Chapter 3

Identify Your Writing Brain

What Kind of Writer Are You?

“The writer must be four people:

The nut; [that is] the obsédé [the obsessed]

The moron

The stylist and

The critic.

(1) Supplies the material; (2) lets it come out; (3) is taste; (4) is intelligence. A great writer has all four—but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2; they’re most important.”

—Susan Sontag

We remember through stories. Most of the elements of our lives—our experiences, knowledge, dreams, hopes, and wishes—all create and thrive on story. It’s clearly how our distant ancestors learned, how countless parents, mentors, and teachers conveyed knowledge and wisdom through the ages, by first focusing on what their offspring needed to know to survive, and later as a way to strengthen familial and community bonds, bring people together, and enjoy each other’s company. Story is so deeply ingrained in what it means to be human that our brains have likely adapted to the prominent role story maintains. We have developed what Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, calls “story grammar,” which creates a way for humans to understand how the world works and how to connect with others.

Storytelling is so ingrained that we often unwittingly create a structure—Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, for example—in stories we tell others and ourselves. Stories help us make sense of the world and our place in it. They also give us a way to think about—dream about, cope with, and learn from—our lives, relationships, choices, past, present, and future, as well imagine new scenarios. Stories posit ideas that our minds can process, including conceptually thinking about thinking, which neuroscientists call “metacognition.”

Just as our brains have evolved, stories have evolved, becoming more complex, more multidimensional, and more original. Most modern-day humans have far more time to ruminate, to delve deeper into whatever interests them, to access massive amounts of knowledge within seconds, and to know far more about the world they live in—all of which translates into innovation and complexity in storytelling. It’s a good time to be a professional storyteller, no matter your venue.

What’s Your Choice Method of Storytelling?

Not everyone is a writer, but all writers are storytellers. Whether they are crafting novels, memoirs, commercials, songs, or poems, they are telling stories. As such, those attracted to writing as an art form or as a profession—or as a passionate expression—likely have an affinity for language and storytelling. The various forms an affinity for writing can take, and defining the qualities that may attract individuals to a certain form of expression, would mostly be guesswork (and inconclusive because there’s also a lot of overlap). However, some predilections—assuming all professional writers love writing and have an affinity for words—could be assumed, for example:

• Journalists tend to be extroverted, curious, methodical, organized, inquisitive, persistent, ambitious, and love to investigate or dig deeper into events. They are fascinated by the “news of the day” and want to reveal the truth to change the world.
• Novelists are often introverted, contemplative, expansive, and see beneath the surface of what people do and how relationships and society work. They’re drawn to original thinking, often adept at seeing something in a revealing way. They want to enlighten or entertain the world, or at least express their unique perspective.
• Memoirists are often introverted, introspective, hypersensitive, nostalgic, transfixed observers, invested in truth, understanding, closure, and justice. They’ve experienced something that they feel needs to be discussed and ultimately seek more understanding and compassion for themselves—and others.
• Songwriters are likely closest to lyrical poets and tend to think melodically and rhythmically; they are typically verbally expressive and have an appreciation for a tightened story arc. They are seduced and mesmerized by the power of music and want to share joy and passion, or they want to use music as a means to motivate others to change society.
• Poets are often introverted, introspective, sensitive, passionate, internally driven, and very focused on the beauty and meaning of each word, each expression. They want to capture the complexity of a moment that really matters and might go unnoticed if they don’t draw eyes and ears to it.
• Playwrights usually have a sophisticated ear for dialogue, love the cadence of speech, know how to hype drama and elevate humor. They prefer one-on-one interactions in stories but are open to collaboration when producing their work. They love the magic, or catastrophe, that occurs when individuals collide.
• Screenwriters tend to also be adept at dialogue. They are visual storytellers who “see” the story in their minds, right down to the setting details. They’re also collaborative, action oriented, and seek stimulation. They want to show the world what they see—and why it matters.

These are, of course, oversimplifications, but if you’re struggling with which medium might be best suited for your proclivities and heart’s desire, formulate a list of your own, exploring the personality and affinities that may draw you to a certain form of expression or offer you the best possibility of excelling in one form over another. This kind of list also may help you hone in on unique ways to use the particular talents you have—and to identify which ones you might want to bolster.

Paula Munier, author of Plot Perfect, and one of my closest writer friends says that she’s an extrovert and thus shouldn’t be as attracted as she is to being a novelist; and I joke that I’m an introvert who forced herself to become a journalist—what we mean is that our personalities weren’t the “norm” and may have made our initial forays into those forms of writing more challenging. Working as a journalist forced me to become more extroverted, more competitive, and perhaps even more ambitious—and it taught me the basics (who, what, when, where, why, and how), and how to delve deeper into stories. It also taught me how to fire up my writing brain, focus, and get words on paper when a deadline loomed.

Remember: You can create writing templates for your brain and sculpt your brain to improve certain skills related to becoming a more creative, more productive, and more successful writer.

Are You This Way or That Way?

While this may primarily apply to fiction writing, the notion that only two broad types of writers exist is fairly common. Here are a few comparisons from a host of writers (and reviewers):

This Way	That Way
Those who write what they know	Those who write in order to know
Those who are talented (facile at conveying)	Those who are gifted (transcendent translators)
Those who write the truth	Those who don’t write the truth
Those who write to fulfill their artistic vision	Those who write primarily to sell
Those who are inner directed, use themselves as subjects or inspiration	Those who look outward and focus on others as subjects or inspirations
Those who make you think	Those who make you wonder
Those who are in love with words	Those who are in love with imagery
Those who want language transparent, easily shared	Those who want to invent their own obscure language
Those who make you think, “Yes, that’s the way it is”	Those who make you think, “I never imagined it could be that way”
Those who self-consciously construct literary meaning	Those whose work is unconscious in origin
Those who are “A” writers (gifted storytellers)	Those who are “B” writers (facile users of language)
Recently published	Unpublished authors (which also includes long-ago published authors)

While many of the above thoughts are amusing, it is worthwhile to ponder what kind of writer you want to be, as doing so, once again, solidifies for your brain what is most important to you—as a writer—and how you want your brain to contribute to the process.

What’s Your Preferred Genre?

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that each of us has a genre—or two or five—we love. The beauty of writing is that you can choose what you want to write about and how you want to write it. To help you think about where you’d like to go, here’s a short list of personality/brain traits that might influence which genre you favor:

Genre	Qualities
Literary Fiction	intelligent, hyperobservant, contemplative, original thinker
Nonfiction	prideful about being logical, linear, factual, teacher, aspiring genius
Historical	detail oriented, factual, immersive, nostalgic, values accuracy and truth
Science Fiction	super detail oriented, fantastical, imaginative, visionary, original
Women’s Fiction	modern, values relationship/feelings, seeks integration, feminist
Thriller	excitable, fast paced, action oriented, needs lots of stimulation
Mystery	loves puzzles, inquisitive, focuses on details, loves to research
Romance	focuses on relationships and feelings, craves and savors connection
Western	nostalgic, individualistic, feels safer living in the past

Once you identify the genre most suited to your personality—and your brain—the easier it should be to get the words flowing. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that authors who ingeniously combine two (or more) genres in a fresh way increase their chances of generating a breakthrough novel, and it’s always good to change your mind and experiment.

Recent examples of blended genres that did exceptionally well would be: Outlander, which combined time travel, romance, and action adventure; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which combined classic literature and horror; and Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, which blended young adult with romance, science fiction, feminism, and magic realism.

By those titles alone, it’s obvious how much fun the authors had thinking outside the limited box of their original genre. Consider your current work in progress and ask yourself what would happen if you added horror elements to your western or blended science fiction with historical elements. It’s as easy as loosening strictures, allowing your brain to play, and being appreciative when it comes up with some surprising ideas.

Next, we move on to the conceptual game of defining your writing brain (or, more correctly, writing habits) as either this or that. Clearly brains are not so strictly categorized, but when it comes to the art of writing, a preponderance of people do lean one direction or the other. Let's begin with Ezra Pound, who put some thought into capturing the differences.

Are You an Inventor, a Master, or a Diluter?

In describing what he called “pure elements in literature,” Ezra Pound, the American expatriate poet and critic who was a major figure in the modernist movement of the 1900s, theorized that literature had been created by what he called “classes of people” consisting of the following (he uses men to represent both male and female members of the human race):

1. Inventors. “Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process.”
2. Masters. “Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as, or better, than the inventors.”
3. Diluters. “Men who came after the first two kinds of writer and couldn’t do the job quite as well.”
4. Good writers without salient qualities. “Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is ‘healthy.’ For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante’s time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare’s time, or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how.”
5. Writers of belles-lettres. “That is, men who didn’t really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn’t be considered as ‘great men’ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch.” One presumes he meant those who write more for entertainment, whose work would have been pleasurable or aesthetically pleasing to read, but not particularly literary.
6. The starters of crazes. (Pound didn’t seem to think this category needed definition.)

Pound wanted to encourage readers to be more selective in their choices of literature. He told them they wouldn’t be able to distinguish differences or establish value in the writing itself until they familiarized themselves with inventors and masters—something that is also true for novice writers. So let’s talk about styles of writing and how you might approach and practice your craft to become one of Ezra Pound’s preferred “classes” of writers.

Are You a Fox or a Hedgehog?

In 1953, philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote a collection of essays, The Hedgehog and the Fox, in which he classified writers as hedgehogs or foxes. The original line is credited to Greek poet Archilochus (c. 680 B.C.–c. 645 B.C.) who wrote: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Some believe that Archilochus ingeniously defined the deepest divide writers and thinkers experience, but Berlin says that he’d written the essay “as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game.”

Berlin’s hedgehogs view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (Plato, Dante, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust, as examples) while foxes draw on a wide variety of experiences and refuse to boil the world down to a single idea (Herodotus, Aristotle, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce, as examples). Berlin says hedgehogs adhere to one unshakeable conceptual and stylistic unity, clinging to a single, universal, organizing principle that he or she fervently believes; whereas foxes adapt his or her strategy to the circumstances, seizing the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects, seeking to fit them into—or exclude them from—an unchanging, sometimes fanatical unitary inner vision.

Hedgehogs are tenaciously consistent, no matter what they write—both in terms of style and vision. Foxes change their methods and field of reference from book to book, because they don’t like to do the same thing again.

So which are you: hedgehog or fox? And which one holds the greatest appeal? It may be time for you to get a little foxy.

Are You a Top or a Bottom Brain?

According to psychologist and neuroscientist Stephen Kosslyn, author of Top Brain, Bottom Brain, humans tend to be top-brain or bottom-brain centric, and my interpretation of his theory in relation to determining what kind of writer you tend to be is outlined here:

• Those who strongly favor the top-brain system collect information about their environment and their emotions to create and adhere to a strategic vision, using future input to make course corrections—they would tend to think their way through writing a book.
• Those who strongly rely on the bottom-brain system organize signals from their senses and compare them to what’s stored in memory, and their emotions to interpret its significance and then figure out what the plan is—they would tend to feel their way through writing a book.

Let’s say you have a book to write: If you primarily rely on your top-brain, you would generate a detailed outline to forge ahead, and risk being so focused on your plan that you forfeit flexibility based on feelings about whether it was working or not working; if you primarily rely on your bottom brain, you might have an idea and simply forge ahead, happy to see where your intuition, filtered by past experiences, takes you, and risk getting lost in unfocused thoughts.

Kosslyn identifies four cognitive modes, which he calls “default modes in thinking,” but for the purposes of planning and writing a book (or movie or play), the analogy of a top and bottom brain offers the kind of comparison that could help you contemplate whether you’re playing to your strengths when conceiving, creating, and crafting your book, or if you might be too rigidly one way or another. We’ll have a quiz at the end of this chapter to see if you’re strongly top, strongly bottom, or tend to lean toward the top or bottom modes of thinking.

What matters most, of course, is that interplay occurs between the top and bottom brain. Ideally, you want both hemispheres to communicate and work in tandem—to come up with an idea, create a plan, employ intuition, factor in feelings and prior experience, anticipate consequences, and adapt the plan as needed. What you most need to figure out is if you’re stuck in one mode over the distinct advantage of being bidirectional and inclusive.

Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?

Some in publishing narrow the way writers work down to two possibilities—plotters or pantsers:

• Plotters, of course, are those who wouldn’t sit down to write a novel (or screenplay) until they’d come up with and pondered an idea; considered their protagonist’s and antagonist’s character arcs; conducted fairly extensive research; considered theme, setting, and tone; plotted the story from beginning to end; and created a complex biographical sketch for each of their characters.
• Pantsers, on the other hand, still believe in muses, that inspiration will strike and their task will be to plant themselves in a chair, face a blank page, and dive right in. Even if they feel somewhat tortured by the process, they trust that their subconscious will deliver up a fascinating story idea, unforgettable characters, and take them, and their characters, on a delightfully surprising journey.

Some writers don’t begin writing until they have a fairly clear picture of what they’re going to write from beginning to end and seem to function best when organized. Others comfortably begin with a vague idea of story and characters, and seem to be comfortable unleashing their unconscious and letting the story unfold as they type. Most writers, however, fall somewhere in the middle, searching for an optimum way to come up with a fabulous and original idea, a way to tell the story that will capture attention and honor their craft, and a way to write it that allows them to get as many words written—as fast as possible—all without sacrificing craft.

Are You a Basher or a Swooper?

In an interview published in Timequake in 1997, novelist and provocateur Kurt Vonnegut described two types of storytellers, saying, “Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers.”

According to Vonnegut, swoopers write a story quickly, which in his description is: “higgledly-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work; [while] bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done.”

Vonnegut considered himself a basher, and considered most men bashers, and most women swoopers. “Writers who are swoopers, it seems to me, find it wonderful that people are funny or tragic or whatever, worth reporting, without wondering why or how people are alive in the first place. Bashers, while ostensibly making sentence after sentence as efficient as possible, may actually be breaking down seeming doors and fences, cutting their ways through seeming barbed-wire entanglements, under fire and in an atmosphere of mustard gas, in search of answers to these eternal questions: ‘What in heck should we be doing? What in heck is really going on?’”

Though you may find Mr. Vonnegut’s gender-specific attitudes a tad outdated, his descriptions are humorous and do describe a variation in approach that many writers either hate or love, adopt or discard. He offers pause for thought, which is what any writer should be doing, as well as evaluating how his or her writing process is working.

Are You a Macro or a Micro?

Novelist Zadie Smith—author of White Teeth, NW, and Changing My Mind—identified what she saw as two “breeds of novelists.” In Changing My Mind, Smith described Macro Planners as “novelists who make notes, organize material, configure a plot, and create a structure—all before she writes the title page.” Macros are more likely to start anywhere and to switch things around midway through the process, including characters, setting, chapters, and endings.

Smith calls this kind of “radical surgery” unthinkable for her, as she’s the other type, the Micro Manager. “I start at the first sentence of a novel and I finish at the last,” Smith says. “It would never occur to me to choose among three different endings because I haven’t the slightest idea of the ending until I get to it, a fact that will surprise no one who reads my novels.”

Smith says it’s easy to identify Micro Managers, as the first twenty pages of their manuscript would be an “opening pileup of too-careful, obsessively worried-over sentences, a block of stilted verbiage that only loosens and relaxes after the twenty-page mark is passed.” Smith says she typically feels the type of “existential angst” that Kierkegaard believed powers, rather than hinders, creative work. “When I finally settled on a tone, the rest of the book was finished in five months. Worrying over the first twenty pages is a way of working on the whole novel, a way of finding its structure, its plot, its character—all of which, for a Micro Manager, are contained in the sensibility of a sentence. Once the tone is there, all else follows.”

What Kind of Writing Brain Do You Have?

As we’ve been discussing, writers usually adopt a manner of writing that works for them—that’s if they pursue their craft on a regular basis and actually complete works. Here’s a quiz you can take to assist in contemplating how you have been asking your writing brain to work behind the scenes. Hopefully the classifications will offer a window into your writing process—and what adjustments could be made that might make the entire process more suited to how your writing brain works.

How My Writing Brain Works

Choose the answer that is closest to the truth:

a) I never start writing a novel until I know the beginning, the ending, the characters, and I have a detailed outline.

b) I never start writing a novel until I’ve pinned down what I want to write about, know who I want the characters to be, and have a list of specific plot points.

c) I start writing a novel when a topic or character excites me and I’m super juiced about it.

d) I start writing a novel when the muse alights upon my shoulder.

a) I am obsessed with knowing exactly what’s going to happen.

b) I never start until I’ve thought pretty hard about the plotline and characters.

c) I like coming up with an idea and then seeing where it leads me.

d) I like to be surprised by ideas that pop into my head.

a) I use a software program that helps me think about all the various aspects of my story.

b) I have a system I use to create all the major and minor plot points.

c) I think about the broad strokes, but plotting makes me lose my juice.

d) I just sit down and let it flow.

a) I write biographies for every character, even the minor ones.

b) I get to know each of my main characters before I write.

c) I never write biographies, I make it up as I go along.

d) I wait for my characters to surprise me.

a) I read every book on writing I can find and spend weeks poring over them.

b) I read other writers’ work to figure out how they handle plotting, characterization, dialogue, etc.

c) I find books that have the same elements (point of view, unstructured plotlines) as the novel I want to write so I can figure out what I want to do.

d) I trust my muse and just write until I get it right.

a) I always write from chapter one through to the end.

b) I work my way through progressively from the beginning to the end, but if I’m having trouble with a particular chapter, I’ll skip it and go back to it later.

c) I write where there’s heat, skipping around often.

d) I write all the easy scenes first.

a) I have hours I set aside for writing every day, even on the weekends.

b) I write for a few hours every day, except on weekends.

c) I write in a white heat, working every day until I drop.

d) I write when the spirit moves me.

a) I make an outline and never stray from it.

b) I outline my story in broad strokes, but expect it to evolve as I write.

c) I figure out my main plot points, but wing it from there.

d) I haven’t outlined anything since essays in college.

a) I only read books in my preferred genres.

b) I read mostly books in my genre and a few outside just for fun.

c) I read books similar to what I want to write, but I also read broadly.

d) I read all sorts of books on all sorts of subjects.

a) I prefer to sign up for a tour with a predetermined itinerary when I travel.

b) I plan my own vacation, down to the last detail.

c) I make hotel reservations and wing it from there.

d) I get on a plane and go.

Now tally up your answers.

If you have mostly As, you are a Rational/Top Brain Writer. You are more reliant on your cortex and “thinking.” This means that you rely on the biggest, most modern part of your brain to think and write. You value intellect above everything else, and you are confident in your own intellectual abilities. You may spend so much time researching and thinking and planning your story that you never write a word. Think your way through your story—from structure and plot to character and craft—but don’t forget to engage your feelings as well. Your “top brain” does not contain your emotional structures, and if you’re not careful, your story won’t either. All plot and no heart is not good storytelling.

If you have mostly Bs, you are a Top Heavy Bi-Brain Writer. This means that while you can harness both parts of your brain, you still rely more heavily on intellect than feeling. You have an organized approach to writing; you tend to plot out your stories in advance, in broad strokes rather than beat by beat. Be sure to trust your intuition in your writing process and allow yourself to go where it takes you.

If you have mostly Cs, you are a Bottom Heavy Bi-Brain Writer. The means that you, too, can harness both parts of your brain, but you are more in touch with your feelings. Emotion drives your writing, and while this can help you connect with readers, you need to make sure that you ground those feelings in a solid foundation. Concentrate on building a plot that will support the emotional impact you want to make on readers.

If you have mostly Ds, you are an Emotional/Bottom Brain Writer. You are more reliant on your limbic system and “feelings and intuition.” Your work may be awash with emotion—but where’s the story? You need to harness your feeling to the engine of plot. Winging it may only take you so far; you have to think your way through your plot. You love creating but may resist mastering craft. You may find it difficult to finish your work; you need to adopt a disciplined attitude toward your work.

Writers on Craft

“I write to dream, to connect with other human beings, to record, to clarify, to visit the dead. I have a kind of primitive need to leave a mark on the world. Also, I have a need for money.”

—Mary Karr

“Wanting to be a writer is a huge percentage of what makes you be one. You have to want to do it really badly. You have to feel that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. A lot of my friends who thought about being writers ended up going into law or advertising or PR. They still dreamed about writing, but they couldn’t give up their good jobs. Fortunately, I never had a good job to give up.”

—Susan Orlean

“People like me didn’t become writers, and probably I would not be a writer today had not a college instructor said to me, ‘Why are you premed? You should do something with words.’ He then called up his editor at Doubleday and said, ‘I’ve got this student. You should give her a job.’”

—Gish Jen

“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.”

—John Updike