SOCRATIC SCRIBBLER METHOD FOR BREAKING THE BLANK PAGE SYNDROME

We usually begin our writing seminars in Socratic Scribbling with an experiment. We ask everyone to make a list of all the different types of writing they encountered in the past week or so… not only words on a page but anything where writing played a key role in the making…could be a novel, a play, a video, a meme, a to do list, a Netflix movie.

Some people ask “Does writing music count, or just the words of the song?” Someone else will wonder about math. I just say, “Put ’em on the list, and we will see what we get.

Here’s part of the list from my last seminar: Facebook entry about a restaurant, directions from Chicago to Cleveland, project list for work, Netflix movie, ABBA song (on every list in every class!), Hamlet, drivers manual in my glove compartment, on screen program listings, banking statement online, email to my sister reminding her it is mom’s birthday, handwritten thank you note for dinner party, work memo, instructions on putting together a piece of exercise equipment, history channel documentary on Nazies, game show on tv, nightly news, New Yorker article, Chekov short story, yellow sticky note reminder, Google question about Deep Breathing, tweet by a friend commenting on a party, You Tube video on tai chi, Disney cartoon, New York Times editorial on Biden’s infrastructure plan, a memorial speech for a good friend’s funeral…that’s probably enough for you to get the picture.

I then ask the group to divide into teams and find different ways of sorting the list. I usually get sortings by characteristics like medium (online, tv, written on paper, sermon at church), genre( news report, play, movie, game show, jokes, song), length (long, short), attitude (fun, serious), age (old, new), author (me, somebody else), activity (everyday, special), audience (boss, kids, friends) I’ll bet you can add one or two they missed.

We then tried to step back and ask, “OK, is there anything all these different examples of writing have in common?” Just like Socrates and Meno do with virtue in Plato’s dialogue The Meno.

In the more than 20 times I have done this experiment, the different groups always come up with the same four things: There’s a writer, a reader (sometimes the same person as the writer), there are words, and there are different kinds of mental activities those words trigger.

The group then discusses the two big implications of these observations.

• All writing involves a writer trying to influence what a reader thinks, feel, or does (even if the reader is the writer). Therefore, all writing is about influencing relationships with others or yourself).
• The writer attempts to accomplish this influence by asking and answering questions, (implicitly or explicitly) that the writer believes are of interest and importance to the reader or audience. If the writing does not somehow connect with the reader’s interests and question, then why would the reader continue reading?

While the first observation is obvious to all, the groups always feel the need to put the second one to the test. This effort, in turns, leads the seminar group to see a further implication that there are basically only five kinds of questions that all writing addresses:

• Something simple Informational like a shopping list we make for ourselves or the directions that we give someone to our house are clearly asking and answering: What do I need to buy at the store? How can you get from your house to mine? Notice that these questions typically do not need any proof. We trust the writer knows.
• It gets a little trickier when we try to explain something that is difficult to understand. When we get to scientific questions like “Why is the sky blue?” or “How does an electric car work?” we require answers that explain the why or how. If we are on a jury and asked to decide if somebody is guilty, we want to look at the evidence. We need more than Information. We need an explanation.
• When someone tries to persuade us to think, feel, or do something they need to do more than explain. They have to tell us either the dangers of not doing those things or the benefits of doing them. We encounter these kinds of questions and answers in every ad we see or editorial we read.
• Sometimes, we are writing about why people or events are deserving of praise or blame, pointing out the virtues or vices involved. We argue a President should be impeached, or the coach yells at the tight end for dropping a pass and tells him to pay more attention to his hands.. We make a wedding toast for our daughter or write a sympathy card to a grieving friend. Here we pose and answer, implicitly or explicitly, questions of behavior and character.
• Wait a minute, you say, what about telling stories? I watch a movie on Netflix or read a detective novel to escape the practical worries of my day and my life. I’m trying to get away from working with questions and answers. Are you really? If the writer of a story doesn’t evoke a question in the very first scene, why would you read or watch any more? Why are the witches casting a spell on Macbeth? Why is that cowboy riding alone in the desert, apparently in such a hurry? Is someone chasing him? Does he need to bring a vital message to someone? All stories engage through a highly elaborate chain of questions and answers. Even a song makes you wonder what the impact Your Cheatin’ Heart has on the singer’s happiness.

It seems like we are born into this world to ask and answer questions and help each other find answers to them. This may be why we find Socrates and his wiley ways of asking and answering questions so important to learn and understand. And these types of questions were specified and analyzed exhaustively long ago by Aristotle in the Organaon, the Rhetoric, the Ethics and the Poetics. We are not the first to notice. Somehow somebody just forgot to tell us this in school…something that makes our seminar folks quite angry.

The problem is that the questions we think are important or the answers we think are right are not always the same for us as they are for our readers and audiences. So, we have to take into account not only our own questions and answers but also, and just as or even more importantly, the questions that provoke the interests of our readers. If we do not do this, we can spend a lifetime talking to ourselves or only to the people who agree with us, a group likely to get smaller and smaller if we continue spouting. Something else they failed to teach us in school.

So, how do we know the right questions to ask and answer? Seems like anything could be a question. All you have to do is start a sentence with Who, What, Where, When, Why, or How. OK, but how can we know the right questions to answer when we start a novel, a love letter, or a business proposal. And, why are Who, What, Why, When, Where and How so important to us?

The Socratic Scribbler believes we find the significance behind these questions in the Great Books, you know, the ones that have been around for at least a hundred years and maybe even thousands. That’s right, the books that smart people still like to read and talk about even when they disagree with them. The books we all mean to read “someday” but never get around to them.

Socrates gave Plato a lot of questions, which Plato collected and sorted in his dialogues. Then Plato passed those questions to Aristotle, who then made some excruciatingly comprehensive and exhaustive lists or questions that have not been much improved upon.

Remember a minute ago we just noted that we can divide all bits of writing into different kinds of questions depending on what we want your readers to think, feel, or do. In effect, there are five Big Questions:

1. What we think we know about how things are and about how things will change…information or facts and how they are connected to each other.
2. How we know what we think we know…evidence or logic or testimonials or personal experience or experiments or statistics or authorities.
3. Why knowing these facts and ideas is important…the specific impact of those facts and ideas on our lives, the good things that can happen…or the bad. We want to know how those facts and ideas connect to our deepest wishes and fears.
4. Who we should praise for their virtuous actions leading to good things or blame for leading to bad things? Who are the good guys, the bad guys, the fence sitters, and the bystanders?
5. The meaning and significance of what we are thinking, feeling or doing in our lives and our relationships, as expressed in stories. This includes everything from today’s news to the long parade of history, everything from imaginative songs and poetry to novels and movies, everything from tv shows we watch for fun to sacred books we read for inspiration and consolation. Did you ever notice that we are almost as hungry for stories as we are for food? And their nutritional qualities vary just as much.

So, when you sit down to write something, it is a good idea to figure out which kind of questions you think you need to address for yourself as the writer and which questions are important to your reader. Until you consolidate those questions into a Big Question there is no point in even starting.

Once that Big Question is settled, whatever else you do, your writing will have a unity of purpose that gives your writing the power to connect with your reader. Now you just have to bring your Big Question to life in a way that will resonate with your audience’s experience.That’s a subject for another Socratic Scribbler secret on another day.

Why should you believe advice from Socratic Scribblers? Believe… because Socratic Scribblers are just passing along time tested advice from the greatest writers and thinkers ever…the ones in those old books. You know, the ones they cut from your school’s curriculum. Instead of helping you find ways to think things through, the school experts just try to make you feel stupid when you dangled your participle. I think nobody minds what you are dangling when you have something important to say.

Scribble on.