The Sculptor And The Potter: The Two Approaches To Writing

A sculptor begins with a block of material. Where others see a mass of granite or ice, the sculptor sees the subject within and knows exactly what to chisel away for that subject to reveal itself. A potter starts with nothing but a ball of clay and some water. They carefully build what’s in their minds’ eye, only ever adding more clay when necessary.

These are the two primary approaches to writing. The Sculptor is the writer who begins with copious notes and a two-hundred page first draft. They write down everything because they are confident that they’ll be able to chisel away at the document through multiple revisions to find the potential within. The Potter starts smaller. They might have a premise and a loose outline. They build the story as they go, shaping it with intention.

I spend a lot of time thinking, writing about, and practicing screenwriting. Every script I read or write is another level of magnification on my view of the medium. Fifteen years of this means that I now view scripts practically at the cellular level – analyzing the bonds between scenes and identifying the story’s DNA. But sometimes it’s nice to zoom out and appreciate writing from a broader perspective, like that of the Sculptor and the Potter. And I don’t mean from an advice-giving standpoint. There are already dozens of books and blogs out there which provide excellent tips for newbie writers on what methods are “best.” I mean it from more of an anthropological perspective.

I’m always curious to meet other writers and to hear about their methods. The thing about screenwriting is that, even though artistic taste is a broad spectrum, “good” writing (at least from a purely technical perspective) is slightly more objective. But as long as the end product is good, people often don’t care much for how that writing came to be. That curiosity is usually reserved for students of the craft, such as myself.

I’m definitely more of a sculptor. I first start with a long general document where I jot out ideas as fast as my fingers can type. Over several sessions I’ll organize these ideas into proper sections for characters, theme, plot, dialogue samples, etc. Once I have a pretty clear idea of what the story is about, I’ll start working on a plot outline. From there I’ll expand that outline into notecarded scenes, and then get into the actual pages. Sometimes this feels like a waste of time, as I almost always end up discovering the actual story along the way and have to start over from scratch, but it’s the process I’m most comfortable with.

I suspect the dichotomy of Sculptor and Potter applies to fields outside of writing. There will always be people who over-prepare and those who are guided by instinct. At the end of the day, though, the only “right” process is the one that works.