I liked Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg - she talks a lot about sparking your creativity and also if you go to your local library and look at books for teaching children how to write like Turn not Pale beloved Snail they can be easier to read and have more common sense than how-to-write books. Or you even could look into books on art like The Artist's way at Work by Mark Bryan. I think most people have trained their imagination more than others. I wait for ideas to come but sometimes I force them. Ideas are mainly just characters, scenario and setting. I don't believe you can't force a decent story. I think waiting for an idea or a brilliant idea to come is just time wasting especially if you have trouble. If you can pick a genre or lack thereof - a character type, not trope - 12 year old girl, a scenario - her mother is trying to pawn her off as a brilliant writer but she can't string two sentences together - setting - New York. You have the germ of an idea you can expand on. When you're not forcing ideas the best way to have ideas is to 'listen' for them only you will know what will make a good story idea for you. But enough happens in a given day I'll bet three ideas get wasted because we don't take the time to go over them in our head. I'm at the library and one of the librarians came over and asked someone to take their staff photo so that everyone could fit in the photo. It's a random thing I overheard - how could it possibly make a story. I take a what if. What if the person taking the photo accidently excluded one person at a point in her life where she was feeling invisible and took this as a 'sign.' Now not everyone would see this as a good idea. But that's the thing it's what I came up with ( cause that's the type of junk I come up with - lol ) and it could make a good story and/ or character. You just need to train yourself, not just to take notice of things, but, to imagine them into a story or a scenario or a what if.
I quite like this idea. It's not strong enough for a story of its own, but as part of this girl's descent into madness? It's a useful little scene.
I'm one of those writer's that never have the big picture when I write. I usually start off with little tidbits like this and keep daydreaming about the character until I have enough for a first scene.
I don't think there is any firm evidence about creativity, other than perhaps where in the brain it originates. But a writer of any degree who doesn't read is not going to be exposed to different methods, ideas, phrasing, etc. They'd essentially be writing in a vacuum, and there is little chance they would improve that way. I would say it's more common sense than scientifically proved.
The point isn't the fact that a writer has read. But that there is no proved relation in between the amount of reading behind and the quality of the writing.
I honestly have no clue what that means. I usually try to replace words if I can't understand something, but that just confused me more. I think most fruits are bigger than other fruits. I think most traffic accidents are worse than other traffic accidents. Maybe my reading comprehension is lacking. If you are talking about that left brained right brained crap, I'm pretty sure that stuff is crap. I don't think its like memory where you can just point to the hippocampus and say that's what part deals with memory formation. Creativity is honestly as poorly defined as imagination. Creatively solving a math problem is different than writing a book, but both fall under creativity. I think that creativity might be closely related to how quickly neurons interact with each other along a given set of pathways. Its obviously possible to make and reinforce pathways over time, so perhaps creativity can be learned. Also, this discussion on if people need to read to be successful writers, it's kind of silly. You could make the same argument about music that to be a successful musician you need to listen to a lot of songs. That's not true, what you need is an audience partial to your material. Justin Beiber never knew anything about music, yet he is a successful musician, sadly. Very sadly. If you want to become a successful writer either learn how to write or become well known in some other area and write a bad autobiography before expanding.
I wasn't talking about left or right brain, no. But if you don't think reading will improve your writing, then don't read. Personally, I've seen writing by people who don't read, heard songs by people who don't listen to much music, seen art by people who have never looked at another's paintings - and it ain't worth much. But, each to his own...
That's not my point. The argument was constructed as follows: A good subjective amount of experience leads to a good subjective outcome. Then the counterargument was that the first part was subjective so it isn't automatically accurate. Both parts were completely subjective as a good writer is just something people call someone. I'm not saying don't read if you want to write, it seems kind of like a condescending and egotistical position if you expect other people to read your work when you don't read yourself. The argument is that the back and forth in this thread is completely absurd when broken down.
But you're not reading what I'm writing - I'm saying reading will make a better writer. Not necessarily a good writer - just a better one. There are a lot of people who read constantly - they'll never be good or even passable writers. But they will be better writers than if they didn't read at all.
Better according to who? It still seems subjective to me especially since your measurement is reality versus a hypothetical reality where the person either reads or doesn't read. I mean you can give any example with that you want. You can say someone who never saw English will be a worse writer than someone that hasn't and its an agreeable statement. But you aren't really talking about people who "don't read", most people read these days, you are talking about people who don't partake in a specific type of art. There are so many generalities and you're saying its an important distinction you said better instead of good. I'll correct my interpretation of this argument. You are making an unspecified claim and people are replying saying that you can't back up the claim when no one really knows quantitatively what the claim is to begin with. Also, the part about some people who read a lot unable to ever be passable readers, that part seems to derail the argument as that seems almost as unbelievable as the reverse of someone who never reads being a good writer. I like to think people who try hard enough succeed but I admit that's probably a flawed viewpoint I've chosen to adopt anyway.
Whoops, the most is supposed to be - some. Typos! argh! Some people have trained their imagination more than others. And by that I just mean that their are people who daydream, observe things and make connections to them, go over their feelings, people watch etc. They live straddling a fantasy world.
Sigh. Okay, so reading is of no value to writers. Their level of writing will not improve one iota based on reading.
I don't thing you can learn imagination. However, I do think you can learn how to use your imagination. Everyone has one, some people are naturally more imaginative than others and, lets face it, to do any of the arts - writing, acting, making music, drawing/painting etc, you need to have a degree of imagination. I think the important thing is learning how to use your imagination in order to get the best possible results.
Creativity is finding patterns and arranging them in different ways until you get something new(ish). You get the patterns by reading, observing, thinking, writing, or just noticing life. The more you learn and then later apply to your art, the more creative you become.
Which is where the imagination comes into it, that constantly niggling "what if?" Question which makes you think up different scenarios. Without that curiosity which peaks the imagination, our stories wouldn't be as good as they are.
Well, shi. I always avoiding writing who or whom in any school paper growing up because I didn't want to deal with getting it wrong. I guess that was a mistake looking back. This is off-topic, but I've never heard the word niggling before. My imagination can help me on why. Its interesting there's a whole group of words like niggling and niggardly. I don't know if I should add them to my vocabulary though since most audiences don't know them and jump to one correlation.
I mean on a writing forum possibly. In speech, I'm positive no one still uses them. I've never seen it in writing either. Admittedly, I don't read a lot of books past 60 years old. I guess if you do hear it used all the time and written in current writing, I'd like to know where you're from. Also, I knew niggardly was a word, but only because some politician had to resign one time for saying it because it offended people.
I think you can work out from the context what niggling means but just in case you don't, it means 'bothering' and where I come from, the word is used a lot. That is the beauty of a lot of reading (you come across new words) and also being a member of this world-wide forum. You get to exchange local words. No doubt wherever you are from, you will have an alternative word or phrase for 'niggling'
Niggardly and niggling are two totally different things. Are you seriously suggesting that every word starting with nig has something to do with racism?
No, I'm suggesting that neither has to do with racism but that the general population who doesn't care about archaic words associates every word beginning with nig as something to do with racism. I can't think of why else I've never heard the word niggling. I'm not annoyed you used it, I just had never heard it before and looked it up. Then I was musing here over if I should ever use it or if I risk being called racist by someone who doesn't look up words they don't know.
But they aren't 'archaic' words in areas where most people use them. I think the point is that one should not make generalizations (about anything) based only on personal experience, particularly if that experience is limited. I run across new words every day - but they are only new to me. I don't assume they are archaic or known only to a handful simply because I've never heard them before - and I've heard quite a few words over the last 60 years.
That's why I asked where you are from. In the U.S. the words are archaic enough where if a politician was to say them they would run risk of having to resign because no one knows the actual meaning. If its a British or Australian thing, its good to know, but its not like I'm going to start spelling analyze as analyse. That question has consequence on if I ever add this word to my vocabulary. I do think a word can be archaic in one country and not archaic in another. I'm trying to research it, every website I go to says both niggling and niggardly are words that have fallen out of usage, aren't actually racist, but might get a person who says them in trouble.
