crispina kemp

The Unknown Unknowns…

…and how to discover them

With any craft there are bound to be skills at which we totally suck. But if we know what they are, then it’s down to us to practice, practice, practice until we’re perfect. Or at least until we’ve mastered them.

But what about those skills we totally suck at but don’t know what they are? Maybe you continually miss-spell a certain group of words without an inkling that you do it. Blind to the error. Or maybe grammar is your curse? Whatever is yours, you can guarantee in everything you write, you’ll make that same mistake, time and again.

These days, thanks to word-processors with built in spell and grammar checks these two examples seldom cause a serious stumble.

But what about story structure?

Or character arc?

Or pacing?

A satisfying ending?

An initial hook?

How do you learn to improve if you’re oblivious to the need?

I was once ignorant of all five of these requirements. A panzer (I didn’t know the word back then), I knitted my stories.

Ah-ha, I’d go, I’ve a brilliant idea for a story! And immediately I was writing it. But I’d no idea where the story was going, how it was going to end, and whether or not the protagonist would grow. Just write, write, write, write and… it’s amazing I actually finished some of those stories. But I did. And I submitted them. And I often got handwritten replies. That was way-way-way back in the ancient days.

None of those replies suggested I might try working on structure, or endings, or character arcs. Therefore, I remained oblivious to the need. They were my Unknown Unknowns, and not knowing them, I made no attempt to improve them.

When the gods intervene

Born with a Gemini sun in my 3rd house, where Gemini’s ruler, Mercury, also sits, might explain my drive to write. I’m not sure it explains what happened to set me on the road to improvement. But perhaps it does. Gemini and Mercury, all about words and thoughts.

I contracted a virus. A wily virus that, having given me meningitis then wheedled its way through the blood-brain barrier to give me encephalitis. Which wrecked my head. It particularly hit language ‘comprehension’. It’s difficult to explain, but while I knew what a cat was, and a mat, and what sitting was, I couldn’t parse that well-known phrase The Cat Sat On The Mat. That phrase was meaningless to me.

The plastic brain

I recovered. And I regained my language skills – mainly by doing crosswords. That was good, because I had a novel sitting on an agent’s desk at the time, and while the agent liked the story, it needed work done to it before she’d accept it.

At this point I figured if I had to recover my language skills, I might as well brush up my fiction writing skills as well.

That’s when I started buying craft books. How to write… how to plot… how to… how to… and over the next few years my Unknowns became my Knowns. And being Known I set about improving them.

Fast forward a decade or so

I’ve stopped buying craft books. Now I watch YouTube videos on ‘How to Improve…’ I watch them while I’m editing. As reminders. Always with my current wip open to check if I’m doing it right, or how I can improve it.

My favourite YouTuber is the writer Carl Duncan. His videos are seldom more than 10 mins long. And there’s nothing arch about him, as there is with some of the other YouTubers. Plus his voice doesn’t grate.

I have to acknowledge Carl’s influence since it was in one of his videos that I encountered the phrase Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns. (Thank you, Carl)

And thank you for reading this.

Please drop me a comment, it’ll encourage me to write more of these Words On Writing posts (totally unplotted, I’ve no idea where these posts are going!)