3. Practice
The
playwright Joe Orton wrote brilliant texts full of life and colour.
It seemed to come naturally from his exuberant personality. But like
most people who appear to make things look easy,
he actually set himself writing homework to make his descriptions more
vivid.
How many hours of violin scales must Nigel Kennedy work through each week in order to produce that inspired and inspirational interpretation?
Is writing different from the other arts? Is it not possible to learn how to improve a description or a dialogue, just as an artist can practice perspective or experiment with colour?
I say that there are aspects of writing that can be taught – including,
perhaps surprisingly, creativity. Sometimes it
is simply a question of developing the knack of seeing things differently.
So try this: Take a paragraph – any paragraph – and rewrite
it without using any of the original words.
