A few years ago I was reviewing an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of a thriller novel. At one point, the lead character met someone in a bar and ordered a whiskey. Three pages later, he finished his beer. I stopped, turned back three pages, and read through them again. Nope, he didn’t order anything else. I did a search for the author, found his email address, and wrote to him to tell him what I’d found.
He wrote back and said that over a dozen people had reviewed the book and no one had caught that mistake. And the book was going to press the next day! And he said, “Wow, you must be a programmer!”
Yes, I am. I was a software developer for over 30 years. Then I left that world and started an online store. I thought I was done coding, but there always seemed to be a need for a program to do something special. Twenty years later, I’m still writing code now and then.
Writing code and writing in a human language are similar in some ways, but very different in others. A computer program has a structure, and so does a novel. English has rules, and so does PHP (the language that runs most of the World Wide Web these days—including this blog!).
When you’re writing code, if you break the rules you’re in for trouble. Your program won’t run at all, and you’ll get an error message. Or it will run, but not create the right output. Or in the worse case, it will cause major problems like the infamous Windows “Blue Screen of Death”. I once wrote a program that wrote some data into the wrong memory location on an IBM mainframe and turned on a bit that indicated that the computer had suffered a fatal hardware malfunction. And the computer believed it and shut itself down!
There are “rules” for writing a novel too, but they aren’t set in stone like those for a programming language. You can break all the rules and still have a best seller. Have you ever read anything by Cormac McCarthy? He doesn’t use quotation marks or dialog tags! And if you could ask James Joyce what he thought of the rules of writing, you would probably be in for a very long reply with very little punctuation.
There are “rule books” for writing, like the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press Stylebook. But you can’t run your book through one of those style guides (note, “guides” not “rules”) and have it flag all your errors—and even better, correct them for you! But human languages don’t work that way. There are style checkers that you can run your work through, but they start to fail if you intentionally break the rules, or if you’re writing genre fiction. Or even if you’re writing literary fiction and you’re using dialects, or quoting something written 150 years ago.
So where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with a glass of whiskey turning into a mug of beer? Well, one thing I learned from programming is how to spot “continuity errors”. I try to run my program and it tells me that I haven’t declared a variable named “product_cost”. Of course I did… except that I declared it as “program_price”. A programmer has to keep track of all the details of their code, all the time. After almost 50 years of writing code, that kind of thing jumps out at me when I’m reading, whether it’s English or PHP.
I’ve found this to be very helpful in doing ARC and Beta reads. A character drives away in a Volkswagen and drives back in a Volvo. Or they say that they haven’t talked to another character in months, but they just spoke to them in the last chapter. Let me tell you, authors are really greatful when you find those kinds of mistakes! (Or “bugs” as we cal them in programming.)
And by the way, my style checker flagged the word “greatful” in the paragraph above, and suggested that I replace it with “fruitful”. Thanks for making my point!
Are there any other programmers-turned-writers out there? How has your coding experience helped—or hindered—your writing?
Thanks, Kurt. I coded for 30 years before retiring and returning to my high school sweetheart – fiction writing. I’ve been trying to write a blog comparing and contrasting programming to creative writing for some time, but have never put it together. Your blog is an excellent and focused comparison. You could continue. Consider good versus bad code compared to literary versus pulp fiction. Compare designing extensible code to planning for sequels.
Okay, time to go back to my writing, as my current WIP looks like I just ran it through a code obfuscator.
Thanks, Paul. I’m not sure I like comparing pulp fiction to bad code, LOL. I’ve read some pretty bad literary fiction. But we could compare debugging a computer program—-finding the logic that doesn’t work—-to doing developmental editing on a novel. Back when I was a kid programmers would do a design document before writing any code (writing an outline for a novel). The design was reviewed by other programmers (a critique group). The code was written and then reviewed by other programmers (developmental editors) to make sure it implemented the design correctly. Then it was tested by a quality assurance team whose job was to try to break the code (beta readers). Finally the code was reviewed again (copy and line editors), and then it was ready to release (publish). Today a lot of apps (or operating systems) seem to have been developed by writing the code as fast as possible, releasing it, and fixing the bugs when users report them. Similar to someone writing a novel and publishing the first draft on Amazon.
Enjoyed this.
That skill does sounds mighty handy! I imagine there are many bestselling authors who would hire you if their egos didn’t stand in their ways. I’ve heard certain wildly successful authors stop taking the advice of their editors. I wonder if that is true.
Hi, Karen. I think some authors do get complacent. They’re big enough that people will buy their books no matter what they write. I once reviewed a science fiction book on Amazon, and said that although the story was good, the book was bloated with too much unnecessary detail. I pointed out a passage where two characters were running towards an area of their camp that was being attacked… and the author stopped to describe the condition of the ground. For two pages. My review was attacked by fans of the author. They even started a thread about my review on Reddit. One comment said it all: “Anything [author name] publishes should get an automatic five star review!”
With fans like that, who needs editors?
I enjoyed this and, because my husband is a former code writer, understand the similarities. However, at the end I was surprised that your “style checker flagged the word “greatful” in the paragraph above, and suggested that [you] replace it with “fruitful,” instead of suggesting the correct spelling of “grateful”. Perhaps a style checker is not a spell checker. Still, your point is well thought out and you stayed consistent in your comparison. This bodes well for your first publication. In what genre are you hoping to publish this year?
Thanks, Allynn. I always have problems with grateful. I’ll leave the misspelling in so your comment makes sense in the future. 😉
I’m writing genre fiction: fantasy, steampunk, and horror to start with. Possibly thrillers and mysteries at some point. But I think I’m going to miss my deadline for this year. My “real job” hit a major speed bump and I’m having to spend several months taking care of it. 🙁
Good article. Thanks.