I'm enjoying immensely The Modern Library Writer's Workshop, by Stephen Koch, a noted teacher and author. One of the reasons I enjoy it is that he talks about storytelling in ways that resonate with the way I approach it.
One point that sparked for me is that we (the authors) haven't actually told our stories until someone reads them. Koch writes,
"To be sure, the reader follows the writer's lead; but only the reader's imagination, collaborating with the writer's, can make anything happen on any page. It's the reader who visualizes the characters, the reader who feels and finds the forward movement of the story, the reader who catches and is caught in the swirls of suspense, rides the flow of meaning, and unfolds the whole kaleidoscope of perception."
Our readers can do that, must do that, to experience our stories. Or, rather, their version of our stories. Each reader will add shades to the meanings of words and expressions and actions. They'll never read the story we've imagined.
We can get 'em close, though, damn close, close enough, with strong craft. One aspect of craft, in particular, is the tool we need.
It's what author and teacher Oakley Hall calls specification in How Fiction Works. Using concrete words rather than abstract words. Here are wrong/right examples he gives.
1. He was a big man with a beard.
2. He filled the doorway, his beard glistening with curls.1. It was cold in the kitchen.
2. She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her hands together against the chill in the kitchen.1. The crowd passed in the street.
2. The street brimmed with the jostling of men in cloth caps and women in babuskas.1. It was raining.
2. He drew his hand inside and licked raindrops from his fingertips.
Specificity makes your visualizations vivid and alive, don't they? And probably you "see" an image much closer to what the author imagined. Of all of Oakley's examples, the one about the cold kitchen does it best for me.
Without specific, concrete images, your reader might imagine something you never intended, and thus stray far from the story you wanted to tell. And it's important to make sure it's your story, not a walkabout made up of random associations to vague language.
Specificity has to do with writing for effect. Or maybe I should say writing to affect,
to make sure the things that go on in your reader's mind are as close
to your original thought as possible. I've written before about the
stimulus-response paradigm. What you put on the page
But how on earth can we, the authors with the vision and understanding of our stories so complete in our minds, hope to understand whether or not what we've put on the page will do the job we think it does?
One way is to find expert other eyes, someone with a knowledge of and talent for storytelling who will spot "invisible" shortcomings. But what if you can't afford that, or don't have a qualified critic who will give you insights for free? What about after you finish the first draft, before your work is ready for anyone other than your self-editorial eye?
I think creating distance from your work can help. Ideally, park the manuscript in a drawer for a couple of months. I'm always amazed at the gaps I find when I return to a narrative that has grown cold. No longer does my mind, grown distant from its obsession with the story, fill in the blanks I've left on the page.
But wait, there's more.
Perhaps there's an even better way to create distance. After two months of refrigeration (or however long you can stand to stay away from it), instead of taking your manuscript out and reading it, have someone read it aloud to you while you take notes. With the use of this new "medium," you double the distance. Instead of the word-stimuli coming into your brain through your vision pathways as usual, it's an audio signal. Your mind has to interpret and understand in a different way. You'll hear the holes. And you might be making notes such as "can't see anything" here and "what does that mean" there.
There is a critique group methodology wherein writers read their samples aloud to the other members, who take notes and then comment. In the past, I've argued that isn't the best way to do it because agents and editors perceive the narrative by reading. Silently. But now I think I'm both right and wrong.
Yes, an editor approaches your story through reading, and a "silent" critique is necessary. But I do know that when I read my own work aloud my ears hear flaws not seen on the page. And I suspect that, in read-aloud critique groups, places where the narrative fails to achieve the specificity needed to make a scene real show more clearly. I wonder if there are critique groups where someone other than the author reads the work aloud. Might learn something.
Maybe I'll try the audio method of creating distance although, to be honest, it's hard to imagine doing a whole novel that way. And I have access to sharp-eyed critics. And I'm lazy. But if I were getting started in this business, I think it might yield insights, especially about the opening of a novel. If you give this notion a try or have experience with it, let me know, okay?
For what it's worth.
RR
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© 2005 Ray Rhamey