Creative Restraint

I am obsessed with the idea of creative restraint. That’s when you could place an infinite number of objects or ideas together—but choose just one.

You display one modest thing.

That less often says far more.

In visual art, it’s all quite obvious. But what about in writing? Creative restraint has a role to play there too—only, subtler. It relies on choosing words to disinclude, so the few remaining can shine electric.

He nervously puffed cigarettes, lighting one from the end of the other.

She could use an ax and disliked a lazy person.

In dark moods, his profanity was shattering

A sybarite with a pistol in her handbag.
Will smiled his flayed smile.

Ferociously precise debates

Meaningless suffering.

Vulnerability hangover.

Ersatz companion.

Petrodollar.

Though being restrained doesn’t always mean being concise. Some authors exhibit restraint in the worlds they build. Take Tolkien. Gandalf doesn’t fly about like a superhero. He taps stones and whispers notes to moths. 

It’s magical, but it isn’t showy.

Restraint is knowing when not to elaborate. In On Writing Well, William Zinsser peppers his instruction manual with delightfully restrained little one-sentence digressions like, “After all, there is a connection between the very young and very old; they’re nearer their origins.” 

Bask in that. He doesn’t explain further.

At the height of their powers, a writer can use creative restraint to insert one single word that conveys the entire topology of their personality—in Benjamin Dreyer’s case, “utterly.”

The application in our work is obvious, isn’t it? Creative restraint narrows the reader's field of focus. If we’ve chosen the words artfully, we can light a chemical reaction in their mind.

At work, I welcome properly set constraints. Just as a writing prompt helps by narrowing the infinite cone of possible directions to just a few, creative constraints allow you to pan the great Archimedes disc of your attention to one idea—and set it aglow. 

And like Archimedes’ fulcrum, you really can move the world. Consider these words:

The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way; The name that can be named is not the constant name.

That’s from a translation of the Dao De Jing, which for two thousand years, has tipped hundreds of millions of readers into the pool of self-reflection.

Set constraints for yourself and your writers and you too can make magical use of your precious few pixels.

Fenwick Principle

♟️ Creative Restraint

We believe constraints inspire creativity, and to be our most creative, we must understand those limits from the start. Not only do we not mind a frame, but we celebrate it. Without it, we’d be lost.

How to apply today's principle

Apply this constraint: For your next article, you can only use one sentence and one image to convey the whole idea. Try with a friend. See what emerges.

In the next issue

Why writing and design should always be intertwined. 

Inside Fenwick

Our new brand is coalescing around a creatively restrained visual metaphor.

Worth reading

More Sonder, Please. A nice meditation on how to make work writing not achingly boring.

A nice, flexible brand system. The characters also work as cutouts.

Some really interesting photo shoots.

A series about nothing? Nonetheless compelling.

I’m obsessed: Why follow your fixations.

TikTok remix or robbery? A delightful long read with compelling imagery.

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