Drawing and Writing, and How Structures Help

Watching the wonderfully talented Celine teach her groups of Manga and Anime fans how to draw their favourite characters was a truly fascinating thing.

And a very insightful one, thanks to its use of structure.

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Listening to the process, I got to thinking about the two disciplines – drawing and writing – and how similar they are. Not just in terms of the work and practice that you put in (fuck AI, seriously), but in terms the task you undertake.

As an artist, drawing a character’s head and shoulders, you start out with your basic lines, the cross of their face and the angle at which it sits. As a writer, this your short pitch, the first paragraph that frames your concept.

The artist will them draw the outline, putting the shape of the face over those lines. This is a writer’s first synopsis, usually a full page, that takes that basic concept and that gives it some form.

After that, the artist starts to fill that shape, drawing eyes, a nose and a mouth. This is your long synopsis, where you do exactly the same thing. You frame your acts and/or chapters, and give them some characteristics.

And then, we have detail. Once the basics are in place, you can build from them, drawing your picture, or writing your first draft. In either case, it’s still a sketch, and you’re allowed to make mistakes. You can give yourself permission to rub stuff out, change it, or redraft it. You can even back right up and draw/write the thing again, if it doesn’t work.

After this, Celine was telling her classes, with that basic sketch is completed, you look up and do something else for five minutes. And this was what really brought the parallel home, as it’s exactly how authors step away from their draft and let it stew, before going back it.

Because that’s how we see the mistakes.

The next step, having navigated and corrected those mistakes (because we all make them, and we have to learn to give ourselves permission), you ink that sketch in, or you complete that draft. Then comes the shading and colouring, bringing those extra layers of fine-honed detail as you flesh out the face, or the world and the characters’ narratives, with all the love you can.

Recently, writing advice has become so full of tricks, tricks, traps and pitfalls, that it’s almost unnavigable, and different things, inevitably, work for different people. I’ve been a pantser all my life, and structure like this is very much about plotting and outlining. Fairly obviously, you have to do what works for you.

But watching one of Celine’s tutees, a lady my age who’d never drawn anything in her life and who came out of the class with a really lovely picture of Chihiro, maybe there’s something in this plotting business, after all?

Reading: Becky Chambers’ A Psalm For the Wild-Built, which is very lyrical and utterly charming. It starts out with a gorgeous description of Imposter Syndrome, and heads onwards into exploring both human and robot consciousness and how we are more than the sum of our parts. So far, it’s as gentle and whimsical as your basic cozy romantasy, but with wonderful layers, vastly more insightful, and far better written.

Watching: The new Beverly Hills Cop movie, which did exactly what it said on the tin. It was an Eighties homage of shoot-outs, explosions, car-chases and Eddie Murphy gags, and while it was true enough to the original to touch a nostalgic place un my heart, it soon blurred into a formless melange and I didn’t manage to watch it all.

Playing: Nope, still nada. Missed our last D&D session as I was under the weather, but hoping to get back to Demons and Dices soon. And if anyone has any recs for PS5, fantasy-type RPGs, please let me know!

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