Four Essays
on Creativity
by John Vorhaus
1/EMOTIONAL TRUTH
Writers often find themselves confronted by the question, "What is emotional truth?" and the further question, "How do I put it on the page?" In my experience of working with writers (and being one of course) I find that writers go through predictable stages in their struggle to convey authentic emotional meaning in their work.
At first a writer has no idea that such a thing as emotional truth even exists. He is only interest in making the plot work, making the jokes funny, and making the script lurch from event to event with no thought for deeper meaning or deeper human truth. I call this the "blowing things up" phase, for a writer has no concern for anything beyond the big bangs of plot mechanics.
As a writer continues to develop, he becomes aware that there's such a thing as emotional truth, but has no effective means of exporting this information from his brain to the page. His efforts at doing so seem (to himself and others) to be awkward, stilted and self-conscious. He might write, for example, the words, "I love you," and then recoil in horror at the awful obviousness of that thought. What's lacking in the writer at this stage is a means of connecting simple human truths to stylish presentation on the page.
If the writer continues to grow and develop, he becomes aware that emotional truth exists, and starts to acquire some strategies and tactics for conveying such information in a stylistically satisfying way. He may, for example, have discovered text and subtext, and brought his writing to the point where he can have one character say to another, "Would you like some coffee?" and have it understood that this really means, "I yearn for you to the very core of my existence." This is a writer who has both the awareness and the toolcraft to convey emotional truth. And yet, often, he does not. Why? Because he is afraid.
In conveying emotional truth on the page, a writer must make a certain leap of faith. A writer must confront the knowledge that, in writing about emotional things, he will in some sense expose himself to the very feelings he's trying to convey. He'll have to own those feelings and take responsibility for them, with himself, with other writers and with the audience and the world at large. This is a profound challenge to many writers… a hurdle that some never get over. It's difficult, for example, to write a venal and corrupt character authentically without feeling venal and corrupt yourself. Some writers never can do that. They never get past their fear of being honest on the page.
Those who do overcome their fear enter a state of maturity in
relation to emotional truth: They know it's out there; they desire to express
it; they have the means for doing so; and they are not afraid. This, as
far as I'm concerned, is the ultimate goal of a writer's life: To know the
truth; to speak the truth; and to be not afraid.
2/STORY AND THEME
Since the dawn of time, humans have used story to convey information. First it was cave drawings and fireside tales. Later came sagas, scrolls and stone tablets, Vedas and Upanishads, passion plays and illuminated manuscripts, comic books and dime novels, radio, and finally, as the ultimate expression of human creativity (ha!) the modern motion picture or television show.
The purpose of story, at bottom, is to convey information: where to find food; when to hunt; how to treat others; etc. Because people will not entirely sit still for plain ol' information, stories cleverly conceal their lessons within entertainment. In The Little Engine that Could, we learn not to give up. In Macbeth, we learn that you shouldn't listen to your pride, or your wife, when they tell you to kill your king. In both cases, we get infotainment. We learn while we laugh (or cry).
A story's central instruction, then, is its theme (at least as I define theme): a powerful lesson expressed as an imperative. Be yourself. Drive safely. Respect others. Stay cool. Trust your gut. The bedrock arithmetic of theme is this: theme = call to action.
A theme is not a theme – not in a sufficiently powerful story sense – unless it takes a stand. Theme is command. Theme bosses people around. To test whether your theme is framed with the appropriate urgency, ask if it can stand the weight of an exclamation point. Get naked! Get free! Get well!
Why is it so important to anchor a story to a strong, imperative theme? Because weak themes kill stories. If readers or viewers don't understand why the story is important (understanding conveyed to them by the urgency of your theme) they don't treat it as important, and they check right out.
Some writers fail to inform story with themes of appropriate urgency because they fear to take the stand that a strong theme requires. They fear that if they state a strong theme, someone somewhere will bust them for big ego: "Where the hell do you get off telling me how to think, or act, Mr. Bigshot Writerman? Who do you think you are? What makes you better than me?"
There's a powerful theme that's taught to humans over and over and over again: Don't imagine that you're better than anyone else.
But we're writers, not humans, and so we have to imagine that we're better than anyone else. If we don't, we'll never be able to write anything with the sort of thematic urgency that will make our stories compelling. For the sake of better writing, we simply have to take a stand.
And here's a shocking advantage: The minute you take a stand, your writing gets not only better, but easier. You suddenly have a strong, clear, aggressive point of view, and a reliable filter through which to pass all questions of character, story, action, dialogue; everything. Theme answers the writer's brutal question, "What do I want to say?" If you start out with that answer, you're hugely ahead of the game.
If you're ever at a loss for strong themes, here's a simple way to find them. Just ask yourself this question: If you could teach one person in the world one thing, what would that one thing be? The answer to that question will reliably be an important theme for you.
Theme isn't always the first thing you get, nor is the theme you start with necessarily the one you have at the end. Sometimes themes emerge from the material as it develops. Often, themes change as a function of new information about the characters and the story you're trying to tell. I like to declare an unequivocal theme at the outset of development, but then stand ready to change the theme as the work unfolds. But I'm never without a theme. I don't trust myself, nor my work, when I can't answer the simple core question of what am I trying to say?
When Moses walked through the desert, he followed a pillar of fire. It kept him from getting lost. As you walk through the desert of story, treat theme as your pillar of fire, and you likely won't get lost too.
3/THE PRACTICE OF WRITING
If you're a writer, you write. At the end of the day, nothing else matters. You can be the worst writer in the world, spewing drivel onto the page every day, but if you do it every day, eventually it will cease being drivel, or at least evolve into drivel of a finer sort.
This happens automatically, because if you write you always improve. Alas, the opposite is also true. If you don't write, you definite won't improve. So that would seem to leave us with a pretty clear choice, wouldn't it? Write, and improve; or don't write, and don't improve. Why is it not that simple? Because the forces of evil are arrayed against the desire to write. And the biggest evil of all is the need to be good. Burdened by the unrealistic expectation of all quality all the time, we often find that we just can't write at all.
But in the practice of writing, quality is not the major concern. In the practice of writing, the only thing that matters is putting words on the page. In the practice of writing, the only fear is the fear of giving up the practice. In the practice of writing there is joy, because the practice of the practice is a goal you can achieve, and a triumph you can relish, every single day.
So how does one practice practice? How can we move by degrees from the kind of writer's life we have to the writer's life we want? Here are some strategies and tactics you can try:
PRACTICE PATIENCE. Some days you get a ton done. Some days you don't. You'll tolerate the bad days better if you just let yourself off the hook. Stress and pressure are not conducive to good writing practice, so go easy on yourself. Life is long. You do have time.
PRACTICE IMPATIENCE. If yesterday was a slack day, make damn sure that today isn't. Yes, it's okay to blow off work, but not every day, not if you're serious about your craft. Let yourself off the hook, sure, but put yourself back on it, too. Demand your own active participation in your active practice of writing.
SET APPROPRIATE GOALS. Don't imagine that you're going to write a whole script before breakfast. Do imagine that you're going to do a reasonable amount of work in a reasonable amount of time. Inappropriately large goals kill will and crush productivity. Appropriately small goals, on the other hand, offer the immediate reward of a job, well, done.
SHOW YOUR WORK. Be fearless in this. Recognize that rejection is a natural part of the practice of writing. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it. The alternative is a trunk full of stuff that no one sees till you're dead.
KEEP GIVING THEM YOU UNTIL YOU IS WHAT THEY WANT. The best part of your writing is the part that's unique to you. Your stories. Your style. Your sensibilities. Your themes. Your way with words. Keep giving them you, even if they keep rejecting you. Eventually – I can't say when and I can't promise soon – your quality will convince them that you is what they want.
SEIZE YOUR SPACE AND TIME AND TOOLS. It's difficult to have an effective practice of writing in an ineffective space. Do you have a quiet place to work, equipped with a decent computer? If not, make it a priority to acquire these things. Also make your writing time a priority. Carve it out of your day, guard it jealously and don't let anyone – especially you – take it away from you.
LET YOUR LIFE RISE. The practice of writing is one of deep psychological intrusion. In becoming the writer you wish to be, you naturally undergo major transformations in terms of the person you are. Let these changes take place. As you gather awareness, you improve as a writer; as you improve as a writer, you gather awareness. Let your life rise and your writing will follow; let your writing rise, and your life will follow too.
4/TOOL-DRIVEN CREATIVITY
When we speak of tool-driven creativity, we’re talking about any logical process of thought or consciously invoked strategy that abets the brain’s innate ability to solve creative problems without overt guidance or control. Using creative tools frees us from dependence on “inspiration” or “the magic of creativity.” But here's the thing about creative tools: At first blush, they seem not just counter-intuitive, but actually anti-intuitive. Many people using tool-driven creativity for the first time fear that the use of tools will somehow subvert or sacrifice their natural, innate creativity. This may be true, but only for a very limited time.
When you first start using creative tools, you may very well find them to be awkward and clumsy in your hands. You may feel that the results you get from tool-driven creativity are over-studied and highly self-conscious. This is a natural consequence of integrating left-brain thinking into what was heretofore a right-brain-only process. But have faith! This awkward, paint-by-numbers feeling will soon fade.
Work with creative tools for even a short period of time, and you will soon find a change taking place. What was awkward and self-conscious soon becomes second-nature; automatic. Rather than losing your innate creativity, you'll find that you have allied your natural creative force with a new means of using that force efficiently and reliably.
Tool-driven creativity, then, comes to us in phases.
Phase one: We don't use creative tools at all. We rely on instinct or trial-and-error, which may serve us reasonably well in terms of quality, but not at all in terms of quantity or efficiency. We are at the mercy of our unguided, unconscious creativity.
Phase two: We start using creative tools and go through a period of learning how they work. During this period, it's common to feel that one's creativity has become "clockwork" creativity, and it's common to feel that some of the natural "found object" aspects of creativity are lost.
Phase three: Creative tools start to fit comfortably into our hands. Having used them for a while, we discover that we get quite a lot more creative quantity and also that the creative quality of phase one is starting to re-emerge. Skills have been acquired. Creative tools now become part of our natural and automatic creative process.
Phase four: Creative tools go deep. They sink into our subconscious and become a reliable ally to our natural creative abilities. More than that, they provide us with a way out of any trap. When natural, unguided creativity will not yield the answers we need, we can turn to tool-driven creativity instead. In this way we step outside the despair of ever having to face a problem we don't feel we can solve.
On the subject of problems we can't solve, if you've ever experienced writer's block, I have a simple method for beating back that beast. It starts with the realization that writer's block takes place at the intersection of too much fear and not enough information.
Too much fear: We feel threatened by the creative problem we're trying to solve – threatened, specifically, by the apprehension that this problem will never solve. The very apprehension we feel becomes a block to our creativity. It's hard to think effectively about our writing when we're under the dark cloud of our own perceived failures.
Not enough information: Creative problems often go unsolved for the simple reason that we don't have enough data to solve the puzzle we've posed for ourselves. Maybe we need more research. Maybe we need to write more character sketches. Maybe we need to broaden our search for story alternatives. Maybe we just need to go deeper into ourselves and our "inner data."
So when you're confronted by writer's block – when you find yourself standing at the intersection of too much fear and not enough information – simply stop writing and start collecting data. When you're gathering information, you're engaged in a process you don't view as creative. Since it's not creative per se, it doesn't come with all the ego expectations and apprehension that "real creativity" brings. How, to put it simply, can you possibly worry about the outcome when the only outcome you expect is more information?
Gathering information puts you thus neatly outside your own fear. Of course it also produces more information. With new data brought to bear on the puzzle you're trying to solve, you often find yourself slipping easily from information gathering back into real writing. You've left fear behind and added new information. This technique – stop writing and gather more information – will quickly and reliably bring out of writer's block and back into an effective practice of writing.