“Becoming a Writer” by Dorothea Brande
After having completed several writing courses in which Dorothea Brande was mentioned, I decided to read her work on writing. I love reading about writing—some of the best writing advice has come from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. None have been quite as prescriptive as Brande, which I believe could be very helpful for beginners.
Besides the fact that the language is from a different century (there are several mentions of pulling out your typewriter), all the exercises she suggests could form the fruitful beginnings of a routine for young writers. I’ll share them here:
Follow yourself through some small activity of the day. Take an episode from the day before and try to write it as a stranger would see it. Then, write out your whole day.
Without talking or reading, begin to write first thing in the morning: last night’s dream, activities of the day yesterday, a conversation (real or imaginary), an examination of conscience. Write rapidly and uncritically.
Choose an hour you’re to write and keep to it religiously, even if you are in the middle of a conversation (no excuse can be offered when the moment comes).*
Read a story, article, or novel rapidly and uncritically. Set it aside and pick up a pen and paper. Create a short synopsis and then pass a summary judgment on it. Did you like it, dislike it, believe it or not? Liked one part but not the rest? Enlarge the flat statements: why did they fall short? Can you tell when the author lost you? Were the characters drawn badly? On second reading, note down any questions you were not able to answer fully about the text. Mark passages that the author executed adroitly, so you can return to them for analysis.
When you have found a technically executed passage that’s better than what you can do, sit down and learn from it. Tear it apart word by word. Write a paragraph, sentence by sentence, imitating it.
To counteract monotony in sentence structure, pick a sentence you enjoy and write your words with the exact same number of syllables (noun for noun, adjective for adjective, verb for verb), being sure they carry the same emphasis on the same syllables as the model.
Set a short period each day where you will, by taking thought, recapture a “childlike innocence of the eye.” Transport yourself back to the wide-eyed state of interest when you were a small child at some point.
For some mundane part of your day (walking to the drugstore, getting on transit, etc.), tell yourself to record every single detail you rest your eyes on. Speculate on the person opposite you, how many conductors were on board, what was the color of the street car… After a few moments, you can drop the intense awareness, but be prepared to take it up again when the scene changes.
In a group, write a synopsis of a story pared down to the bare bones of an outline, in one sentence. Choose the “tritest.” Write for 10 minutes and expand the sentence into a paragraph or two. See how different each of the stories is. (
This could be a fun game if everyone chooses a different story and , equipped with only the one-sentence appraisals, everyone has to guess the original.
Write a complete essay or story in one sitting. Find a simple idea of yours. For a day or two, immerse yourself in the details of the story—think about them consciously, turning to references if needed. Then dream about it. Think of the characters separately, then together. Do everything you can to digest the details of it consciously and unconsciously. Set a time to write and put the story aside; try not to consider it again until then. Then, like the time exercise, make sure you sit down and write exactly when you said you would, with no other distractions.* Write the first and last sentence of the story. The exercise must be completed in one sitting. After you’re done, step away for a few days (you cannot read your own story objectively when it’s newly finished). When ready, read it and notice how you have written both less and more than intended.
Repeat #10 once a day for several days. Close your eyes with your mind quiet, without feeling any tension or urgency about it. Choose a simple object to hold (without distinguishing characteristics or bright colors, like a grey ball). Hold it and stare at it, confining your attention to the single object. Call your mind back to the object when it begins to wander. After you’ve been able to think of it and nothing else for a few moments, close your eyes and continue looking at the object and nothing else. The final method is to let your thoughts skitter around wherever they want, watching and observing as your thoughts move about “indulgently.” It will grow quieter eventually. Don’t hurry it.
Hold a story or character in your mind, letting stillness set in around that. Let your mind see possibilities around that. Then choose any story at random. Replace the character of a well-known book with someone you know (how vague, stiff, or incomplete this idea is of no importance). Make a rough outline of the story (try the circle-and-ring experiment: write the end and beginning sentence of the story, envisaging the end to set the story in motion). Take the rough draft of the story for a walk with you (walk slowly and come back to where you started). Now think about your story; let yourself be engrossed by it, but think of it as a story, not how you’re going to write it. Induce the “artistic coma” by finding a comfortable position to sit and do nothing, not moving, for some time. Quiet your mind, not quite asleep, not quite awake. You will eventually feel an impulse to rise, a kind of energy, so obey it at once. You will be in a slightly somnambulistic state—hopefully, you will be dull to the outer world but sharply alive to your imagination. Write.
There you have it. All the exercises, spelled out as Dorothea Brande has written them in Becoming a Writer. Hopefully, this is useful for someone.
One additional note: Brande brought to light a definition of “genius” and creativity that I had never heard of or considered before. She says, “There is much that the conscious can do, but it cannot provide you with genius, or with the talent that is genius’s second cousin.”
She mentions a chapter in Human Personality, written by F.W.H. Myers, called Genius (linked here), which lays out the theory that lowering the barrier between your conscious and unconscious minds is the key to excelling in creative endeavours; it is the way to enable the genius we’re all searching for.
“The unconscious should not be thought of as a limbo where vague, cloudy, and amorphous notions swim hasily about. There is every reason to believe, on the contrary, that it is the great home of form; that it is quicker to see types, patterns, purposes, than our intellect can ever be… If you are to write well you must come to terms with the enormous and powerful part of your nature which lies behind the threshold of immediate knowledge. ”
* The idea of needing to write immediately, no matter what state you’re in, no matter if you’re in the middle of a conversation, to keep the writing promise you made to yourself, has less value to me. If I need to shift my writing time by two hours, no sweat. But perhaps this idea will be helpful to someone.