Captions

I just read an article about how right-brained thinking (artistic, big-pictured, story telling) is going to be far more important than left-brain thinking because it can't be automated or easily outsourced. At the end of the article, Daniel Pink says, "When you write a caption for a cartoon, there’s no right answer. That’s one of the things that makes it challenging. Whereas, if I ask you the square root of 144 plus the square root of 81, there’s only one answer. And there’s a way to do it. You can show your work. With a cartoon caption, you don’t follow a set path to an answer; there’s no algorithm. And that makes it challenging."

I largely have to agree with this. Captions are deceptively difficult, since the set-up is given to you, and all you do is fill in the punchline. However, in a given picture, you have completely free reign to make it say whatever you want. A picture of two cats sitting in the sunlight could be as simple as that, but with the right caption, it becomes a picture of an alien with a cloaking device waking up in a drunken haze next to a man in the most realistic cat costume ever.

There was one part of captioning that wasn't mentioned in the article, but really should be. There are two methods to captioning pictures: sequitur and non-sequitur. The sequitur method is about looking at the picture, paying close attention to all of the details inside of it, and trying to make the most logical words to go with the picture. It's truly trying to fill in the blanks. The non-sequitur method is where you do the opposite. You see the picture, then bend or break conventional reality and sybstitute your own. If you see two people having a conversation, you can caption it so that neither one is speaking, and the desk plant has a line.

Sequitur captions teach you how to pay attention to detail. When you are given a scene, you can undertand everything that is going on. Non-sequitur captions teach you to explore possibility. When you're given a scene, you see what people expect to happen, and then you do something completely different. It's basically the difference between drama and comedy.

I think it is important to caption in both sequitur and non-sequitur. Even though people tend to prefer one over the other, or excel at one over the other, practicing both will stretch your abilities and your mind. It can only make you a better writer.