Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive?: QuitBooks for Writers, #6

By Becca Syme and Susan Bischoff

When you "just know" how a story should go...

When you "have a feeling" about how that ad should run...

When you "get overwhelmed" by columns of data or the idea of running numbers...

Those are all types of intuition. Intuition, commonly misunderstood as being primarily driven by emotion, is actually a very quick ability to pattern-read, and is based in information-gathering that's done so quickly, you're not even aware you're doing it. But... if you're intuitive (about certain things only, or about everything), you can't use concrete or linear decision-making strategies.

You might not be able to outline.

You might not be able to plan in concrete terms.

You might not be able to run those numbers.

So, what does that mean for you? How do you go about understanding the intuitive brain you have? This book is written by two coaches who have worked with thousands and thousands of writers, many of whom are "intuitive" in some way. Because we've noticed patterns in how these authors make decisions, and in how process can work in an intuitive way, we wanted to share this book with you.

Inside this book, you will find:

• the five types of intuition (and how to tell if you have them)
• the most common patterns of intuitive writers (and how to cope/strategize with that difference)
• the difference between running ads as an intuitive, and running ads as a concrete
• guidance for running an intuitive-decision-making business (especially as an entrepreneur)
• when not to trust intuition
• and so much more...

If you resonated with any of the first three questions (even if you didn't resonate with all of them), we hope this book will help to provide some context around why you're functioning the way you are, and some guidance for how to be the most successful version of yourself.

When you "just know," and no one trusts that, you learn not to trust it. We're here to help save your intuition from a world that doesn't understand it. To help you wield this superpower.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hummingbird Books
• Release date: Apr 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201956219

Book preview

PART I

Understanding Intuition

ONE

Before Aristotle

Imagine yourself walking the streets of Athens in the early 4th century BC. The infamous Poetics hasn’t been written yet.

If you’re not familiar with Poetics, it’s often credited as both the beginning of theatre theory and also the beginning of story theory. Because so much of our thinking about plot structure stems from someone’s interpretation of Poetics, I think it’s important to start there.

But back to Athens.

We’re walking around, getting little rocks in our sandals, and suddenly, we stroll past a theater. We walk inside. There’s a play currently being performed. We sit down.

Being theoreticians of the 21st century, we recognize the rise and fall of the action. The turning points. The dark moment. The resolution.

But… it’s before Poetics was written! How in the name of all the gods is a poet writing in three act structure before there’s someone around to teach them about how to write in three act structure?

I know this may not seem like rocket science to some people, but have you ever really considered the implications of the three act structure being discovered and not invented?

When a discovery is made, it necessitates the thing existing before the discovery happens.

Essentially, that means there were people writing compelling stories before anyone codified the structure. Before there were classes or books or MFAs. Even if we assume the theory might have had a different name, or there were other unwritten conversations about structure going on in the coffee shops of Athens at the time, any discussion about the structure of story would still result from discovery and not from invention. ¹

If you’ve ever read Poetics, you get the picture of Aristotle sitting in the audience of several productions, noticing form. He’s extremely familiar with all the poems and productions of his time, and he breaks them apart to show the form underneath the beauty. But the productions had to exist for him to break them apart.

First, it had to be intuitively written by someone who didn’t know three-act-structure—a lot of someones, since he discussed so many works.

I’m not sure how we’ve reached the point in modern structural theory where we assume all intuition is a thing of the past, but that’s definitely where we’ve come.

What’s encouraged now is: learn plot structure and then write plot structure. That seems really smart, until you’re the person who’s trying (and failing) to learn it. Yet somehow, when you sit down and just let yourself write, you find that compelling story coming up out of the water like an invisible current.

Some writers can’t put structure in the story, but they can discover structure.

Why?

Because they intuitively write structure into the story without realizing it. Just like the poets of 4th and 5th century BC Athens, who were writing compelling stories (for the ages, some of them) without someone to teach them how.

Let me be clear. I’m not assuming that no one talked about story structure before Aristotle. But if you look at the history of the theory of story, you see looser structure at the beginning and more refined structure at the end (in the 20th and 21st century). You see Aristotle with big-picture principles, and then you see 21st century theoreticians trying to put percentages on the parts of the story where certain elements have to happen. General to specific.

That’s how all theory works over time. We start off less specific, and the people after us get more and more specific because that’s how thought works. Someone who comes after Aristotle now has all the teachings of that great thinker to understand, and they come to know plot structure in a deeper way and then write a new book or make a new theory. Theories and philosophies throughout recorded time show similar progressions.

So, what does that mean for us?

First of all, it means—regardless of what they say (the universal they)—writing with intentional plot structure is not necessary for the story to be compelling. If it was necessary, then the poets of 5th century Greece (and other countries) wouldn’t have been able to do it. Additionally, if knowing plot structure was necessary to write it, then the more we know plot structure, the better our stories should be.

I’m not going to point fingers. But… if this was the case, there would never be a bad movie made in Hollywood, because there’s nowhere the structure idea is more forcefully mandated than in the halls of film and television.

Raise your hand if you've never seen a bad movie. No hands? Not even one?

I should pause here to say: this is not a book to beat up on those who use structure and do well at it. That’s why structure teaching exists. To help the people it can help. If you’re a person who uses structure effectively and enjoys it, and it makes your books / plays / scripts better, then my hat is off to you and I’m happy for you.

It’s also not a book about discovery writing. Not all intuitives are discovery writers (we’ll get to that in a moment). But it’s important to show that intuition can be right without needing education.

Those creatives who tend to draft by intuition desperately need the reminder that story existed before structure was codified. Otherwise, many of us are going to lose years and tears and good stories to the fires of failure because we’re trying to fit ourselves into a box that’s way too tight across the shoulders. So tight, we’re ripping out.

And, of course, as we continue in this book, we’ll see that intuition isn’t limited to story structure. So there may be some of you who are very intuitive in some areas, but who need an outline. That doesn’t mean you’re not really intuitive, it just means your intuition applies in some places and not others. But I needed to start with Aristotle because that’s the place I usually start with my intuitive clients.

As an author coach (who at the writing of this book has coached more than 5500 individual authors, from new authors to seven-figure major award-winners), almost all of the teaching I do is related to what I discover in my coaching sessions. I find, when I’m coaching, that authors generally don’t trust themselves, even when they should, and I almost always have to go all the way back into the origins of their expectations in order to deconstruct them. In the case of story structure, we need to understand just how important it is that proper form existed before codification.

Not because codification is bad. Because codification is often held up as the paragon of virtue. And those of us who need to be good, or need to follow rules, require proof that it’s okay to question the premise of what we’ve been told. ²

As we often say, three act structure is not righteous. It’s not bad, but it’s not righteous. And for so many of us who can’t trust our intuition yet, we need to be reminded that it’s still possible to write in a compelling way if we trust our intuition.

So, what else does this (the fact that intuition can be trusted) mean for us?

Second, it means that there are many different forms of intuition. If we can understand how each one works, we can more fully trust our intuition and live more sane lives. And hopefully also, write better books.

As a result, this book will endeavor to do some codification of its own. Breaking down intuition, explaining how it works, and providing some action steps for how to learn to trust that part of your intuitive brain.

Third, because both Becca (me) and Susan (one of my coaches) are intuitive writers, we’re going to start from our own experiences and extrapolate outward. I (Becca) am doing the bulk of the writing, because apparently, my intuitive nonfiction process requires me to have more control over the arc than I had expected. But Susan is our primary intuitive coach at the BFA ³ and she’s been thinking about this subject for all her professional life. I could not have written this book without Susan’s contributions, and I’m so grateful to have her as a co-writer.

Because we both have something at stake here (the learning and accepting of our own intuitive brains), we have a vested interest in making this book as helpful as we can for intuitive writers.

So, let’s take the first step into this journey and dive in to understanding our intuition.

TWO

What Intuition Is

What is intuition?

That feeling in your gut?

That unconscious decision?

That quick picture you can’t quite describe?

Some colloquial definitions of intuition exist and, depending on how much you’ve studied this in the past, you may have some of them in your head. But for the purposes of this book, we will not be using anyone else’s definition because we find a lot of them to be confusing. ¹

Our main definition is, knowing something without being able to explain how you know it.

I just know but I can’t explain why is the evidence of intuition.

But intuition isn’t primarily a feeling—which is how it’s often described when people are trying to write it off. That’s just a feeling, they say, like you’ve gotten emotional or had bad shrimp. Intuition is a logical and concrete knowing (internally). It just isn't something you can prove in the moment.

Intuition also isn’t limited to abstract thinkers. There are plenty of concrete-thinking intuitive writers.

Just as an example, Susan and I are both intuitive coaches, but she’s an abstract coach and I’m a concrete coach. I have internal metrics that I’m completing as I hear people talking. Where do they fall on this continuum, or that continuum? How much do I hear their need for stability? How full is their positivity bank? How full of energy pennies ² are they? I’m constantly assessing and adjusting as we move through coaching sessions, trying to make sure I get all the data.

I can usually rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10 in any particular metric.

Do I know exactly what I’m hearing that makes me put them there? Nothing I can explain in the moment. In fact, sometimes I’ll say, you sound like you’re 80% sure about that, they’ll ask me how I got to that number. And while I’m certain about my assessment, I have to go back over the data from their conversation and pull it out of my subconscious. I have to say, if you were 100%, you might have said X or Y, and instead, you said Z.

I couldn’t give you the criteria in the moment. But afterward, when we break it down, I can understand why I had that intuitive sense about where they might land.

I also couldn’t teach someone to coach the way I coach, because so much of it is either learned behavior or intuition, and I can’t codify even how I assess the different metrics. That’s how I know it’s intuitive. I just know how to listen for those concrete markers.

Susan coaches from abstract intuition. And she’s incredible at it. When she listens to a client, she’s taking in all the same data I am, but she’s processing at a speed that doesn’t allow her to be conscious of specifics. She doesn’t need to be conscious, because she knows herself, and she knows she can trust unconscious knowledge.

My conscious knowledge and her unconscious knowledge almost always come to the same conclusions about what someone needs to hear or do. In fact, if you were to watch us coach on video, you wouldn’t necessarily see us doing much differently. But how we’re working internally… it’s completely different.

Two people can process information in completely different ways and still be doing it right.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to coaches. It applies to writers and thinkers and marketers. It applies to any intuitive.

To intuit is to know before you can give specific reasoning. Susan describes it as recognition. She says:

When I quickly know something, is it understanding? Or is it recognition? Because when you say something and I think, I agree, but I can’t explain why I agree, calling it understanding feels wrong. But I recognize a pattern, and then I need time to explain the pattern.

Pattern recognition is why we know something we can’t explain. If we can get our head around how intuition recognizes, I think we will have more confidence in the process.

Like peeking behind the wizard’s curtain.

So. If we assume intuition is recognition, what are we recognizing?

Data.

We take in data and make connections between the data, and then make meaning out of those connections, even when that meaning is not explicit or available to others.

It’s a very concrete and logical process. It’s just not conscious.

For instance, when driving on an unfamiliar road, we rely on general principles (like the fact that interstates were designed for higher speeds, so the turns, whenever possible, are wider and more able to be taken at high speed), or past data cues (e.g. if I’ve driven the mountains of Montana, I’m much more likely to feel intuitively comfortable driving in the mountains of Colorado because the data cues are almost identical). We can intuit what the roads will be like in front of us in order to estimate a comfort with a higher speed.

We might also have an intuitive trust of our own quick reflexes, or a knowledge that we’ve been driving for decades. Recognition gives us confidence.

But when data changes (bad weather, signs of an accident, heavy traffic), we make new connections between data points (an extra car or two on the road), extrapolating those connections into patterns (there must be more cars than just the ones I’m seeing) and then making meaning out of those points (I should slow down because there might be a stoppage ahead). That intuition is quick pattern-reading and meaning-making.

Those two parts are essential.

(1) Seeing the pattern in the data. (2) Making explicit meaning where others see disconnected points.

If you’ve ever been in this situation before, you’ve seen intuition at work: You’re in the car and someone else is driving. Someone hits their brakes in front of you and you say, out loud, better move into that other lane. The driver looks at you like you are crazy.

Why would I move over?

You stop, unable to communicate for a moment. You both saw the same data points. Why is the driver not responding the same way you would? Chances are good, they aren’t an intuitive processor (especially perhaps when it comes to concrete experiences like driving). That means, the two of you are seeing the same data, and you’re creating meaning between those data points where they are not.

Because it happens so quickly, you might have a difficult time explaining why you think they should switch lanes or slow down. But sure enough, if you don’t switch lanes, you end up in the slow lane, and in a traffic jam, and at that point, you can usually explain what it was you saw.

In the original moment, though, it might be impossible to explain.

You just know.

The same thing happens with emotions and numbers and people and places and events and decisions. It will be a pattern over your lifetime.

A lot of intuitive people will say, but I like numbers, or but I like data, or but I like explanations. There is a segment of intuitive writers who absolutely do like numbers. However, many of us have learned to compensate for intuition by liking numbers. Because we’ve been challenged so often (or because our intuition is often disbelieved), we like having numbers for non-intuitive thinkers. Numbers are proof our intuition is right.

Here’s a for-instance.

I first started coaching authors in 2009. It didn’t take me long to see that there were extremely distinctive patterns in the way authors think. But I’d only coached a few writers at that point. Less than a hundred. I didn’t have anywhere near enough data to prove my intuition correct. But I know people. So while I was coaching on the whole thinking is working concept long before I had the data to prove there were some authors who needed to think in order to write, I wasn’t publishing my research.

I couldn’t bring myself (with a background in academics) to make an assertion I knew to be true without the data to back it up. So, three and a half years ago, I finally published my first book on the patterns I saw among writers, almost a decade after I first started to see the patterns and wanted to do something to help writers who needed to think in order to write.

If I’m in a group of writers, I will say, "I love

Reviews for Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive?

[AnIncrediblyGinormousBookaholic · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As with all of Becca's nonfiction books, I enjoyed taking a hard look at some of the prevailing myths in the author world. I personally am heavy on the plotting side of things because of my heavy reliance on dictation for first drafts. Other authors have tried out dictation and found that it doesn't work for their style.

There are definitely highly intuitive writers who "just know" things, and Becca is talking to them. Even though I'm absolutely the sort of client who would have asked the builder to measure the space the tree needed on the lot, I'd also just consider it a formality. Trust but verify. If someone does it for a living, they probably know what they are talking about.

I think that the section on social media really resonated with me. I've definitely read that you MUST do social media. And I know someone who makes a very comfortable income as an author focusing on science fiction and fantasy who outright refuses to have a Facebook or Twitter account. He regularly blogs on his own site and sends out newsletters, so he is not a techno-phobe. He is merely concerned about the addictive time-sucking qualities of social media sites.

I enjoyed Susan's voice in the book. Becca has tons of consultations with authors under her belt, and Susan is even more intuitive than Becca. That's subjective, but it's the impression I got while reading about how they assessed authors.