How to get a Blackbelt in Writing - Part 10 - Power

This week in my writing I've been angsting...trying to understand how to write powerfully, so I can pull the reader along and make them feel what I want them to feel. It's not easy. (For me, anyway. I'm quite pragmatic.)
    In martial arts, when you first begin, your throws have no power and you're trying hard to copy exactly what your sensei does and how he/she does it. Quite frankly, you're crap and your partner is doing all the work. You're doing well to move your foot to the right place. It's physically impossible to master the subtleties because you haven't yet mastered the gross movements. Every movement is bigger than it needs to be. Every punch is obvious to your partner. You're just going through the motions, copying what the blackbelts do as best you can, not understanding how to move people.
    If someone attacked you a few weeks after your first martial arts lesson - or perhaps even a year after -  you'd probably revert to instinct and flail wildly at them. If you did manage a throw or a lock or a punch, it wouldn't be as strong and centred as someone who had been training for years. 
    That's what practice and learning is FOR. The more you learn, the more you practice, the more powerful and effortless your martial arts becomes. Your training partner how HAS to go with your throw, or risk a broken or dislocated arm. You will also adapt it to suit your own physical quirks and capabilities. Your art will become uniquely yours, in subtle ways.
    As a writer, most of us begin by writing derivatively. Rehashing things we loved as a reader. We'll often hit people over the head with preachy themes. Or have no theme at all, so the work seems flat and has no power to resonate. We write in cliches and overused tropes. We write obvious, predictable plotlines and shallow characters in obvious, predictable ways, not realising they've been done to death. We're just spilling words without understanding how we want to move the reader. Or how to write powerfully.
    Then you learn the things you didn't know about. Things like story structure - the shape of stories - and how to use that to build tension. Things like how to interweave theme and character arcs to help readers relate to characters. Or you start to understand tropes and how to subvert expectations in ways that both surprise and delight jaded readers. 
    Once you get your head around the large-scale movement and braided elements of a story - plot, character arc, theme - then you start to work on scene-level techniques. How to create tension within the scene, between characters, or with setting. How to set mood. How to make the reader want to keep reading past the end of the chapter. How to write in ways that resonate with the reader and immerse them into your make-believe world.
      How to write powerfully, in your own voice.
    But it's a work in progress. Forever, as far as I can tell. And it seems to follow the graphical representation of the rule of diminishing returns. It's a steep learning curve to start with, then it flattens out and you learn in tiny increments and feel like you're getting nowhere.
    It's only when you look back to the very beginning that you realise how far your writing has come. Or your martial arts.
    It's only when you re-read your early work that you cringe and realise how clumsy it was.
    But that's what learning is all about. No-one's perfect to begin with. But everyone can be powerful, if they are willing to learn, practice, and apply that knowledge.

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