Shouts From Down Under

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There are some valuable insights for the future purpose of writing within the questions and answers on this website.

http://www.chipmacgregor.com/

The old advice to read, read, read, has never changed, but I pondered today why reading other people's stuff would improve how we write? We all enjoy a good story, but just reading it and being entertained by it won't do diddley squat to improve our skills.

We have to nut out the reasons why their work caused a reaction in us. What was it they wrote, what techniques did they use, that shoved us around, moved us emotionally, had us fretting and worrying over a character / characters, made us forget our mundane sad lives for a couple of hours?

Why did we enjoy that story? Why did we feel suspense? The whole works that we felt, the process of stimulating our thinking, was ignited somehow.
And whatever it was, though we may have given some permission for this to go on, the writer's talent and use of words did the rest. We were convinced. We were willingly influenced, and influenced in a big way.

How could we let someone, a total stranger, using mere words, manipulate our thoughts? If someone did this in real life, real time, in a physical sense, we'd swiftly have them arrested, and charged with something .

I could blah on all day about what those things are that DO influence us, about the devious means, using words, that writers conjure up whole worlds that fall on our heads, bring us fear, comfort us, excite us, take our breath away, arouse us, sadden us, entertain us, inspire us, satisfy us.

But I don't feel it's that difficult to work out the formula for how we too can write like this. It's right there in front of us.

When we read those books of the authors who are talented (and have done the hard yards, the long hours, burn't the midnight oil- let's not forget) if, for the sake of this learning exercise, we remain somewhat detached, as we read their novel / work, and note in our minds the timing of our feelings, then we can pinpoint what they wrote and how they wrote it, to bring about these feelings and to cause this reaction in our mind.

That moment when we begin to feel whatever it is the story promotes, the direction our thoughts take unconsciously whereby reading the story is made desirable.

Ask ourselves why. What words and order of sentences etc began to encourage that change in us? What was their timing pattern? What level did they set the drama of those moments. Did this level increase by how they worded the dialogue? Were all our senses stimulated, in our mind at least, by how they addressed all the sensory input?
Did people shout in anger? Were we left in a dark, windowless, claustrophobic room with our character, experiencing that fictional persons real incident?

We could read all the books in the world and not come any closer to getting it.

But the quicker we do stop, concentrate and go through a story a few sections at a time, and learn these techniques, and maybe even invent some of our own, then we'll be way better off, and we won't be wasting our time; we will take a short cut to vast improvement, I'm certain of it.

We already know it's no picnic.



No, it's no picnic with a thermos flask of coffee, sitting beside a creek in Queensland, Australia, listening to the wildlife.
Writing isn't a picnic, but we can write in such a way as to make our readers feel like the piece HAS been a picnic to write.

There are the rules of course. But who decided the rules?

The painters of old who learned their trade as apprentices by meticulously copying the masterpieces; they followed the rules set by someone great. But someone great is just another person.

Are there really a few geniuses and then the rest of us ordinary humans?
Once I would have thought this was right.

Now, I'm not so sure. I feel there is the potential in all of us to be geniuses in our own way. Well, not by learning in our own way we won't; as in just doing it how we've always done it, and only to suit ourselves.
No, to tap into our own genius, we have to be willing to learn something NEW. That means admitting we don't know it yet. We are ignorant of whatever it is that's new.

There is something very satisfying learning something new. It may not be new knowledge or skill to others, just ourselves.

That's how individual improvement happens, the only way it happens. When WE learn it. When I learn it.

Sparky