Greetings, writers—
Well, my Wednesday post about the importance of outlines sparked a mildly unwelcome reevaluation of my current writing strategy.
Yes, typing as quickly and carelessly as possible has been super delightfully fun, but all good things must come to an end; now I’m realizing that it’s probably a good idea to take a step back and figure out just a few more things before banging out another 50,000 words.
So! Now I know what I’m doing this weekend.
What are you doing this weekend?
If you were Philippe Petit, you’d be juggling, practicing magic, plotting something wild and illegal, or possibly building a barn because you’d bought a really cool barn-door handle and you needed somewhere to put it.1
In his book, Creativity: The Perfect Crime, Petit—a bona fide but slightly overbearing genius, if his book is any indication—talks about how an imposed starting point opens up his imagination instantly. (And hey, that’s what I hope these writing prompts will do for you: function as meaningful yet somewhat arbitrary starting points that, rather than constrain thought, encourage it.)
Here’s Petit on the fascinating concept of “mechanical tolerance.” He’s talking about lock-picking here, but it makes me think of paragraphs, of scenes, and how they might seem fixed but can in fact be opened much wider.
A system involving parts designed to function in harmony with one another can do so only if the system is imperfect—that is, if there is a minuscule space between the parts. Craftsman call this “mechanical tolerance.”
Without such tolerance, a door will not open; a key would not turn in a lock; in the world as we know it would not function.
The art of lock picking consists of exploding mechanical tolerance by introducing tiny metal tools inside a locked mechanism and rearranging its moving parts until it opens.
[…]I take pleasure in finding imperfections in a system; I use them as tiny portal through which I sneak in, to explore, to understand, to create.
For today’s prompt, please consider a paragraph or poem you’ve already written (or choose a poem or paragraph by someone else).
Find what seems to be a minuscule gap between two of the sentences. Now write into the space between them.
Narrative time will naturally slow down. You may find yourself sliding into recollection or backstory. Maybe your sentences will lead you in some fascinating tangential direction. Or you might simply go into much greater detail about whatever you’ve already been considering or describing.
Explode a paragraph’s tolerance. What gets discovered in the blast?
Happy writing—
Emily
Enjoy this email? Click the heart button to help other people find it and forward it to a friend!
Seriously. He once ordered a “magnificent” door handle, and when it got delivered, he said, “Now that I have a way to open the door, all I need to do is build a barn around it!”