Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken
glass.’
Anton Chekhov
Despite the fact that I had always carried the knowledge within me that
I would one day become a writer, for many years I also believed that I couldn’t
write, or at least that I was incapable of producing any writing of value. Not
surprisingly, this caused a deep conflict within me and some confusion. Looking
for the reasons behind this fundamental lack of faith in my own ability, I
could cite low self-confidence or even low self-worth, and to a certain extent
this was true. However, the real reason can be found in the word ‘value’. I
believed that I could not produce anything of ‘value’ because I was quick to
measure my abilities against those authors I read and often loved in high
school. My schooling had given me a clear sense of what was valuable and what
wasn’t. Maths and Science were valuable, while Art and English were not. And in
English, the subject I was most drawn to, some authors were valuable while
others were not. At the time I didn’t question these hierarchical constructions.
I reveled in the glorious language of the authors I was studying, and in the
process became deeply engaged in exploring the underlying meanings of texts and
excited by their philosophical and spiritual explorations. Yet, while enjoying these
texts I also came to believe that I was not a good writer because I couldn’t match
D H Lawrence’s vocabulary, the intensity of his passion or the richness of his descriptions;
Shakespeare’s depth of understanding was beyond me, and while the philosophy of
Euripides was tantalisingly wise, I was too young to embrace it.
I was only able to liberate
myself from this belief when I began to understand that the depth of meaning I
was seeking was not found in language itself but in the spells we cast with words,
spells which create stories that reflect our experience and in the process
enable us to access a deeper knowledge. During the long process of letting go
of my expectations, I discovered that sometimes the simplest writing speaks the
most profoundly and that crafting a story is as valuable as writing vivid
descriptions. As Robert McKee wrote, in Story,
‘you
may have the insight of a Buddha, but if you cannot tell a story, your ideas
turn dry as chalk’. Over time I found my own voice as a
writer and with that, my own place in the spectrum of storysmith versus
wordsmith. Right in the middle. This has proved to be both a blessing and a
curse, as my writing bridges commercial and literary genres, leaving publishers
at a loss when deciding their marketing approach. Yet despite having liberated
myself from the misguided belief that for novel writers, description is more
important than story, and despite having my novels published, I am still astounded
when reviewers and readers comment (as they sometimes do) on the powerful
evocation of landscape in my novels or the vivid depictions of characters.
Description is one of the fundamental elements in storytelling. It is a
tool or a technique and over time I have learned how to use it. As with any
technique of writing, description is both a craft which can be learned and an
art which can only be discovered. Description has a function or a number of
functions and should be used purposefully. It grounds and sets the story in place and
time, builds character, mood, tension and suspense, shifts pace, adds
plausibility, provides metaphors and deepens thematic exploration. In any story
there is also a balance that should be sought, between action, reflection and
description. Too little description and the story remains floating, ungrounded.
Too much description and the story threads become lost. As Stephen King wrote
in, On Writing, ‘description begins
in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.’ When and how
to use description, and how much to use, is something we can only learn through
trial and error.
It is not always possible or even desirable to separate the art and the
craft of description, as the art is fed by an understanding of the craft. We
can only access the art of description by inhabiting the scene we are writing,
by living, breathing and tasting it, and by grasping its subtleties. What more
is this scene trying to tell us? How might it act as metaphor, as an expression
of a universal truth, a human emotion, a philosophical idea? The art of
description lies in what we make of a scene rather than what we observe.
Powerful description suggests so much more than the words themselves. Powerful
description layers and deepens our stories and their themes.
V. S Naipul once wrote, ‘Land is not land alone, something that simply
is itself. Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods
and memories.’ A reminder perhaps, that it is not possible to be objective in
our descriptions when even the decision to include or exclude information is a
subjective one. What we see inevitably changes according to our mood and our
memory. We see what we feel and we interpret what we see through our emotions,
our memory and the ideology which frames us and forms us. The way we describe
the world is a political act, always subjective yet more often than not,
heralding itself as objective. Yet most of the time it is unconscious. Most of
us can only see the world in the way we expect to see it, limited and framed by
our ideology, by our personal and cultural history, by our understandings. Perhaps
it is enough to be aware of the restrictions within which we interpret and
describe the world, in order to begin breaking free of these restrictions. In
any case, it is certainly useful to be aware of these restrictions in order to
make use of them when we describe the world through the eyes of our
character/s.
If we describe how ugly someone is but neglect to notice the beauty of
their expression, then we have missed an opportunity to deepen a character and
extend our understanding further. If we describe
walking into a beautiful landscape that is filled with the stench of death or
sewerage, we would most certainly need to call on our other senses in order to
explore the contradictions and build tension into our story. We see, feel, touch, taste, smell and intuit the
world around us (see Writing Between Worlds – Describing the Indescribable), and recording these sensations
helps us to bring our stories to life on the page. We also react to our
environment, and those reactions are personal as well as cultural. Stepping out
into the cold may be exhilarating for one person and terrifying for another, particularly
if that person carries a traumatic memory that relates to the cold, or is being
exiled from home, or simply, doesn’t have warm clothes. Returning to a
childhood home or an old school will arouse different emotions in us, according
to the memories we carry from our earlier time in these places. One person sitting
on an outcrop of rocks, high up on a hill, might experience a peaceful summer’s
day, the warm air sitting calmly in the valleys below, friendly voices calling
out to each other, the smell of cut hay, sheep dung. . . yet another person
sitting on that same rocky outcrop, might experience a day full of sinister
overtones, the shadows in the valley too dark, the voices of others harsh and
unfriendly, the sun burning. . . Through considering emotion, reaction and
memory as well as the physical characteristics of a place, we can begin to
build the tensions, the conflicts and the contradictions that will feed out
story and make our characters plausible.
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
wrote that ‘metaphors are a great language tool, because they explain the
unknown in terms of the known.’ With metaphor
we find ways of stepping beyond the limitations of language, of expressing
meaning without reverting to cliché or telling the reader what really needs to
be shown. If we describe a tiny plant struggling to grow through a crack in a
concrete pavement in a busy city street, it tells us something about the power
of nature over what is man-made. It also tells us about persistence and reminds
us that strength doesn’t always lie in might. Perhaps too, it might tell us
about a child growing up in a loveless family.
Nature acts as a powerful metaphor in storytelling. As Jung wrote in The Integration of the Personality, ‘all
the mythological occurrences of nature, such as summer and winter, the phases
of the moon, the rainy seasons. . . are symbolic expressions for the inner and
unconscious psychic drama that becomes accessible to human consciousness by way
of projection – that is, mirrored in the events of nature.’ In my novel, Flight, a journey into the wilderness in Tasmania is a metaphor for a journey inwards into the labyrinthine depths of the unconscious. Describing natures seasons in our stories also provides a deeper layer of meaning that links the cycles
of nature to human experience, a link that reminds us of our connection to all
life, and allows us to access and express universal truths.
We use description to provide information, to slow the pace, to build
tensions, to provide texture, to break up monotony, to establish mood, ambiance
and theme. But most importantly, description is a powerful tool that when used
well, enhances and deepens our writing, helping us to create a convincing
setting that transports the reader into the world of the story, enabling them
to suspend disbelief until the end. Description isn’t easy but mastering it is worthwhile
and rewarding. And the key to that mastery is in capturing detail, seeking
simile or metaphor and avoiding self-indulgence.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/
