Feb 22 2009
The Magic’s in the Detail
Let me give you a sentence:
The animal affected him.
Okay, so, what do you imagine? What animal is it? How did it affect him? Come to think of it, who the hell is he?
You see, without giving a reader true detail, you leave the readers with way too much free space, way too much to imagine. And that’s scary. Even if we add a little detail, say, to let readers know that the animal was “fearsome,” or “pathetic,” we still aren’t showing the reader anything.
A textbook I’m currently using claims that when we recall an event, we tend to recall how we felt when something happened far more than the details of the event. While that helps us move on with some sort of meaning in our own lives, that tendency of ours doesn’t help us show anyone else how the impact of the event affected you. And we readers need to feel such things for ourselves, not be told what to feel.
Now, if I change the sentence, say, to something like this…
Spreading his hands along the greyhound’s side, Ray felt its cold flesh stretched over jutting ribs. He didn’t have to be a veterinarian to know the dog had starved to death.
I didn’t show Ray sobbing, or tell anybody he was sad, but the event would conjure similar sorts of feelings in the reader. Will every reader feel the same way? Of course not, but I’m not seeking uniformity of feeling, but depth of feeling, and readers will feel more if they have a concrete association to the events. Telling them how to feel will only distance them from the action.
What if I tried something different:
Jack woke slowly from a harsh dream, reaching out an arm as if to save himself from drowning. His hand landed on a slick, rounded sort of tube. And he still felt like he was drowning. His lungs burned; his neck felt tight. What was wrong? He reached for his neck, and found, instead, more of the slick tubing, heavy, tighter than a neck brace. It was Samson, his roommate Keith’s boa constrictor. “Keith!” He tried to gasp, tugging at the murderous snake until it loosened its grip and slithered down off the bed.
A totally different situation, yet again I didn’t tell anybody what to feel. Just detail, detail, detail.
Now I’ll let you try it. Here are a few lame sentences. Make them into something brilliant…and remember, show us the scene instead of telling us what to feel:
1. She touched him.
2. The place jogged my memory.
3. He didn’t know what to do with the situation.
You can also try out a new version of the sentence way up at the top…
Go on! Be brilliant! And all of you folks who come and read the blog but never write anything, now’s the time to chime in and impress me.
Pre - He lowered his rifle. The deer stared directly at him, his rack gorgeous and well worth the price of a bullet, but he couldn’t do it. There was a certain dignity in those eyes, a quiet peace and he couldn’t be the one to shatter it. All of the sudden, a pasttime he had always enjoyed and never questioned seemed tawdry and senselessly violent. That was life and he understood that now as he hadn’t before.
1. He’d never spoken to her, talked to her. His first encounter was with her battered body. As a coroner, he knew about keeping objectivity, a separation from the victims he examined daily, a separation he needed for his own sanity. But, sometimes he couldn’t do it. As he documented her half-healed bones and pushed gloved fingers through her shattered skull, as he found the abrasions, contusions, scars, some from years before, he felt tears threaten his vision and his voice shake on the recorder. That one little person could have lived so long with so much torment. Poor baby.
1 and 2. The green of the trees beckoned spring, so he opened the window to the scent of honeysuckle. All at once, he wasn’t a grown man driving through scenic country to his mother’s deathbed. He was a kid, climbing trees, skinning his knees, laying on his back beneath an old elm, sucking on honeysuckle and enjoying the same dappled sunlight he drove through now. His mother then had been hale and hearty, always ready with a hug and a glass of lemonade. Now, he knew, she was just a shell, who didn’t even know his name, his face. He should have been here more, but to see her lose identity, to see the spirit dull in her clouded eyes, shook him to the core. He rolled the window back up, grieving for the woman he had already lost.
1&2&3. He hadn’t thought when he dived in. He’d seen her just before she’d jumped from the bridge, but he hadn’t moved until she was in the air. Now, she lay on the bank, pale, wet, tracks on her arms, shadows under her closed eyes. She wasn’t breathing and part of him wanted to try to breathe life into her. After all, he’d gone in to save her, didn’t he? But, he could remember an afternoon of his own where he’d spent hours face to face with his daddy’s pistol, years ago. He hadn’t pulled that trigger, but it had been years before he had stopped regretting his forbearance. True, his life was different now, but would it be for her? He looked in her face and saw his own tormented youth. Did he have the right to throw her back into the life she had tried so hard to escape? Was there not an alternative?
Yep, I’m an overachiever. I love these kinds of exercises.
Pretend I used “senselessly” instead of “senseless” in my “pre” item, please. *Sigh*
I changed it for you, Stephanie. And the stuff is BRILLIANT! I obviously need to provide these little exercises more often.
I really like them too. I like limitations placed on me, so that I have to work within a more restricted construct. More exciting that way. Perhaps that’s why I like time limits (24-hour plays) and structure (sonnets, haiku)…
Thanks for writing in… hopefully you will inspire others to do the same.
I could not possibly mind any less! Please, please (wait, do I sound like I’m begging?)…
I’ve already got some other possible activities in process… but thieve away on Thursday. Maybe we’ll get a tag team thing going.
Don’t know that my brain will clear enough to play today bt I WILL try sometime soon
Dang IT!
logged into wrong account… tis flit (not kid of flit)
Please, do, Flit… Hopefully I’ll have some exercises that allow you to respond without taking too much of your time.
Very, very cool, Richard! I’ll have to check out your site…