Do You Write Inside or Outside? by Connie Berry

 

Do you write inside or outside?

I’m not talking about a physical location, although I love mornings at our cottage in Wisconsin—taking my computer and a thermos of strong coffee down to the pontoon boat and writing while listening to the lapping of the water and the call of the loons.

What I’m talking about is the author’s perspective when writing a scene—his or her mental and perhaps emotional location.

Most writers say they picture the scene they’re writing in their heads—that’s good. I do too. We want to be cinematic. But are we standing outside the scene, observing and recording, or are we inside the scene ourselves, experiencing and listening?

It makes a difference.

I began thinking about this aspect of the author’s perspective when I heard what British author Anthony Horowitz said:  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwxFM0oHhfA)

Don’t stand on the edge of the book, looking as it were over the edge of the chasm. Live inside the book, looking around…so what my characters see, I see; what they smell, what they feel—the wind, the sunshine—if I am, as I’ve said, inside the book, I feel all these things. I’m not thinking about these things, not writing what they’re saying. I’m listening to what they’re saying. 

                   

In the course of my writing career, the words of experienced authors have changed my thinking and my methods. Words have the power to change lives. Here are a few of the words that have changed me as a writer:

I hate writing. I love having written.  (attributed to) Dorothy Parker

When I revise, I just take out everything that isn’t the book. Hank Phillippi Ryan

Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something--anything--as a first draft. Until it exists, writing has not really begun. John McPhee

 

Horowitz’s explanation of the author’s perspective when writing—inside the scene rather than outside looking in—is one of those simple but life-altering, mind-changing concepts that will stick with me forever.

And here’s the best part: it’s a lot more fun to live a thrilling story than to merely observe it.

How might living with your characters inside a scene change your writing?