Basic Instinct - friend or foe?

Instinct: the way people or animals naturally react or behave, without having to think or learn about it

Cambridge Dictionary

I read somewhere once that instinct is a subconscious lesson learned which surface to keep you from making the same mistakes. I know, from experience, that instinct plays a large role in our day to day lives. It can be helpful, it can be protective, but it can also be crippling. Perhaps I should add a disclaimer here - I am not a mental health professional, just a writer musing on life in general and with a blog post to fill. I am also vaguely familiar that there are many categories of instinct such as herd instinct. I am going to concentrate on that internal gut voice that inwardly communicates with you when you didn't ask it to. Now back go my blog post...

What has instinct got to do with creativity?  

There have been many times when I have been writing a scene and my instinct kicks in. I have a growing sensation that the scene is not going in the right direction. I know, instinctively, that I need a little more passion or a twist to add more energy to the plot. I did not plan the plot this way, but as I write my instinct tells me that this chapter just isn't right. I have never taken a creative writing course in my life, so it is not a lesson I have learned, but I know where I subconsciously acquired this instinct and it began on the day that I picked up my first novel to read.

It developed gradually, but mainly during my negative reading experiences when I have grown to dislike the hero or heroine, the plot direction or how the book is written. I have wasted countless hours reading a book I dislike just so I can finish it (I can't give up on a book, I have to finish it).  This is a good example of turning a bad experience to good use.

However, in my opinion, if negative experiences can develop an instinct that can be used in a positive way, negative experiences can also develop an instinct that, although trying to be protective, can have negative outcomes. For example, if you have received several rejections for your manuscript, your instinct might be to not submit the manuscript again. You have subconsciously learned rejection is painful and that you are not good enough to get published so why bother and be hurt again. This instinct is protecting you from future hurt and rejection... but I am not sure this instinct is always a good instinct to follow.  People say that every journey is made of small steps and that failure is a path to success. Sounds daunting and not much fun to tread.

It is not always easy to fight against our instincts. It is not always easy to know when to fight against them or when to follow them. I guess all we can do is consider the possible outcome and ask ourselves this question... will this situation put me in harm's way? If it won't, than perhaps we should question why our instinct is telling us to flee/reject/avoid/ignore and is there anything we can do to improve the outcome and be braver/more adventurous/more determined. 

Every event is a learning experience and can be positive and negative. Your instinct is there to help you and we must learn to let it help us... but we must also learn to not let it control us. After all, changing our thoughts and how we deal with our negative experiences could change our lives for the better.

Victoria Cornwall

What are your thoughts on instinct? Can you think of a circumstance when it has helped or hindered you? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Adding Realism To Your Writing by Victoria Cornwall

A novel is like the inside of an intricate clock. Just like the well-oiled cogs and gears of a clock, a book has many elements which need to interact smoothly so it provides an enjoyable read. This week I am going to chat about a character’s reaction to a given situation. Their reaction is one of those key elements. A good reaction can strengthen the reader’s interest in the character or plot  … a poor, ill-written reaction can lose a reader’s support and loyalty.

As a writer, I try to imagine how the character would behave and think in any given situation and describe it as accurately as I can. However, over the years I have come to realise that people do not always behave how we would expect them to. If a writer captures this unexpected reaction in their writing, it can add realism to the situation and more depth to the character. It can also add an unexpected twist. Here are two examples of what I am trying to explain. They are both related to losing someone special:-

Imagine you are writing about a young widow learning how to navigate life again without her husband by her side. The story starts with a scene of her sitting by her husband’s hospital bed. They are holding hands as he finally succumbs to a long, drawn out battle with cancer. The last two years have been particularly brutal. The normal emotions of denial, shock and heart rendering grief come to mind. Scenes involving tears, emotional numbness, relatives offering comfort, doctors saying things that in the moment make no sense. Those scenes are in her future, but right now she is still holding his hand as it begins to grow colder in hers. Her love, her soul mate, her friend has just left her forever. The perfect reactions to her husband’s passing are just waiting to be written. But wait! STOP and think again.

Remember that she has just spent years by his side battling cancer. The last two years have been particularly bad. What if his personality had changed over that time? What if he had not accepted his diagnosis well and had railed against the unfairness of it all. She had nursed him up to the point of his admission to hospital and she is now in a state of physical and mental exhaustion. Her love for him had changed as his illness had changed him. The happy years of their marriage are a distant memory as his anger, frustration and physical changes had eaten away at their marriage as efficiently as the cancer inside him. He was not the man she fell in love with. What if she felt a great sense of relief at his passing? Imagine the guilt she would have at experiencing such feelings. She would feel unworthy of the sympathy offered by friends and relatives. She would feel like a fraud. In the story she will eventually learn to understand her husband's reaction to having cancer, understand her own reaction to living with someone she no longer recognised and finally forgive both her husband and her reaction to living with cancer. She will fall in love with her husband all over again as her memories of their happier times together become easier to recall. She has to do all this before she can grieve normally again and feel the true depth of her loss. Finally she learns to live without him, but her initial “abnormal” reaction actually adds realism and an extra dimension and twist to the normal grief process. Her reaction may at first seem abnormal, but it is actually very realistic. Chronic illness is a terrible strain on family members and we can add this side into our story too.

I used to work in intensive care as a nurse. After the death of a patient, I came across his son sitting in the corridor. I sat down beside him ready to offer words of comfort. We were both in our mid-twenties and had never spoken before.  Back then, if I was to write the scene, I would have had him expressing his grief at losing his father, perhaps eyes brimming with tears, hands trembling in grief, reactions all equated with grief. The reality was very different. Although he was very distressed, he did not show it in the normal way. His mind was whirring and he was agitated as he didn’t know how to arrange all the practical things to do with a death in the family.  He gave the impression of being rather selfish – only thinking of himself and all the jobs he had to do. Where would he get the death certificate from? How would he move the body to the funeral directors?  Who would he have to notify? His father had died yet he was talking as though it was a problem to be solved. However, I understood his thought processes as not long before I had been in a very similar situation.

He had no experience of dealing with a death in the family. He felt ill prepared and knew little about how to sort out funerals, wills, death certificates etc. The one man he would normally turn to for advice was no longer there and he was in panic mode. He felt his loss very deeply, but expressed it in a different way and was overwhelmed by the practicalities facing him. He wanted to be a support to his mother and protect her by doing all the practical things required, but he felt totally inadequate for the jobs ahead. He felt that he was already failing his father and as he sat outside the intensive care unit, numb with shock, he spilled out his worries to a nurse who happened to sit down beside him. Luckily, from my recent experience, I could help him more than most.

So just remember, although it is important for a character’s reaction to be a believable one, sometimes you can add depth, a twist or an added layer to a plot or character, by allowing them to react in a way that is not quite what one would expect.

Fiction by Victoria Cornwall