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It didn’t take long for readers all over the world to fall in love with Lessons in Chemistry.
Bonnie Garmus’s debut swiftly ascended to international bestseller status, selling more than eight million copies, and with characters like Elizabeth Zott and canine narrator Six-Thirty, it’s easy to see why. Bonnie’s story not only addresses the repetitive, systematic misogyny of the scientific field; it introduces characters that defy all norms and, ultimately, become adored by readers.
The Novelry was delighted to welcome Bonnie to an online writing class for our writers, and to hear Bonnie’s experience of crafting the novel deemed one of the best of the twenty-first century. Lessons in Chemistry is Bonnie’s first novel, although Bonnie has always been a writer: a copywriter working predominantly in technology, Bonnie carried over the central aim of advertising into writing fiction—simply put, to keep the reader’s attention. Resultingly, Lessons in Chemistry is as plot-driven as it is character-driven and offers a fantastic example to writers of balancing action against description. It took five years for Bonnie to write her debut novel, and during that time she grew to understand the value of a writing community, classes, and workshops.
Bonnie shared her advice with our writing community here at The Novelry, and now we are sharing five key tips—or ‘lessons’, as we’ve coined them—that Bonnie Garmus kindly gifted to our writers.
Named the Barnes & Noble and Hay Festival Book of the Year in 2022, Lessons in Chemistry was adapted into an Emmy-nominated television series with Brie Larson starring as Elizabeth Zott. Bonnie’s debut has sold over eight million copies globally and was described by Stephen King as ‘witty, sometimes hilarious... the CATCH-22 of early feminism’. Lessons in Chemistry demonstrates why you should write out of passionate anger at injustice, how to balance the darkness with light-heartedness, and that your unique voice is your greatest strength.
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1. Write when you’re mad
The inspiration for Lessons in Chemistry came from a particularly bad day at work.
After a tech presentation Bonnie found her ideas dismissed and then entirely reaccredited to a male colleague, leading her to ask how much had really changed since the 1950s. She returned to her desk, seething from the injustice, and wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry. She told The Novelry:
It’s really smart to write when you’re mad, because you’re full of passion, you’re full of very real feelings, and then you feel quite driven. Because my day at work was pretty bad and lasted more than one day, I was able to keep working on it. That is a much better use of your time.
Writing from your own experience of injustice often provides the momentum you need to get your story down: the passion you store, the rage you feel, are creative propellors.
When you find yourself asking questions about the state of the world—like Bonnie did with her experience as a woman in tech advertising—set that question at the center of your story, and you might find the characters emerge naturally. Your anger is a tool: use it to drive the story you are passionate to tell.
2. Let your characters take the lead
Writers often wonder how much to plot and plan before they start writing. Perhaps you feel you need a thorough outline that details each moment and transition of your novel.
Bonnie, however, prefers not to submit to the supremacy of the outline. Instead, she lets her characters lead the action, allowing them to surprise her as she writes. Letting your characters take over prevents you from getting in your own way, according to Bonnie. She advises writers:
Allow these characters to speak in their own voices, put them in difficult situations where all their flaws come out, where they start behaving badly. And then suddenly, you have very distinct people.
The various points of view in Lessons In Chemistry all announced themselves to Bonnie: she felt Walter Pine’s frustration and Mad’s loneliness. What she realized was that each of these voices represented a character who had been touched and changed by her protagonist, Elizabeth Zott. In chemical terms, Elizabeth was the catalyst of change in each character’s story.
Try to let your characters surprise you and let their interactions with your protagonist drive the motion of the story—you might find you overcome those roadblocks in your plot that once seemed insurmountable.
3. Lighten the darkness with laughter
While Bonnie recommends writing from anger and confronting injustice in your novel, she warns against preaching.
Lessons in Chemistry tackles difficult and often dark themes, which are necessarily uncomfortable for a reader. However, there is a way to balance these direct confrontations with societal injustice with a lightness of touch, preventing your reader from feeling preached at or overwhelmed by the darkness of the situation. Readers adored Lessons in Chemistry particularly because of its humor.
Humor is one of the best ways to communicate your point of view to readers, especially if your novel handles difficult subject matter. Balance the darkness with the light, and let your readers see the ridiculousness and injustice of the situation for themselves, without preaching it to them.
No one wants to hear your rage unless you balance it with humor, unless you allow people to see a hideous situation in a lighter way, so they can be on your side… So they can begin to see the ridiculousness of these situations through these characters and their voices.
John Irving was an inspiration to Bonnie while writing Lessons in Chemistry, and it’s clear to see from both Lessons in Chemistry and The World According to Garp that they share a wit and humor that balances the heaviness of the storyline beautifully.
4. Publishers care about the words, not the credentials
Bonnie was 64 years old when Lessons in Chemistry was published and was awarded the Paul Torday Memorial Prize for the best first novel of an author over sixty. While she acknowledges facing some ageist remarks in the media, she stresses that the publishing industry does not care about age. All the experience leading up to the publication of Lessons in Chemistry, including Bonnie’s career as a copywriter, was necessary practice for her to write in the first place.
Whether you have been writing for five years or 15, all of that practice is invaluable; don’t worry about being the ‘right age’ for publishers. Bonnie reassures writers:
You shouldn’t worry about your credentials, your age, whatever, when you go to a publisher. They could care less. What they care about are the words on the page.
It‘s natural to feel self-conscious as a writer approaching agents for the first time, but be confident in your work and in your own voice. Which leads us to the final piece of wisdom from the globally bestselling author Bonnie Garmus…
5. The best voice you have is your own
At The Novelry, our writers often discuss their battles with self-doubt. It seems to be a universal affliction of writers everywhere.
When asked what she considers her ‘golden’ writing tip, Bonnie acknowledged that writers constantly question whether their work is any good, but, above all else, Bonnie’s advice is to write with confidence in your own voice.
A reader can tell when the author doesn’t have faith in themselves.
Trust your own voice, and in those vulnerable early stages of writing, make sure you keep your draft close to you—do not share your work with anyone right away. At this point, Bonnie says to write what you are feeling, write what you know, and explore the things you don’t know.
Learn some things on the way, but write with confidence.
Write with confidence, and then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite! Once you have faced that hurdle of the first draft where you keep your manuscript safe and protected, then it is time to be critical, according to Bonnie.
Editing and rewriting your drafts will get you to the stage of letting the people around you read and offer feedback on your work—one of the most valued benefits of joining a writing community.
Bonnie wrote around 36 drafts before landing on the final version of Lessons in Chemistry, each time making small adjustments and adapting the structure to see how it worked. Having confidence in your own voice and being your own best critic will help you develop your draft into the best manuscript it can be.
Bonus lesson: Pay attention to the conversations around you
The best quality of a writer? Being nosy.
Bonnie admits to eavesdropping wherever she can, listening carefully to the rhythm of people’s voices and to the reality of how people talk.
For example, Bonnie highlighted that written dialogue can easily sound too formal in comparison to the daily spoken conversations people have. Often when people talk to each other, they drop the beginnings of sentences: they might not begin a sentence with ‘the’, and they will not say ‘I am leaving’, just ‘leaving’. If you really pay attention to the way that people talk to each other, you will become attuned to the rhythms and quirks of real-world dialogue that will grant your novel a verisimilitude that your readers will appreciate.
So, always pay attention—your dialogue will thank you for it!
As a final note to our writers, Bonnie Garmus reiterated the importance of writing with confidence, writing what you wish you could read, and writing for that person on the train who’s had a really tough day at work. Her departing message was:
Write for somebody else and make it worth their while.
When you do that, Bonnie says, your novel will automatically start to come together.
For more live writing classes with globally bestselling authors, insights into literary techniques, coaching and a supportive writing community, join us on a creative writing course at The Novelry—the world’s top-rated writing school.
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