Monday, July 18, 2011

Writing from a One Point: The Thing Steven Seagal Taught Bill Shakespeare

All---

photo by Tharso
This afternoon, I was smarting off to author Roni Loren on Twitter.  She had expressed a very real authorial frustration with not knowing where to start her current novella project.  I offered her some #CannedWritingAdvice.  When she asked for a a can opener, I spouted off deep-sounding drivel, drawing on my old radio improv skills:


Start with the voice and let the narrative flow in all directions from that one point.

While a fair summation of how I right, and how I structure stories, and reflecting some of the resonance of Scott GF Bailey's unified theory of writing, I meant this to be flip.

Only.

My word choice tripped me up, and I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since.

You see, in aikido, we talk about a one point.  Your one point, thought of as the center of the energy which the martial art draws on, is somewhere between two and four inches below your navel, depending on your physique, health, mindset, etc...  Sometimes, you also work around an extension of the one point, a point in space measured out from the point in your physical body. 

The idea of the one point is complex.  Here are a couple of examples.  

To the left, you can see  me, in a rusty aikido ready stance.  Most of it's not terrible, given my dress, circumstances, and rustiness.  If I were doing this properly, my arms would be drawing from my one point and extending the energy out through my fingertips, directly at my target. 


Below, you can see an aikido master, using the one point to lever his 
opponent down.  He first drew his attacker in, and then controlled him, essentially like bending a flexible rod over his knee -- except bending his opponent over the one point, in stead.

Sometimes you redirect energy from the one point.  Sometimes you redirect your subject around the one point.  The one point is the center of a dynamic sphere of activity at the heart of everything in aikido.

Now, back to what I said to Roni when I was smarting off: Start with the voice and let the narrative flow in all directions from that one point.

I'll be darned if that's not true to how I write.  The voice really is my one point.  It is the center of energy withint he body of what I'm writing.  Everything else I do is to redirect that energy or to redirect my readers around it.  The voice is the one point at the center of the dynamic sphere of my writing.  It is the thing which I extend out into the universe, and the thing which provides the lever point for whatever impact I hope to have on the reader.  The rest of the narrative really does flow from there.

Perhaps it's a little thing this analogy, but it helps me embrace the idea even further.  Because I love working with analogy, it also helps me understand other things.  Aikido disciplines suddenly seem directly applicable.  Focus and directionality in my ready stance tells me about preparing for writing.  It's about deliberate extension of voice, not about character and plot notes.  Aikido exercises suddenly seem instructive.  Routines in which we practice complex circular motions while pinned to one point give me insights in how to perceive my story as revolving around the voice.

Love those epiphanies...

.Nevets.



10 comments:

  1. Smart off to me anytime if it helps with inspiration, lol. :) I see where you're coming from. I'm all about voice too. I think my big struggle with this new WIP is I can't decide whose story it is. I'll be using both the hero and the heroine's POV, but it's got to be more one of their stories than the other. And that has a lot about whose voice wants to tell it.

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  2. @Roni - I struggled with that in Sublimation (my novel I'm wrapping up) and I ended up doing two POV's equally. Very, very different voice in each POV. It took me a while to believe in it, but it worked out great honestly. Harder to do that in a novella, perhaps.

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  3. Very cool analogy. Quite perfect, actually.

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  4. Excellent advice. Even if you're working with an outline, the voice should dictate the moves. Nobody ever sticks to an outline anyway, do they?

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  5. @Jennifer - Thanks! :-D And the picture of me is the one from my Creep fan fic.

    @Anne - Thank you! And, maybe someone does. Not me, though. I consider myself a planner, but by the time I finish, my outline would never recognize the book...

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  6. I like the analogy, though I can't help but noticing how much this all sounds like writing craft talk. ;)

    Still, you told it well. You are so multi-talented. Tomorrow I have a feeling we might just learn about Olympic championships or... ?

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  7. @Shopgirl - haha Okay, you caught me. :) Actually, I know you're teasing me about that, but I'll confess that I'm enough of a dork that it was on my mind when I posted it. I was hoping the fact that it wasn't advice and that I had all the cool aikido stuff in there might hide it. But, alas, you're too sharp!

    Multi-talented? Maybe. Olympian? Nope! Not that athletic, though I did love being on the elementary school volleyball team.

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  8. I love analogies. It is interesting to note how many things can be applied to other things almost perfectly. As if everything is interconnected.

    And I must agree with Shopgirl. I fully expect to hear about a time you single-handedly defeated a gang of ruffians armed with AK-47s. Them, not you.

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  9. It all looks and sounds very energetic, Nevets, but a very nice analogy.

    Now, can I do the same with horse-riding... I've been sitting on several plots for some time, so I guess I can?

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  10. @Jake - I'm a huge fan of analogies, too, and as someone who's interested in chaos theory and fractals, I tend to think there's more to analogies than apparent coincidence.

    No AK-47s, I promise.

    @Frances - grrrrrrrroan

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