Writing Secrets: Break the rules like an artist
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso
There’s a certain point at which writing skills must melt away and become part of your being, rather than remain forefront in your mind.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a great believer in skills. Your power as a writer is amplified through understanding the tools you have access to, and the different effects you can create. Structure a scene more dramatically, your readers will be captivated. Cut this and leave that to the readers to infer, you will move them more than you thought possible.
You may have picked up the skills of writing by being a loving reader, or through a writing course like ours. But what we try to instil through the manner in which we teach those skills is the sense that, after a certain period of being intensely aware of them, our writers will relax. The skills will become intuitive.
That’s the point at which, for example, you must forget the technical aspects of point of view and immerse yourself in the moment. It’s a bit like a day-dream. Forget yourself, your life, and what you’re hoping to do. Lose yourself in the world of your story.
Don’t remain yourself, the writer, trying to shift your characters around your chess board, adding the aspects you think will make them seem real. Slip inside the skin of the narrator. Most commonly this will be one of your characters, at a time anyway.
Even if we’re not right inside the “I” persona of a character, you’ll usually be showing us the world from their perspective, filtered through their consciousness. You might be using “she” or “he”, but you’re nonetheless showing us what she is aware of, what she sees and hears and smells, and what flits through her head.
Stop worrying about the technicalities, though. And forget about yourself. Instead of telling us, from your head to ours: She feared entering the room, slip inside her skin. As she does, you’ll feel the dryness in her mouth, smell the acrid odour that rises to her nostrils when she shifts her arm. Show us that, and we’ll feel it with her.
I believe this is true, even if you choose to show us your characters from afar. Perhaps we’ll experience your world through the eyes of a strong narrator with a convincing voice, who views the foibles of your characters from a distance – like God, or an artificial intelligence, or the sardonic voice of the community at large.
Even then, picture your narrator, and become them. Slip from them to the characters they give us access to. Leave yourself behind. Allow your narrator to show your characters to us – without explanation and interpretation.
Once you can let yourself go, your writing will relax and become the property of your characters – still yours, but a shared space.
It’s not easy letting go. There’s fear in doing so: you don’t want to lose control, you fear you may look a fool…
That’s part of writing, allowing yourself to be vulnerable. It’s only when you’re able to slip away from yourself and embody the world and consciousness of your narrator that your writing will lose its self-consciousness and, ironically, become authentic.
