Blogger: Rachel Kent
In general, the right side of the brain has been shown to be the more creative, emotional side while the left side focuses on logic. Do you think that right-brain thinkers and left-brain thinkers would approach writing differently? Perhaps right-brained thinkers choose not to outline while left-brained thinkers outline? Or maybe right-brain thinkers don’t have a scheduled writing time every day or week while left-brained thinkers do? I have no idea if there’s a trend like this, but it sure would be fun to find out!
Here are definitions of left-brain and right-brain thinkers:
Left Brain: Objective, analytical, looks at parts, logical, sequential, rational
Right Brain: Random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, subjective, looks at wholes
Click here for more on right- vs. left-brain thinking.
In this article, I found reference to a case study done by Gott, Hughes and Whipple in 1984. They studied one woman who supposedly could switch between being a left-brain thinker and a right-brained thinker. She described the left side as her “business woman side” and the right as her “gardening side.” Wouldn’t that be a unique gift? It’s almost a superpower. 🙂
Are you a right-brained or left-brained thinker? Or a dual-thinker like the woman in the study? Here’s a quiz that can help you to find out. (I’m not sure of the accuracy of it, but it’s fun!) According to the quiz, I’m left hemisphere dominant. I answered 11 questions with left-brained answers and 7 questions with right-brained answers. I would have guessed that I am a left-dominant thinker.
Once you’ve figured out which side you tend toward, please feel free to post a comment! I’d love to know
what kind of thinker you are;
if you outline before write;
and if you have a scheduled writing time each day or week.
Also, the test I link to above is short so we don’t spend all day taking personality tests, but if you have a better online brain dominance test feel free to share a link.
If you’re interested in tapping into the other side of your brain while writing, I found a site with prompts for both types of writers. It’s also fun!
To inspire left-brained writing.
To inspire right-brained writing.
Have a wonderful weekend!
This quiz showed me as right brained.
As a teacher I once attended a seminar on brain dominance. Ten of us were selected from the audience to be tested in a battery of dominance testing – most were physical reactions that you cannot plan to control.
I was found to use both sides of my brain equally – he said I had a super-functioning corpus callosum which sends messages back and forth between hemispheres.
It was fun to discover that I had some sort of super-power. (I already knew it wasn’t sports and it sure wasn’t cartwheels!)
I think my kids got it, too. All are “whole brained”. One son is a brilliant mathematician who can also do improvisational jazz piano. Both hemispheres.
Sheila, the connexion between math and music’s interesting. When I had access to a piano I could play and transpose by ear, and run some fairly complex improvisations, but reading music came hard. I could never translate what I saw on the page to what was under my hands with any real feeling.
* And in math I was kind of the opposite – I could teach it and do it well, but had not the capacity for brilliance. For example, writing computer code that did matrix algebra, I could never ‘see’ the shortcuts that one could use to make the storage of large matrices more efficient (which was really necessary in some contexts). I used brute force algorithms to do what the geniuses could do with style. They pitied me for being a Neanderthal, and I pitied them when their fancy stuff choked on certain input and they couldn’t figure out what went wrong.
The test was fun, Rachel! Thanks for this.
* I’m evenly split. Didn’t really surprise me because I could go either way on a lot of the questions – it’s all a question of context and circumstance.
* I don’t do outlines, because I’ve learned that an outline is something that I impose – and my characters are not me. They ‘do’ things that I would not do, and there goes my plan for the story arc they inhabit.
* And there’s no specific writing time, even though I’d love to have one, because I don’t know when I’ll be physically up for the task. But when I could handle all the dog feeding I did it at the same time, and in the same order every day, down to the way I would balance three or more food-dishes.
* Brains are complex and delicate things, and full of wonders. Therefore I try to keep mine in the best shape possible by using it as little as possible, so as not to wear it out.
Putting aside the bad science (http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth.html), I do find I have two modes.
When I’m working on tech–either teaching programming or providing support to clients–I can’t write. I can edit, but if it’s more than the mechanics of language I just put a note into the file until I’m more creative again.
When I’m in a creative mood, the words flow faster than I can type. Just don’t ask me a math question or you’ll kill my whole vibe 😉
It says I am left brained. But there were several questions that I could have answered both ways and just tried to pick the best answer. I have a regular writing time every day and do better if I have a plan for what I’m going to do that day. I also outline with the Save The Cat method as my current favorite, but I started out as a pantster. My writing has improved greatly since I started outlining.
I love an outline (hard to believe I wrote that), and I love to pantster my way through the major points of my outline. 🙂 Best of both worlds.
This was great fun, Rachel, but things are weird. I took the quiz and scored a total ZERO as right-brained. Then I went to the next page to compare the differences of right vs left-brained and I personally related to the right-brained descriptions more so than left.
*I’ve never described myself as left-brained dominant. Anything remotely math related causes my brain to melt and although I’m a sticker for following rules, I hate reading directions. I need pictures, stick figures, cave drawings, anything. I tried band and piano lessons as a child, but could never learn to read music, it was easier to play by ear.
*I think the quiz confirmed I march to the beat of a different drummer going in the wrong direction,?but I’m intrigued by the opportunity to inspire left-brained vs right-brained writing.
*To answer your questions, Rachel, I’m not the best with super structured outlines, I prefer to list ideas in the order I’ll need them and my best, most productive time to write is early morning. I’m also a deep thinker. I probably think too much.
Can a person ever think too much? Don’t think so. Jesus himself said we should love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. I relate to that mind one, and I love discussing why believing in the creator is the only fully rational thing a scientifically knowledgeable person can do.
According to those questions (for which number nine did not offer my correct solution) I am 100% left-brained. I’d describe myself as a straight-line thinker, rather than a philosophical wanderer. I don’t outline in great detail, but I do break the days in my stories into consecutive events. I don’t write scenes or chapters at random.
“You responded as a right brained person to 9 questions, and you responded as a left brained person to 9 questions. According to the Hemispheric Dominance test, you use your left brain the most.” Ha ha! 🙂 This was fun. But some of the questions, I wasn’t 100% sure about, like which side of the theater or auditorium to you sit on. It’s hard to know, because thinking on it, I believe where I enter plays a huge role. And I sit where my other half likes to sit. And he doesn’t care which side, as long as it’s at the very back or near an exit. Lol. I’m so glad you did this today, Rachel. Reading over my MS, I see where a few spots need help. So I’m looking at re-writes for those scenes. But where do you begin with a re-write, with that scene? I’ve never done a complete re-write of a scene, I’ve only changed it some or made it better. Once I have a scene down on paper, it’s very hard for me to imagine a different direction. Is that a right or left brain problem? 🙂 Any helps for that? Is there a good tool or way to think that can help me see another way for that particular scene to go? 🙂
I’ve been on Pinterest this morning … it’s helping so much. I think I’m in love. 🙂
Fun quiz, Rachel. I split 9 and 9, but some of the questions (like geometry vs algebra, humorous vs well-reasoned) were ones where I’m equally comfortable with both. Maybe that’s another sign that I can function in both styles.
*As far as thinker type; I’m classed as an abstract sequential. Most scientists are in this category. Most engineers are in the concrete sequential category. Lots of visual and performance artists are abstract randoms. I’m also classed as an analytic (see the details and form the big picture from them) rather than a global (see the big picture but let the details slide).
*I’m a plotter, so I know where the story is going and where it will end from the start. However, I don’t outline. I write short summaries of the key scenes and sometimes the key scene itself as I’m laying out the plot.
An offer for the right-brained among us (or those left-brainers who never learned html code).
*The WordPress built-in text-to-html converter (the thing that converts your words to the code that does the real work) doesn’t give you the option of inserting multicolumn tables. If anyone here wants the cut-and-paste code to do that, just go to my website and contact me. I’m thinking of adding a writers’ helps section that includes some simple things like that for people unfamiliar with html code.
*It probably takes a left-brain person to enjoy bringing up a WordPress site all by herself with just a Dummies book and some email chatlines to help. I made mine live yesterday and it’s been a blast once I figured out a few things that weren’t obvious for how to make the website primary and the blog secondary, how to control the menus, and what plugins to use. Still a work in progress, but that’s half the fun, like editing and rewriting a novel. One beauty of WordPress is how anything you do that doesn’t make it better is so easy to reverse.
If you want to see what the table looks like, go to the Roman Names page there.
If adding code sounds scary, it shouldn’t. When you write your post, you have the choice of “visual” or “text” display. With visual, you see the page like it will appear. (The html code created behind the scenes when you type here is being translated and displayed for you.) With text, you’re seeing the code. To add something like a table, you just paste the code for making a table where you want it in the “text” form of the editor. Easy as can be.
That’s strange. The test says I’m left brained, but I don’t believe that’s true as I’ve always been a very imaginative person. Some of the questions didn’t give me an alternative I’d want to choose. And I sit on the left side near the front of auditoriums because my last name was near the beginning of the alphabet so I always got assigned to seats there in school.
Jan, your point about seating in auditoriums is well-said.
* There are also some cultural influences. I went to an English school, and under no circumstances were we allowed to talk with our hands. “You are NOT Italians or Greeks.” said the Head. “We keep our hands at our sides or behind our backs when we speak.” As an Asian I was particularly suspect for potentially falling into declasse habits.
* As he habitually carried a riding crop, he was generally obeyed. (And I have trouble NOT capitalizing the h in ‘he’ when I refer to him.)
I talk with my hands because I’m fluent in American Sign Language. After spending years in the company of Deaf people I can’t help doing that.
Makes sense, Jan. I know a bit of ASL because we had a deaf Heeler and taught it to her, and now I use it to communicate with my service dogs; it prevents other dogs from picking up on commands and getting in the way.
Hey, Jan, a person can be both left-brain and imaginative. How do you think people get patents? Ya gotta be left-brain to make engineering stuff work, but you gotta be very imaginative to come up with something useful that nobody has ever done before.
So embrace your left-brained-ness! Besides, we’re all a mixture of both.
Thanks, Carol. That makes me feel better.
Colored me surprised, I thought I’d be left-brained but I’m split down the middle! Those inspiration sites are fabulous.
*Even farther down the rabbit trail, the Myers Briggs personality test is a blast to take and then look at the comparison of traits versus those in your own life. I also use it to help define my characters’ personalities, since I don’t want them to be cookie cutters or echoes of people I know.
*It depends on the story I am writing about outlines. Sometimes the outline is hard and fast. Other times, it evolves (which almost is annoying when the characters won’t play nicely in the sandbox).
*I dream of the day I have a scheduled writing time. As it is, I fit it in on lunch breaks, between soccer or volleyball games and after dinner and homework checks. But I am grateful for Davis Bunn’s suggestion about the home office: set aside 20 minutes to close the door, turn off the internet and write. No Facebook, no emails, no answering texts (unless there is fire or copious blood loss). My family gives me that grace period and it is wonderful!
Unfortunately, copious blood loss really IS one of the things that makes it impossible for me to schedule writing time!
Sarah, when my kids were little, I told them to find me right away if there was blood or vomit. If not, get a blue ice out of the bottom tray of the freezer door. If that didn’t work, come get me. It was amazing how many “injuries” were immediately fixed by simply getting that blue ice.
I was left brain 11 and right brain 7. Sounds correct…
That was fun! I scored 0 right brain and all left brain. I do use an outline, and for my latest book by its nature it was kind of complicated and I outlined the entire thing before writing anything and stuck to it. I also have regular writing times on the calendar. I also use my calendar extensively for all seas of my life. I’m going to check out the writing prompts! I think I could use some right brain creativity. It’s interesting because my writing tends to be very practical. Hmmm…
Dominate R answered 13 right and 5 left. Not new info but still fun.
So I got nine and nine – and the test said I’m left brained… How is that possible?
I both analyze and day dream; I have a semi-outline in order to keep myself on track; and fit my writing in catch as catch can. My life is crazy.
But this was fun. Thanks, Rachel
As far back as I can analyze, I’ve been both. When I learned to drive a stick shift, I recognized that “pause-jump”– same as my left brain / right brain shift. As I mature in my faith, the shift is less noticeable.
*I write story right brain, I edit left brain. Sometimes I’m 100% one or the other. But I can do both at the same time, maybe a 70/30 split.
*Jesus Christ, I image, is 100% both, all the time.
“I imagine”
My left brain is done. It already did its 8 hours.
As always, I am almost balanced at both. No surprise there.
Usually I test about 50-50, but on this test I scored left-brained (13 L to 5 R). I always say I’m very left-brained for a writer 🙂
I outline and I keep a schedule – though a very flexible schedule.
Thanks for the fun test! I am strongly right brained according to it. What I loved the most is “Fantasy-oriented with creativity” so I guess I’m in the right place writing teen fantasy! Another point that rang true was “sees the big picture first” I am good at seeing that and then dive deeper into details. It’s the same for my writing. I see where I want to go, and then use tools that wonderful left-brainers have taught me to guide my creativity.
Fun topic!! I often test equally left-brained and right-brained, and this test came out that way as well. Nine for left brain and nine for right brain. I don’t outline, but I really wish I could. (I usually have to write all the way through just to see where the story is going.) And I do have a set time to write six days a week. Pretty funny that even my writing process is about half and half as well! 🙂