How to Write That Freedom
By. Darju Prasetya
When you begin to write, your own ideas run into a blank wall. Creativity is the ability to make connections between things that don't seem at first sight to be connected, and in that moment of making the connection, you cannot predict how it will end.You want to write about an experience you had that changed your life, but you're not sure how to start or where it will lead.
Telling a story is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You can't see the whole story at once, but you can still get where you're going.
Writing a good story is when you don't know how it will end.
A good story is one you don't know how it will end.
You may think that's a crazy thing to say, since the whole point of telling a story is to have something happen. But if you already know how it will end, then you don't have to describe what happens — that's just going through the motions. And if you don't know how it will end, then you can't take the easy way out and make it fit some formula. In fact, if you don't know how it will end, then there's no formula for writing a good story.
And that is why independent writing is so hard. If you already knew where your story was going, then the only thing left would be to find a way of getting there — in other words, just following a formula — but since you don't know how it will end there isn't any formula. So all you can do is write down what happens next — and make sure it's as interesting as possible.
In fact, independent writing is even harder than that because making sure what happens next is interesting isn't enough; in a good story what happens next has to be surprising too. And that means not knowing where your story is going.
Anyone who publishes a book will tell you that the first draft is by far the easiest. If you're writing a novel, it's because you have some story you want to tell; if you're writing nonfiction, it's because you have some argument you want to make. The first draft is just a matter of getting that story or argument down on paper (or computer screen).
Trouble begins with the second draft: the rewrite. The rewrite is when you discover how bad your first draft was. After all, if you knew how good it was, why would you need to rewrite it? By this time, however, it's too late to simply throw out everything and start over. You've invested too much in the way things are now: there are characters involved and subplots and some damn thing happens in chapter seven that makes everything that comes after make sense. You have to do something, but what?
The answer is independent writing. Independent writing means writing scenes or chapters or sections of your book that don't depend on anything else. When I'm stuck—which is most of the time—I write an independent scene or chapter, usually about something else entirely. I'll take my central characters, who might be living in Paris.
Many successful writers say that you have to write every day. That advice is not necessarily wrong. After all, if you don't write every day, your ability to write will gradually atrophy and disappear.
But there are many different ways to approach the business of writing. Some people can only write well if they're following a detailed outline; they need to know exactly where they're going with a story before they can start it. Other people need to know the ending before they can begin—they need to know where the story will end before they get started on it. For these writers, knowing the ending is not so much a matter of artistic control as of basic self-defense: if you don't know where you're going, how do you know when you've arrived?
There are still other writers who go about it in a different way entirely: rather than coming up with an idea for a story and then developing it, they prefer instead to come across a situation and then let the characters tell their own story. These writers rely on what's sometimes called "the subconscious mind" or "the muse" or "the imagination."
It may seem impossible at first glance that any writer could produce a good story without knowing the ending of her work in advance.
I have a friend who is a novelist. Every few years we get together for lunch. I always ask him how his work is going, and he always answers, "I'm stuck." He's been stuck for 20 years.
He's not really stuck, of course. What he means is that he can't figure out what happens next. He wants to know what happens next, so that he can write about it; but he doesn't know yet, so he can't write about it yet. He's stuck between two states: knowing what will happen next, and writing about it; not knowing yet and writing anyway.
Telling stories is like playing a jazz solo: you improvise freely within a well-defined framework. You don't know exactly what notes you will play until you hear the music in your head and begin to play. But you do know the rules of harmony: major chords here, minor chords there; no tritones or half steps allowed; etc., etc., etc. The question for the writer is when to break those rules: when to have a half step where you're not supposed to; when to use two chords that are both minor or both major; when to use an unexpected rhythm; when to substitute dissonance for consonance.
So how do we get from the writer's block-filled beginning to the well-oiled, story-spinning middle and to the thrilling, surprising end of a novel? Well, you can have someone else write it for you. But that doesn't seem like much fun.
A better alternative is to learn to take advantage of three important writing techniques. You can use these techniques in any order, or in combination with one another: revision, improvisation, and incorporating what you learn into your writing.
Revision is the process of going back over your work and changing whatever you need to make it better. Improvisation is making up the first draft as you go along. And incorporating what you learn is learning from your mistakes and successes as you go along. The most successful writers I know use all three strategies every day. They revise more than they improvise and they incorporate more than they revise. But each of these strategies has its place in their creative process."
Storytelling is the only way humans have to pass down knowledge. You might think that writing is a young technology, but stories existed long before there were books. And in a way, stories don't need us at all. Lots of creatures can learn from each other; some birds and insects and mammals are smart enough to pass down their knowledge through generations. But none of them have the same range of techniques, or the same power to surprise, that humans do.
My favorite place to find writing advice is Quora , which has a tag called "Ask a Question on How to Write." Here's one question: "What are good books/articles on writing?" The answer is, "There aren't any." Another says: "I would be wary of taking advice on writing from anyone … because their methods won't necessarily be right for you."
One reason no one has found a good way to teach writing is that there isn't one. The best teachers seem to be able to see what works for each individual writer.