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May. 11th, 2023 02:31 amI think there’s something to the idea that anyone can write, more so than the idea that anyone can draw.
Suppose you talk to someone and write down what they say. No cuts, no edits, just exact copy. That might not be narratively compelling, but it’s recognizably writing, and you can do it without knowing or understanding what a “writing style” is.
Of course, there are plenty of skills to layer on top of that. Can you imagine what a person would do in a different situation? Can you study sensory inputs and pick out which are most “evocative” to bring the reader into the scene? But I don’t think those are strictly necessary, just good to have.
But you can’t look at someone and draw exactly what they look like! Every drawing is in some way stylized, and that imposes a requirement to understand how stylization works. That mental machinery doesn’t function for me at all, which is one of multiple reasons I can’t draw. Without the ability to convert a 3D image to a 2D “style,” my clumsy mimicry of what I see ends up unrecognizable. (On the other hand, I think I’m a passable photographer.)
Suppose you talk to someone and write down what they say. No cuts, no edits, just exact copy. That might not be narratively compelling, but it’s recognizably writing, and you can do it without knowing or understanding what a “writing style” is.
Of course, there are plenty of skills to layer on top of that. Can you imagine what a person would do in a different situation? Can you study sensory inputs and pick out which are most “evocative” to bring the reader into the scene? But I don’t think those are strictly necessary, just good to have.
But you can’t look at someone and draw exactly what they look like! Every drawing is in some way stylized, and that imposes a requirement to understand how stylization works. That mental machinery doesn’t function for me at all, which is one of multiple reasons I can’t draw. Without the ability to convert a 3D image to a 2D “style,” my clumsy mimicry of what I see ends up unrecognizable. (On the other hand, I think I’m a passable photographer.)
