Using Constraint
by Cindy Layton
Writing is hard. That’s common knowledge.
What makes it hard? With any writing endeavor there are always constraints.
In the most generic sense a writer’s limitations are any combination of ability, time, commitment, and interest. Those are built in.
From there, writers must make choices. Fiction? Poetry? Essay? There are rules, should you choose to obey them, and expectations.
But it’s those next-level down, that are the writer’s own challenge.
Poetry, yes, but sonnet. Fiction, yes, but micro fiction.
These are writing constraints.
Maybe the constraints are not so much form, but subject, or point of view, or narrative choices. Try historical fiction, but for young adults, with multiple point of view characters, each in first person narration. The more a thing is defined the more it’s restrained.
These are hardly the most challenging constraints a writer might encounter.
How about deliberately eliminating words containing the letter e from your available choices?
Or a whole string of letters? Those that are “tall” (ie. b,d,f) as opposed to “flat” (a,c,e,m,).
Using what seems like artificially induced constraints becomes, not an impediment to success, but a link to it. Your brain plumbs its recesses for the perfect word. You search down avenues you might never have explored. You may be astounded to realize how quickly your mind adapts to the new vocabulary or the structure of the stanza.
Long ago, in a beginner’s writing class, the instructor assigned writing projects from fiction, poetry, and screen writing. I was only there for the fiction. I worried my creative brain would flounder in the poetry or screenplay areas of writing. What spark of inspiration would I possibly find there?
Poetry was the given, but, in a “universe-giving-me-what-I-need” moment, I chose sestina, a complex word arrangement and stanza system, as my format of choice. Working within the system made the writing linear and cohesive, but still creative, in a way that accessing a dictionary’s worth of unrestrained language was not. I won’t claim it was publish-worthy but the experience taught me a valuable lesson.
Using constraints in writing creates the opposite of the expected result. Constraints expand your mind.
Find out more about writing with constraints at:
