Salt of Description

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

As I was preparing to sit down last week and write a post on the subject of using all five senses in descriptions, I looked at my blog feed and discovered that Go Teen Writers had just done such an article.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call unfair.  However, I decided I would go ahead and write my own thoughts on the matter, and in the end you can read both posts and compare.

Descriptive passages have never come to me with quite the same ease as dialogue.  Perhaps this is because dialogue tends to follow a more logical procession from point A to point B, or at least from point A to point Q back to point B, while description is more intuitive and emotional.  But difficulties notwithstanding, I do enjoy writing these scenes.  I enjoy them because it is a pleasure to take a step back or forward and examine the world in either broader scope or closer detail - and because, by looking at a scene through the eyes of a character, I see things in a different light.  (That is part of the brilliance of fictional people: not existing, they still manage to be so real.)  While of course still utilizing my own senses, I am at the same time accessing the senses of the character.  Separating those senses into the five common ones, and leaving out the sixth sense of intuition, each one provides rich means of vivifying description.

sight - touch - hearing - smell - taste

We depend very heavily upon our eyes, so it's no wonder that descriptive passages tend to be heavy on this aspect.  I don't know about you, but when I'm reading a description, no matter how well I can smell and feel and hear and even taste the object, I would very much like to know what it looks like.  The man may smell of horse and sweaty leather boot-soles - grand!  The pipe may make music like the wind across the surface of a lake - brilliant!  The decorated cake may taste like the cover of a hardback book - disgusting!  And yet, without a few choice visionary descriptions, it is difficult to bring to the reader's mind exactly the same image that was in the writer's thoughts.  I can imagine a great deal about how the man in question feels about bathing, and even create my own mental image of him; but my imagination is probably quite faulty.

Descriptions based on sight tend to get a bad rap, I find.  This is reasonable, as many take this as the easy course and write off a hasty description about how the man is 5'9" and tanned (or is that dirt?) and has piercing green eyes, which evokes nothing.  However, it is possible to go to far to the other extreme and eliminate all sight-based descriptions.  Strike a good balance!

The next four senses are, I think, the most fun and provide more food for the imagination and for one's originality.  This is especially so if you mix and match them, and do not simply use them in obvious settings.  Of course if you're describing a stew, you'll want to describe its taste - but what about its appearance, or the sound it makes falling into the bowl, or its texture?  If a flower is in question, appearance and smell are obvious.  But how do the petals feel against your skin?  How does the wind sound thrumming over its leaves?

Another good thing to do, and one which is used powerfully by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliff, is to link senses together in descriptions.  Colors can be used beautifully in these descriptions.  Something might taste scarlet - similar, perhaps, to saying it tastes like blood, but far more evocative in the writing setting.  Perhaps the flower smells the way honey tastes on a day in midsummer.  A laugh can sound like silk running through one's fingers.  Oftentimes these sorts of descriptions leap to one's mind and can't be actively sought out, but if you're watching for them, you'll see them more frequently.

Caveat!  (I do tend to have caveats, don't I?)  Descriptions of any one kind ought to be used sparingly, sprinkled rather than dumped into a story.  Too much of a good thing is still too much, as they say.  These are thoughts to keep somewhere in the back of one's mind during difficult descriptive passages, not to have always and obsessively in the forefront of one's thoughts.  I find they're like salt: useful in small doses, not so useful in large.  ...Unless you're Sutcliff, because she pulled it off amazingly.

Whimsy

Last night I finished Jean Webster's novel Daddy-Long-Legs.  Not for the first time, of course: I've read it perhaps half a dozen times over as many years, and yet it never fails to leave me happy at the end.  Like Jane Austen, Daddy-Long-Legs is a comfort read.  Whenever I am blue, and whatever I'm supposed to be reading isn't cutting it, it is usually a choice between Pride & Prejudice, Emma, or Daddy-Long-Legs.  (Not Mansfield Park: I love that book, but I'm sure it gets my blood pressure up.)  This time it was The Shield Ring that, in true Sutcliff style, was just too emotionally investing, and Daddy-Long-Legs came off the shelf.

The book is not difficult, or mind-stretching, but it is the sort of book that makes life seem brighter by portraying it with zest.  It picks up all the little details and spins them into a gossamer story - appropriately gloomy in some places, for it wouldn't be as cheery in the other parts if there were not at least some grey bits.  Everything is touched with whimsy, much more, perhaps, than real life has from day to day; but maybe that in itself is what makes the book so darling.  It characterizes the momentary, simple (and sometimes profound) pleasures we encounter that feel too good to be true.  They don't usually last long in all their vibrant glory and I don't think it possible to have them constantly (I wouldn't want to confuse these things with joy proper, which ought to be a steady characteristic of our lives); there are many times of struggle, of grief, of worry and stress and hardship where such brilliantly happy moments are rare or nonexistent.  But, like candy or a vacation, they are very pleasant during those once-in-a-whiles when they come.

daddy-long-legs

"P.S. It's raining cats and dogs tonight.  Two puppies and a kitten have just landed on the window-sill."

"College opens in two weeks and I shall be glad to begin work again.  I have worked quite a lot this summer though - six short stories and seven poems.  Those I sent to the magazines all came back with the most courteous promptitude.  But I don't mind.  It's good practice.  Master Jervie read them - he brought in the mail, so I couldn't help his knowing - and he said they were dreadful.  They showed that I didn't have the slightest idea of what I was talking about.  (Master Jervie doesn't let politeness interfere with truth.)"

"The accompanying illustration is hereby reproduced for the first time.  It looks like a spider on the end of a string, but it isn't at all; it's a picture of me learning to swim in the tank in the gymnasium.  The instructor hooks a rope into a ring in the back of my belt, and runs it through a pulley in the ceiling.  It would be a beautiful system if one had perfect confidence in the probity of one's instructor.  I'm always afraid, though, that she will let the rope get slack, so I keep one anxious eye on her and swim with the other, and with this divided interest I do not make the progress that I otherwise might."

"We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal.  Isn't it amazing?  Listen to this: 'Last night I was seized by a fit of despair that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining-room clock into the sea.'  It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing to have about - and awfully destructive to the furniture."

So you see, I always feel happier after I've read a few of Judy Abbott's letters to Daddy-Long-Legs-Smith than I was when first I picked up the book; maybe that has something to do with the cloth binding.  Somehow cloth binding makes the story even better.  And now, with that comfort book finished, I've begun A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery.  It's amusing to see his typical Winnie-the-Pooh style carry over into a whodunit.

what are some of your comfort reads?

In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain

We are having a November day. Everything outside is grey and dreary, with a lazy rain pitterpattering on the gutters and the stark, silver branches dripping - though the Christmas pig our neighbours erected in their yard kind of ruins the effect. (Seriously? A pig? In a Santa hat? You have to be kidding me.) But all in all, it's a day that represents November and makes you want to curl up with tea and a blanket and a good book. Preferably not a Geometry book.

Weather is a poignant thing, and a few good words concerning it can create atmosphere in a scene like magic. It could be rain, or it could be fog, or it could be full sunshine, or it could be a peek-a-boo pattern of light and clouds, but whatever it is, it is important to the life of a scene and should be treated as such. You can't just arbitrarily decide that the day is sunny or the night is dark and stormy; you've got to know that the day is sunny, and it has to be sunny with a purpose. Otherwise the descriptions will turn out bland, unimportant, and perhaps even invasive.

There are two main things to consider about blending atmosphere and purpose. The first is correspondence. To go back to the example of a dark and stormy night, what is the cliche supposed to signify? Drama, of course. You know - "It was a dark and stormy night. A door banged. The maid shrieked. A ship appeared on the horizon." To be more literary, when A Wrinkle in Time starts out with that sentence, you see Meg Murry in her attic room, scared out of her wits as she thinks about the wind and the rain and the tramp who has been stealing things around town. The weather mirrors her emotions; this is correspondence.

I went for correspondence in the title of my story Sunshine and Gossamer. (Actually, the title came before the plot, but still...) The mood of the novel is light; it's a children's story, of sorts, and I wanted it to be in the style of Daddy-Long-Legs or Dew on the Grass. Therefore, I wanted some whimsy in the title. Other forms of correspondence might be rain at a funeral; sun at a wedding; or fog around a haunted house. Put bluntly they sound cliche, but with the right touches they can be pulled off - just like the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time.

The other option is contrast. This is where you take the cliche and turn it inside out and on its head, making the sadness of a funeral clash with a sunny day, or turning a wedding whimsical or ominous by placing it in the rain. The death of a character can be made even more terrible by contrasting it with a gorgeous summer day and by making the protagonist feel the grossness of that contrast. I wanted this in the scene in The Soldier's Cross when Fiona is informed of her brother's death; I wanted two worlds to clash there - the sunlit world she had always known before and the dark chaos of the life in front of her. A rainy day wouldn't have conveyed the message with the same pathos.

Both methods are useful in any story. It is possible to try too hard to use the principle of contrast when having weather correspond with emotion would do just as well; it is also possible to err on the side of the cliche. As with all things, balance is important. Take time to consider the atmosphere as you write each scene; you may not end up using the weather, but it is good to know things outside the immediate sphere of the written word. After all, what you don't write is quite as important as what you do write.

She Thought Her Heart Would Break

Question number four (-ish) on You Haven't Got an Appointment! was put by Londongirl, who asked

How do you write a sad, emotional scene without making it seem sappy or forced?

First of all, I'm flattered that you thought the scenes in The Soldier's Cross met this difficult hurtle! Emotion can be a very hard thing to capture, but, when done right, it also provides some of the best dramatic scenes; done incorrectly, the scene becomes melodramatic instead. So how does one manage to convey emotions, whether it be fear or anger, tension or sorrow, without falling into the trap of being ridiculous and cliche?

Probably the most important element of writing emotion is knowing your character. I won't go so far as to say that the whole issue boils down to that one thing, but I will say that if it boils down to anything, that's what I would expect to find left in the pot. Individual characters will react differently to traumatic events, just as individual people in real life will; there is no cut-and-dry solution which allows you to say, "If the event is a death, the main character will feel this way," and, "If the protagonist is insulted, he will react like that." In every story you write, you should find the protagonist a little different from the one in the novel you wrote previously. Get to know your character; this may mean filling out pages upon pages of interview questions, or it may mean simply continuing to write and learning by trial and error. When you begin to understand what makes that person tick, you'll be better able to write those dramatic scenes.

As to the nuts and bolts of writing an emotion-packed scene, these are a little more difficult. I wouldn't venture to give a dogmatic answer, but I can give some suggestions that you may or may not find helpful - hopefully you will! First off, recognize that in the early scenes of a story, you probably won't get the character's reaction quite right on the first try. I wrote a good 40,000 words of The White Sail's Shaking before I had a handle on Tip's character, and I had to go back and rewrite the early chapters. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you won't have to edit, and you'll begin to realize that there is no point in being too hard on yourself the first time through. Relax.

Second, as you write (or before you write, if you like to warm up before you start in on a scene), put yourself in the place of the character to the best of your ability. What would you feel like if someone were coming at you with a knife? Or, to use the example that Londongirl did from my own story, how would you react if someone told you your brother was dead? Try - again, to the best of your ability - to see things with the eyes of your character. K.M Weiland on her blog Wordplay frequently emphasizes the importance of using all five senses in description (not all at the same time) - smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling as well as seeing. It might help to consider each of these as you write out a scene, then hone in on the ones you feel are most important.

Third, don't forget the little things. I mentioned in a post some months ago how marvelously Rosemary Sutcliff conveys emotion through small things. You may be inclined to think that in the midst of something traumatic a character wouldn't notice details, but this isn't always the case; the mind often fixates on strange details like an odd smell or a particular color. Incorporating something like that to a highly emotional scene helps to set off the character's emotions without forcing the author to relate his or her feelings point by point.

And then, of course, look beyond the cliche! Think about how you can describe reactions and emotions in a fresh manner. Give the old phrases a new twist or look at an emotion from a different angle, and see what you come up with when you do. After all, isn't that part of the fun of writing?

The Small Things

Yesterday I finished rereading one of my sister's favourite novels, The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. I read it years ago, but I had forgotten how much I liked it until I bought it (she carried off all our Sutcliff books when she married, and now I'm having to build up my own stash) and started it. I had forgotten how Sutcliff sweeps you away to another place; I had forgotten how beautiful her writing is. There were a dozen things I loved about the book - the main characters (Esca!), the minor characters (Uncle Aquila!), the descriptions (Etruria!) - but one of the things that stood out to me most was Sutcliff's ability to evoke emotion through small things. She could make an inanimate object or an animate being symbolic of so much, and I loved the way she employed this here and there throughout the novel.

The Rose Bush When Marcus takes command of the cohort at Isca Dumnoniorum, he notices a rose bush, just beginning to bloom, that was planted years ago by some predecessor. The pot-bound plant reminds him of his family's farm in Etruria, which was sold after his father's and mother's deaths, and also links him to the past and the Romans who came before him in the frontier fort. Through the months he commands Isca Dumnoniorum he watches the rose bloom; but after the native British uprising, when Marcus is told that, due to a bad wound to his leg, he is being discharged from the Legions, winter is coming on. As Marcus watches his career - and the only life he ever expected to follow - slip away, the rose loses its last petal.

"Now that he could sit up, he could look out into the courtyard, and see the rose-bush in its wine-jar, just outside his window. There was still one crimson rose among the dark leaves, but even as he watched, a petal fell from it like a great slow drop of blood. Soon the rest would follow. He had held his first and only command for just as long as the rose-bush had been in flower..."

Cub Cub, the wolf pup that Esca brings home to Marcus after a hunt, does not at first glance seem to come into the story much; he is left at home when Marcus and Esca set out to find the lost Eagle, after all. But Sutcliff draws parallel between the collared wolf-cub and Esca the slave, the Briton of the tribe of the Brigantes who was taken captive and made into a gladiator. The time comes when Marcus has to take Cub's collar off and give him the chance to return to the wild; and the time also comes when he has to give Esca his freedom, and allow him the chance to return to his own people.

"And watching him, Marcus remembered suddenly and piercingly the moment that afternoon when he had taken off Cub's collar. Cub had come back to him; but Esca?"

The Signet Ring Marcus' clearest memory of his father is of him standing in the courtyard of the farm in Etruria, the sunlight glinting on the flawed emerald and dolphin of his great signet ring, the ring that links many of Sutcliff's novels together over generations. Like the Eagle itself, it is a bond between Marcus and his father, a bond of family and honour, of strength and loyalty.

"Looking back across the years, Marcus remembered that his father's eyes had been very bright, like the eyes of a man going into action; and the light had caught suddenly in the great flawed emerald of the signet-ring he always wore, striking from it a spark of clear green fire. Strange how one remembered things like that: little things that somehow mattered."

The Olive-Wood Bird On the farm in Etruria there was an olive tree with a gall, which Marcus, as a child, cut off and carved into a bird and has carried with him for years as a reminder of that beautiful place. It is his last physical tie to the farm, which he had hoped to buy back after he earned enough in the army, and in the long days and nights where Britain feels cold and foreign to him, the olive-wood bird is a sign of home. When Marcus burns it as an offering during the hunt for the Eagle, his old life seems to be burning away as well.

"But a new life, a new beginning, had warmed out of the grey ash, for himself, and Esca, and Cottia; perhaps for other people, too; even for an unknown downland valley that would one day be a farm."