by James Dowd
For those writing as someone who does not have real-life embodiments to research and capture — a fictional character, for example — just attach real-life personas to the voice you’re writing. If it’s a cowboy, use real-life people who represent them, do research on them, and capture it. Maybe your cowboy has some Han Solo qualities, but with more humor. There’s plenty of research available on Solo, so simply find your funny persona and combine traits for both in your Dump, where you can then sift through and determine what best represents this character you’re speaking for.
2) Make a Profile
With all of your Dump-worthy content captured in one place, start studying it. You did the research, now look for patterns. What words do they use often? Notice syllable usage, cadence, inflection. Find common mistakes they make and wonder why. Pay attention to punctuation. Do they speak fast, seemingly without punctuation, or do they take long pauses? Listen for the things that make them sound weird. Those are the things that make them sound different from others and what you should leverage. It's what gives them their Voice. With anything they say or write, they are creating music. Look for the signatures that make them unique.
I will even go further and look at them from a demographic and psychographic angle. Where are they from? What makes them tick? What makes them emotional? What are they passionate about? How are they to me? Who are they to other people? Who are they trying to be? If you understand them on a higher level, you will write for them on a higher level.
For example, when writing for an MTV show, the target was teenage girls, so I read teen magazines, like Seventeen and Twilight. I made notes about the music they were listening to, the slang they used, the shoes they were excited about, the boys they thought were cute. I captured all of this in a profile that helped me see their world outside my own. This profile brought the person to life for me. It made me consider their daily lives, their passions, their traits, their struggles — not just what we were trying to say, but what they wanted me to say to relate to their lives. It all gave me perspective. It made me consider things I could have never considered before. And, I could look to it often to remind myself of this person I’m writing as and for. I could add to it and evolve it as they too evolved in this world.
3) Invite Them In
Writing in someone else's voice is not about getting outside of your own mind. It's about inviting someone else in. It's about being able to hear their voice inside your own head so they write for you. To do this, let your head be an open room with only them in it. Based on your research and profile, give them an anchor phrase that demonstrates their patterns and character — a sentence that perfectly captures them. With everything you write, hear that phrase in your head, in their voice, to show you how to write what's next.
For example, I used to write for a sports announcer — Wes Johnson, The Voice of the Washington Capitals. His voice is legendary, and so to get it right in writing, I'd listen to recordings to invite his unique voice into my head. After a while, I would pick up on the way he'd use syllables in a unique way. There was a code in there, and when I listened long enough, it became apparent. I boiled it all down to one thing that inspired every word I wrote from there on out. It was only two words — Washington Capitals — but I could hear it in my head, over and over (I still do), like how he would lengthen and build the word Washington to increase tension and excitement. Then, everything I would write would be driven by that key phrase in order to match his patterns, to sound the same, to sound like it actually came from him. He spoke clearly in my head and the words were therefore his.
Dumb Writing Tip #20: Get another POV.
There you are, you’re Braindumping, trying to figure out what you want to say, what you want to communicate. But, you got nothing. You can’t think of other perspectives or ideas. That’s ok, it happens. Sometimes you just don’t have the time or mental capacity to find new ways of looking at things. So, when you don’t have thoughts of your own, steal someone else’s — not through plagiarism obviously but through the quick reading of ideas in the comments section of online articles. There are some real gems in there! With the digital wall separating people, they feel free to share their thoughts and ideas openly, even when they damn well shouldn’t. Take advantage of that. Find blogs and publications around a similar subject you’re writing about, and then find someone debating or building upon the topic. In the comments section, people argue and boldly take a stance on a subject. They always seem to think they’re the absolute subject-matter expert, and when everyone is the expert, it makes for some fun arguments. But, through it all, you pick up different perspectives and ideas. Read through each one and consider other ways of looking at the subject you’re writing about. By doing so, it expands your perspective and provides fuel for more multidimensional writing.
Dumb Writing Tip #21: Don’t overthink it.
I’ve already said it, but I know you didn’t listen. No one ever does. And so I repeat: Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it.
Write that down on a post-it and put it somewhere you can see. Make it your mantra. Tattoo it onto your wrists. Whatever you have to do to remember to not overthink your words and writing, do it. Your brain’s insecurities and belief that because it can process information it should do so incessantly is holding you back from connecting yourself to the world through writing. Yes, it is that simple. Yes, you do it every day. Yes, you can overcome it. Just don’t overthink it. Just be a bit dumber.
What A Wonderful
Time to Write!
"Don't forget — no one else sees the world the way you do,
so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell."
- Charles de Lint
As a Writer, you’re powered by your past. Your experiences, your opinions, your adventures — they all fuel your words. Yet, you struggle to get words onto the page. You overthink everything and make excuses. You don’t see that you have a world view that’s unique and powerful, just waiting to be unleashed onto the page. Because of everything you’ve seen, done, read, heard, felt, and the generation in which you exist, you’re a member of the most fortunate generation in the history of mankind, and you don’t even know it. And, it’s not just because of what you have now, but because of what you didn’t have when you were a kid when you were careless, and curious, and you didn’t overthink, or overplan. This is the secret to writing with Heart.
As a child, you followed your Heart, always. It was a magical time in your life, wasn’t it? Ideas flowed naturally. You wrote for fun, even if it was in crayon. Stress, anxiety, work-life balance, self-confidence — these were not topics of conversation. Instead, as children, we climbed trees, we took things apart, and we fell down a lot. We created without blockers or judgy eyes around us. We grew up in a time when our playtime radius stretched miles. We looked at hills and forests, wondered what might be on the other side, made up stories, and adventured out there to places that represented possibility and personal expression. Our parents pushed us out the door and told us not to come back until dinner, or until we were bleeding. We’d swim great distances, build things with our little hands, and give our own unique meaning to things we’d discover.
We had TV, but we couldn’t sit too close to it, and we certainly couldn’t take it with us. Sure, we also had Gameboy, dial-up, and Oregon Trail to entertain us and spark our sense of imagination for a time, but they were novelties, sideshows to what really mattered. We were the main event in our lives each and every day, because we didn’t have access to constant, ever-changing entertainment, unless it was the entertainment we created within our own minds.
But now, we
live in a world of daily innovations, developments, and breakthroughs. We are witness to the great transition into a fully digital age where information and content are commonplace. It’s never been easier to be a Writer, to share your words, to connect with others! The sad fact is, despite this flood of inspiration, so many of us have become numb to the things that could once fascinate. We look deeper and deeper every day into space and discover Earth-like planets so often, I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to be excited anymore. We access books through Amazon or Audible so easily the books lose power. We write on Medium so often the numbers become meaningless, and we read so many articles there that we stop paying attention or remembering any of it. How could we ever hope to compete against the thousands of aimless Medium writers, especially when we can see them so clearly writing in this vast room with us?
We have access to nearly all of the world’s knowledge, and we can even attach it to our wrists, but we risk forgetting how exciting it all is without something to compare it to. So, we will have to look back on our wild youth when our imagination ran free. We must reach deep inside our memories to find a true sense of wonder. That is your charge, because we’re fortunate to be able to remember a time where when we didn’t know something, we asked, we sought, we explored, we made it up. We didn’t accept excuses, and we didn’t make them. We were never too busy, or overwhelmed, or scared to bring our ideas to life. We just got to work and never called it work. We didn’t know the meaning of the word, literally.
Now, everything we could ever want to know is a simple Google search away but we, and only we, still have the power to wonder beyond these technological advancements — something we can’t be sure will survive with future generations. We’re the last to grow up without the internet, so only we truly know the awesome power of those little information machines we carry with us everywhere we go. We’ll likely be the last to actually drive cars with our own physical bodies, so we’ll be the last to truly know the personal freedom of the open road. We’ll be the last to have gotten lost without GPS, discovering a sense of adventure and accomplishment in finding our way home. And, we’ll be the last to experience the power and emotion of a developed photo, whether we waited one hour or even longer. Instead, our memories are to be forever outsourced to social media where they’re no longer our own. Those single photos of our youth, which encompassed so much emotion, are now replaced by 100 digital options easily captured and just as easily forgotten.
There’s great value in our growing access to technology, of course. Skype meetings and Slack chats, for example, save us and our employers time and money, but you know what I truly miss? Getting to the airport early during business trips, disconnecting, and having a beer while watching the strange mix of people passing by, and wondering about their stories — what strange adventures they might be on. It’s a moment I experience less and less each year as technology makes travel unnecessary, but when I get the opportunity, it will always be something I savor and enjoy. I have the past, and you do as well, but others may not. It’s a potential extinction of experiences, so you must recognize it, and be present. You must use it to power your words, because someday others may not have this power that you possess.
As more information and innovation become commonplace, and the more we absolutely know and can easily achieve, uncover, and possess, the less we experience, the less we wonder. So, never forget your device-free youth, and your sense of imagination. Never forget the power of child-like perspective. Never forget what it’s like to make up your own stories. Never forget that those stories are in you, just waiting to be written.
Embrace your curiosity and imagination, and rediscover the ever-changing world around you. We’re the last to experience so much discovery, the last to wholeheartedly wonder. We’re the Wonderful Generation, a fortunate flicker in existence with the ability to experience two great ages in human history, so don’t let those last remnants of a forgotten analogue past disappear without letting them influence your eager view of the future. Unplug whenever possible, wander, wonder, and maybe listen to some birds. Let everything inspire you and your writing, every wonderful day.
Words Are Magic
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most
inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting
injury, and remedying it.”
— Albus Dumbledore
One day, as I pretended to take notes in a meeting, I watched my hand moving across my notebook and noticed something odd. With slight, unconscious movement of my pen, magic was happening. Symbols, shapes, ideas were coming to life, bleeding forth from my pen, and they evoked further meaning, emotion, wonder in my mind. I wiggled my pen on the page and images were born in my brain. Incredible! This was no small thing. This was something unbelievable that I’d simply never paid any attention to. I realized I wasn’t merely spelling words. I was doing something wonderful. I was casting spells. It was magic. And I’m a magician!
Crazy? Maybe, but only if you underestimate words themselves, the strength of them strung together, or our ability to wield them. Words can make your heart beat faster, make you sweat, make you cry, make you fall in love.
Consider that words are of the supernatural sort, other-worldly, yet not; gifted to us by some divine spirit, maybe; ever-changing, not ours, simply floating in us and around us, shaping our world and each other, but still shaped by our own innate, internal passions and energy — our blood!
Sceptical? Well, you can explain words as well as you can explain magic, and it’d be just as fun hearing you try. That’s because neither are driven by truth, but by belief. Our acceptance and understanding are not bound by logic, but by emotion. We believe in words, we breathe life into them, we cast them into the world and they thrive. But, when we stop, when we abandon them, regardless of their linguistic evolution, regardless of their past, they die. They exist to communicate, to express meaning and understanding, to serve as a symbol for something, and then…poof, they’re gone. (Magic.)
In fact, the word ‘spell’ — to spell a word — actually influenced the idea of casting a spell — to use magic to influence others. And, it had such magical power over me after observing my notebook scribbles, I went so far as to learn more from my favorite wielder of words and Yale professor, Dr. Mike Zimm (editor’s note: James and Zimm sit next to each other, so James “magically” just looked over and asked). Zimm said (immediately and without research, because he is a huge nerd), “The root ‘spellam’ originally meant ‘story, saying, tale, history, narrative, fable’ and then the term ‘spell’ started to take on the meaning of a charm or magical incantation in the Middle Ages.”
See, told you: huge nerd.
“In the Indo-European tradition, words were viewed as having magical abilities, or possessing a dangerous magic,” Dr. Nerd rambled on. “For example, the daughter languages of Proto Indo-European arrange the consonants in the root for the animal ‘wolf’ in bizarre ways. This is probably because the original speakers — before 3000 BC — feared that if they said the actual word for ‘wolf’ it would magically cause the animal to appear. It’s the origin of ‘curse words’ — the belief that the usage of particular words had powerful negative effects — the ability to curse yourself or others. And, it can be seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Village, in which the villagers refer to the creatures they feared as ‘Those We Don’t Speak Of’ as well as in Harry Potter where characters refer to Voldemort as “He Who Must Not Be Named.’”
Once again, big-time nerd.
So what does all this magic talk really mean? Well, for Writers, it means we’re magicians; we’re powerful. We can cast spells over the world by spelling words into existence and we can change the way people think, feel, and act. That’s our ability as Writers, speakers, and storytellers; that’s our gift — to influence others, to create the unexpected, to change the way people see and understand the world, to put on a show.
Conside
r the power of one word alone. A single magical word can not only change something’s meaning, it can convince someone to change how they think.
In 1974, an experiment was conducted in which people were asked to recall what they’d seen in a car crash video. Some were asked if they’d seen “the” broken headlight and some if they’d seen “a” broken headlight. Those who were asked if they’d seen “the” broken headlight were three times as likely to have seen it than those in the other group. Truth was, there was never any broken headlight in the video.
A single, small collection of letters created a memory people believed was true! They reported on something that never even existed. Yeah, you got it, it was Magic.
Still don’t believe in the power of words? Finish this sentence:
“What if…”
Oh, the endless places those simple words, those six letters, can take you. The sparks of imagination burning in your brain this very moment. Your imagination, like a child’s, explodes with unrestrained possibility. What if you could use that very power of inspiration, creation, and connection with everyone you meet? Answer: you can.
We wielders of words, we sorcerers, charmers, creative conjurers, magical beasts; we are free to spell words into existence at will — writing that’s crafted to convince, to change, to instill a sense, a feeling in someone beyond their control. There’s real power there. We are undoubtedly unstoppable.