FICTION & THE CREATIVE PROCESS PART TWO
Let’s look at the “product” of creative writing, and then we’ll look at the process.
To start, I encourage everyone to read the article, “Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process,” by Betty S. Flowers. Although this article focuses on teaching the writing process to children, it is one of the finest articles I’ve ever read about writing process, and I’ve used it in just about every graduate school writing course I’ve taught over the last twenty years.
Image by Hector Laguna from Pixabay
To be successful, a piece of creative writing has to have two qualities. It must demonstrate a proficiency with craft, skill, thought and judgment; show that the artist is in control of the material and is capable of crafting that material to reflect his or her unique vision.
In addition, a successful piece of creative writing must also contain surprise and mystery, wonder and spontaneity; it should keep us guessing, every bit as much as does life itself, at what might be around the next corner – the next page, the next line.
In her book, Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande points to the two sides of the artist.
One side, she writes, “ [cultivates] the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the ‘innocence of eye’ that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; . . . instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise.
But there’s a second part to the writer’s character: it is “adult, discriminating, temperate, and just. It is the side of the artisan, the workman and the critic rather than the artist.” This side “must work continually with and through the emotional and childlike side, or we have no work of art. If either element of the artist’s character gets too far out of hand the result will be bad work, or no work at all.”
You’ve probably heard “left brain/right brain.” This is essentially that principle in action.
Sometimes there’s a mistaken notion that the creative writer – the artist – is all left brain; all “anything goes”; all madman. But it’s not just spontaneity and energy and surprise that marks a successful piece of creative writing. There’s craft involved too.
So the final work must demonstrate both surprise and spontaneity, as well as carefully thought-out control.
This might seem a paradox; how can I be both spontaneous and controlled?
The answer is that I can’t – at least not in any one moment. But I can be first one and then the other, and thus the writing process is a continual movement back and forth between the subconscious, spontaneous mind and the conscious, controlling mind. The successful writer learns to work in each mind, and to go back and forth between the two.
Brande goes on to say, “The work arises in the subconscious. It then appears . . . in the consciousness. There it is scrutinized, pruned, altered, strengthened, made more spectacular or less melodramatic.”
Another way to think of this involves two basic steps: “discovery” and “communication.”
Early drafts are discovery drafts; what’s there, what this work might want to be and how it might best be told. I spend much time in the subconscious, but will step back into the conscious mind as needed.
The second stage is the “communication” stage, in which I am trying to tell this piece in such a way that readers will take from it what I’d like them to; I’m trying to figure out how to present this work in such a way that readers will experience my story as I would like them to. This stage is spent largely in the conscious mind.
In Flowers’ article, the “madman” arises from that spontaneous, subconscious realm; one characteristic of a madman is that he (or she) does not care what others think of him; madmen have no sense of their actions having consequences.
In this first discovery stage, write as if there is no reader, no one other than yourself, no one you care about pleasing or worry about disappointing; write as if the words you put on the page will have no consequences whatsoever. Just try to find the story; just tell the truth – even if you’re making it up.
The architect introduces the conscious mind; the architect looks at the big picture–overall structure, order, missing parts or parts that exist but don’t belong. The carpenter works at the sentence and the word level: sentence structure and order, word choice, sequencing. The judge shows up last, to clear up errors of grammar and punctuation, but also to help answer questions like, “What do I do with this next? Is it ready to send out? Should I show it to my writing group first? Is there something missing that I haven’t figured out yet, that suggests I should put the manuscript away for a while?”
There is no room for the judge in the early stages of writing; in fact, allowing the judge access in the early stages will inevitably make for bad writing, or no writing at all. “Start by promising your judge that you’ll get around to asking his opinion,” Flowers writes, “but not now. And then let the madman energy flow.”
This movement is not strictly linear. It generally is – we spend more time as the madman early in the drafting, try to hold off the judge until later. But it’s recursive too. A back and forth movement.
As a writer, how can I make use of this concept of the subconscious and the conscious minds? First, decide where you are most comfortable; which side you tend to gravitate toward in your own writing (even, perhaps, in your own life). Then work on developing a comfort level with the other side.
Usually, adults feel more comfortable when in control. Also, they may be more conscious of craft, more appreciative of great literature. Most adults have learned to try to avoid making mistakes, and giving up control increases the likelihood mistakes will be made.
Most adults don’t need too much help tapping into their conscious, critical minds. It’s the freedom of the madman they often need to re-learn.
With young people the opposite is true. Shout out a topic and most kids will jump right in. They live much closer to the madman. They also often lose interest when you ask them to revise. They care more about the energy and spontaneity of an unleashed imagination than they do about craft. Once they’re done, they’re done.
The key for any writer at any age is to find where you are, and which of these two main roles— subconscious madman or conscious architect, carpenter and judge--you need most to cultivate. It doesn’t matter which it is. Every writer needs balance, and needs to be able to move back and forth between the conscious and the subconscious mind.
Then, when you have attained that level of comfort (and until you do, learn to tolerate the discomfort), the main task will involve deciding when it’s best for your writing for you to give up control, and when it will be best to step in and take that control back.
©Mark Farrington 2026
Works Cited
Brande, Dorothea. Becoming a Writer. Random House, 1981 (originally published in 1934).
Flowers, Betty S. “Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process.” Language Arts, Vol. 58, No. 7, Writing (October 1981), pp. 834-836 (3 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/41962375