This week’s rebroadcast from 2011 (and a little later in 2011) looks at the mental strain of all the different roles a writer switches between.
This past weekend consisted of three long days of meetings and work sessions for the Big Fish musical; Sunday went fourteen hours. I had a hunch that late in the day wasn’t the best time to introduce a new song, and now science has my back:
No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain.
Writing involves a dozen choices every sentence, a thousand every scene.
Discussing material with producers and a director means understanding and deciding between myriad possible options — and the more people in the conversation, the more choices to consider.
And casting? Exhausting. It feels like it should be one of the easiest parts of production — you’re not doing anything, just sitting there and listening — but it wears you out. I’ve been through casting on five projects, and each time I’m amazed how tough it is. You’re trying to compare the actor you just saw versus the actor you saw yesterday versus the actor who won’t audition.
Michael Agger looks at scientific studies on writing to figure out why it’s so damn hard:
Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as “knowledge-crafting.” In that state, the writer’s brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and — most crucially — theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what’s being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience.
All that mental shifting slows writers down.
Since writing is such a cognitively intense task, the key to becoming faster is to develop strategies to make writing literally less mind-blowing. Growing up, we all become speedier writers when our penmanship becomes automatic and we no longer have to think consciously about subject-verb agreement.
I can attest to screenwriting getting easier and faster with practice. The form is so esoteric and strange, with special formatting and rules to follow, that the first few scripts you write are mostly about getting comfortable with the shape of screenplays.
Once you start to recognize the rhythm of the page — how action interrupts dialogue, how to change locations while staying in a story thread — a lot of the frustrating craft stuff melts away. Decisions you used to consciously agonize over get taken care of before you’re even aware of them.
(Or, more geekily, it’s like your brain develops a graphics card to ease the strain on your main processor.)
I really notice the difference when I write prose fiction. I’m happy with both The Variant and Snake People, but they were exhausting to write, because I found myself far too conscious of every choice.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Twitter @ccsont, or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art