KITCHEN TABLE WRITERS

I’m Nina Milton, and this blog is all about getting out the laptop or the pen and pad to get writing. My blogposts are focused on advice and suggestions and news for writers, but also on a love reading with plenty of reviews, and a look at my pagan life, plus arts and culture. Get all my posts as they appear by becoming a subscriber. Click below right...

Thursday 14 March 2024

Pace Your Story – What Literary Pacing is all about

                                                               ......PACE is the timing by which the major events in the story unfold and by which the scenes are shown. Also the process of stretching out the big scenes by slowing down time and compressing offstage action (speeding up time) to match the reader’s emotional needs. This means that it might crawl along, feel crushed, or flow and slide like a slow river. It might then accelerate, thrusting forward, or hurtle like a booster rocket. Pace  is a tool that controls the speed and rhythm readers are pulled through  events. It refers to how fast or slow events in a piece unfold and how much time elapses in a scene or story. Pacing can also be used to show characters aging and the effects of time on story events.

We usually expect pace to be created from the action, but dialogue and even inner monologue can engender pace. A build-up of  pace and is mostly used to advance the action and create nail-biting  dramatic tension, while drop in pace will create a different mood...dreamy, thoughtful. A slower pace can also cleverly be used to delay the peak of the tension for as long as possible, teasing the reader and gaining an explosion of drama once that pace changes. The technique used is a process of stretching out, by slowing down time and compressing offstage action to match the reader’s emotional needs. As  James Scott Bell explains in Plot & Structure, ‘When you’ve got a handle on the trouble for your character… you are ready to stretch.  Go through the scene beat by beat… Take your time with each one’

The opening to a novel is a good place to announce to the reader the sort of pace they should expect. Pace should fluctuate, changing regularly, to create variety within a piece, but it's you – the writer and author of the piece – who decides what the pace should be and when it should alter.

As a writer of crime fiction, sometimes I want my reader to know there will be more pensive moments, even among the thrills. This opening is dreamy and contemplative, despite the subject matter and opens my second novel, where I use devises such as longer words, sentences and paragraphs, deep imagery, and expanded descriptions, upping the pace just a little with action and dialogue at the end; 



The retrieval was unceremonious and without dignity. The woman’s body was winched from the Dunball Clyce at 17.13, dripping with sluice-slime. The hip bones shone white against the sun and there were fish swimming in her belly.

    It had been the hottest day that summer. The mountainous heaps of sand and gravel at the Dunball Wharf Aggregate Works had dried out so completely that a choking dust rose from them. The waters below had heated until their reek oozed into the nostrils. No one wanted to move fast, and sounds were muffled, as if the late afternoon sun had thickened the air. 

    The two detectives had arrived as the body was trundling on the gurney over to the white tent where the pathologist waited like an adjudicator at some macabre contest. The woman was found stripped of any clothing and the technician had thrown a green sheet over her poor mutilated and rotting body for that short journey, but the gurney jerked as its wheels stuck to the walkway, which was so burning hot it was melting the policemen’s thick soles, and the woman’s head slid to the edge, her heavy locks falling free, as if she’d just unpinned them. Despite the river weed and silt, her hair was still glorious; as black as a nighttime lake, not tampered by bleach or dye. 

    Detective Sergeant Gary Abbott had stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and touched the woman’s hair, crying out like a distressed relative. 'Take care with her, for God’s sake!'   (On The Gallows, Midnight Ink Press)


On the other hand, I wanted a more foreful pace to open my fourth novel, although still I hold back a little;

     John Spicer was already waiting, when Larry drove down into Harper’s Coombe.
It was like a lover’s tryst – a lung-drying desire.
Larry pulled the old pickup to a halt behind John’s Audi and jumped out the cab. The ground was so soft he felt his wellingtons sink by inches.  Across the coombe there were patches of shining water, the start of little lakes.
    Bloody rain. It was never-ending. Even down here in the coombe, the wind behind it was throwing water into his face.
    He pulled the fur of his trapper hat down around his ears and went to the back of the pickup. Water pooled on the tarp, trickling down to the metal base as he shifted it, wetting the random items he carried. His fingers were slippy as he spun the combination lock. It was an old-fashioned document case, but it did the job. Empty, of course, because the previous money he’d carried home was now in a Second World War tin box, which had belonged to his father’s father and had previously held old documents and his sister’s first baby shoes. 
    Soon, he would buy a soft leather case with a laptop inside, slender as a slate tile.

As the action grows, I start using very short, active sentences, curtailed paragraphs, stronger verbs and sharper phrases;

    'You’ll need a tow,' Larry grunted. 'You’re in too deep.'
    He mashed his way to the pickup, his jeans stuck to his backside. Somewhere in the back was a bit of good rope they could use to get the Audi out of its predicament.                                            
    He shifted the briefcase to one side. It was still wide open, like a dog waiting for a treat.
    The bastard owes. 
    A double payment.
    Fucking feels sorry. 
    For me.
    Fuckhead.
    He’s in too deep.
    Bloody fluid fizzed inside his brain until it felt like it was oozing out of his eye sockets. He wiped them and looked at his hands. Nothing but mud and rain and hot, invisible tears.
    Blackmail is the bigger crime.
    The back of the pickup was littered with his stuff. Bits from the farm, bits for the car, a spare sack of layer’s pellets. He spotted the fat coil of blue rope towards the bottom and reached down for it. His hand knocked against his shotgun. 

At the end of this opening, a murder has been committed and I've already exhausted my reader, so I open the next section of the story with a much gentler pace; 




   All over Christmas, rain fell over the Somerset Moors – fast rain – hard. It splashed

into the canals and dykes, forcing up droplets, churning mud from the bottom. The waterways swelled, filled and spilled over roads and rail tracks, uprooting power lines as it spread.
    One morning I got up, booted the laptop up, and on every news site were images of my county, bogged with water. Floods were churning down village high streets, taking cars along for the ride, rising over the hedges. Families leaned from their bedroom windows as they waited for rescue. 
    My house escaped damage. The sluggish, smelly creek at the bottom of my garden moved up several gears, running swift and flush to its brim, but it didn’t reach the top of the gully. I was lucky. Most of Bridgwater had been built above the flood plain, but on the other side of the town, people were sandbagging their front doors.
    On the moors, a hundred square miles lay under shimmering water. In the deepest places only the canopies of bare trees and the roofs of churches jutted through the surface…and a few villages safely on the highest ground. These were islands in past times, and when they get cut off like that, it’s easy to believe the myths and legends of Somerset.
    How the county got its name because the Ancient Britons came here only in summer when the grass re-emerged from the waters, fresh, lush, virgin pasture for their flocks and herds.
    How Joseph of Arimathea sailed from the Holy Land after Jesus had died, landing his boat on Wearyall Hill where he planted his staff as a Christmas flowering tree.
    How early man built roundhouses on stilts and walkways to pass over the marshes.
    Once a week throughout the winter, I drove to Muchelney to visit an elderly client who liked a hand and foot massage, splashing my Vauxhall through surface water until I could go no further. Then I’d wait for the boat, a RIB that had become a bus service now Muchelney was an island again. I shared the boat with the postman, a local farmer, and the district nurse.
    When I stared out over the floodplains, I couldn’t help thinking that anything could be lost down there. 'You can’t see the bottom for the mud.'
      'It’s not just mud,' the nurse had said. 'Sewage, leaking chemicals. Dead animals.'
    'Even the worms are dead.'  (Through the Floodgate Midnight Ink Press)


I'm  slowing pace because I want to produce an absorbing read at this point. To help this, I focus on one subject in a prolonged way (for a crime fiction, at least!) Increasing pace can lose you that absorption, as you replace it with dramatic tension. So I used the rhythm of the writing to enhance the effect, with alliteration to highlight the watery theme and a repetitive start to some of the paragraphs, with 'how, how, how...' 


There are various ways to engender pace, including some quite small, but important adjustments:

    • To speed up pace, move more quickly over the parts which have no major impact on the character, especially minor common actions (preparing food, for instance), whilst focusing on any major action. 
    • To slow place, expand and dramatise outcomes, actions, especially minor actions (preparing food, for instance). 
    • To speed pace, use clipped dialogue, staccato words, shorter sentences, lots of full stops and short paragraphs. In screenwriting, minimise the scenes as you build-up tension. Use what you’ve learnt about about phonetic symbolism.
    • To slow pace, use longer words, words with a smoother feel, longer sentences and longer paragraphs. Use phonetic symbolism.
    • To speed pace, use the present tense. Reduce your use of the present participle (‘ing’ endings) and check you have not moved into the passive form.
    • To slow pace, try including the present participle and the perfect tense (he had seen her) within the simple past where this is might be effective.
    • To speed pace, take out most of the character’s thinking process. In acute scenes of action, this can be reduced to almost nothing. (This technique tends to be redundant in scriptwriting.).
    • To slow pace, allow the character to be reflective and record the thinking process. Use interior monologue, especially deep, unfiltered thought processes from the narrator.
    • To speed up pace, use snappy dialogue, snatches of free indirect discourse and no long speeches.
    • To slow down, delve deep into imagery and utilise a more dreamy mood.
    • To speed up, make images clear and precise, with sharp sights & sounds. Omit adverbs and avoid as many adjectives as possible
    • To slow, explain an outcome…use exposition rather than an active scene to describe something that has happened.
    • To speed up, avoid  ‘countersinking’, when the writer allows the actions implied in the story scene to become explicit – ‘let’s get out of here,’ he said, urging her to leave. You can countersink emotions, too, by allowing your character to give blatant and unnecessary clues to his own emotions…I laughed heartily as I told my news...and countersink action description…she rose from her chair and stood up.
    • To slow down, allow a little exposition, but be careful that this 'tell' doesn't replace 'show', but is there to do a job. 


Two further techniques can be used to vary pace.

  • Cliffhangers hold off the denouement of the scene ending. Some sub-genres of fiction have this as an accepted method of completing book chapters, and it’s particular useful in writing for children, while TV and radio series have employed this technique for many years. Delayed outcomes force readers to start the next chapter, and force viewers to make a note to watch again next week
  • Jump-cuts move from an unfinished scene to somewhere else entirely. This is a technique widely utilised by screenwriters, but novelists, non-fiction writers and other scriptwriters can use it too. For scripts, the jump-cut naturally shuttles to another scene. For prose, the jump can move into exposition, interior monologue, or backstory. It can also move to description, but do beware of the caution given above.  Be sure to jump back again, before the previous scene is forgotten.
  • Rapid-fire dialogue invigorates a scene. Pared-down dialogue has a natural velocity
  • Rapid-firing of situations and events, all occurring immediately, one after another will up the pace dramatically, especially if these events 'bare down' on protagonists.
  • Very short chapters, segments and added break-out parts, such as texts or newspaper headlines, turn up the pace. The reader digests them and passes through them smartly, giving the feeling of speed. 


Exercise

  • Experiment with slowing and speeding up the pace of your work.
  • Take a scene that you know is too slow and use some of the techniques to speed it up.
  • Now take a scene which you would like to be more contemplative or introspective and again, try some of the techniques to widen and deepen the voice.
Share your resulting writing by commenting on this blogpost!



Saturday 17 February 2024

The Beautiful Tau Banner of Lady Dai; Duchess of the Han Dynasty

 

  •  Xin Zhui, (better known as the Lady Dai)
    In 1971 some builders stopped for a smoke as they dug out an air raid shelter on a hill in Hunan, China. They were puzzled; as they dug deeper into the hill, the soil crumbled away as if it had  previously been disturbed. They lit their cigarettes and noticed that the matches burned with a deep blue flame. They might not have known that decomposition of human remains can release highly flammable gasses, but they left the site quickly, and reported their finding. 

    The outside cavity holding the three coffins
    When the archeologists arrived a few months later, they established that this was the resting place of a noble family of the Han dynasty. Two tombs, of the Marquis of Dai, who died in 186 BC,  and  a male relative, who may have been a son or brother, had been disrupted and robbed. But the final tomb, built circa 163 BC, for the Marquis's wife, Xin Zhui, (better known as the Lady Dai), was intact, and the archaeologists discovered  an opulent, spectacular and surprising interior. 
    One of the three inner caskets
  • The tombs were accessed via rectangular vertical shafts dug deep into the earth, a method originating from the bronze age. Lady Dai's funnel-like crypt contained more than 1,000 precious artefacts, including makeup, toiletries, lacquerware, and 162 carved wooden figures which represented her staff of servants. A meal was even laid out to be enjoyed by the 50 year-old duchess in the afterlife. In the central area lay three nesting coffins. Inside many layers of silk was the beautifully preserved mummy, wrapped in her finest robe, her skin still soft to the touch. The fact that she was quite corpulent, from her amazingly rich diet – scorpion soup was apparently a favourite – may have helped the quality of her ancient skin.
    An artefact found in the tomb
  • The outermost coffin was a plain box. Inside were the three nesting coffins painted with  hugely expensive lacquer in black, red, and white. This protected from water damage and bacterial invasion. I cannot imagine how awed the archeologists must have been as they steadily revealed each coffin.
  • But even more magnificent than all of this, was the banner that lay on top of the innermost of the coffins. This almost intact piece of beautifully painted silk would have been part of the procession of the Marquise  to her resting place. And on it were full and intricate instructions for her soul. The banner instructed Xin Zhui's spirit how to reach her paradise
  • This T-shaped silk banner was over six feet long and in excellent condition for 2000-year-old fabric. It is a very early example of pictorial art in China.
  • I first encountered this breathtaking story of life in Ancient China at a lecture given at Lampeter University, in West Wales. Fabric specialist had travelled from across the country to learn more about Lady Dai’s banner, its art and its messages. 
  • The banner is divided into four horizontal sections. In the first, Lady Dai is pictured standing on a platform, leaning on a staff, wearing an embroidered silk robe. Framing the scene are white and pink sinuous dragons, their bodies looping through a 'bi' (a disc with a hole,  representing the sky). This section is remarkable in itself, as it is the earliest example of a painted portrait of a specific individual in China.
  • In the section below this scene, sacrificial funerary rituals are portrayed in a mourning hall. Tripod containers and vase-shaped vessels for offering food and wine stand in the foreground. In the middle ground, seated mourners line up in two rows.
  •  On a mound in the  between  two rows of mourners there are the patterns on the silk that match the robe Lady Dai wears in the scene above this.
  • Lady Dai’s banner helps the modern world understand the religion she followed two millennia ago, and how artists began to represent depth and space in early Chinese painting. They made efforts to indicate depth through the use of the overlapping bodies of the mourners. They also made objects in the foreground larger, and objects in the background smaller, to create that illusion of space.Diagram of Funeral Banner of Lady Dai (Xin Zhui), 2nd century B.C.E., silk, 205 x 92 x 47.7 cm (Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha)
  • Above and below the scenes of Lady Dai and the mourning hall, are images of heaven and the underworld. Toward the top, near the cross of the “T,” two men face each other and guard the gate to the heavenly realm. Directly above the two men, at the very top of the banner, is  a deity with a human head and a dragon body.
  • Dragons and other immortal being look down from the sky to a toad standing on a crescent moon flanks the dragon/human deity and  what looks like a three-legged crow within a pink sun. The moon and the sun are emblematic of a supernatural realm above the human world. In the lower register, beneath the mourning hall,  the underworld is painted with a red snake, a pair of blue goats, and an earthly deity, holding up the floor of the mourning hall Two giant black fish cross to form a circle beneath him. The beings in the underworld symbolize water and earth, and they indicate an underground domain below the human world. 
  • Body of Lady Dai with mourners (detail), Funeral banner of Lady Dai (Xin Zhui), 2nd century B.C.E., silk, 205 x 92 x 47.7 cm (Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha)
  • While other mummies tend to crumble at the slightest movement, Dai is the most well-preserved ancient corpse yet to be discovered. Unlike most of the mummies found in ancient Egypt, her organs were all intact –  there was still blood in her veins—Type A. This allowed pathologists the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform an autopsy on the preserved body, 2,100 years after her death, ultimately giving us a firsthand glimpse at how the richest of the rich lived during the Han Dynast and is arguably the most complete medical profile ever compiled on an ancient individual.
  • Thanks to her luxurious lifestyle, the Marquise had osteoporosis, arteriosclerosis, gallstones, liver disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol. She must have been in pretty constant pain from a fused spinal disc.
  • Immediately after she was exposed to oxygen for the first time in 2,000 years, her body started to break down, which caused some of the visible decay apparent in the photograp of her mummy at the top of this blog.  Her body and belongings were taken into  the care of the Hunan Museum, where she now lies in state.

Thursday 8 February 2024

PLOT OUTLINE OR SYNOPSIS; Which do you need?

 Plotlines and Synopses 

People often get muddled when referring to the plot outline or synopsis of their story. There is a huge difference between the two. Until you are ready to market your work, don’t attempt to write a synopsis, and refrain from calling any outline you write a synopsis, even in your own head. 


 A synopsis or proposal should not be written until after the work has been completed (at least in the first draft)  – it’s the overview that other people want to see, not something that you should work from. 


Meanwhile, as you create the work, you’ll need an outline of some kind (even if you are the most avid of ‘character-led’ writers). You can call this a plotline, plot outline, plot map, story outline...whatever you like, so long as you don’t call it a synopsis!



Try this Kitchen Table Exercise 



  • 3Draw a representation of an ECG – the line your heartbeat takes electrically – on a sheet of paper. (You don’t have to be medically exact!). 
  • This pattern is also an excellent plan of a good plot.
  • Try to slot the plot of your story (short or long,) into the cardiogram.  
  • There should be peaks or climaxes, where the action and drama rise to a point, and resting phases, which are absorbing to read but allow a rest between the action. 
  • As we get to the middle of the story, the heart rate should increase, and the peaks shoot a little higher, reaching their highest point towards or at the end, just as your reader's heartbeat should increase as they 'get into' your story and begin to turn the pages faster.
  • Take a look at what you've got. Did your plot go up and down?
  • If you have to admit your story is in asystole, (a flat line), your story is as dead as the patient on the table. 
  • If it seems to have fibrillation (too fast a heartbeat), you may have too much plot and not enough character development; your reader will want ‘resting phases’ as they read, which is why the pattern has peaks and troughs.
  • NB: this is NOT your plot outline. It's an exercise to lead you into creating one.
  • Now try Creating a Map of Your Story

 Creating a Map of Your Story

A plot is not just any map; it’s a treasure map. There are instructions for the reader at the beginning, danger (or at least tension) along the journey and a wealth of satisfaction at the end. There are more ways to map your plot than there are...well...plots! 

  • Here is a list of just a few of these below:
  • Fragmentary notes that jot down the ideas as they come to you. This might include:
  • snatches of dialogue
  • descriptive passages 
  • character sketches 
  • possible themes
  • thoughts on how the story might work.
  • A designated note book, with the title of the story on the front. At first, it will contain the fragmentary notes, but as these build up, you will include further techniques, such as those listed below.
  • Diagrammatic forms might include:
  • Webmaking; jotting previous ideas (including characters and their traits) all over a large sheet of paper, then seeing how they join up.
  • Clustering; writing one phrase (or the title of the story) in the centre of a large sheet of paper, then using a ‘freewrite’ technique to create clusters of further thoughts. Each new thought comes out of a previous one, until it is exhausted. You then return to the first phrase and start again, so filling the paper. Afterwards, watch for the important clusters to jump out at you.
  • Mindmaps, which spring out of brainstorming
  • Character sketches, look for events, obstacles, opposition and conflicts to shape plot
  • Lists that you might develop as the idea developes
  • Timelines are useful, especially for longer stories or stories that use flashback a good deal. In this case, why not create a timeline of the plot and a timeline of the story (see the illustration above)
  • Index cards, where your ideas can be shuffled around in front of you
  • A pegboard or whiteboard technique, where you put things up, move things round and rub unwanted ideas out.
As you write, keep  asking:
  • What is my character’s goal and how important is it to them?
  • Who is my character’s opponent, and how much of a threat are they?
  • What are my character’s obstacles, and how am I going to space them out in the novel, so that there can be peaks and lulls in the dramatic tension?
  • Have I at least an idea about the final conflict, and how it may lead to a satisfying conclusion for my character?
Creating an Arc

However you start to gather ideas, most writers then want to pin these fragmentary thoughts to some sort of template or plotting device.  In his book Writing a Novel, Nigel Watts recommend the ‘eight point arc’, suggesting…every classic plot needs to pass through eight phases… Here are his eight points; 
  • Stasis; the base reality, and the ‘status quo’ of the story. A ‘day like any other’ (although it might also contain conflict or opposition) 
  • Trigger; an event, beyond the control of the protagonist, which turns the stasis from average to exceptional
  • The Quest; not just about fantasy; the trigger will generate the quest which may take up
    the journey of the story
  • Surprise; this is often an obstacle or conflict, but it could be pleasant; the heroine meeting the hero, for instance. A surprise definitely helps ‘middle slump’ 
  • Critical Choice; a brick wall in the protagonist’s path means they have to make decisions. This is where causality is most necessary, otherwise the story can descent into chaotic coincidence.
  • Climax; in literary theory, this is any great moment of intensity – the peak of a conflict situation. Watts give this example of the middle three phases…if the surprise is a burglar…the critical choice of the householder is self-defence, the climax is the burglar being hit over the head…
  • Reversal; a story is better for having reversal, sometimes call the peripeteia in literary theory. Watts points out…if the climax does not result in reversal, a question is raised: is there a purpose to the climax other than as spectacle? Of course, you can have spectacle in your story, but it is plot event, rather than plot development. 

  • Resolution; the completion of the plot, where a new status quo is established.
Aristotle and Freytag

It's probable that Watts developed his 8-point arc from the very first thinking on creating a structured plot. That may go as far back as Aristotle, who
 used the the term 'mythos' to denote plot and describing it as ‘the arrangement of incidents’. 

By studying Aristotle and the Greek playwrights, Gustav Freytag developed a plot pyramid in the 19th century, dividing story into five dramatic elements.

A Introduction
B Rise, or rising movement
C  Climax
D  Return or falling movement
E Catastrophe

The pyramid looks like this––   
                         


Gustav Freytag, from Die Gartenlaube (1886)
Be aware that a plot-based triangle  does not have to have the perfect symmetry suggested above. A crisis could arrive sooner, and often arrives further on in a story.

Almost all plotting structures and methods have evolved from Freytag’s Pyramid, but over time the original terms have slightly changed, especially our approach to the ending, ‘catastrophe’, refers mostly to a dramatic tragedy, and although you may certainly be writing one of those, it’s also possible you’re aiming for a happier end. 

Nowadays, you’re more likely to see:

A) Exposition, Stasis, or Ground State
B) Complication or Inciting Incident
C) Crisis 
D) Anticlimax or reversal
R Resolution or dénouement.

However, triangles beats, point-arcs etc, are not the only way to plot. Here's three  ideas that might suit your story better; 

  1. Storyboarding. Film directors assemble a series of photographs or drawings on a storyboard, moving these pictures about, rejecting some and adding others until the relationships between them, and their relevance to the story, are clear. Writers can make storyboards in the same way. Use a large sheet of paper or new unlined notebook –use pin men if you’re not a natural artist.
  2. Start with the characters It’s an excellent idea to plot through your characters, and you can do this as you write, but the problem will arise that you won’t quite know what will happen next, and you can trail down the wrong route for a long time without realizing – although some of these trails need to happen – they are a form of plotting in themselves. You might like to look at the alternative methods of creating plot maps above, to use alongside this method.
  3. Fruitcake. Take a bowl, stir in a freewritten sentence– one that will grab you. Add handfuls of the ideas in your head – however feeble – while you continue to stir your freewrite. Pour in any of the list above of "Fragmentary notes". Feed in settings, themes, obstacles, problems, new characters, more problems and emotions. Keep writing. Add other problems. Open up to other possibilities. Keep stirring, and bake.

Finally, don't forget Cause and Effect 
Causality is a massive part of the plotting mechanism which will have a riveting effect on the plotting of your stories. Readers love to see the ‘story build up’, as events, thoughts, behaviour etc., set up in the early moments of the story, connect, build and develop the story. Causality is linked closely to the motivation and personality traits of the characters. As the plot unfolds causality results in a process of significant change which gives the reader regular emotional hits, until the conclusion is revealed. Using causality, a plot builds up from incidents that impact on one another. These incidents should not be a series of unrelated events. Causality will help you get a patterned, driven, tight plot that takes the reader on a journey via the motivation of the characters. Causality also helps you guard against implausibility; if the character’s motivation and conflicts are always directed by cause and effect, the writing will be far more believable. It is by combining causality with conflict that the strongest plot affects are gained. Conflict allows the ‘screws’ of cause and effect to tighten towards the end of the story. The reader knows all the complexities will be sorted, but they can’t for the life of them see how. A good ending will generally spring that sort of surprise; the ‘how’ of making a satisfactory and (if the author wants) happy ending, where the character has survived his ordeals, and learns and grows as a person. Using a learning/growing outcome often helps the plausibility of the story, and leads to a satisfying end, because the main character will have mostly sorted things out for himself and be responsible for most of the good outcomes. 

How is your plot going?
 Do let KitchenTableWriters know, by talking to us all through our comments page. Look forward to hearing from you! 
     



Monday 22 January 2024

Descriptive Writing: The Truth is in the Zoned-In Detail


The truth is in the Zoned-in Details


In her marvellous book Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose says this; 

Details are what persuade us that someone is telling the truth––a fact that every liar knows instinctively and too well...what a relief it is when a detail reassures us that a writer is in control

Fiction writers need to be excellent liars. Their entire story is made up – of course it is. And it's in the descriptive details that those stories look the most convincing. It's not the Devil that's in the detail, it's where fiction appears to be its most true. 

One of the first things I learnt about describing as a writer of fiction was this, from my own tutor… although we are using words, we are stimulating pictures in a reader’s mind. 

Students of Creative Writing often find this one of the hardest things. I can’t blame them; they want to be able to jump in, feet first, and start creating something whole; making stories, working on plot, writing about action, developing their characters, saying important things to the reading world. 

They may be impatient when told that the first thing they should work on is how to describe. But have you ever read writing so vivid that you felt as if you were actually there? This is description that appeals to the senses — eyes, nose, ears, tongue or skin. The clue is in being specific. I call this ‘zoned-in detail’.

Think back to the last thing you wanted to describe in your writing. A landscape, a neighbourhood, or something smaller; a room, a piece of furniture or an artefact. How did you describe this? Did you use any detail at all? Did you use too much? 

Better to use the right details, of course, but knowing what the right details are is not an easy skill to acquire.

Chekhov was a master of description, in both his drama and in his wonderful short stories. Here's his take on what I call 'zoned-in detail'.

In my opinion a true description of nature should be very brief and have the
character of relevance. Commonplaces such as "the setting sun 
bathed the waves of the darkening sea, poured its purple gold, etc" – "The sealers flying over the surface of the water tittered merrily" – such commonplaces one ought to abandon. In descriptions of nature, one ought to sieze upon the little particulars, grouping them in such a way that, in reading, when you shut your eyes you get the picture.

I think Chekhov has put it so well. When you describe, take your time and, rather than concentrating on an overall picture, zone-in and look at some small detail that can exemplify the whole. 

Recently, I needed to describe the two oak trees that are a legend in the county of Somerset. Locally called Mog and Magog, they can be found on a country path inside a small enclosure. I tried describing them directly, but it felt flat, so I skirted around, zoned-in and tried to find the right symbolic gestures to allow the reader to 'see the oaks in their mind':

The oaks were almost leafless and white with age, and he was leaning into the further of them, his arms hugging the trunk, which was so broad it would have taken several of us to surround it completely. I rested my hand on the gnarled and weathered bark of the other tree. The day was warm, bees already buzzing in the foxgloves. A woodpecker rapped with furious persistence in the distance.

“Oh, listen,” I whispered.
         Beneath the Tor by Nina Milton
I went for the sense of sight, but also touch and hearing, and conveying the image through a person’s actions. What I was trying to avoid was information overload. Readers cannot hold an infinite number of details in their mind at the same time. If I described everything about the trees, my readers would end up sensing none of it.
The strange truth is, the more detail you chose to include, the less boring the writing becomes…moving into close-up is absorbing. On the other hand, skimming over description loses the reader and results in a lacklustre narrative line. What readers want, and love the most, are the details of life as they know it and can recognise it. A writer who can recreate the ‘commonalities’ of life so that they appear fresh and new on the page will engage and entrance their writer. Samuel Johnson said, “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.

Zoned-in detail gives you the opportunity to use your descriptions to achieve other parts of the Craft of Writing. Good description will often also:
  • Reveal and differentiate places and characters
  • Enhance mood and atmosphere
  • Heighten the reader’s identification with character
  • Hint at clues to theme or outcome
  • Suggest a larger picture or background information
  • Deepen symbolism
  • Add jokes and/or moments of depth
  • Express the emotions of the narrator
  • Add extra zing to the writing by bringing the five senses onto the page.

Looking back at the six lines of description I wrote about Mog and Magog, I wonder myself if I managed any of the above. I certainly didn’t attempt much description of the trees, although later, I do a little more, using dialogue. But, was there atmosphere? Did the narrator’s own feelings come across? Could you guess a little about the man hugging the tree? Were there hints of what might come later in the story? Was there any ‘zing’?

One thing is clear; avoiding description because you don’t think you’ll do it well is not an option – it is one of the building blocks of creative writing.

So, don’t be afraid of zoned-in detail – it makes all the difference – it is the complete opposite of writing huge swathes of description that skim over detail and bore the reader to sleep. By bearing in mind that you don’t have to describe the whole thing, and looking closely at the most interesting parts of the whole, the description is enhanced. The reader won’t want to see it all – that’s like being too close to the screen in the cinema.

Next time you need to describe, remember; in you want to convince your reader of the absolute truth of your story, that truth is in the zoned-in detail.