Unique You: Writing Part 4

Write from the GUT and the HEAD

One of the aspects of developing your own style is to develop both your intellectual and creative mind. I often see beginners lean too heavily on one area of their creativity. This can leave your work feeling either dry and tedious with no spark, or crazily inventive, but without coherence.

The Head

Strong writing requires us to do some intellectual groundwork. Research! We may be writing about a war in space, but if we research both the real and theoretical science of space travel, we will imbue our story a certain believable tone. It’s OK to then apply our imaginations and make a leap into the unconsidered, but having done the groundwork our new idea will seem reasonable. 

Logic certainly need not be our paramount concern, but within the framework of our story’s rarefied reality it must make sense. It must have an “internal logic”!

Let’s return to our longshoreman/writer from an earlier post. We suggested it might be folly for him to write a story about Beverly Hills nannies. However, if the longshoreman did copious research on Beverly Hills, rich families and nannies, then applied his own personal knowledge of the interactions of people, he might still write a great story about the nanny scene. If he attempted this story without that investigative reporting, his story would fall apart under scrutiny.

And finally, the intellectual mind must be used to learn the aforementioned basics of spelling, grammar and story structure.

But, without the creative mind, the brainy approach alone can leave us with an arid and dreary narrative. It will become something that reads more like a textbook than a fictional piece. Balancing these two aspects is one of the keys to good writing.