Found Material

By JD FitzRoy

Writing is a lengthy, time-consuming craft of patience, focus, and resilience. Balancing narrative sculpting with every-day distractions is tricky. Inspirations, note taking, organising research, and the not-so-simple act of weaving all these into something that flows, will always be hard but fun.

Much like playwright Colin Teevan, whose historical dramas required research kept in separate box-files, many works will require a great deal of study. Quick access to highlighted details, newspaper cuttings, book scans or even physical materials from an era or for general inspiration. Much as an artist or designer might fill a mood-book with patches, colours, photos or other reference material, this process can act as a mode of transportation, of translation for the writer inventing their narrative world.

But with found material, something altogether different takes place. The process of taking an object or text and editing or crafting it to be something else can be destructive and transformative. This is a fascinating process. An active mechanism to re-shape and reflect upon old materials, perhaps putting a new light on old subjects.

It could find an abstract way to discuss complex or important themes like poet Stephen Willey’s ‘Mirror Flag’. To find a new kind of relationship in communicating with the reader. To repurpose the themes or subtext and find a new, transformative or perhaps even subversive message. Or perhaps simply to be playful, using found materials to add a bedrock of symbology, text or graphical details to amplify a character or scene.

An example might be to take the dry technical text relating to weapons of war, redacting sections and adding layers to counterpoint technical jargon with the consequences of war. A new perspective formed from the historical context, becoming metatextual or symbolic as something altogether new. In this sense, an old piece with one message can be modified to also contain a counterpoint or highlight something contemporary.

So perhaps if you are struggling with a creative project, take a page, or a photo and transform it into something new. Take something inspirational, subvert or otherwise add a layer or modify it into something new.