Which Brain are You Using?
That may seem like an odd question. Although with all the recent political upheaval, it might be tempting to see if I could use one other than the one currently residing inside my skull. One less stressed, foggy, and not running in twenty different directions at once.
But in a sense, we all have two brains when it comes to doing creative work. The trick is to allow each its time to shine. For short, I’ll call them the Creating Brain and the Editing Brain. I’ll skip the neuroscience for now (believe me, I can be a neurobiology nerd) but the important thing to know is, there really are different parts of your brain firing up when taking on different tasks.
When you’re in pre-writing or first draft stage, you need your Creative Brain. You need to be able to turn off your Editing Brain, the part that says “But wait! That doesn’t make sense!” and tries to box every idea in before it’s barely breathed its first breath. You need to be able to take those wild flights of fancy, to make those imaginative leaps like Spiderman swooping from building to building with no safety net. You want your subconscious to be on fire, working even when you’re not actively writing.
As you move into later drafts, you may use a mix of the Creative Brain and the Editing Brain. You’re usually still finding deeper aspects of the characters, the story, the theme… and you want your Creative Brain free to keep hacking away in the jungle, in case it comes upon some hidden treasure. But you also want your Editing Brain to kick in, to start reining in some of the wilder impulses that won’t actually lead anywhere but sound cool at first, so you don’t write fifty pages that you have no use for in your story. You want to begin to focus on shaping and pruning, although you won’t let your Editing Brain really rip until your final draft (or two).
But how do you keep these two impulses separate? For most of us, it isn’t easy. For one, we may have a tendency toward one or the other in general, which makes it more effortful to engage the other. People with strong Creative Brains come up with wildly imaginative plots, fascinating characters, all kinds of colorful settings – and have trouble wrestling it into a story form that people can read. Strong Editing Brains are great at developing outlines, story boards, complex plots, themes, and characters, perfect sentence structure – but these can seem pedestrian, devoid of the spark of surprise.
So what is one to do? I am struggling with this right now, as I move from intense editing of my last book to engaging my Creative Brain in thinking about a new one. The Editing Brain does not want to let go! In my case, this is made even more difficult by the fact that my job is to edit other people’s writing, which means my Editing Brain is switched on almost all the time. I have to be very intentional about getting my creative time in early, before I start any editing of any kind.
Suggestions for Engaging your Creative Brain:
Start your creative work early, before your brain has time to fully wake up and snap into a less dream-like, more efficient mode.
Make time to play. This can be actual play, as in doing things just for fun (other art forms, whether you make them or simply appreciate them). It can also mean playing in your writing, such as trying different forms (poetry? Essay? Flash fiction?) or writing exercises that are just stretching your muscles and not intended to be “serious” writing. You never know where your next idea will come from, or where it will take you.
If you need to get into your Editing Brain, it helps to get organized. The Editing Brain is like Kondo-izing on steroids. Although sparking joy isn’t the goal for the Editing Brain, it does take immense satisfaction in whipping that big messy draft into shape. It loves bringing order to chaos. However, before you tackle the line edits, grammatical and spelling errors, you need to take a step back and consider the big picture.
Suggestions for Engaging your Editing Brain:
Re-read the whole story, from start to finish. Write each scene and make sure the Action Arc and your Character Arc are entwined in a cause-and-effect trajectory.
Answer these questions: Is your world building solid, or are there still questions that need to be answered about how things work in your story world? Is there one clear Point (or theme) that runs through the novel? Does the end resolve the problem set at the beginning? Is there an arc of change for the Protagonist? Do they have agency over their actions? Do their actions make sense? Is there a strong Antagonist thwarting the Protagonist at every turn? Are there clear stakes, inner and outer? How is the pacing and flow? Does it conform to genre conventions, if appropriate?
These are some of the questions you need to address before getting into the nitty-gritty of line editing (no need to worry about lines when you likely need to add or cut scenes or whole chapters). Working your way in from big-picture issues to tiny word-choice issues will leave you less overwhelmed and make sure you actually do the edits you need to do, and don’t just go over the same ground making cosmetic changes.
Where are you right now in your manuscript? At the beginning? In the middle of a first draft? Editing a draft? How do you keep your Creative Brain and Editing Brain separate? Let us know in the comments!
