The other day I walked into my advanced writing class and told them how much I love to read and think about structure. They looked at me like I was some kind of little puppy that couldn't climb the stairs. So I went to a metaphor to explain why I get so excited about outlining. This is what I told them.
We often have this experience of reading something that's well-written and thinking, "Dang, this is genius, I wonder how he or she did it?" This is the same thing we feel when we see a good speaker. Because they don't read this way or really pay attention to speakers, I gave them something else: Think about Tom Brady. You watch him play football (yes, even in the Super Bowl where he set the record for most consecutive passes), and you're amazed. Or you should be. He's really good at what he does. How does he do it, and why can't others do it so well? He does it well because he understands the structures of the NFL, the plays, the possibilities, the formations, the available options. He acts within and responds to these structures very effectively. Tom Brady isn't an arm in motion, he's a mind assessing patterns. In writing (as in football), this is the power of structure: it allows you to select ideas, facts, and arguments and order them to be most effective for a context and an audience.
Now compare Tom Brady with Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow doesn't understand structure. He's the arm in motion without a grasp of what's happening around him. Tim Tebow is like the writer that pulls an all-nighter to finish the paper. It works occasionally because Tim Tebow has the raw talent to throw together a paper and say some interesting things. But here's the rub: give Tim Tebow some structure, let hem understand plays, and possibilities, and formations and structures and suddenly that raw talent turns into "consistently good."
My main message was that getting to grips with structure demystifies greatness in writing and in football by showing you that good writers (like good football players) are good because they understand patterns better than you do. But appreciating it means you can begin to master those patterns yourself. They're just patterns, after all!
There's an additional point here about creativity that's also relevant -- the idea that constraints and structures charge a different kind of creative energy -- but that's a thought for another day.
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