"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
—E. L. Doctorow, Writers at Work—Sixth Series (1984)
Recently, our research on the writing process led us to an insightful essay by Betty S. Flowers, emerita professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. The article, Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process, adds an important layer to our understanding of the writing process. She argues that different phases of writing (drafting, organizing, editing) require different kinds of energy. For example, while drafting requires creative energy to generate ideas, editing requires critical energy to find and fix errors. The challenge for writers is to manage these competing energies. Otherwise, competing energies can stop a writing project in its tracks.
Flowers describes four roles that each play a part in the writing process. Descriptions of the roles follow, presented in the order in which they appear during the writing process.
Madman—This label is meant to convey the idea of unbridled creative energy. You could also say “artist” or “creator.” This role refers to the initial stage of the writing process: brainstorming and getting ideas down on paper.
Architect—This role is responsible for organization, for imposing an overall order on the document.
The Carpenter is a craftsman who turns the architect’s blueprint into prose, nailing down one sentence after another.
And then you have the Judge. The Judge finds grammar, punctuation, and spelling problems.
Four roles, four kinds of energy
We’re going to quote Flowers at length as she recounts how she introduced her framework to her students. The following selection (the opening paragraphs of the essay) let you eavesdrop on her classroom as she describes how she sees the "energetic” aspect of the writing process.
“What’s the hardest part of writing?” I ask on the first day of class.
“Getting started,” someone offers, groaning.
“No, it’s not getting started,” a voice in the back corrects. “It’s keeping on once you do get started. I can always write a sentence or two—but then I get stuck.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’m writing along, and all of a sudden I realize how awful it is, and I tear it up. Then I start over again, and after two sentences, the same thing happens.”
“Let me suggest something which might help,” I say. Turning to the board, I write four words: “madman,” “architect,” “carpenter,” “judge.” Then I explain:
“What happens when you get stuck is that two competing energies are locked horn to horn, pushing against each other. One is the energy of what I'll call your ‘madman.’ He’s full of ideas, writes crazily and perhaps rather sloppily, gets carried away by enthusiasm or anger, and if really let loose, could turn out ten pages an hour.
“The second is a kind of critical energy—what I'll call the ‘judge.’ He's been educated and knows a sentence fragment when he sees one. He peers over your shoulder and says ‘That's trash!’ with such authority that the madman loses his crazy confidence and shrivels up. You know the judge is right—after all, he speaks with the voice of your most imperious English teacher. But for all his sharpness of eye, he can't create anything.
“So you're stuck. Every time your madman starts to write, your judge pounces on him.
“Of course this is to over-dramatize the writing process—but not entirely. Writing is so complex, involves so many skills of heart, mind and eye, that sitting down to a fresh sheet of paper can sometimes seem like ‘the hardest work among those not impossible,’ as Yeats put it. Whatever joy there is in the writing process can come only when the energies are flowing freely—when you're not stuck.
“And the trick to not getting stuck involves separating the energies. If you let the judge with his intimidating carping come too close to the madman and his playful, creative energies, the ideas which form the basis for your writing will never have a chance to surface. But you can't simply throw out the judge. The subjective, personal outpourings of your madman must be balanced by the objective, impersonal vision of the educated critic within you. Writing is not just self-expression; it is communication as well.
“So start by promising your judge that you'll get around to asking his opinion—but not now. And then let that madman energy flow....Talk on paper, page after page, and don't stop to judge or correct sentences. Then, after a set amount of time, perhaps, stop and gather the paper up and wait a day.
“The next morning, ask your ‘architect’ to enter. She will read the wild scribblings saved from the night before and pick out maybe a tenth of the jottings as relevant or interesting...... Her job is simply to select large chunks of material and to arrange them in a pattern that might form an argument. The thinking here is large, organizational, paragraph-level thinking—the architect doesn't worry about sentence structure.
“No, sentence structure is left for the ‘carpenter’ who enters after the essay has been hewn into large chunks of related ideas. The carpenter nails these ideas together in a logical sequence, making sure each sentence is clearly written, contributes to the argument of the paragraph, and leads logically and gracefully to the next sentence. When the carpenter finishes, the essay should be smooth and watertight.
“And then the judge comes around to inspect. Punctuation, spelling, grammar, tone—all the details which result in a polished essay become an important only in this last stage. These details are not the concern of the madman who’s come up with the ideas, or the architect who’s organized them, or the carpenter who’s nailed the ideas together, sentence by sentence. Save details for the judge.”1
Three takeaways from Flowers’ framework:
Flowers makes a convincing case for her four roles and the idea that different phases of the writing process require different kinds of energy.
Let each role—each type of energy—have its time in the limelight. Let the Madman spew all his ideas on a topic. And hold the Judge at bay until the Architect and Carpenter have had ample time to do their work, with the knowledge that he’s going to have time to review the document before publishing.
In Flowers’ description of the writing process, we note that the task of big-picture organization (by the Architect) often happens after the Madman has been given free rein to produce a lot of ideas and get them down on paper. Sometimes you may need to draft several pages before you can see an outline for your document.
Allow time for each role. And allow time between roles for your thoughts to gel. When ideas have time to settle in your brain, you often find a better way to express an idea.
1Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process.Author: Betty S. Flowers Source: Language Arts, Vol. 58, No. 7 Writing (October 1981) pp. 834-836