Skip to content

Noise and Signal

David Gane
David Gane
— 1 min read

During the construction of a story, how often do you allow the noise to hide the signal:

  • How much sensory input do you allow in (RSS, email, social networks, television, books)?
  • How many commitments of time do you make?
  • What is your level of output (blog posts, journaling, other projects)?

In the article Why We’re Powerless to Resist Grazing on Endless Web Data from the Wall Street Journal, Lee Gomes quotes Dr. Biederman:

“It is something we seem hard-wired to do. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’ ”

When we are writing, we need to change where we receive our information from and what we do with it.

When you cut the amount of information coming in and the amount coming up, your mind will hear the real signal of the story.

Blog
David Gane

David Gane Twitter

Co-writer of the Shepherd and Wolfe young adult mysteries, the internationally award-winning series, and teacher of storytelling and screenwriting.

Comments

Related Posts

Ways to edit

Just as there are different ways to write, there are different ways to edit. Some people will edit as they go, while others do it after they've finished a draft. Some will begin with the structure and move down into the sentences. Others do a sentence at a time, writing

Containers

A container can be almost anything. It can be made from any number of materials. Glass, plastic, and even paper or cardboard. It can be different heights, sizes, and shapes. It can hold almost anything—as long as it is sturdy enough to keep it inside. However, some containers will

Control

In Will Storr's The Science of Storytelling, he states that the mission of the brain is control—whether it is a mental model to make sense of the world around us or to change it to gain control. Unfortunately, the model is often flawed. Too many inputs and not a