft and rules seem so didactic but they’re there to give you confidence in the story you’re telling. Ultimately, we throw all the rules in the bin. And writing isn’t bound by rules. Actually, all we need is confidence in the story we’re telling and the space and time to deepen our knowledge of our characters and the particular way we want to torture them, ha ha. Craft rules are often a good starter for people new to the form, who want prompts to help them make choices. That’s all writing is, really, a choose your adventure set of choices. I’ve found, that in teaching the best way for writers to learn is in situ. I can help you with all the ‘rules’ you’re gonna throw away in a lecture setting all you want, but it’s in workshopping the work that we put the story on its feet and find what works and what doesn’t. Workshopping my work with a set of writers who are my critical friends, asking me questions of the text gives me an insight into what’s working, what’s not, what needs to be better and where there has been slippage between my intention and execution on the page.
What has writing for children taught you?
That there is no difference between writing for adults, teenagers and children. Really. Fundamentally. Children’s stories are complex and filled with nuanced, brilliant, difficult characters in impossible situations battling the odds to become better versions of themselves. When you, as a writer, think, this is me writing for the kids, it becomes that Steve Buscemi how do you do fellow kids meme very quickly. The best way to write for kids and teenagers is to remember you were a kid, a teenager, once, and channel that feeling.
Is there a popular piece of writing advice that you disagree with?
I disagree with many. Sometimes, I think it’s appropriate to tell me, not show me. Other times, I think it’s ok for characters to tell each other what they’re thinking. There are rules about craft that are very Western Literature, very Great American novel, that I think can make the writing dull. The one thing I hate is when writers tell you what works for them, routine-wise, practice-wise, like it’s a rule for being a writer. You don’t have to hand-write 1000 words a morning in order to be a writer. Firstly, who has the time. Secondly, my handwriting has been terrible since 1996. Thirdly, what if I’m not feeling it today and I write 1000 bad words just to get through it cos I have other work to do, or a sick kid or a morning screening of I Saw The TV Glow. I’ll just have to edit that 1000 words with a straight delete in the editing process. So spend time not volume, quality not quantity. If you have a weekly target and you hit it by Tuesday, take the week off. If you work better in the evenings, do that. If you want to use your notes app, use your notes app. No one is going to strike your name from the British Library if you found what works for you and did that and did it and did it again.
Also, sometimes, our habits change and our practice changes and our lives change. So find what works, be realistic and reasonable about the drafting process, let it take however long it takes. You know how brown rice takes longer to cook than white rice and you spend ages trying to hurry it along, and there’s a crucial patient point where you have to let it cook just enough or it’ll be uncooked or burned… basically, writing is like this: you come up with a metaphor, and halfway through you discover it doesn’t work and you have to work out whether to push through and turn it into a meta commentary on writing advice, or just delete it, sip your CBD-infused drink, stand up from your desk, walk around and think, what else can I say that’s useful… and that’s writing in a nutshell. It’s iterative, emergent and flexible. And I left this all in because hey, it was fun to write. And I discovered it in the writing.
Also, final thing: the best writers are the curious writers. I have little interest in a know-it-all writer telling me everything they know. I love the curious writers on a voyage of discovery. Their surprise and delight is my surprise and delight. Their curiosity draws me in. Their openness in their journey brings me along for the ride. Good luck. Keep going.
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