The Myth of Talent

[Steerpike]

This article doesn't focus specifically on fiction writing, but it offers an interesting perspective on learning and practice v. innate talent.

Why Every Kid Knows Maths: The Myth of Talent

 

[CupofJoe]

I think the author conflates skill and talent as I understand them.
I like the idea of tiny increments - in fact in Team GB cycling "the aggregation of marginal increments" is the mantra [and getting rid of your inner chimp - but that is another email].

 

[Steerpike]

I think that's right as well, Joe. At least to a degree. I do think there is some innate talent for the arts, and through practice and incremental learning skill is developed. Someone with a great deal of natural talent can go a lot farther on that same level of skill, but all of us can learn to be skillful.

 

[Devor]

That's a pretty cool article with some interesting considerations behind them. I don't know about the basic presumption, though. It's entirely possible that artistic talent is not all the same with three year olds, but that the talent difference is surfacing in ways too subtle to pick up on and will just amplify over time.

I don't remember where I picked up this distinction, but I view talent as innate and skill as being trained. Skill can overtake talent, but there's no beating someone with both. I don't know how much talent exists in this way in the strictest sense, but I find it a helpful framework.

 

[Penpilot]

I don't remember where I picked up this distinction, but I view talent as innate and skill as being trained. Skill can overtake talent, but there's no beating someone with both. I don't know how much talent exists in this way in the strictest sense, but I find it a helpful framework.

I think this is where I stand too

 

[Sheilawisz]

I really have to disagree with that article!!

If that were true, then every Tennis club of the world would be producing Roger Federers and Maria Sharapovas all the time: All it would take would be to make common kids practice enough until they magically become Tennis legends =P

Practice is very helpful and necessary to become a master or expert in something, but that does not mean that Talent is a myth and that everything depends on practicing long enough...

 

[Anders Ämting]

See, I used to think like this. That "talent" is just a matter of doing something so much you eventually get good at it, to have an interest in what you are doing that pushes your forward. It's a nice thought, because non of us want to admit that maybe we are limited by our own talents and that some of us simply don't have what it takes to reach the top. But these days? I dunno...

...I know this guy on another forum. I doubt he hangs around here but I'd rather not use his name all the same. Anyway, this guy likes to draw. He's been drawing stuff for years now, and seems pretty enthusiastic about it. The rest of the forumites tend to encourage him by having him draw things for them. But one day a while back, I looked at his drawings and realized he's never really getting any better. His drawings are exactly as crude and unrefined now as they were several years ago. I mean, sure, he's better than someone who can't draw at all, but he's still not genuinely good. He has little grasp of anatomy, no defined style, he's terrible at layout and his drawing are so unexpressive, they just can't convey any real feelings. Worse, he thinks he can do all these things well - he seems to see his drawings as better than they are, because he simply isn't objective enough to see his own limitations. And it's not like he's just scribbling stuff down for fun; he specifically refers to it as practice. I just don't have the heart to tell him. It's just kinda sad, you know?

But here's the thing: He should have gotten better at this. Even if everything he does is wrong, even if he has the wrong technique and the wrong tools and the wrong attitude, he should have improved in some way through sheer practice by now. I've seen enough artist progress collages the know that he should be making some kind of noticable progress, but... he just doesn't seem to have the talent.

At one point I asked him to draw something for me. I wasn't expecting much but I thought that if I gave him very detailed instructions, I might get something half-decent out of it at least. But even after being told exactly what to do, it was as if he had no idea how to put it down on paper. After two or three attempts, his drawing still came out completely wrong.

By then I realized that I would actually be way better off drawing it myself - I'm seriously better at drawing than this guy, and understand, I'm hardly a skilled artist. I haven't been drawing properly for at least a decade, yet the rusty, mediocre drawing skills I aquired as a teenager with dreams of drawing my own manga are still superior to his, even though he keeps drawing stuff on a regular basis.

As a comparison, my younger brother is currently studying to become a professional cartoonist. When he started drawing for serious, he went from basic scribbles to way better than me in something like a year. No teachers, no instructions aside from whatever tutorials he could find online. Just one kid who decided he wanted to draw. That's talent.

 

[Devor]

As a comparison, my younger brother is currently studying to become a professional cartoonist. When he started drawing for serious, he went from basic scribbles to way better than me in something like a year. No teachers, no instructions aside from whatever tutorials he could find online. Just one kid who decided he wanted to draw. That's talent.

I mentioned above the whole Talent vs. Skill thing. But there's another perspective which I've only heard once, at a book signing for the Artful Edit, but it struck me and seems appropriate here.

But this thing that we're born with, which we call talent, isn't an ability, but rather, something more akin to good taste. We spend hours upon hours trying to grow as authors and artists and musicians creating garbage so that our abilities will grow to align with those tastes. Thus a person who draws simple lines might do something phenomenal with those skills, while another more skilled graphic artist might spend a lot of time and work developing something that still doesn't look right. His sense of good taste might not be as strong.