Don’t Think Writing Into the Dark Works???
Here Is A Great Explanation…
Sent to me by a friend… Thank you!
This was in a 1923 letter from George Bernard Shaw to Alexander Baksky, author of The Theatre Unbound.
“You will understand that my plays are not constructed plays: they grow naturally. If you “construct” a play: that is, if you plan your play beforehand, and then carry out your plan, you will find yourself in the position of a person putting together a jig-saw puzzle, absorbed and intensely interested in an operation which, to the spectator, is unbearably dull. The scenes must be born alive. If they are not new to you as you write, and sometimes quite contrary to the expectations with which you have begun them, they are dead wood.
“A live play constructs itself with a subtlety, and often with a mechanical ingenuity that often deludes critics into holding the author up as the most crafty of artificers when he has never, in writing his play, known what one of his character would say until another character gave the cue.”
One hundred years later, that is called “Writing into the Dark.”
I also tell people that when stuck, just write the next line. Figure out what the character is going to do and say by writing it down.
Just me poking…
11 Comments
Kristi N.
It’s always nice to discover that the giants of the past practiced the same technique. I used to do step sheets, only to discover I didn’t want to write the story because I knew how it turned out. Now I’m happily writing into the dark and each day of writing is like reading the book. Just had one of those Aha! moments yesterday when I thought I had 6 more chapters to write and the story said, “No, I’m good.” It was surprising, and gratifying that the story knew when it was done, and made me happy that I could move on to the next book. Writing into the dark for the win!
Emilis
“didn’t want to write the story because I knew how it turned out.”
I had the same problem for years and wondered how other writer’s pushed themselves through that final slog. Turns out they don’t. Not all of them.
I tried writing into the dark (years ago) and fun. I still have critical voice issues with letting (usually imagined) other people’s opinions into my writing, but I’m getting better.
Mangala McNamara
🧡🧡🧡❣
Thank you, and thank you for giving us a much more dignified term than the one that is popularly out there!
Emilia
Got my own name wrong, but Emilis sounds like a cool fantasy name.
Also though about how writing is in some ways like hiking (I’ve hiked in Finland, Scotland, Norway, Iceland and the Alps).
You have the hiker, in a setting, with a goal. With writing you’ll have a character, in a setting, with a problem.
And you write from there.
The big difference is that in hiking you need an app or map. Otherwise you may end up walking into someone’s sheep herd by accident or climbing up the wrong cliff.
But in writing you can’t fall of a cliff, and the fun is seeing unexpected things. A lot of them. So you should go off the trail with writing.
With both hiking and writing you take the next step/write the next sentence until you get to the end.
Marc Meaney
Totally agree. The only books I’ve ever finished have been ones I’ve written with excitement into unknown territory. Then I had to work my butt off to get the characters out of their jams and to the conclusion which always surprises me. I’ve had readers amazed that the plotlines have all tied up neatly because the reader could not see how they would get out of their situation. I didn’t either… until I did. That’s the motivation that gets me writing.
This is the best advice I’ve ever received. Thanks Dean.
Give it a go. Even if you think you’re a plotter, try writing into the dark. You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Harvey Stanbrough
You know my response, Dean. Excellent quote. Here’s another one from our friend, Robert A. Heinlein:
“I would never advise a beginner to rewrite. He can learn more by starting a brand-new story and doing his best on it.” Robert A. Heinlein
(from a letter Heinlein wrote to Sprague de Camp in 1952, after de Camp asked for clarification on Heinlein’s “rule 3”, quoted in Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Volume 2 by William H. Patterson)
dwsmith
Yup… Thanks, Harvey!
Nissa Harlow
Jigsaw puzzling would be a terrible spectator sport.
I used to write outlines. But then I found out how fun it can be to write without them! If I try to work from a formal outline now, I usually lose interest in the whole project.
Aniket
This single thing, and depth changed my writing for good. Thanks for floating this out in the world Dean!
dwsmith
I just thought the way I was writing was weird until I started talking to lots and lots of other professional writers over the decades, often one-on-one in a restaurant or bar, and they all thought they were weird as well and never talked about it in public, but they basically wrote like I did, into the dark, clean, cycling, one draft. Except Harlan who wrote one draft clean on a manual typewriter while sitting in bookstore windows. He talked about it all the time and no one listened any more than they listened to Heinlein.
I just decided I like windmills. (grin)
Mangala McNamara
It’s not just that they don’t listen. It’s that they actively try to make you feel bad for not pre-scripting. I suppose everyone needs to feel good about themselves… but they don’t need to put us down for doing it differently!
You may have saved me, Dean. The windmills were carrying flails.