A conversation about description

I met with a couple of writers this afternoon for a make-up session for last month's support group. Vicki had an excellent question about description. How do you know what to include and how much is enough and how much is too much? Flaubert used an encyclopedic amount, Hemingway very little. They're both considered master story tellers.

Of course, there are no simple answers to these questions, even though there are writers on writing who may try to sell you a formula. Lots of factors come into play. But there are some guidelines I use.

1. How much does description fit into your writing style? Many of us have writing styles or voices that are a reflection of how we live. Your style may be sparse in true minimalist fashion or it may be complicated and baroque in its detail. Take a look around your living space and you'll get an idea of how much detail you want to live with and write with.

2. How can description of a character or a setting assist your story? Description for description's sake almost always comes across as lame. It needs to serve a purpose. If your character is wearing a mini-skirt and a tank top to a job interview, we know a lot about her without you having to tell us. Giving your teenager girl an immaculate bedroom will go a long way to underscoring her anorexia without you having to tell us. That's right. We're back in the land of "Show, don't tell." Physical attributes can reinforce a character's personality in a few words. Even when the attribute goes against the moral grain (a thug in an Armani suit), it works without you having to tell us that he has expensive suits or is trying to hide his true nature.

3. How can description assist your scene? If I'm writing a scene that focuses on two characters breaking off their relationship, I probably don't want a lot of physical description. Instead, I'll want to describe what the point of view character is feeling and how she's responding to her lover. I'll want to focus on emotional description and how I can convey that without saying "she was sad." Maybe "she bit her lip and began to take things out of her purse." Actions can be description.

4. When is enough enough? This is a tough question to answer. As a reader, I want enough detail in description to paint a picture in my mind of the character but I don't want too much, because I want to use my imagination as well. I don't usually want specifics. I don't want to know that a character weighs 112 pounds and is 5'4" tall. Those kind of measurements are the mark of the amateur. Instead I want suggestions so that my mind can play. I want to know that she has one of those baby-girl voices that sell records these days or that she is chicken-bone thin or has been spending most of her paycheck on ice cream and brownies.  

The freedom to go deep

Have been thinking about the freedom to create. Eric Maisel is talking this week about social constraints on our freedom, the pressure we feel from others, known to us or collectively, to conform. And the psychological constraints that we place on ourselves, through conditioning or fear.

When I would read certain sections of my novel, Fog of Dead Souls, to friends, they would comment about how dark the scenes were, how violent they were, and how out of character that was for me. I found their comments interesting. First, because I read a lot of mysteries and police procedurals and enjoy that kind of fiction and so it didn't seem odd to that I would write in that vein. And maybe people don't know that about me, though I don't make any secret of it. Second, their assumption that my personality and my fiction need somehow to be in tune with each other. I think of myself as a rabidly nonviolent person in my relationships and my dealing with the world, but I am interested in those aspects of human nature. And while I didn't feel defiant about my writing on those subjects, I paused a little too long for my own comfort in considering their comments. As if I should reconsider. I didn't. I left it dark. But I'm interested that I paused.

One of the important freedoms we possess is to take our creative work in whatever direction appeals to us. To go deep, to look at our shadow selves, our darker sides, both the emotional and the spiritual. To paint black paintings or purple pumpkins, to present as realistic fictional characters that do not come from our lived experience but from our understanding and imagining of human nature.

When we listen to what others want, we give up that freedom to explore and create what is deepest in us, even though that might be scary. Here's to the scary.

The dangers of writing in your head

One of the things I love about being on a creative retreat is the opportunity to stay with my story most all the time. I’ve just come back from a week retreat with six other creatives in Netarts, a village on the Oregon coast. While I was there, I continued my first-hour creative practice, getting up each morning, brushing my teeth, making tea, and lighting a candle and as the day came on, I continued to create Lola’s story. Then I’d make breakfast, write in my journal, help with cooking, write another 90 minutes, read the mystery novel I brought. After lunch, I’d write again for 90 minutes, go for a walk. We’d have circle. Some nights I read some of the story. But the characters and their dilemmas stayed with me all day, coming in and out of my mind, and all kinds of interesting twists and turns would appear in my mind.

On Wednesday, I drove into town to check email and handle a few business connections. On the way back, along the country road, I suddenly realized there were several cars behind me and I was driving way too slow. I suspect the young men in the pickup directly in back thought it was a little old lady too timid to press on the gas. I had no way to tell them that it was a big old fiction writer completely wrapped up in her story.

Then today, I drove down to Oceanside, another village to the north where there is good beach access. I was cutting it close for the tide was coming in and a big storm was brewing off in the distance. But there were plenty of people and dogs still strolling and I parked and went on down. The going was a little dicey, the sand pretty soft, but I hoofed it down 15 brisk minutes and back. I realized as I turned around that I had barely noticed the beauty of the water or the big rocks glistening in the silver fog so involved with Lola and Jimmy was I. And then I got sucked back into the details and just as I got back to the entrance in full mental writing mode, sorting out what was happening with Lola and the vet, I fell flat forward onto the sand. I hadn’t noticed the fairly large rock jutting out of in front of my foot. I wasn’t hurt, just surprised. And I sat there and laughed at how caught up I was in my imagination and then I dusted myself and went up to the coffee shop where I wrote the next installment. 

False starts and the perfectionist

In the Enneagram system of personality traits, I am a One. Ones like being in alignment with order, are partial to the details and rules of life. They are often labeled Perfectionists. Both of the first two attributes are definitely characteristics of mine. But I seldom think of myself as a Perfectionist. I'm the one with toothpaste or spaghetti sauce on her shirt., I don't agonize over the documents I write or edit for clients; I do my work, do a good proofread, and move on. It isn't a struggle. I keep my home tidy but I don't stress over dishes in the sink or the rug pad showing in the dining room as it has for the last two weeks. I'm not compulsive about that.

But I realized this morning that the One's perfectionism is a part of my struggle with this new novel. I mentioned in an earlier post that the first two novels sort of unscrolled in plot and organization. And this one is not doing that. I'm struggling for the first time with what feel like false starts. And a perfectionist part of me doesn't like that.

Last week at Writing Friday, I read a chunk of a chapter to my astute friend Jan. She loved the story part of it but felt it couldn't have come from the mother as told story, that it was really the narrator telling this, that it was too perfect, too rehearsed to come out of the mother's mind. Well, of course it was and that had even nagged at me. But it meant I'm not yet on the right track with this book and I'm annoyed about that.

I know this happens all the time to the best writers. And I know my story idea is a solid one. It's just taking some time to find itself and to connect with me. It's a great learning experience, it expands my abilities. But it isn't as easy or fun. So I find myself bumping up against shoulds (it should be easier than this, it should go more smoothly, I should have it all figured out) and that is clearly perfectionism.

So time to go with the flow, go with what is, and keep following the leads.

Unearthing old treasures

Last Saturday, I took a wonderful 4-hour workshop from poet John Morrison on poetic forms: meter, rhyme, and the classic structures. As you may remember, last winter I took on writing 100 poems between Jan 1 and April 15. I was writing in what is called free verse with uneven line lengths and and no established meter or rhyme scheme. To be honest, I never gave them a thought.

So when I saw John's class was on a Saturday afternoon I had free, I signed up. Curiously, I had forgotten how much I already knew about these matters. I have an advanced degree in French literature and while the details are not exactly the same from French to English, the systems are very similar and I had spent a lot of time doing what is called "scanning" of meter and rhyme in French in those classes decades ago and taught them to my students as well.

And then there was the spring quarter I got asked to teach Intro to Poetry to students in English as a part of my graduate assistant job and I worked with a wonderful book called Sound and Sense, a classic. And I learned the differences in English and taught them to my students. And then I put that away in some place in my mind where it has stayed out of sight for the last 30+ years. And it all came flooding back last Saturday and I had a great time relearning, remembering, and practicing.

Three things stood out for me. One, I hadn't had that kind of intellectual fun and conversation in a long time. It's the kind of conversations that academics could do with each other and don't--the intellectual side of academia is hidden and rather private, trumped in large measure by the political. But apparently writers in gatherings do this a lot. I want more of that.

Second, I realize how much fun this was for me is due in part to my being a One in the Enneagram system. We Ones love order and detail and meter and rhyme scheme is all about that. It's almost made to order for us.

Lastly, I could see clearly how this knowledge and additional practice could serve as a major tool in revision of both my poetry and my prose, something I've gone about rather blindly. I'm excited to do more of this.

Meandering in the semi-dark

I got up at 6:30 today to write. Lit the candles, made tea, sat down. The dark was both external (the dawn doesn't come until well past 7:30 now if the sky is cloudy) and internal as I can't quite see my way clear with the story.

The first two novels I wrote, I wrote pretty quickly (about a year each). The stories were unknown to me as they spun themselves but they unfolded in a very straightforward and linear way. I kept asking "What happens next?" and before too long, some intriguing and feasible answer would present itself to me and I'd work with it and write another chapter. I had to go back once the draft was done and reorder a little and fill in some gaps blanks, but the story unscrolled like a lovely Chinese poem.

This new novel is different. Ideas are coming at me from all sides like an unruly classroom of kids waving their hands and shouting "Pick me, pick me." Or a fork in the road with a half-dozen choices equally scary, equally delicious in their beckoning.

Some of the dilemma is in sorting out how to present a large amount of back story for three characters who come together and separate and come together and separate in a somewhat chaotic dance. Equally enticing are the three characters, each with a fascinating point of view. And whispering in the back of my mind is Durrell's Alexandria Quarter, with its retelling of one story by different characters.

I sat this morning for about 15 minutes of my precious hour vacillating. And then I followed the advice I give all the writers I coach. Write a scene, any scene. It will take you in and you will find your way.

More on showing up

If showing up is half the creative battle, staying put is the other half. Many of us struggle with the modern addiction to email, and I'm someone who's developed a Pavlovian relationship with the little letter icon that shows up in the bottom left corner of my computer. I used to salivate when the little bell rang and then I turned that off. Now I find myself casting my eyes in the direction of that corner a gazillion times a day. So I do my creative writing on the laptop in the dining room where there is no wifi.

Also like many of us, I tell myself I check email to service my clients by responding quickly or seeing if somebody needs me, but the truth is most of the time, I check email because I'm doing something else I don't feel comfortable doing.

This morning I got up again and sat down to the novel first thing. I didn't have the same level of eager anticipation because yesterday I had finished a long chapter in which a great story unfolded bit by bit between two characters. I was very pleased with the writing of that, which had taken five morning hours, but now it was over and I didn't know what was going to happen next.

I didn't balk at sitting down to write, I just didn't know what to write. For the first 20 minutes, I struggled to stay put. I wanted to get up, make more tea, check the sunrise, let the cats in or out or in again, and most definitely I wanted to check email. Email is far more seductive than the other distractors because it can go on and on. Not only can you see who emailed, you can read their message and respond or check a link or buy a groupon or read someone else's blog. You can then go in and see what kittens are up for adoption at the Humane Society or check your bank balance.

But I didn't do any of those things. I stayed put. And I thought about my characters both directly and out of the corner of my mind's eye and I waited. And about 20 minutes into the hour, two big ideas come trundling out of the creative closet and I knew what to do.

Checking email wouldn't have had the same result at all.