The funny thing is that I might well consider both writing and drawing to be both a thinking and seeing medium, at least as far as creative writing goes. The most successful images are effective in giving a message and a thought; the most successful passages are those that can create a precise image in the reader’s mind. The two mediums are very much alike in that respect.

“There is no correct way to portray an experience”

There are surely incorrect ways though, i.e. ways that fail to convey what the author intended. This isn’t as vulnerable to individual readers’ perception as people think, and I’m not sure this is so different to drawing

“building up a style and voice is mostly a matter of doing it and seeing what “feels” right”

Style and voice are surely more closely equivalent to an artist’s use of pencil or brush strokes to convey things like shape and shadow. The techniques can be learned from teaching and observation of other people, but it is how you apply them to the content of your own work that is important. If your content sucks, not matter how good the style, you’ve got nothing.

As for doing what “feels” right, I agree completely. The writer tends to work with less tangible substances than the illustrator due to the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two media. The writer who deals more with feelings and opinions erases and repeats until it “feels” right. Drawing is a visual medium so the artist erases and repeats until it “looks” right.

What I’m saying, I guess, is yeah, I agree.

@dotdash: Well, you’re talking about creative writing in particular, for which I would agree: writing what you know and have experienced is pretty much the best way to go unless you’re willing to put forth mountains of research. It’s one of the reasons I think Michael Crichton was so successful as an author. But as far as other types of writing go — nonfiction and opinion pieces such as blogs — I think it’s hard to pinpoint just what the tangible thing is. There is no correct way to portray an experience, really, so building up a style and voice is mostly a matter of doing it and seeing what “feels” right, but that’s pretty shaky anyway.

@Authoritaters: Thanks! And as far as following the blog goes, I found that I didn’t much care for the widget that contained the “Follow” option, but you can still manually follow my blog by inputting the URL into your dashboard. Sorry for the trouble! I prefer the RSS feeds myself, so I don’t really use it, haha. ^^;

I noticed that I can’t follow your blog, is it possible for you to add that option? ’cause I would be keen to be able to check out your latest collections!

Only if you want to that is.

Meow.

“Write what you know” is pretty much the unquestionable mantra of writing teachers, and stylistic exaggeration of/deviation from reality is still predicated on the idea that the writer is coming from the perspective of being able to write realistically.

Writing good characters requires an understanding of how real people behave, speak and react in different situations. I suspect that a lot of professional anime writers don’t really know or care much about this, which is why the current anime scene is such an acrid, otaku hellscape/gleaming, postmodern paradise (delete as appropriate).

Writing from outside your own experience (historical, SF, otherwise exotic scenarios) requires research in order that the illusion of realism can be sustained. Starting from that basis of knowledge, you can then twist things to suit your artistic goals, for example making the lasers in Star Wars go “pyoo pyoo” when there wouldn’t really be any sound in space, or making the characters in Deadwood use modern swear words because the profanities of the time would sound hopelessly twee to modern ears.

P.S. Nice blog!