This Political School of Thought Is The Secret Behind Every Great Writer
This Political School of Thought Is The Secret Behind Every Great Writer
Relax, there's nothing about Trump or Biden below
When I was 13, I became fascinated with one thing and one thing only…
Guitar.
It became my world. I would stay up until the early hours listening to the sonic greats and attempting to copy their style. My parent’s became all too familiar with the sounds of B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan as I’d blast them from my laptop speakers.
I was hypnotised. But I gradually hit a wall…
I was learning the solos from my favourite records and copying them note for note. I could play you the entirety of Pride and Joy by SRV without missing a beat.
Then, one day in 2008, I went into a guitar lesson with my teacher James.
“Will, you’re doing brilliantly. Now, we’re going to take it up a notch.”
“Umm… sure! Sounds interesting.”
He reached for a CD. For those of you who aren’t aware, that is a magic storage device that used to contain… wait for it… one whole album. I know, right?
Written on this silver CD in blue marker pen were 3 words and 1 number.
These words would forever change my understanding of how music, art, writing and all are supposed to be expressed…
Blues Backing Tracks #1
“What are those, James?”
“These are jam tracks. No vocals. Just instrumentation. I want you to create your own solo over the top of it.”
I froze like water on the first day of winter.
“I… urm… don’t really know how to do that.”
“Sure you do, come on, give it a try…”
He hits play. On comes a moderately fast tempo Texas blues style soundscape. I had no idea what to play. I took snippets of what I knew from the solos I’d learned note for note and tried to play them over this. Some worked. Some didn’t.
4 excruciating minutes passed by.
“Not a bad job, mate! Let’s go again…”
I was like a broken record. Same licks. Same ideas. Over and over and over. We did another one for a grand total of 3 solos.
At the end, James looks up to me with a grin on his face.
“Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.”
He sensed my anxiety immediately. And like a true sonic firefighter, he sought to extinguish the flames of my doubt.
“Why do you want to learn guitar, Will?”
“Because I love it and want to become a great player”
“Do you want to be in a cover band?”
“If you pay me handsomely! But honestly, I want to create my own mark.”
“Right… That’s why we must learn about this core concept of guitar playing — improvisation. You see, Will. You can’t just learn all your favourite solos and expect to hit your goal. You need to know why these players are playing each lick over each chord at each specific moment. Why does this combination of notes work here but it doesn’t work here? What are the common patterns you notice in each player? It all forms a jigsaw puzzle.”
I realised he couldn’t be more right. I had to start understanding why it all worked so I could break free and form my own style.
This is where I’ll introduce a neat concept to you. Once you hear about it, it’ll change how you view your writing forever.
It’s known as The Chesterton Fence.
This is actually a term that comes from public policy making.
It is described as follows:
“The principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.”
In simpler terms? Learn the rules so you can then go and break them.
If you don’t learn the rules behind the games you’re playing, you never stand a chance. You float around aimlessly in your self-hypnotised state trying to succeed. You might even hit an odd win, much like I used to hit a nice note on the guitar. But you have no idea why. You can’t replicate it.
We need rules to create boundaries for us. As writers, this seems like the strangest phenomenon.
We learn from a young age that writing is this connection to education and putting knowledge down on a piece of paper.
But it isn’t.
It’s an art.
A beautiful, flowing, altering art.
It requires study and patience. You don’t pick up a paintbrush and expect to paint a Picasso. So why would you expect your writing to be good off the top just because you have interesting things to say?
We must hone our craft.
When I started out, I knew I had a sense of why some of my writing worked. But I had to dig deeper.
I began exploring concepts such as:
Rhythm
Rhetoric devices
Narrative arcs
Persuasive language
The Hero’s Journey
And the more I dived into them, the more I realised where certain elements of my writing came from.
Once I understood this, I was able to do the one thing we must all do to form our own unique style… Break the rules.
I love to use ellipsis in my writing. Most writers will tell you it doesn’t serve a purpose. But, for my stream of conscious, it works perfectly. It’s my brushstroke to the page’s canvas. It won’t appeal to everyone, but it communicates the tension I desire to emulate.
Another one is the classic adage ‘Avoid all adverbs’
Well, apply Chesterton thinking to this. Why is that even a rule in the first place?
Because, in general, people’s use of adverbs dilutes their writing.
Describing something as ‘very very good’ is certainly not a creative masterpiece.
But what about if you want to describe the motion of personification?
‘His thoughts drifted down the river effortlessly’
Here, if I cut the adverb ‘effortlessly’, it loses all of its meaning.
It detracts from the ART I’m trying to create.
If you want to create your own unique style, don’t trust writers you look up to who say it’s just ‘some gift they have.’
Because it isn’t.
It’s a fundamental understanding of the rules. And it’s a fundamental understanding of themselves to know when to say fuck it to the rules.
This is how you progress as a writer.
Go away and learn the essential concepts. Then worry about style.
We cannot be afraid of being students to something we previously thought required no study.
Instead, we must embrace it with a callous fragility.
Once you do this, much like as the phoenix burns itself whole, you will emerge from the embers stronger and wiser. You’ll have a sense of exactly why you’re feeling a certain way when you read a certain text. And you’ll know exactly the effect you wish to communicate as you build up your repetoire.
You’ll become something that is worth more than gold in today’s digital age — unique.