Ray Bradbury: Learning to Write from the Right (Cerebral) Hemisphere

Last night I started reading Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451). In it Bradbury says he started writing seriously when he was 12 years old, mostly copying the style and voice of his favorite writers for the first ten years. Everything he produced was derivative garbage.

His breakthrough came in the way of technique, which allowed him to (in his words) access his subconscious directly. In my words, the technique allowed him to write using his right cerebral hemisphere. “But along through those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.”

Bradbury’s Method: Making a List of Nouns

Bradbury began by making a list of nouns. He just started writing every noun that popped into his head without planning and without thinking too much about it. His sample list: “THE LAKE. THE NIGHT. THE CRICKETS. THE RAVINE. THE ATTIC. THE BASEMENT. THE TRAPDOOR. THE BABY. THE NIGHT TRAIN. THE FOG HORN. THE SCYTHE. … THE SKELETON."

He goes on to describe how each of the nouns resulted in a short story or novel. “So there you have it,” he concludes. “In sum, a series of nouns, some with rare adjectives, which described a territory unknown, an undiscovered country, part of it Death, the rest life.”

Why I Think it Works (If it Does Work)

Bradbury attributes the success of his method to how it allowed him to access his subconscious—the world of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and memories that are a part of him but that are outside of conscious awareness. I see it as mobilizing different problem-solving and insight-generating systems in the person. Bradbury’s description comes from the leading psychology during the first half of his life (psychoanalysis), and mine comes from cognitive neuroscience, the leading psychological theory during my life.

We humans have a brain divided into two hemispheres: Left and Right. The left hemisphere is responsible for language, logic, rational decision making, deduction, mathematics, critical thinking, and so on. The right hemisphere is responsible for divergent thinking, aesthetics, intuition, emotional expression. (In some people, primarily left-hand dominant, these are reversed).

Now, the hemispheres are connected and in communication. But the primary communication signals they give is inhibition. It would be inefficient for the left and right hemispheres to solve a problem simultaneously. So if the problem is a math problem, the left hemisphere inhibits the right. If the problem is aesthetic, the right hemisphere inhibits the left.

As Iain McGilchrist has convincingly shown, we Westerners in the developed world have learned to rely heavily on our left hemispheres. This means that our left hemispheres have started taking over right-hemisphere activities. Such as creative writing. 

When I write, I plan what I’ll write about. I decide what the purpose will be, which examples I’ll use, and how best to communicate all of it to my audience. These are left-hemisphere activities. I have turned writing into a program. If I deliberately try to write in my own voice, then my left hemisphere takes over again and I think, “And what should that voice sound like?” You can see the problem.

The only way to inhibit the LH is to give it a problem it cannot solve. Something for which no amount of logic or rational thinking is helpful. For Bradbury, this is making a list of nouns.

My List of Nouns

THE FEAR. THE INTESTINES. THE ROLLER COASTER. THE BREATH. THE MOTOR. THE SORE. THE QUIET. THE BELIEF. THE CANDLE. THE WATCH. THE TRAIN. THE ROCK GARDEN. THE SUNKEN SOCCER FIELD. THE BEST FRIEND. THE TOBACCO BARN. THE NEW OUTFIT. THE DEPARTMENT STORE. THE BOOK RECOMMENDATION. THE KITTEN. THE RIDE IN A TRUCK BED. THE RED TRUCK. THE FIREWORKS. THE BOAT. THE RED TIDE. THE BATHTUB. THE STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT. THE HATCHBACK. THE MOUNTAIN RUNNER. THE HOT SUMMER.

The Process

Writing the list was much harder than writing everything else so far. At first I couldn’t get beyond my immediate awareness. I would hear the dishwasher hiss or click and would think about dinner plates, then grilled chicken, then smelling barbecue, and so on. It was all observation and association: LH activities. 

I finally had to go behind my face in the words of Bradbury. I closed my eyes and focused on the darkness of my sinus passages. I ignored everything that came from my environment, and everything that was semantically connected to what came from my environment. That’s when I landed on THE BELIEF. It came from nowhere. Just appeared. Then a memory from my grandmother’s ROCK GARDEN. A memory from working at a DEPARTMENT STORE. As I’m writing this, I’m tempted to find common associations between these two, but that’s more LH work.

The strongest feeling I had was with THE STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT. The story has practically started writing itself. I’m going to run with it.

THE STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT

(More nouns, using association this time.) THE OLDER BROTHER. THE INNOCENT NEIGHBOR. THE INNOCENT TEACHER. THE COMPETITIVE CLASSMATE. THE DARK NOTEBOOK. THE LIST. THE SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS. THE HIGH AND TIGHT. THE SCANDAL. THE PRINCIPAL’S CAR. THE ALTERCATION. 

The list spontaneously stopped there. I became lost in my thoughts—trying to solve a problem in a narrative that doesn’t yet exist. I don’t know if the process is done or if my LH tried to take over. But confusion gripped me. And now I feel tired.