My father used to say, about reading fiction, that he never bother to read anything that wasn't in quotes. Like me, he was interested in the characters, and ignored the settings.
Unfortunately for my fiction writing career, my father and I are different from a huge proportion of potential readers. They want to see, hear, feel, and smell what the characters do, in order to deepen their reader trance. So, I've had to overcome my tendency to skip details of setting.
As I worked on this problem, I overshot the mark, and began to over-describe settings. So, I had to learn to cut these descriptions down until they were "just right."
I've developed a number of exercises to help me. Perhaps this one will help you:
The Goldilocks Exercise
1. Take yourself to a place you might use for a setting in one of your stories or articles.
2. In at least one hundred words, describe the setting in all its detail. (too much)
3. Now reduce the setting description to a single sentence, no more than seven words. (too little)
4. Now describe the setting in as few words as it takes to retain the trance-inducing qualities, more than seven and less than a hundred. (just right)
The Character Version
By the way, I also use this exercise to describe characters. I often pick out an intriguing person in an airport waiting area and take notes on every single detail I can capture, trying to use as many senses as feasible. I keep all these details in my database of fieldstones and start the exercise from there. The database entry serves as a reference if and when I use this character (or setting) in a story.
The Intermediate Version
For intermediate writers, there's a fifth step, particularly useful if step four's output still seems a little more than a reader might swallow in one gulp.
5. Distribute the parts of the description into at least three pieces, which can be dropped into the story or article in separate places.
The Advanced Version
Moving ahead, to the advanced version of the exercise:
6. Now express the parts of the description from step 5 in terms of a point-of-view character's emotional reactions to them:
Examples:
"How does he get his wheelchair over that small step between the old part of the house and his office? Maybe he's more mobile than he wants me to believe."
"If I had a gas fireplace in my office, I wouldn't fill it with cut flowers. Not in winter, anyway."
"Why would an agnostic keep a statue of St. Jude on the right next to his top-of-the line computer?"
We'd love to see the results of your exercise as a comment on this post.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
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3 comments:
Goldilocks Exercise, Dwayne Phillips
The Loooooong version
I'm sitting in a corner of the library at work. The chair is like a bar stool, except that is has a back piece on it. The chair is covered with fabric in a pattern of leaves and roses all brown, green, and gray. The table is tall - "bar height" I guess you would call it. The table top is round, probably only two feet in diameter. The carpet is putty colored. I guess that is the modern equivalent of battleship gray. The walls are the same color - put-you-to-sleep putty. A thermostat is mounted on the wall next to my right shoulder. "Honeywell" is labeled on the front of the thermostat. There are windows to my right. Tall, narrow windows that allow me to see the beautiful weather outside and make me wonder why I am trapped inside. This corner is too noisy for a library. "Xerox" laser printers hum loudly only six feet from my table. I wish they would hum constantly, but instead they site quietly 90% of the time only to awaken that interrupt-prone 10%.
...
The shrt version
I'm sitting at a tall, small table.
...
An attempt at the just-right version
I'm writing from a corner of the library. This is the wrong corner. The table is tall like a bar requiring an uncomfortable bar stool chair. The nearby laser printers come to life every few minutes and pause my thoughts. The thermostat on the wall hisses now and then, pulling my gaze to the windows and the beautiful early-fall weather outside. Why am I not outside?
...
Step 6:
If this were my library, I would have doors next to the windows so readers and writers could take their thoughts out into the glory of an early fall day.
Why doesn't the librarian take that phone call into his office instead of blabbing so loudly?
I don't understand how that man can read while sitting within a foot of that obnoxious laser printer.
...
Thoughts on the exercise: I enjoyed doing this. While writing the too long and too short versions, I was able to gather my thoughts for the just-right version. New ideas kept coming to me while writing. I don't think they would have come to me had I not done the first two "throw-away" versions.
I should do more throw such "throw-away" writing. I don't because I hate to "waste" the effort. I will try to re-frame that as "learning" effort instead of "wasted throw-away" effort.
Nice job, Dwayne!
And remember, if you're troubled by "waste," you don't have to "throw away" anything. Keep the entire exercise in one of your "stone piles." You could use this setting a number of times, extracting different details for each different context.
Great exercise! There's a similar exploration of character and setting at http://www.creative-writing-companion.com/creative-writing-ideas.html
I love how much great advice there is on the web :)
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