Crafting Insight
***This week W. Alexander takes over my journal and shares his thoughts on curating insight. It has been a pleasure to meet, and form a friendship with, W. Alexander as we both navigate the writing world. His gift of words is inspiring. Enjoy!***
All literature is devoted to exploring the complex drama of human experience. The writer’s canvas is the human psyche, and we, creative writers, are constantly attempting to show our readers an insight into the human condition. You’ll never write well if you, the writer, cannot look at your subjects and render people and topics with action and dialogue, images and patterns, accurately. The writer must write the truth—why we [humans] do the terrible or good things we do, or why we avoid certain situations, or why we continue to exercise counter-productive, near self-ruining, behaviors. Crafting insight in a nutshell is looking at people and nature and situations up close and in depth and then questioning what the character sees.
Often times, the mark of an artist is someone who sees what others never notice. Writers cannot hurtle through life so quickly that they risk missing some minute detail, or interesting predicament that is critical for them to use for inspiration. A writer notices, and writes what they see, and, therefore, writers provide, through literature, what most miss as they live their lives from one anecdotal experience to another. When the writer crafts insight, he/she slows down life, puts the human experience under a microscope and speaks straight into the reader’s heart.
Paying close attention + writing = insight
Creative writers and I, like N.L. Blandford, believe examining the reality of everyday human situations, regardless of how weird or superfluous, or sad, or hilarious, or frightening is the highest of values. One might accuse me, and they would have a point, that I believe it takes a specific personality trait to write fiction: the ability to see oneself in another’s shoes.
“There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It’s a kind of trick of mind and he is born with it”— MORLEY CALLAGHAN.
How Exactly Do I Actually Write Insight?
What is the secret to crafting insight and doing it well? Work with images. With every scene, strive for accuracy—describe things exactly as they are. When it comes to writing psychological accuracy (your characters behaviors, motivations, doubts, desires, etcetera), write exactly what you [the writer] see, and do not slant actions to make a particular point. In other words, keep your footprint out of it as much as possible.
Practice looking closely at scenes and settings and pay particular attention to what you see. Avoid, like the plague, listing what you see in a scene. When you accurately render what it is you see in a scene, you will naturally write wonderful, realistic gestures and dialogue. Your story will breathe to life on its own, and the reader will be changed forever by what you have done.
Another way to craft insight is to never answer your character’s big questions; insightful writing poses questions; you can point to conclusions but resist giving answers—this is the stuff that makes a reader breathless and turning over, long after finished reading the book, thought-after-thought the complexities in your story. This is because, when a writer pretends to have all the answers, especially in fiction, the reader will, most often, be turned off and bored by the story. Don’t worry, you can certainly wind things down, end things quickly, but the writer, and that’s why knowing the craft is so very important, must never cut off the curiosity that keeps us learning—this is what moves us toward insight.
Always, and I mean always, ask more questions with your work than answers. The secret here is to make sure your questions are within the images of your scenes—real places and real moments of time. Let your reader, not your pages, have the emotions.
A Tip: A great way to add writing insight into your writer’s toolbox is to get in the habit of keeping a writer’s notebook. Here, explore the questions that keep you up at night. It doesn’t matter what these questions are, only that you search them out.
—W. Alexander
Author’s Note: I am delighted to share my writing insights with you, N. L. Blandford’s followers. Help me help her by sharing this post with everyone you know that may find her, and this craft tip, interesting.
W. Alexander is earning his BS: English and Writing Creative Writing with a minor in History from Liberty University. He writes literary fiction. You can follow his work and read more of his insights on his popular blog, www.w-alexander.com. Here, he shares writing tips, book reviews, close analysis of literature’s masters, and even his new passion for art—painting and sketching.
