by Charles Harris
Despite the hundreds of books and seminars you can find on writing, what few people realise is that the vast majority of these do not teach "writing" at all.
They teach "editing." Editing is fundamentally a "left-brain" activity - intellectual and analytical - of the kind that dominates our education. Taking place mainly in the dominant left hemisphere of the brain (in right-handed and some left-handed people) this kind of analysis is considered in our culture at large to be the most important, sometimes the only, way to think.
Analysis deals with structures and stereotypes and is essential for judging our work, correcting and redrafting text. However it is exactly the opposite of what is needed to write those texts in the first place.
In 1934, the writer Dorothea Brande described the importance of developing a different way of thinking and writing in her book "On Becoming a Writer". She showed how the act of writing itself is quite different from that of editing, and involves synthesis (combining things together) rather than analysis (splitting apart).
Rather than judging, we need to suspend judgement, relax and enjoy.
More recently, neurosurgery has shown that these creative, synthetic processes take place in the less dominant right-hand side of the brain.
This is the part that is more interested in details than overview, that can become lost in the description of a sunset, the texture of a piece of bark or the sound of a distant church bell.
Obviously, both sides of the brain are necessary for creating a finished script, but an experienced writer has learned that they cannot both operate at the same time.
Editing mind is impatient of detail.
It likes to look at the big picture. Editing mind wants to move quickly, to judge what's good and what's bad and move rapidly on.
By contrast, writing mind is turned on by everything the left-brain finds boring. It loves detail.
Editing mind says "train". Writing mind wants to know what kind of train. It wants to hear the low thud of the steam engine, see the flicker of smoke over the dusty windows, feel the lurch of the carriage as the locomotive begins its slow pull out of the station....
Writing mind doesn't care about good and bad, graceful or clumsy. It just loves words, images, experiences: the very things that give a script life.
Sadly, in our Western educational system we are taught to "think" analytically, but rarely creatively. So when most of us begin writing, we immediately try to judge our words even as we type them.
But the strange thing is, when in writing mode it is quite impossible to judge what you're writing. So beginner writers grow rapidly frustrated and dissatisfied. Nothing seems to work. They decide they "can't write" or have "writer's block" and all too often they give up.
To write effectively, it's important to learn how to turn on the writing mode, and turn off the internal editor until we need it. But while writing mode is not difficult to teach, it can't be understood just by reading about it. The only way really to understand it, is to experience it.
Exercise
In the following exercise, you'll get a chance to experience what it's like when the right-brain takes over in writing. I suggest you do it now.
Ensure you are comfortable, relaxed and will not be disturbed. What you'll be doing is simply writing. Non-stop. For ten minutes. The only rule is that there are no rules.
You can write absolutely whatever you want. No-one else will ever see it. You don't have to be clever, original or even coherent. You can spend the entire ten minutes writing "I can't think of anything to write," if that's what you want. You can write about your latest script, but you don't have to.
All you have to do is keep your pen moving for 600 seconds without pause or correction.
If your editing mind starts to make judgements, ask it gently to go away and come back later, when you need it. For the moment, all that concerns you is putting words on the page.
Start now.
How did it feel?
"Right-brain" writing can be exciting, enthralling, uplifting. It can sometimes be boring too, but the reaction of most of my students is one of amazement: they are amazed that they had so much inside their heads.
So much fluency and so many ideas at their disposal, if they allow themselves to simply write. I recommend all my writers to do this ten-minute warm up before starting work, every day.
After twenty years at the keyboard, I still do my ten minutes every morning, discovering new thoughts, styles and voices.
It is, in a way, a contract with the unconscious, to keep the mind richly supplied with ideas and images.
It's also a sign, if only to yourself, that you take your craft seriously. Once you've started to become familiar with this non-judgemental writing mode, you'll learn to draw on your writing mind at will.
You'll be able to use it for developing ideas, brainstorming straight onto the page. You can use it for developing characters - writing to yourself in their own voices.
The same writing mind will be the one you draw on to rough out a first draft treatment or script, before you start to edit it down to its final form. Words and images are central to the screenwriter's art, and the best of them arise from deep within, when we relax and allow them to bubble up. The more we do it, the more our unconscious will reward us with better and better gifts.
"Writers write," as your man says in "Throw Moma From The Train". They write - and then they edit. When a writer can switch between the two separate skills with ease then he or she is well on the way to mastering this difficult, often frustrating, sometimes exciting, craft of screenwriting.
© Charles Harris, 2003
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