Flowers and Focus

Madison’s Garden Expo houses hundreds of people, from horticulturists hungry for spring to bemused guys seeking valentine gifts. Attractions range from copper-covered gingko leaf earrings to gigantic black and orange diesel tractors. It’s easy to get lost in the possibilities, especially if it’s your first time in this world.

Even if you’re writing a sequel, it’s still your reader’s first time with these characters at this moment. Because it’s new, they can easily get lost, and it’s your job to help. Maybe they’d like a map?

But unless you’re creating a historical or fantastical world, wandering feels more fun than reading a map. Wouldn’t some sort of guide be more helpful? So you can make your way through this new world?

No matter what point of view you choose, your narrator is a guide. A charming and illuminating one. Your narrator supplies running commentary on the landscape, whether it’s a garden show, space station, or bath in Pompeii just before everything erupts.

·         Don’t let your narrator reveal too much. Good guides let folks discover things on their own.

·         Do have your narrator foreshadow what’s significant.

You can also guide readers through choice and arrangement of details. While this can be trickier, it can be even more satisfying, especially for those who prefer to read more actively than passively.

·         Don’t expect readers to connect all the dots on their own. To visualize your map, they need hints that are neither obvious nor obscure.

·         Do provide clues that feel organic. Accomplishing this in your first draft is quite difficult. Much easier to set up what you’ll need after you’ve written “the end.”

Either way, provide focus rather than expecting readers to navigate without assistance. That separates fiction from reality. Good novels encourage exploration without confusion or overstimulation. Using the details, narrator, or both, supply a map for the world of your novel.

Tip: Provide just enough guidance so readers don’t get lost.

Connotation and Why You Care

Words have their own “lives,” much the way characters act naughty or nice behind our backs when we’re not looking. The lives of our characters are offshoots of our intentions as novelists. Words, though, have lives of their own—perhaps ones we never planned. This doesn’t mean we get to ignore the history of the words we choose. Just the opposite, in fact.

Let’s say you want your character walking on a starry night. Great. Just remember that Vincent Van Gogh planted a very particular image. Don McLean’s song further accentuated that, and new versions continue to flourish.

Why does this matter to novelists? Because the standard paradigm affects how readers read your scene. One choice is avoiding that language altogether. The other is intentionally harnessing or revamping the meaning a particular phrase evokes.

Let’s say that Lelia, your protagonist, flees the house during a heated argument and heads down a country road lit only by stars. Like Van Gogh’s, these stars seem gigantic and turbulent. They signal fury and madness spinning out of control above a peaceful village. If that’s how your protagonist feels, all you need is, “Slamming the screen door, Lelia stepped into the starry night.”

But what if she doesn’t feel that way at all? Maybe Lelia dashes outside, looks up at the stars and finds inspiration. This marriage isn’t a happy one, and every distant point of light reinforces this new-found clarity. She’s had enough. She’s moving out. She’s moving on. If that’s so, either describe the stars some other way or help your readers see what Lelia does. Perhaps she thinks of Van Gogh and then smiling, shakes her head. The guy who cut off his ear had it all wrong. This is pure “Wish I may, wish I might.”

The familiar phrases that leap into every writer’s mind arrive there because they’re so familiar. So identify any wording that conveys iconic, archetypal imagery, however accidentally. Then make conscious choices. Build on tradition, reverse it, or simply mention “stars” rather than “starry night.”

Tip: Train yourself to notice the connotations that your readers do.