Restrictions

There is nothing like staring at a blank page to make you not fill it up. It's intimidating to most people to put pen on paper or fingers on a keyboard and start writing. A writer intimidated by writing? I swear, it really happens.

But why? A blank page gives a person the freedom to do anything they want; the last thing a writer should be is hesitant. But I believe it is because the blank page is too free that a writer can't write. I can fill a page with a poem, start a short story, or draw random doodles. I could write about family, nature, or make up a new world and write about that. I have infinite possibilities of choices. How can I hope to settle on any one thing?

Writing is much easier to do with restrictions. Ideas form that fit within the restrictions and the mind shapes those ideas to be represented within the restrictions. Think about your days in school. You may be asked to write several pages every single day for several months at a time. And if you weren't a complete flunky, you actually produced all of that writing. So how can you write 50+ pages in four months, but spend three weeks trying to write anything on a blank page? The difference is that the writing for college was restricted.

Write three pages on how smoking can lead to bankruptcy. I'm sure it wouldn't be very hard to do. I bet it also wouldn't be very fun, but at least it gets you writing. Write three pages on religion. This is less easy to do. It is so broad and vague that you can't be sure exactly what to say. It's better than being asked to write three pages on anything, but not much.

My comic has a very strict form. I have four panels of a fixed width and height. I need to fit in both a picture and words and I need to be funny at least once. Again, this is not the easiest thing in the world, but it does get me writing. It also gets me thinking, which is what really matters. The more I try to write in my format, the more it gets me thinking about how to write in that format and the more I end up writing.

On the subject of restrictive forms, I definitely have to point to Ryan North. One of the premises of Dinosaur Comics is that the art never changes from strip to strip. And with the exception of a handful of guest strips, his comic has had the same art from day one, which happened on Feb 1, 2003. His site is extremely popular and extremely funny. Because of having the same art, it forces the words to matter even more, which they do.

Now, I know of many successful and funny comics that do not even have a regular size, like SMBC and C&H (although it is actually made by multiple people), so I don't have the gall to say it is a necessity to force restriction to produce creativity, but I do believe it is a great help. If you ever find yourself frozen, staring at a blank page, give yourself an assignment (or have somebody else give it to you) and do it.