Skills > techniques

Most writing instruction I’ve come across focuses on teaching specific writing techniques, usually by providing knowledge about writing indirectly through lectures and books. But to use the constraints led approach I’m currently studying, the focus should be on teaching problem solving skills, or knowledge of writing, by working in an alive environment.

For fiction writing, that alive environment includes 1) the writer’s environment, 2) the story they’re trying to tell, 3) the way they’re telling it, 4) the text they’re creating, and even 5) the readers (or a representative reader) who will be reading the text. A writer may look like they’re sitting at their desk tapping at keys, but there’s a lot more happening during the writing process.

A typical instruction that focuses on technique might tell the writer—ironically—to “show don’t tell.” They might say, “focus on sensory details” and “let your readers draw conclusions.” However, there are three big problems with this technical instruction approach.

• The technique doesn’t take into account the environmental constraints, the task constraints, or individual constraints. In other words, it doesn’t consider the story, the writing, or the writer.
• The indirect teaching method does not even transfer the technique well to the writer. They won’t be good at applying the technique.
• The instruction doesn’t help the writer know when to activate the technique.

In a constraints led approach, the focus is on developing an adaptive skill to solve a problem.

What is the problem we are trying to solve with “show don’t tell?” There’s an inherent contradiction between depth and pace: the pace will slow down if the writing gets bogged down in details, but if we speed up the pace, we risk losing the depth of writing. A good writer knows how to balance depth and pace, and that’s the skill the writer needs to practice applying in a variety of settings. Often the solution is to “show don’t tell,” but sometimes telling is the answer.

And so, a good teaching tool is a writing exercise that gets the writer started writing. And it will use constraints that affect pace and depth.

• Word counts and timers
• Levels of detail
• Perspective shifts
• Genre shifts

The writer then practices the skill of balancing depth and pace which sometimes means using the technique of “show don’t tell” but other times requires a completely different technique.