On Hypnotic Writing (Article)

On Hypnotic Writing by sleepingirl

Content warning: This writing is explicitly and implicitly hypnotic. It contains suggestions about reading, writing, and learning, and experiencing trance in different vanillish ways. It is not explicitly sexual except in a possibly hypnofetishistic sense, and discusses a little bit about intimacy.

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I am endlessly grateful whenever someone tells me that I’m able to write about hypnosis and capture it when it seems so hard to grasp. It is the highest praise, for me -- hypnosis is so unique in a way we are all familiar with, but struggle to describe. It is a nominalization, a noun that describes something that is not an objective thing, not something we can hold in our hands. That I can come close and evoke that sense is something I am so proud of.

So I am grateful, yes.

But not really surprised.

Because I am intimately aware of how to use language to get someone’s brain where I want it to go. I am a hypnotist, and I like to think of myself as being a fairly effective one.

This is a hypnotic writing about the relationship between hypnosis and writing.

Really, all writing is hypnotic in a sense. There is a reason that one of the examples we use to describe hypnosis is the idea of becoming absorbed in a book. But it’s not just that familiar idea of absorption that is hypnotic; it is the very nature of following, of approaching a piece with curiosity and interest, of how we process differently when we are reading something, of how human communication is made up of suggestion.

Of course, that was all suggestive language. This is, too. I’m using my place of authority as an author and relating concepts to influence the way you frame reading and writing. And I’m telling you about my intent, which gives you a certain context for how to read, although that’s not something you have to exert effort on -- it’s something that just happens when your perspective changes, even slightly.

I’m doing this very overtly here to spell out the motivations and theory involved in writing suggestively. Sometimes I write for myself, and I’m hyperfocused on my own responses. But the author’s mindset, from my perspective, is also sometimes about considering the reader, what the reader is thinking, feeling, hearing, seeing. It is just like being with a subject, that quality of attention, the same way I feel my own words flow but get into a space where I am associating closely with the other person. In hypnosis, it’s easy to display that kind of attentiveness, easy for the subject to see my focus and find it compelling. In writing, it is a simple shift.

The other side of the coin is the focus from the subject on the hypnotist -- such a delicate, precious thing for me to feel, that awareness that makes me feel like I’m central in some way to their world. Writing is a fascinating thing in this, because neither the reader nor the writer have that unique direct feedback. In that way, it’s a little different from hypnosis where both partners are together, which I think about as being a highly responsive activity. As reader and writer, we both are grasping at something nebulous, not always focused on the person behind the words or in front of them, but what is happening is that we are presupposing that there is someone there, even if we aren’t consciously thinking about it. It’s interesting to consider how someone can be so responsive to a static piece, and how the author anticipates that response.

But what is it that catches the eye and the ear and the attention of a reader? Hypnotists are fascinated with language, but we can look at poetry as an example of classically potent use of it. When we say something is poetic, what does that mean? It captures us with rhythm, tone, pacing. It’s an organization of words that we parse in a specific way. It’s cultural and biological -- we learn these patterns and we study the effect they have on us.

Every word we read has feelings attached to it based on all the associations and history we have with it; reading the word “trance” makes us process a certain way, not necessarily reliving fully the exact feeling of depth specifically but creating an electrical change in the brain because it must parse the meaning and everything that evokes. Memories and associations have different qualities that we experience, sometimes blurry, sometimes detailed, sometimes a caricature of the original, sometimes full of familiar elements. It isn’t a linear gradient, but a full-fleshed space of different ways that we recall things or think about concepts. Oftentimes this is so nebulous we don’t really detect it, but when you pay attention with a little more care, you can realize the deep structure behind the words, even get caught in one specific concept trying to work out all the different ways it makes you feel, all the different ideas it connects to. When you think about the word “trance,” what do you notice?

We do this unconsciously with so many words when we read something. It’s the connections between the words and the ability to relate one idea to another to another that makes good writing so effective. It is not just the meter, although it is certainly that too, but it’s the skillful associations in the reader’s mind that get drawn upon. “Reading the word ‘trance’ makes us process a certain way, not necessarily reliving fully the exact feeling of depth specifically but creating an electrical change in the brain because it must parse the meaning.” The word “trance” relates to the word “depth.” The word “depth” can be stretched to connect to the word “change”. The word “brain” ties it together thematically and helps to strengthen that association. The relationship between these concepts is what is being used to absorb someone, not just one word or the next, but the pathways between them, creating a sense of narrative that the mind meanders through. Those connecting words matter, too -- implying causality, being purposefully vague to account for range of experience, relating the reader’s experience.

Novelty is important -- the feeling when someone describes something in a way you’re not familiar with, not thinking of; the “oh” moment. Sometimes I talk about trance as being something delicate and ethereal, a feather-light touch to the mind that causes a thickness, fogginess of the air, something that you are able to breathe, something that has weight yet has a quality of weightlessness that is impossible to touch. Even if you’ve thought of trance like this before, even if you’ve heard words like this, it’s how I’m talking about my thoughts and experiences and relating it to you; you filter it through my lens, and it becomes novel. It makes your brain process in a new way, which is such a hypnotic thing: Expanding the ways that someone thinks, changing cognition.

There is a quality of ambiguity that permeates my language, too. Ambiguity, of course, is well-discussed within hypnosis, Ericksonian, connotations of tricksy play. I use nominalizations so much, I talk extensively about certain things in ways that makes it hard to put a finger on them. I like to imagine it sometimes as making it difficult for the mind to fully settle on something, grasping at something liquid, and very importantly needing to find some way to process it, whether that’s existing in limbo, supplying its own meanings, discovering a new way to think about something… It’s ambiguous to talk about the connection between two people, like a reader and a writer, or a subject and a hypnotist. It’s ambiguous to say that something is happening but only leave hints as to what. It’s ambiguous even to try to describe how we group certain words in our heads depending on context.

By the same token, it’s about balancing and leading and cycling between collapsing and expanding that ambiguity. There are times I want to punctuate and be direct. Contrast is such an effective ingredient, and it’s the journey between uncertainty and certainty and back again that can become patterned and hypnotic. I move from talking about a metaphorical haze of trance and its incorporeal nature to talking about reality: The quiet body of a subject, the slightly tilted head, the fluttering eyes even down to each trembling eyelash. Even here, I use my words like a camera lens, telescoping in from the macro to the micro. I’m using a sense of motion to be compelling, despite talking about an understated, still scene, but I can just as easily shift to motionlessness. A full stop. A real sense of stillness that changes so minutely it is easier to focus on what isn’t moving than what is. Lovers trapped in a potent gaze. Eyes locked, breath held.

Certainly you can notice that from a purely linguistic view, I change tempo and rhythm when I want to shift. One of my primary tools is signalling. I like being able to be intentional about my shifts, especially when there are so many variables and elements to change. Some of our response to this sort of thing is innate -- good writing takes advantage of our natural responses to rhythm and words. A simple shift in cadence becomes a marker and causes the brain to shift perception; we don’t need to discuss what one tempo might mean over another, but be aware of how the change itself is mirrored in our readers. There is also poetic discussion of language that sounds to us to be inherently pleasant or unpleasant, based on the shape our mouths make when we sound them out. “Delicate” feels light; “stomp” feels rough. Of course, everyone has a slightly different way that they process words, but when I write and when I trance, I pay attention to the way words sound and feel, almost in a synaesthetic way, and use that as yet another piece that I can shift around and signal with. Just like in improvising music, sometimes you want to do something dissonant to lead to resolution, and that sound informs the mood.

I am really not always so concerned with how descriptive I have to be to get the reader to experience something -- different people have different experiences with visualizing, hearing sounds, feeling sensations. I am not even that worried about what there is to explore directly through the senses, unless it’s very important. That, I think about a lot; the concept of importance. I am much more of an emotional writer; that is, what drives me is what the people involved are feeling -- the subjects of the writing, and the reader.

I think about how someone feels when they sort of cautiously walk into a new restaurant for the first time with a partner, where their focus is; then, how they notice the walls minimally adorned, and the cushioned booths, and the bustle and din of other people perhaps becomes relevant. I strive to understand why it’s relevant -- perhaps that newness of the experience causes them to be more keenly aware of their surroundings before refocusing on the person they’re with. Even here, I only gave bare detail, purposefully ambiguous so the reader just has enough to work with. But sometimes the focal point is very sharp and clear -- in an intense moment of quiet, staring down at a cup of diner coffee, the way it even looks weak and thin, the spoon left in it, the intricate, faded designs on the saucer plate beneath it. Some aspects of these elements -- submodalities -- are significant, but others, like color in this case, can be left to spontaneously emerge in the reader’s mind or be left as unimportant. I don’t need to trip over every possible descriptor when the mind will do what it needs to do. The level of detail I explore has much more to do with how the passing of time feels, how narrow the focus becomes.

This idea is something we keep coming back to. Motion. Time. From here to there. Not only in the prose itself, but the idea of a journey as a whole. A story is more compelling when there is growth in some way, a dynamic experience, or something learned, a sense of time that’s passed. Sometimes our fantasy of hypnosis uniquely involves change. Change and growth can be the representation of an experience that was meaningful -- I think a lot about how I always feel just a little different after going into deep trance. When you first started reading this, I wonder what your expectations were? I don’t really know what will stay with you most from this piece and this journey, but time has passed, and so the way you think about these ideas has been influenced by what I’ve said. Sometimes, we’re not keyed in as much as we could be to notice these shifts; even in stories, we sometimes put effort into analyzing the growth of characters. But perhaps using the right attention, you can notice something interesting about how you think and feel right now as opposed to 2000 words ago.

And it’s easy enough to bring that back to a more functional state right now, right?