For me, the creative process is a mysterious one. Sometimes, even downright spooky.
I read craft books, study the structures and
elements of stories that I love, tinker with outlining, think up plot points
and muse about character motivations and backstory. I’ll fill out calendars for
the timeframe of my story and consider character arcs while also taking the
traditional three-act structure into account.
However, as much note-taking and preliminary work as
I might delve into, the true magic of storytelling never happens in the realm
of “thinking something up.” At least, never for me.
I won’t deny I get some solid ideas when
brainstorming. I might even get full outlines that I’m pleased with. I can come
up with compelling characters and I might even catch a glimpse of how it all
ends. What I can’t seem to manage with preliminary work, though, is creating
magic.
Author Robert Lewis Stevenson, who based The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
from his dreams, once wrote: “And for the Little People,
what shall I say they are but just my Brownies, God bless them! who do one-half
my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest
for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself.
That part which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies’ part beyond
contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means
necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it even
then.”
In this
wonderful quote, I believe that the “Brownies” Mr. Stevenson is referring to
might just as easily be called the subconscious.
My subconscious,
I have found, is a far better organizer than I am. Even
if I’m working with an outline, I don’t ever force myself to adhere to it completely.
In fact, if a story begins to take off in a new direction, I usually let it, if
only to see what will happen and if it might work. Art, after all, should also
be play. And play can be messy. Usually, that is how I find the gold. Or
rather, that’s how the gold finds me. And by “gold,” I mean the all the stuff I
couldn’t possibly come up with by consciously thinking and mulling it over.
In my current project, for instance, there is a
specific item that shows up in every scene that a certain character appears in.
At the time of writing those scenes, I was not purposefully making it a point to
link that imagery and that character together. However, since it seems to be
such a fitting element, during my subsequent drafts, I can now streamline that imagery,
amplify it and take conscious note of something cool that I did unconsciously.
Sometimes, even well after a book has been finished,
I’ll still think of the things that tied together at the end and wonder how on
earth that happened in the way that it did. In the end, I know I owe it to my
Brownies, of course. God bless them indeed.
5 comments:
Yeah... voices in the head, thinking things without you knowing, filling you in after the fact.
Wish I had no idea what you are talking about, but the voices explained it to me.
I've heard an artist talk about things that "come from the paper" to refer to those unplanned miracles of creation. "Coming from the monitor" has a less poetic ring.
Yum. Brownies! God bless 'em.
Well said, Kelly. :)
So true, and it's this "magic" that keeps me writing through the sludge periods and the publication challenges.
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