In his excellent book, "The Art of Fiction," John Gardner writes, "Art depends heavily on feeling, intuition, taste. It is a feeling, not some rule, that tells the abstract painter to put his yellow here and there, not there, and may later tell him that it should have been brown or pea-green."
As the rest of his book makes clear, Gardner certainly isn't against learning the craft of writing and he knows intuition isn't the only thing you need. But it seems to me that more than ever people are looking for templates, formulas, and prescriptions that will relieve them of the risk of writing something that doesn't work. Just the other day I saw there's yet another book out that promises to spell out for you the EXACT formula for a winning screenplay. Hey, if that author has the secret sauce, why isn't he cranking out screenplays with it? Wait, maybe he's a humanitarian who just wants to share his wisdom with the world rather than selfishly benefitting from it himself.
Naah.
I wonder whether it's the crazy pace of change that freaks us out and makes us want an easy answer for predictable success. Of course the greater the pace of change, the less predictable anything is.
Getting to the practical, I just want to suggest that at least at the start of your writing project you give a bit of attention to your gut as well as your head. One technique for this is completing a sentence really fast--so fast that you don't have time to think it over. Blurting is what you're going for. Here are a few that might help you if you're writing a novel or screenplay or story:
What is most interesting about my protagonist is...
My protagonist's biggest secret is....
When people see or read what I've written, I want them to feel...
The thing that scares me about writing this story is...
This story will be better than anything else I've written if I...
Give it a try. It's a guaranteed formula for success!
OK, it's not.
But it could help.
(You'll find lots of tips but no formulas in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)
