Neat. What happens in the brain while writing

[Zoom]

www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-brain-of-writers.html?_r=1

[sapphire]

This is pretty awesome. It would be interesting if they found a way to track brain patterns throughout the writing process, too. They did people thinking up a plot, and they did people continuing a story with a couple of sentences to start them off, but I wonder if anything would change if they gave them more time to plan, or let them start their own story.


"It’s possible that the novices are watching their stories like a film inside their heads, while the writers are narrating it with an inner voice."
It's honestly kind of scary how that tracks my process. I used to "watch" my stories as I wrote them, and as I spent more time in writing classes and worked on my writing process, I started watching less and narrating more, if that makes sense. Not that I think watching it in your head is a bad strategy. Just doesn't work for me anymore. (Unless I need a good description - then I tend to close my eyes and picture it until I find the right words.)

[Raphael]

Dang. That means I have to actually start writing...

[sapphire]

Practice, practice, practice.

[Zoom]

Yeah and we might learn some really cool stuff about writing if we knew how it actually worked!

Interesting about the difference between novices and experienced writers - I'm a novice writer, but I've noticed that kind of pattern in other aspects of life. When I first learned to drive a standard, literally all my effort was focused on not stalling it. Navigation and safety came later.

I wonder if really experienced writers could write out a book in real time without editing? Because they've exercised both the flow-of-events skill and the best-way-to-write-it-down skill.
Maybe writers of a certain kind; I suspect every one is different. Which I also think is pretty cool - two comparable books might have been written with completely different methods. I think that's what I like so much about creative fields; they're the only ones that really allow different methods. I mean there's really only one way to build a house; you can't do any of the trim before you've put up the walls.

And Raph yes, yes we should write more! We should do everything more, all the time.

[sapphire]

To go along with that car analogy - I think the most basic aspect of writing fiction (or narrative nonfiction) is knowing how to tell a story. If you can put characters into settings and tell a compelling story, you're more than halfway there. The mechanics of it will come with practice, but I honestly don't think there's a way to teach storytelling.

It would be an interesting experiment, to see if people could just write a book in real time like that. I can't imagine doing it myself - I'm a slow, slow writer, for starters, but I'm also fairly tied to my outlines at this point. I don't do much freeform writing anymore.
Although I remember reading somewhere, about one author (whose name I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure they were fairly famous - super specific, I know), that they always submitted the first draft of a story, no edits.

It is kind of great how creative processes like writing are all so different. Every single writer does things a little bit differently, and there's so much room for interpretation.