Seeing with an Artist's Eye
On noticing gaps and openings in the work you love (or why critiquing things is good, actually)
This morning I was discussing a TV show with my wife, and began to say that while I quite liked it, I had some issues. “Oh really?” she said. “Lincoln has critiques of something? I’m shocked.” It’s true. I am incapable of reading a book or watching a movie without noticing what I perceive as gaps, problems, or missed opportunities. This is true even in works I adore and revisit countless times. Sometimes you see fans online react to criticism with, “Why can’t you just turn off your brain and enjoy something?” But I’ve never quite known what “turning off your brain” even means. How can I enjoy something without my brain thinking about it?
I think this critical brain is also the brain that admires the achievements and analyzes the craft of great works. It is the “artist brain,” to be reductive. The artistic impulse comes—in my experience at least—from noticing the gaps in existing art and wanting to fill them. The opposite instinct might be called the “fan brain,” which lauds turning off your mind in favor of “enjoying” the work. I thought of this distinction this afternoon when I saw yet another round of fans being upset at a George R.R. Martin quotation about Tolkien. I’m not trying to “dunk” on anyone so I’ll just post the quote:
Certain fans get offended at this. How can someone insult my favorite book? How can they not realize it is perfect? How can they think they’re better than it! The fan brain thinks about what is. It worries about “canon” and wants to preserve the work like a sacred object from critics, vandals, and barbarians. The artist brain thinks in what could be. It looks at the object not to vandalize it, but to come up with a new object. Actually, let me shift my metaphor to the “artist’s eye.” The artist’s eye is always looking for openings, cracks, and canyons to explore. And yes, fans can have an “artist’s eye” too. Isn’t the main impulse of fanfiction “What if this thing I love had been done differently?”
Regardless of one’s feelings about hobbit sex, Martin himself is a deep admirer of Tolkien. Martin isn’t saying Tolkien is bad. Rather, Martin is explaining an artistic impulse behind his own epic fantasy series: an impulse that saw Tolkien’s work as missing the sex and grit and chaos of so-called real life, and which grew into A Song of Ice and Fire.
This is how creativity tends to work. Donald Barthelme—a formative influence of mine—was once asked, “How come you write the way you do?” He replied, “Because Samuel Beckett already wrote the way he did.” Barthelme adored Beckett, but Beckett had already written Beckett’s works. Barthelme had to find a different path.
Of course, Martin could have simply trod the same path as Lord of the Rings, doing the artistic equivalent of Microsoft Word’s “find and replace” on kingdoms, characters, and plot. Many fantasy authors have done so. (I will refrain from naming names) But the reason Game of Thrones became so influential is because Martin wrote into the gaps and the untrodden paths of fantasy. Other great fantasy authors have done the same in different gaps and other paths.
I’d stress a “gap” in a work is not necessarily a flaw, exactly. LOTR works because it takes a mythic tone—Tolkien was openly influenced by legends, myths, and old epics like Beowulf—that perhaps doesn’t allow the sex, grit, and random chaos of Martin’s world. And vice versa. Imagine if Frodo had just died randomly from a snake bite infection halfway to Mordor! Similarly, the mythic tone of LOTR—where the rightful heir is always good and heroes can kill a million foes without a scratch—wouldn’t fit in Westeros.
Right now, some young writer is reading ASOIAF and thinking, “Okay, Westeros is pretty cool but I hate how Martin does X and the world skews Y and is missing Z.” That will be the seed of the next great fantasy series that will inspire someone to find the gaps in it. Or perhaps their eye is looking at the worlds of N.K Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy or Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, to pick two of my own favorite recent fantasy works. Or they’re reading horror or postmodern fiction or lyrical poetry. It’s the same in any genre and medium. For another example, horror writers have noticed Lovecraft’s racism (hard not to notice, of course) and then taken cosmic horror on a different path: see Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom.
If you’re not trying to create your own work, enjoy things however you want. Turn off your brain. Watch with eyes half-closed (or half-attuned to your phone). But if you want to create, I think one should embrace your artist’s eye. Anyone can learn to see this way. It just takes effort and a creative desire. Read widely, but also closely. Notice the openings, the gaps, and the fissures, as well as the unplowed fields, the unplucked branches, and the untrodden paths. Those are the places where your own work can bloom.
If you like this newsletter, consider subscribing or checking out my recent science fiction novel The Body Scout that The New York Times called “Timeless and original…a wild ride, sad and funny, surreal and intelligent.”
Other works I’ve written or co-edited include Upright Beasts (my story collection), Tiny Nightmares (an anthology of horror fiction), and Tiny Crimes (an anthology of crime fiction).
I love your distinction of fan brain and artist brain. I’m being slightly reductive but—to the fan, pointing out a “flaw” is an act of disloyalty or aggression. To the artist, the close attention that allows you to find those flaws often signals loyalty and affection to the work!
One thing I find myself doing, quite often, is thinking, “I really liked this work but I didn’t like this choice.” It’s a very personal reaction, because the work might be fine with that choice! The writer had a goal and delivered on it. So what I’m actually saying is something like, “If I were to do something like this, I’d have a different goal…and therefore would have different choices…and a different outcome.” As you noted, this looks like criticism but is actually about someone articulating their OWN project and perspective, using other works as a reference point
I appreciate that the "eye" you describe is your "artist's eye." But I don't think it describes mine at all. As a result, I wonder if you haven't assumed that because finding discontinuities and cracks in stories works for you, it is a generalizable phenom. I doubt this idea is or can be true. There may be some way to compose a list of "artists' eyes," but it will always be an incomplete list because such eyes change with the nature of both socially and individually perceived "reality," even the realities of stories.
I write this as someone who is quite different from you. As a writer, understanding how I come up with stories is a useful consideration for me. I can tell you that I go along with stories, rarely looking for discrepancies or holes. I'm swept up in story. I've learned from writer critique groups that unless the problem is huge and obvious, I don't see them--I give the storyteller a pass on issues others see. That's me.
I guess my response to your post is: That's you. Not all of us are like you. 'Nuff said, thanks for the insights into your process.