On Adding Constraints To Your Art

Learn when, where, and how to impose constraints onto your own work.

I had reason to get drunk and high recently, something I rarely do these days. It made me think of a friends pursuit of art just as I was going to bed. I shot off a half-cocked idea to him. This will be a more fully-cooked exploration of the idea I was trying to present to this man the other night.

Rick Rubin’s principle of using constraints to create great art is a genuinely important idea and the reason I deeply respect the man. I think the ideas in The Creative Act: A Way of Being are essential if you wish to make great art.

Credit: Alexander Krivitskiy

Once you internalize this idea of constraint, you can take the second step and attempt to learn when, where, and how to impose constraints onto your own work. Natural constraints are incredible, but oftentimes the artist must add some of their own as well. This is how you bring forth order from the chaos of your artistic ambitions. This is how you make great art.

How?

Let’s say we are designing a screenplay of some sort, for a production of some sort. We think to ourselves, “I will follow Joseph Campbells Hero With A Thousand Faces for my screenplay.” Seems pretty good. Only one problem, ALL worthwhile storytelling necessarily complies with this structure (more on that in another post). You’ve identified a natural pre-existing constraint; not imposed a new one.

So you haven’t added a constraint, you’ve just acknowledged one that was already present before you ever opened your Macbook. Adding a constraint would be something more like, “I will force my screenplay into a homeric beat and structure at every level. I will force my story to mirror that of Achilles in The Iliad, even in the particulars in some metaphorical way when possible.”

Now, choice of such a constraint is ultimately an aesthetic practice of taste and judgement. And whether your work soars or not, that will ultimately be a matter of whether you choose your constraints correctly or not. And the creator of the art himself is best placed to choose his constraints. But I think many need to be reminded to seek out the strictures of constraint and thus allow their creativity to truly bloom.

This is what I meant to convey in the text. Perhaps I could have phrased it as a question. “What constraints have you chosen for your ambitious project? As relates to the story itself, perhaps you might consider {insert bad random idea in order to inspire a better one in the artist}.”

As for me, I have constrained myself to 500 words this morning. Do you prefer this version of me? Will the algorithm?

Thanks for reading.

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