~Writing Well Wednesday Tip~
Most writers love the freedom of the blank page.
It means we can create whatever we want, however we want. Any type of story, any type of characters.
Freedom makes writing fun!
But freedom can sometimes get us in trouble.
Writing Restrictions Can be Liberating
Too much freedom sometimes leads to writer’s block or other problems like disjointed storytelling or character cliches. Research on the subject shows that too much freedom can be paralyzing.
In one experiment, for example, scientists asked a group of participants to write two-line poems, one restriction-free, and then another with one requirement: to include a given noun in the poem.
Independent judges then judged the poems. They determined that those written with the restrictions were more creative. Just that one simple constraint—having to include a certain noun in their poems—helped the participants become more imaginative. Better yet, the effects lasted even after the scientists lifted the restrictions.
“Constraints may turn out to be liberating,” said lead author Catrinel Haught-Tromp.
Haught-Tromp named this phenomenon the Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis, after the famous Dr. Seuss book. Turns out that book came about when the author was challenged by his publisher to write a children’s book in 50 words or less.
Next time your writing isn’t flowing, try adding some restrictions to stimulate your creativity. Here are some ideas:
- Follow the research mentioned above, and require yourself to use three specific nouns in your scene.
- Give your scene a word limit—only 500 words, for example.
- Restrict the number of people in your scene—to only one or two.
- Give your scene a time limit—it must take place over the course of only 10 minutes.
- Require yourself to focus on a random object in the scene, and give it unique meaning.
- Put an unusual animal in the scene, and make the characters react to it.
- Give yourself a unique setting, and require your next scene to take place there.
By the way, I got the idea for this post by watching the following interview with composer Dario Marianelli. He wrote the soundtrack on the movie “Pride and Prejudice.”
In this interview he reveals how a simple restriction—the fact that actress Keira Knightley didn’t play piano—led him to write the theme for “Mrs. Darcy.”
You can hear the entire piece as it appeared in the soundtrack here:
Sources:
Haught-Tromp, C. (2017). The Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis: How constraints facilitate creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(1), 10-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000061.
Tom Jacobs, “Constraints Can be a Catalyst for Creativity,” Pacific Standard, April 25, 2016, https://psmag.com/news/constraints-can-be-a-catalyst-for-creativity.