Notes on speedwrite 1

Please note: If you haven’t read the previous piece, please read the introduction to speedwriting, and then the speedwrite itself.

The first thing I’d like to say is that exercises like this are almost all but useless when they are forced upon you. I clearly remember doing several such writing activities in school, and though I always excelled in what I did insofar as high-school standards go, I was never satisfied with the activites themselves. I knew what each respective teacher wanted and I crafted a piece tuned to what I knew of their personality in order to get a good grade or positive responses, rather than to develop my own writing style.

One should never attempt such an exercise until one fully understands why it’s a good idea, and has some basic expectation as to what good it will do.

The speedwriting exercise achieves several key things:

– It forces you to think quickly about your ideas and get them down.
– The narrative must have a clear introduction, climax (or ‘point’, if you want to interchange the term), and conclusion; the idea must complete at the conclusion.
– Evolutions of ideas are encouraged to happen much more quickly.
– Extraneous description, idea expansion and dialogue are minimised. Every word has to count.

Of-course these are not all elements that are desireable under all writing contexts; there are times when great elaboration is appropriate and quite expressive, but the idea behind speedwriting is to develop one’s own skill in creating ideas and translating what we see in our mind to written language. The pressure brought about by the time-constraints is both daunting and thrilling at the same time. You can’t sit and ponder where exactly you want to go with certain things, you have to just go with it and keep creating. As this is a short-term exercise, the process of drafting does not exist, and so it opens up a few conceits that allow us to bypass some of the normal options we might have like re-writing eariler contexts to fit new ideas that aren’t well established by what we initially created.

I chose the four movement descriptions before I started for very specific reasons;

– The setting: doesn’t have to be about environments, but it is the first thing we encounter in any narrative. More than anything, it sets the tone and atmosphere for the events to follow. Sometimes settings can be intentionally confusing for the reader, but either way, getting one down in 10 minutes is quite a challenge in itself.

– The protagonist: of-course introduces the main character should there be one. Not every piece of creative writing will include a protagonist, but again this is a parameter that should be decided before writing commences to force you to explore a focussed set of elements. Once again, 10 minutes to introduce a character and set its tone in context to the setting is another great challenge.

– The moment: I had several names for this one, ‘The point’ or ‘Middle section’ were both close contenders, but I decided that for a short-narrative, there should be a holy-moment which is an abstract of the entire piece. It’s fairly obvious that Catherine sees herself in the young woman in the car, and that the young woman is a parallel representation of many of the thoughts she is having; firstly the young woman isn’t anyone Catherine knows, so part of her significance is the strangeness of the unfamiliar changes to the neighbourhood. The young woman may also be deep in her own thoughts in a similar way to Catherine, and both of them are in this city reflecting on themselves and their memories. There’s a whole lot more to that moment, but I’ll let the readers interpret whatever they want out of it, suffice to say that as far as authorial intention goes, this moment is actually the centrepiece of the story, rendering the ambiguous ending almost irrelevant (almost).

– The conclusion: has to wrap everything up and provide an overall context for everything that has happened. In this case, we don’t know who Catherine has met, or what they need to do, and this kind of ambiguity is absolutely my style. I actually never created any purpose for Catherine to go to this building which itself could be anything; a hospital, an apartment block, an office, a courthouse, even less grand things like a movie theatre or restaurant – it really is up to the reader’s own interpretation. What is important in my conclusion is that this thing that Catherine needs to do, whatever it is, has brought her back to the neighbourhood of her childhood which has inspired all of these thoughts within her. It is those thoughts which the piece is focussed on, and I feel that the decision the readers’ come to in regards to what she’s doing there, will wholely depend on their interpretations of her thoughts, and how they translate them into their own lives and experiences relevant to themselves. The fact that Catherine is here to do something is the reason for all of these thoughts.

For me it was important to set time constraints on each movement rather than set an overall time for the piece. If there aren’t boundaries for each movement, one might be tempted to get caught up in the setting or the premise for the narrative, or perhaps lose the pace by creating an enthralling story. The idea is to be quick and focussed, then to reflect upon elements that can be easily identified because of the pressure they were written under.

As I refelct on what I’ve written, I identify many things which stand-out as my style, and some things which have come about because of the pressure I was under. To be honest, what I wrote in 10 minutes was probably bellow par for the volume I would usually get down, but it was my first attempt at such an exercise, so I had many moments of hesitation where old habits came back to stall me. One of these habits is trying to figure out a character’s name, so it was good to feel that pressure of just getting it out. Usually I like to choose slightly different names, but eventually when I chose to go with Catherine, my character became the name, rather than trying to get the name right from the outset.

The subject matter of the setting is also very much my style, yet the way I presented it was greatly effected by the time constraints. Usually I would make the setting much more elaborate, even in my minimalist way, but this became even more minimalist. Only the most important features and elements were described before having to introduce the protagonist, and I had to make quick decisions there and then as my fingers were flying across the keyboard as to what those important elements were. It was then even more difficult to keep the atmosphere of the setting present throughout the other three movements, but I did get into a rhythm where the setting came to life surprisingly quickly and really was the living, breathing environment through which Catherine traversed.

I would also usually spend much time with the main character. I tend to want to introduce them, then give some backstory as to why they are the way they are. Trying to establish a personality in a 10-minute paragraph was a huge challenge, and I think I partially succeeded in this, and at times was a little weaker than I would normally be with no time constraints. Looking at the paragraph itself, it is rather short, and this is symptomatic of my stalling when it comes to details. Eventually though I figured out that the focus should be on what she is thinking and the things that are triggering these thoughts, as this was where I wanted to take the piece.

The ‘moment’ of Catherine looking at the young woman and all the symbolism that ensues is very much iconic of my style, so too the ambiguous ending and the moment of hesitation just before it. To me there is a whole lot of life that we live in such moments; ordinary moments in life where our emotions, thoughts and memories seem to collide, or at least converge at one moment where we have to stop and take everything in. Such moments truly are beautiful, and I love exploring them and building up to them. I’m also very fond of walking and reflecting, as many would have guessed, it’s an activity I do often, and this is probably the most of myself that is directly translated into Catherine.

My first attempt at this exercise was stilted yet inspiring. I’m very happy with what I created under pressure, and as it’s intentionally an exercise that I choose to do myself, it becomes very easy to look over it and both identify elements to examine, and totally immerse myself in the creativity. I heartily encourage any writer to try an exercise like this one; set limitations on time spent either on sections or the entire piece, and set focussed parameters as to how you want the piece to unfold and conclude. Avoid creating a complete ‘chapter’ per se, where you might write four distinct movements with a conclusion, but yet give yourself the conceit that ‘oh you won’t get this bit because there’s actually a whole chapter of backstory or unfolding narrative to come’ etc. Make sure you complete a single narrative that can be contained in one piece.

It’s amazing the things you’ll learn.