Focus indicates thought

This year marks my 20th year as a professional puppeteer and the more I write, the more I realize how beautifully puppetry works as a metaphor for describing the writing process.

There are four basic principles of puppetry and they all tie in fairly neatly to writing, or at least to how I approach writing.

• Focus
• Breath or rythym
• Muscle
• Meaningful Movement

One of the first things we talk about with puppetry is focus. Focus indicates thought. What the puppet is thinking about is what it is looking at. The same is true when you’re writing.  What you are having the character focus on tells the audience what the character is thinking about.

And it’s the same for what the character is looking at, or feeling or smelling for that matter.

In addition to what the character is looking at, the writer has control over what the reader is looking at.  Because as a writer, you can only show the audience one thing at a time. You have to rely on their imagination to build that picture based on that one thing at a time you can show them. So the order in which you show things also becomes important.

There’s this form of puppetry called overt puppetry which is where the puppeteer is in full view. Within about five minutes you stop noticing the puppeteer because they are using focus to direct your gaze. Humans are trained to look at what someone else is looking at. Like if I’m talking to you and I keep looking over your left shoulder, you are eventually going to turn around to see what the heck I’m looking at.

So as a puppeteer, what I’m looking at is what I want the audience to look at. I am controlling what I want them to look at by what I am focusing on. I am also, as the puppeteer, controlling what I am saying about what my character is thinking about by what my character is looking at.

As a writer, I can take that same principal and direct your attention by what I show you on the page and the order in which I show it to you.

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