Stages of Creative Development by A.H. Ahrens
(abridged by A. Crandell)
In an article titled “Impression and Expression in Artistic Development,” educator Harry
Broudy has classified three stages of aesthetic/creative development that are not only highly
useful to an understanding of natural writing but correspond remarkably to the stages of brain
development. He refers to them as the stage of the “innocent eye, ear, and hand,” the stage of
the “conventional eye, ear, and hand,” and the stage of the “cultivated eye, ear, and hand.”
The Innocent Eye, Ear, and Hand
This stage of innocent creative expression lasts from about age two to age seven. It is
characterized by innocence of perception--that is, children have few preconceived notions about
what the world ought to be like, about how they should feel, about what they must do according
to certain prescribed formulas. The world is sheer possibility and a child’s characteristic stance
towards it is wonder. Each day is filled with the delight of new discoveries rather than the dead
weight of obligations; each minute, each activity is experienced as “now” rather than as a
worried look into the future. Wondering is openness to the unknown; in fact, wondering makes it
quite acceptable not to know, precisely because it sets the stage for spontaneous discoveries.
Writing in this stage is characterized by wholeness at the expense of logic, by vivid
images, by accidental metaphors (“Can’t you see I’m barefoot all over?”), and by sensitivity to
language rhythms. A poignant example is the recently republished turn-of-the-century diary of a
six-year-old girl, Opal Whiteley, entitled Opal. An orphan, she lived in a mining camp with foster
parents.
Potatoes are very interesting folks.
I think they must see a lot
of what is going on in the earth.
They have so many eyes.
Too, I did have thinks
of all their growing days
there in the ground,
and all the things they did hear.
...
I have thinks these potatoes growing here
did have knowings of star songs.
I have kept watch in the field at night
and I have seen the stars
look kindness down upon them.
And I have walked between the rows of potatoes
and I have watched
the star gleams on their leaves.
There you have it: the intense openness to experience, the unclouded power of
observation, the vivid images, the charming childish terminology.
The Conventional Eye, Ear, and Hand
From about eight through sixteen, our manual dexterity is considerably strengthened
through continually improving eye-hand coordination. We also gradually eliminate the logical
gaps in our stories. As a result, our writing and oral storying become increasingly conventional
and literal, with a loss of the spontaneity and originality of our earlier efforts.
At this stage our vocabulary is firmly enough established so that we feel little need to
invent metaphors in an effort to communicate meaning. By now we know that a star is, by
definition, a “hot gaseous mass floating in space,” in contrast to our innocent stage, when,
looking out at the star-filled sky, we pointed to the largest one and excitedly exclaimed, “That
star is a flower without a stem!”
Yet, at this age it is reassuring to “know” the same things our classmates know; it feels
good to have familiar labels to classify the world around us.
Our writing at this stage displays two distinct characteristics. First, it tends to be
insistently literal. Second, it tends to be highly clichéd--that is, riddled with overused and trite
language or observations. To illustrate:
I Wish
I wish I could soar with the birds in the sky
I wish I could run with a horse,
I wish I could swim with the fish in the sea,
I wish I could burrow with the ground squirrel on his underground course.
Most of us at this stage gradually slide into a negative attitude about writing, with the
result that we write only when it is required of us: book reports, perfunctory thank-you notes,
and tests. Thus, writing becomes tedious, anxiety-provoking, and pleasure-less. Perceived as a
necessary evil, our once free-wheeling expressive powers that were grounded in an openness
to wonder and an innate love of storying become mired in the ruts of convention.
And that’s where most of us have stayed. Wonder was gradually replaced by the
complacency of knowing what everyone else knew, of seeing what everyone else saw, and of
writing what everyone else wrote. And our world began to narrow, our potential to constrict, and
our trust in ourselves to ebb away into the river of the commonplace.
Fortunately, the human brain is constituted to grow and learn and change as it comes
across alternative ways of seeing and doing. When this happens, no matter what our age, we
open ourselves to possibility and to moving into a stage of creative expressive power, a childlike
“innocence of eye.” This is the stage of the cultivated eye, ear, and hand.
The Cultivated Eye, Ear, and Hand
In this stage, we recover the characteristics of the innocent eye, ear, and hand,
beginning with wonder. It is a paradox of creativity that the way to move beyond the
conventional stage is not to try harder, but to take a seeming step backward: to reawaken and
cultivate in ourselves some of the ways we had of perceiving and expressing when we were
children.
Directing Your Hand
Experience a return to the innocent eye, ear, and hand that characterized your
interchange with the world when you were small.
1. Close your eyes and invite a childhood memory of something that had an enormous impact
on you, negative or positive. Stay receptive and quietly alert, letting images and their
accompanying feeling-tones pass before you until you come upon the experience that draws
you to it most insistently.
2. Now cluster that experience by using as a nucleus the most dominant feeling and
characterizing it, to which you give a name, for example:
Cluster, for two to four minutes, for as many details as you can recall of that experience, letting
the associations flow, knowing that one association will trigger the next; you’ll be surprised by
the richness of your cluster. Remember feelings, sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes. Cluster
until you have the sense that you have a focus and a sense of where and how to begin.
3. Now write your vignette in ten minutes or so, from the point of view of the adult looking back
on this experience. Begin your vignette with “I remember…” and stay in the past tense while
telling your story. As you write, occasionally refer to your cluster for direction for details.
[Note: vignettes are short, evocative pieces of writing that capture a moment in time.]
4. When you have finished, read aloud what you have written, making any changes you feel
would improve the whole.
5. Now do an about-face: retell your story in a second vignette from a radically different point of
view: of you as that child having that particular experience. Write in the present tense, as though
it were happening to you now. Eliminate “I remember…” Instead become that child in
imagination as you write, recording your story, your feelings, your experience, as though you
were there at that very moment, experiencing, feeling, doing, saying. Quote conversation if you
wish. Refer to your cluster for direction and details; you may be surprised to discover that some
of the details that did not get into the first vignette are finding their way into the second.
6. When you have come full circle, reread aloud what you have written and make whatever
changes you think will improve the sound of the whole.
After Writing
Now read both versions aloud again and simply notice the differences. Re-entering
childhood in imagination probably brought you much closer to a sense of receptivity and
innocence than did the recall from the adult’s point of view. Natural writing stems from this kind
of immersion in whatever subject you are writing about.