The Psychology of Imagery

It’s established that imagery/visualization helps athletes succeed, so imagine how imagery enhances the reader/writer connection. Even in print, and especially in fiction, a picture is still worth a thousand words. Used deftly, verbal evocation of the five senses creates a world where readers feel what the characters do, see what the novelist does.

Tip: Create not just a plot, but one readers can experience—through their five senses.

Here’s how that works. In The Sacred Wood, T.S. Eliot refers to the pedantic-sounding but not actually overwhelming concept of the “objective correlative”:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. 

This observation warrants some unpacking. An objective correlative can link (“correlate”) a subjective idea or emotion with the external world (“objective,” relating to something physical, like an object) in a neutral way (again “objective,” but this time in the sense of impersonal).

Eliot introduced the objective correlative to explain why Shakespeare failed to provide a visual image for Hamlet’s emotions. Although many would disagree, the objective correlative strategy has much to offer not just playwrights and poets, but novelists.

In Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence, Lisa Cron observes that 

what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.

And the more scientists learn how about the brain, the more they discover connections between plot or imagery and reader emotion. Want readers to keep reading? Integrate what happens with opportunity to vicariously interact. The source of  that interaction? Language summoning one or more of the five senses: in other words—imagery. 

Genuinely vibrant description provides additional benefits: 

~ Objectivity.

Concrete details eliminate “telling” what you ought to “show.”

~ Bridge from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Need to explain something? The technique of analogy or metaphor is about as old as ideas are. Comparison helps readers grasp what’s unclear or difficult, which could be anything from quantum mechanics to the protagonist’s tragic flaw.

~ Contributions from your own subconscious:

one of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is to grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without fully understanding it yourself. —Christopher Nolan

~ Engagement of reader emotion.

Readers identify with what they can see, hear, etc. But they can’t identify with references to “terrible agony” or “delightful happiness.” James Bonnet’s paraphrase of Carl Jung explains why abstraction deprives readers of the protagonist’s world and the events there: 

The auditor experiences some of the sensations but is not transformed. Their imaginations are stimulated: they go home and through personal fantasies begin the process of transformation for themselves.

Why not provide that possibility of transformation for your readers?

Opening Up

Buds are full of promise. How large will this one get, how fragrant, how multi-faceted, and will the culmination prove worth the wait? If a bud is a rich with potential, how much more so a novel’s first sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. There you entice readers. Or lose them.

Openings hint at what we can expect, help us decide if we should await the outcome. Contrast these: 

Our quick breath encircled our heads in the late-winter air as he pulled me by the hand, through lines of Model Ts and Cadillac Coupes, toward the glow of the Colonial Theatre. My body coursed with elation and guilt, every bit as intoxicating as the rum drinks he'd mixed for us out of the trunk of his car. The frenzy of the Jazz Age had overflowed from the cities into smaller towns like ours in music, film, fashion, and literature, resulting in restlessness and tension between generations and ideals. Fueled by the energy of the new, we had toasted our agreement: That night it was only us in the world, and we would live like it was ours.     He'd lifted a triple-stranded pearl necklace over my head and set it on my skin, kissing the scar on my collarbone, a relic from the first night we'd found each other. He whispered that the necklace was only costume jewelry, but one day he'd buy me the real thing. --Erika Robuck, Fallen Beauty

Here’s a very different beginning:

The girl standing in the foyer when Alex went down to get his mail, trembling slightly on her cane, was Esther. Not a girl, really: a woman. Everyone in the building knew her. Or everyone, it seemed, except Alex, who, in the few months since he’d moved here, had never quite managed to be the one to open a door for her, or put her key in her mailbox, or start a conversation with her in the oppressive intimacy of the building’s elevators.     She was looking out through the plate glass of the entrance doors to the street, where sunlight now glinted off the morning’s earlier sprinkling of rain.     “I wouldn’t go out there if you don’t have to,” Alex said, then regretted at once his admonitory tone.     From the confusion that came over her, plain as if a shadow had crossed her, it was clear she hadn’t understood.     “The rain,” he said. —Nino Ricci, The Origin of Species

Individual readers will prefer one approach over the over. And why?

• Contrast the depth. Which probes psychology in a way that intrigues you?
• Evaluate the scenario. What grabs you, and why?
• Consider the language. Which seems more vital? Original?
• Check the syntax. Which types and variety of sentences meet your needs?
• Respond to the imagery. Does it stimulate your senses?
• Meet the characters. Do you want to follow them—or flee?
• Note the point of view. Is it the kind of window into a world you’re looking for?
• Reader participation. How free must you be to reach your own conclusions?

The average novel reader won’t consciously pose even one of these questions. Still, readers instinctively consider quite a lot of this when checking the opening to decide if this book’s for them. What does the first page offer? Does its potential unfurling seem like something worth following? Whatever the source, is there a genuine hook?

Tip: Your novel’s opening matters more than anything that follows.

“The Decisive Moment”

In the preface to the book of that title, Henri Cartier-Bresson accompanied his photographs with commentary, including “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.” Unintentionally, of course, this idea applies not only to camera work, but to the engine that drives fiction. 

Tip: “Decisive Moments” structure your novel and the scenes (or summaries) composing its plot.

It starts with noticing. Whether with camera, computer, or pen, you need first to identify significance, then be certain that you capture it. After all, as he observed, “Once you miss it, it is gone forever.” 

Ready yourself to seize flashes of inspiration, whether they wake you at dawn, strike when you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, or disrupt concentration on rush hour traffic. 

~ Don’t, needless to say, endanger yourself with sleep deprivation, eyes on your iPhone, or both. 

~ Do make sure you have a means to record even the most slender wisp of idea. Otherwise, how will you ever know how big it might have become?

Cartier-Bresson felt strongly about the impact of a single moment, saying, “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.” 

~Don’t view this premise as unrelated to fiction.

~ Do harness the construct of the “decisive moment” to structure your novel and choose what you present in “live time” and what you summarize.

In fiction, those “decisive moments” are the pressure points that create character arc. The protagonist’s customary response, whether waiting, rationalizing, or denying, is now impossible. However painfully or foolishly, the character must act—and immediately. Just as photographers portray the external world, the novelist must accept that readers want to view the most intense moments through action and imagery. The best pressure points are photographable. This prevents the clutter of excessive rumination, review, or reconstruction. 

Once you recognize your novel’s events in terms of “decisive” or “significant,” you’re on track to decide what should unfold, detail by detail. The rest? Collapse it into a swift abbreviation of what readers need to know but have no need to watch.

The Cartier-Bresson phrase “proper expression” is already ambiguous, and more so when applied to prose. Yet in either fiction or photography, “proper expression” means that the portrayal says it all—no caption needed. If you’ve found the “decisive moments” of your protagonist’s journey, never deflate them by explaining what they mean. 

Haven’t found the “decisive moments” yet? How matter how many words, drafts, or themes you’ve amassed, it’s back to the storyboard. The best novels, no matter how historical or literary, always build from the moments when there’s no turning back. And it’s most fun for readers when these pivots, or turning points, are barely visible until the plot ends and readers grasp the how and why. 

Here’s to “decisive moments.”

Who Is Wallace Stevens?

When I recently solicited search engine help from a computer geek, that’s the question I got, followed by, “Is Wallace Stevens a corporation?”

Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), arguably the greatest poet America has yet produced, may not be recognizable to everyone. After all, not many poets are. But he should matter to every writer, which, of course, includes novelists.

Tip:  Know your audience well enough to present details responsively.

Here’s what Stevens could encourage writers to consider: 

~ Audience. 

This poet’s name, beloved to certain writers and unknown or only vaguely recalled by others, clarifies the question of audience. Until you’ve identified yours, you’ll never know what to take for granted and when you explain too little or too much. Readers (including agents) discard possibilities from both ends of the spectrum: feeling patronized, or feeling that they spend more time with Wikipedia and the dictionary than the novel itself. Neither is much fun.

As a novelist, it’s your job to know whether your readers are likely to be familiar with Wallace Stevens, Grace’s version of “You Don’t Own Me,” or The Battle of the Bulge.  Write for everyone, and you might wind up writing for no one.

~ Mystery and inference.

Stevens urges us to “Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.” What’s the invitation here? Rationality can sometimes be—too rational, too clear, too blazingly bright to let creativity  flourish. Close your own eyes so you can open your reader’s.

~ Symbolism.

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor,” Stevens says in “The Necessary Angel, Essays on Reality and the Imagination.”  Both the poet and the novelist need an original vision, accompanied by figurative language that lets readers see beyond the ordinary.

~ Concreteness

In that same book of essays, though, Stevens insists that it’s the relationship between the individual mind and the sound, smell, taste, sight, and touch of the physical world that lets writers fulfill reader needs: “The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.” Because of that, “Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.”

~ Unity of content and its expression.

Yes, great ideas can be expressed badly, and shallow observations phrased exquisitely. But in the most compelling verbal moments, the quality matches. And the language seems to reinforce the mood, the idea, the emotion. That’s why “A change of style is a change of meaning.”

~ Ambiguity.

Some of the greatest literature is accessible only if the reader is casual about exactitude, so “The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.”  Poetry becomes quite difficult if one expects an identical literal meaning from every reader every time. Hmm. Can’t we say the same of certain esoteric but highly influential novelists like Virginia Wool and James Joyce?

~ Inspiration. 

In “Sunday Morning,” Stevens postulates that “Death is the mother of beauty,” Is it the knowledge that life is finite that helps us appreciate the pathos of the seasons, that makes us want to draw? Paint? Write?

That’s who Wallace Stevens is. Want to know more? Start with “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “Evening without Angels,” “Sunday Morning,” and “Adagia.” 

The Novelist’s Vocal Chords

As D.W. Wilson noted in The White Review,

Voice is not talking. In fact that makes no sense – the written word being an inherently silent medium. We say we like the sound of a writer’s voice, but this is purely metaphorical, this is hand-waving, this is gross simplification of the highest order. What we actually like is some analogue of sound in a writer’s voice, some approximation of how the voice-as-written represents the voice-as-spoken.

Voice in fiction is so elusive that it’s as difficult to define as to release. But every novelist must grapple with it, because “if you like the person telling you the story—which is to say the voice, not the author—you generally will let them tell you a story” (Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic).

 Like sinful chocolate or cheese, satisfying complex voice teases and fulfills, begins as one flavor and ends with another. That can’t happen with a simplistic taste or sound. Instead, it’s an immersion in sensation: the result seems as original as it is familiar.

The source of this rich stuff is a combination of elements: innovation plus tradition, inventive plus archetypal, subjective and socio-political, and not just dramatic or poetic or side-splittingly hilarious, but the magic of seamlessly interweaving those.

Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall call their book Finding Your Writers’ Voice. This implies that it must be lost, so you must you find it. But how can you with that “must” daring you to screw up? Threatening not only humiliation, but the consequences of lacking the fresh and innovative sound that every agent, publisher, editor, and reader seeks? Voice synthesizes “must” and “can.”

In fiction, great voices suggest not one singer with a guitar, but an entire band or orchestra. How do you avoid sounding like a one-note wonder?

~ Personality.

How do you sound when you’re really yourself? Uncensored, and thus possibly whiney or arrogant or meticulous or—the person no one else can earth can be. This fosters sound enhancing language while imagery enhances meaning. It comes from going deep inside yourself while remembering that you’re not doing this just for yourself:

The issue in most manuscripts, then, is not whether the author has a voice but whether they are using it to maximum effect. Does the language of the novel light it up? Does the story stab our hearts? Does its passion grip us? Do we see the world in new ways? – Don Maass

~ Impersonality.

“The individual voice is the communal voice,” Joyce Carol Oates reminds. Want to be so much yourself that you write only for yourself? Fine, just don’t ask anyone else to read it.

Tip: Ironically, voice is the paradoxical merger of tightening up and letting loose.

“V” Is for “Vivid”—Not “Verbose”

The internet revolutionized our assessment of “vivid” versus “verbose.”  

Do you ever skip description in a novel? I do, too. Obviously, merely describing how things look, sound, taste, feel, and smell is not, by itself, going to bring a location to life. Something more is required…Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive.”  — Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

Neil Gaiman illustrates this in American Gods:

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

That works. This does not: “The house smelled of must, dampness, and the sweetish smell of rot.” What makes one “vivid” and the other “verbose”?

1. Originality.

Particularly when dealing with anything familiar—like a decaying house—transcend same-old, same-old. What’s the best source of that? Your character’s perception.

2. Comparison.

This could be a metaphor, simile, symbol, or analogy. In all of these, successful comparisons arise from “an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar” — Aristotle, The Poetics.  Does the resemblance resonate at the deepest level? If so, readers instantly sense that a mockingbird or white whale or scarlet letter represents not only the literal but also a meaning beyond that.

3. Insight.

Setting becomes meaningful when it reminds readers what they didn’t know they knew.

4. Tension.

Setting should set up what’s ahead, and without “telling.”  In Kraken, here’s what China Miéville does with the sky:

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.

And Amy Tan with war in The Joy Luck Club:

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people—men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Images of “clouds” or “war” abound on the internet. So even incorporating all five senses won’t necessarily produce something “that readers will not skim,” as Maass reminds. Unless setting intensifies response to plot and character, it often feels “verbose.”

Tip: Setting becomes “vivid” only when it’s as integral to a novel as its plot.

OVERWROUGHT!!!!!!!

“Overwrought.” Since its first meaning is over-stimulated to the point of hysteria, we associate this word more with behavior than language. Yet “overwrought” also defines purple prose— phrasing that’s ostentatious, gaudy, pompous, self-conscious, self-indulgent, and likely to drive readers nuts.

Tip: Overblown language isn’t lively or original; it’s excessive and irritating.

To illustrate, I could choose from hundreds of classical or contemporary disasters. Instead, I tactfully offer hyperbole of my own making:

The few faint, final, fluttery wand-like wisps of the dying sun’s peach, mauve, and magenta rays whispered past the stony-faced mountains, majestic mountains unmoved by the sky’s pyrotechnics as it sank, ever more slowly, toward its well-deserved rest. The scene’s serenity reminded the still-heartbroken widow of all she had lost. Never again would she savor his tender caress, his musical laughter, his powerful arms. No! The love they’d had was lost forever. No, no, no! As the thickening twilight besieged her, no one anywhere in the world yearned with greater anguish, or wept with more acrid acerbity.

Let’s examine “overwrought,” one issue at a time.

~ Lighten up on colors, especially esoteric ones like peach, mauve, or magenta.

~Exercise caution with the familiar, including the heavy-handed symbolism of the setting sun.

There’s a reason “It was a dark and stormy night” is more hilarious than threatening.

~ Avoid personification, or attributing human characteristics to anything inhuman.

Does the sunset actually “whisper”? Are those mountains more moved by sunrise than sunset? Does the sun really need a rest? Deserve one? Can twilight “besiege”?

~ Insinuate sound echoes.

A little alliteration, or repetition of initial consonant sounds, goes a long way. Bombard

 with poetic devices, and you’ll move readers to laughter instead of tears.

~ Understate.

A widow watching the sun set already verges on melodrama. That means you can’t have clichés, exclamation points, turgid pace, vapid generalizations, or annoying repetition.

~ Eliminate arcane or abstract language.

Certain words achieve neither invisibility nor imagery. The paragraph above is full of them: “savor,” “forever,” “yearned,” and “anguish.” This language diminishes rather than intensifies the moment.

Replace oversimplified judgments like “tender caress,” “musical laughter,” and “powerful arms” with original imagery.

“A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.” -- Russell Page

One concrete, apt suggestion is worth a hundred tired, redundant, overblown details.

Winter Light

Chanukah, the festival of light, commemorates the miracle of a scarce supply of oil burning for eight days. What better time than now to revere light? Many of us fade at least a little during winter, missing what fosters happiness, not to mention inspiration.

The symbolism of light is rich and ancient. Shakespeare’s Juliet has this to say of her lover:

When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

This tragedy complicates dark and light, as all insightful fiction does. But no matter what your faith or lack of it, light represents goodness and illumination; it’s a gift from and to the gods or God. Light’s presence has always protected us from animals, spirits, and fear of the unknown.

What’s that got to do with your novel? A great novel offers subtle and surprising enlightenment. In that sense, isn’t every novel a festival of enduring light?

Festival. The word originally described religious gatherings and social bonding, later adding group entertainment and celebration of the arts. The novel encompasses all of that: a good time, a cultural expression, and both strengthening and questioning of norms.

Tip: Incorporate all the elements of festival into your novel.

As a writer, you’re in the fortunate position of gathering and distributing all the “available light.”

~ Find the light.

Whether with candles, fireplace, imagery and the prose you create or enjoy, gather all the light you can. Unless you collect the light, how can you possibly share it?

~ Study the characteristics of light.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. ― Truman Capote

           

How recently have you questioned light and dark, good and evil in your novel?

~ Revere the intrinsic symbolism of light.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. ― Martin Luther King Jr.

What better time than right now to revisit this relationship? Can you do that in your own novel?

Use your fiction to reveal the light that represents our hopes—and burns beyond our expectations.

Detail and Shadow

Most writers relish details the way they cherish words: how can you possibly amass enough? Yet details are like chocolate. Continue after you should quit, and the result is queasiness. Or worse.

19^th century writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich said, “I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.”

Here in the 21^st century “wings” are generally restricted to literal flight. The language has changed, but not its truth: the smallest possible number of precise details let readers engineer their own flights.

The right detail is worth ten or twelve almost-right ones. This isn’t just a matter of leaving readers enough space; it also involves perception.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow. ― Leonardo da Vinci

What underlies this observation? The significance of dimness, of ambiguity, of the part you have to squint to bring into focus—and it might still remain indistinct anyway.

The history of photography, of how we make imagery permanent, has much to offer novelists. Picture yourself in a darkroom, dipping the print-to-be in its bath, waiting for an image to emerge, waiting to see what you captured.  Even though we can now see what we capture as fast as our fingers can move, patience remains the fiction writer’s ally. Yes, it’s great to have 50 chances to get the shot. But you have let all of them go except the one that offers both shadow and light, that guides readers without blocking the view. Present all your attempts, and you’ve erased every shadow.

Keep” taking shots” until you achieve the picture that gives readers of what they sought in the first place: the privilege of discovering where the shadows begin. Here’s an example:

Helen made all well-formed sentences. But they were hollow and stuffed―linguistic training bras. She sorted nouns from verbs, but, disembodied, she did not know the difference between thing and process, except as they functioned in clauses. Her predications were all shotgun weddings. Her ideas were as decorative as half-timber beams that bore no building load. ― Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2

Powers gives us lots of metaphors, each providing a clue to what’s missing. The details make this happen: “training bra,” “noun” or “verb,” impetuous marriage, and “beams” that offer no support.  In about fifty words, readers discover something about Helen, the person describing her, and the discomfort of non-communication. He loves metaphors—and many of us love him for that! Because the metaphors are never definitive—only suggestive. Each reader can interpret a little differently. Grant your own readers that opportunity.

Tip: Leave room for the shadows.

Time, Space, and Fiction

Novelists tend to view time and space in terms of themselves or their characters, i.e. “I never have enough time to write—and I’m never inspired except in coffee shops,” or “My novel moves my protagonist from childhood to seniordom, and no two scenes occur in the same place.”

All perfectly legit. But these observations circumvent a crucial question: how do readers experience time and space in your novel?

Space

Every novel has two kinds of space. The obvious one of course, is the physical one what we call sense of place. Without that, your characters exist in the ether.

But the one more often neglected is described by Stacey D’Erasmo in The Art of Intimacy:

What’s in that critical space beween in fiction? Of what is it composed? What makes it “work” or not? One way into this delicate matter might be to look not so much at individual characters and their motivations or the outcomes of their yearnings and relationships, or even at their interactions per se, but at exactly what is in that space between them, the linkage.

This is where, if you leave room, your readers experience your novel’s world and characters directly. Sure, if you omit all comments, your readers might miss something. Isn’t that preferable to bludgeoning with clarity?  Yes. So, how do you provide that gift?

• Plant clues.
• Use imagery and metaphor.
• Avoid cliché. (Familiar expectations fill space, leaving readers outside.)
• Omit whatever the reader already knows.
• Trust your reader. Trust yourself.

 Time

You’re the ruler of every physical law in your novel. This gives you the power to make time slow down for drama and speed up for backdrop.

• Clarify time’s progress.

A reader wondering about sequence doesn’t constitute pleasurable ambiguity; it’s merely confusion.

• Make time emphasize.

In Joan Silber’s The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes, she notes that “Slowed time is—or should be— a way of pointing to what’s important.”

• Start where your story begins.

In other words, is the material with which you open the story an arrow pointing toward the unified effect?” ― Julie Checkoway, Creating Fiction

Tip: Make your novel’s world one where time and space never frustrate, only offer endless pleasure.

Only a Click Away

Tip: The better you see, then the better your readers will.

Sit in a public place and observe the people with their phones. Don’t whip out your own and start photographing or texting. Don’t call or email anyone about what you see. Resist that temptation. Obsession, maybe? Just watch. Remember that?

A smart phone lets you see with a camera instead of only with your eyes. The views differ radically. Once you frame the world to fit a rectangle or panorama, you’ve changed it, however slightly.  And that affects your readers more than slightly.

Good novels create a reality that’s sharper, acuter, and more “real” than reality itself. Can video, slo-mo, burst, or series of clicks capture the fullness and intensity of the entire world? What camera can compete with the five senses plus the human imagination?

Well over a century back, Ralph Waldo Emerson understood this. “Each and All” mourns the fact that snippets and souvenirs can’t reproduce the forest or seashore:

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

Is photography depriving you of what Emerson calls “the perfect whole”? If so, that deprives your readers, as well. Perhaps a bit of sensory immersion would help.

Put down your phone. Disconnect yourself from everything except the physical world around you. Take a moment to touch, hear, see, smell, maybe taste. In this scene…

What’s most beautiful?

What’s ugliest?

What’s most intriguing?

What contains potential danger?

What contains potential pleasure?

How would you make someone care about the least interesting detail here?

How would you make someone care about the least empathetic person here?

What astonishes you?

What’s a metaphor to describe “the perfect whole”?

Don’t give up until you have a good answer for each question.

What Ezra Pound called making it “new” is less about seeing something different than finding what’s different in the presumably ordinary. It’s more comfortable to reach for the exotic. But if you’re a writer, originality is your job. Take it all in so your readers can. According to Kurt Heinzelman in “Make it new: The Rise of an Idea,” the writer’s task is renewing via a “return to origins.” Where do you find that? Many things originate in the external world—and at least sometimes you need to view them without the frame a camera imposes.

Plot and Its Delivery

Novels with great plots often succeed despite weak writing. Great plots generate movies and TV series, so cash flow follows. Sound great, right?  Yet unless your plot is extraordinary or your novel merely a draft for a screenplay, you might want to pay attention to the plot’s delivery. Lots of attention.

These elements can make adequate plots good and good plots great:

~Characterization.

One-dimensional characters never live, so their fate never matters much.

ü  Do you reveal your characters through action and dialogue, instead of through thoughts (potentially tedious) or commentary (potentially irritating)?

ü  Do your characters exhibit both consistency and complexity, as real people do?

~ Narrator/character balance.

Readers need the context only narrators can provide (summary of time, change of scene, exploration of complex motivation) in addition to the immediacy only characters present.

ü  Do you make use of both your narrator and characters?

ü  Do you put meaty, exciting events in scene using your characters?

ü  Does the narrator quickly and attractively deliver the logistics and background that are fun to write but deadly to read?

~ Supportive detail.

In Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway made two points about description: “The first is that the writer must deal in sense detail. The second is that these must be details ‘that matter.’” In other words, the best details involve one of the five senses, but that’s not enough. The detail must point toward what you what readers to see, hear, etc.

ü  Do your details ever distract from the story?

ü  Are all your details both concrete and significant?

ü  Do you amass catalogues of details because you haven’t found the one you need?

~ Texture.

Memorable novels offer something beyond familiar characters enacting a familiar plot, however competently that’s executed.

ü  Does your novel encourage readers to reach their own conclusions?

ü  Do you intertwine theme with plot?

ü  Does your story allude to concepts and conditions larger than itself?

~ Beauty.

Our world is an efficient and hasty one. Many readers don’t care about graceful sentences, and many writers feel that polishing sentences wastes time. Yet writers remain responsible for their writing.

ü  Do you want to write swiftly or beautifully?

ü  Wouldn’t you love readers exclaiming, “Wow—that’s gorgeous”?

Tip: if you polish both plot and delivery, you could earn both Pulitzer and film option.

Beauty and the Best

America’s literary giants had plenty to say on the subject. Romantic Edgar Allan Poe asserted that “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.” Who could argue with that? Or with Ralph Waldo Emerson observing that “Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

It’s no newsflash that interpretations of “beauty” or “art” vary widely. In fiction, though, beauty comes from characterization, from causality, from imagery and rhythmic syntax.

~ Characterization.

The more rapidly and insightfully you can develop a character, then the more exquisite the impact. In Ten Little Indians, Sherman Alexie does it in one sentence: “She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks. ”

*** Are you gathering examples of characterization that strike you as particularly  concise and true? Are you seeking ways to accomplish this yourself?

~ Causality.

Jane Austen’s novels end happily because the characters mature enough to earn their happiness. Darcy overcomes pride and Elizabeth overcomes prejudice because neither can bear to lose the other.

***Are you noticing examples of causality? Does causality drive your own novel? Shouldn't it?

~ Imagery.

The best imagery works both literally and symbolically. It infuses the trivial with significance; it makes the ordinary extra-ordinary, but without calling attention to itself, like this example from Bernard Malamud’s The Natural:

Roy Hobbs pawed at the glass before thinking to prick a match with his thumbnail and hold the spurting flame to his cupped palm close to the lower berth window, but by then he had figured it was a tunnel they were passing through and was no longer surprised at the bright sight of himself holding a yellow light over his head, peering back in.

*** Do you catch yourself using three or four or five images? Does this suggest vague awareness that you haven’t found the right one?

~ Syntax.

Rhythm and emphasis can transform prose into poetry in prose. Like this: “People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?” ― Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen

*** Are you rationalizing sentences that don’t quite sound right? Are you aware that either craft or psychological obstacles often originate such sentences?

Tip: Savor beautiful writing. Collect it. Isn’t that the start to your own beautiful writing?

The Novel and the Novelist’s Emotions

Like everyone else, writers may be reluctant to wade through their deepest emotions. It’s like a swamp down there—with all the worst quagmire characteristics: rotting material, oppressive atmosphere, fetid odors—the stuff of nightmares. Maybe even the idea turns you off. Who loves swamps, or wants to revisit fear, anger, or pain? At best it puts you in a terrible mood; at worst it hurts.

But dark places can originate creativity: carnivorous plants, larger-than-life creatures, symbolism, secrets.

In Writing 21^st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques, Donald Maass suggests that novelists often gain the greatest impact by probing deep inside—unearthing what they’d rather forget or ignore.

Tip: You’re the best source of the depths that make your characters compelling and real.

The point isn’t self-torture, of course, but the kind of experiment that scientists like Newton have always performed. To whatever extent you can step back to notice or recall profound feeling, you might gain both perspective and stoicism. You might unearth the details that create complex characters, which in turn creates compassionate readers.

Questions to might help achieve that:

~ How would you rank this pain (or fear or lust or rage)?

Scoring helps recall other instances of intense emotion and produces more objective comparisons. This can yield specific examples and strong metaphors. Make yourself take notes so you can later round out your characters—even your minor ones.

~ What’s hidden in your personal swamp?

Perhaps there’s more envy (or competitiveness or greed or selfishness) than you usually acknowledge. But it’s okay, because you’re wearing protective garb: “This is for the writing.” That arms you against hideous imagery and noxious fumes while you dig up the traits that shape intriguing characters. Write down the details.

~ How does intense emotion affect you physically?

Note breathing changes—also your pulse, lips, shoulders, and tongue. Which of the five senses dominates? What happens to hunger, thirst, energy, even digestion? Record your observations to replace clichéd body language like turning, yawning, and shrugging.

 If life dumps you in a swamp, such exercises may feel intolerable. But if you can wade the bog for the sake of your novel and its characters, your discoveries might enrich not only your fiction, but your life.

Seeing the Magic, Making the Magic

Say it’s winter, and you’re lucky enough to be on a southern beach instead of imprisoned in a northern cold front. Say you like that beach enough to put it in your novel. The easy, obvious course is describing the easy and obvious. Here goes: hundreds of folks glistening with oil or tanning lotion splay out on beach chairs facing the sun. Behind them, the waves lap rhythmically, soothingly. It’s true. Absolutely.

But who cares?  No one, really. No magic here. Only the easy and obvious.

Tip: To convey something magical, first you must see—not just skim the surface, but really see.

It’s actually harder to see than to craft sentences about what you’ve uncovered. Seeing is far more than half the battle.  Happily, looking deeply and creatively is a skill. Like any skill, it’s something you can learn. All you need is patience, practice, and determination to keep seeking what’s initially invisible.

A writer I know remarked on wanting to find what’s beautiful and special about any location. Even though many admire mountains and ocean more than farmland, finding magic wherever you are makes you a better novelist.

That’s the whole trick: looking past pedestrian clichés and tired, superficial imagery to the mystery and magic. In that world—which is actually everywhere—magic surrounds you, encompasses you, infiltrates you. Replace sunbathers (yawn) and raucous gulls (yawn, yawn) and lapping waves (not yawn but ouch!). How about a sliver of moon accompanying a star or two when your protagonist’s the only one in the hotel pool at 5 a.m. Or a protagonist who, with only blessing for compensation, walks the beach, forking litter from seaweed and broken coral, stowing other people’s refuse in a giant garbage bag.

~ Find the magic of fantasy.

If you’re lucky enough to imagine what elves lovingly whisper during elf trysts, or the spell an elderly       wizard casts when he knows his long life is winding down, then you transcend the ordinary.

~ Find the magic of reality.

Every novelist needs magic, and not all of us can or want to conjure elves, wizards, or unicorns. But magic is everywhere. All you have to do is really look, and you’ll begin to really see. Abracadabra.

There it is. Yours for the taking—yours for the giving. A version of blessed.

New, New, New, New, New

We’re starting a new year, which arrives with a flurry of resolutions, hopes, and dreams about a new start. Nu? What have you done to make your novel “new” lately? If you haven’t, perhaps you’d like to. Because our word for the long narrative comes from the Latin “novellus,” meaning, of course, “new.”

A novel that does nothing new is last year’s news. While it’s truer than ever that “there is nothing new under the sun,” it’s your job to make your novel feel new. These strategies might get you started.

~ Opening.

Link the setting and atmosphere to the dilemma, and any location or conflict becomes original.

~ Plot

Dig deep. As Don Maass frequently reminds, the first nine twists you generate will most likely lack the punch of the ones you brainstorm following that.

~ Character

Whore with a heart of gold? Quarterback who wants to make it big so he can save his family? Whores and quarterbacks—why not. Stereotypical ones? Uh, uh. Make one major change, be it status, dreams, occupation, even gender. Shake things up.

~ Syntax

Sentence structure is important and it’s not necessarily instinctive and English teachers aren’t the only ones who loathe run-ons and so you should get out of the rut. Vary. Change patterns. Transcend habits, even if that requires conscious, concerted effort.

~ Imagery

Roses are red. Skies are blue. Tears equal sad. Spring equals happy. Roses come in a rainbow of colors, as do skies. And character tears can make readers quite sad—for the wrong reason. Can’t find anything new for your scene? Turn it upside down. Probe its core. That’s where the imagery you need is hiding.

~ Climax.

If readers have expected a set scene for a couple hundred pages, don’t rob them of that pleasure. Still, satisfaction blends the predictable with the startling. One perfect detail will get the job done. Again, the secret is discarding the first dozen or so possibilities. The great ones come from thinking long and hard enough.

Tip: Resolve to find ways to make your novel “new” in this new year.

Have a happy one.

Who’s Doing the Heavy Lifting?

People read fiction for various reasons—escape, entertainment, and illumination, information, or insight. But probably not one reader would add “enduring an exhausting workout” to that list. That’s what the gym—and the job—are for.

Tip: The less hard the writer works, the harder the readers have to.

Novelists can fatigue readers with what they put in or leave out. Here’s a partial list:

• Picturing context for the characters.
• Transitioning between moments, places, and external/internal realms.
• Shifting point of view.
• Including numerous characters.
• Assigning distracting character names.
• Introducing ambiguous metaphors.
• Isolating images, subplots, and themes.
• Composing lengthy sentences with multiple phrases and clauses.

Many readers enjoy ambiguity; that isn’t on the list. Readers don’t enjoy having to guess and compute. Sometimes that’s unvoidable. Attempt to make everything clear and easy, and you could wind up sounding graceless and boring. As often applies to the craft of fiction, balance is the key. These questions help test whether you make readers cope with something they needn’t.

• Do you ground your characters in physical space?
• Do you avoid unnecessary shifts, especially of short duration?
• Do you transition whenever you change time, place, point of view, etc.?
• Do you include the smallest number of characters you can get away with?
• Do your characters have accessible names, i.e. as close to familiar as credibly possible?
• Do taglines help identify characters, i.e. the one with green eyes or that oversized purse?
• Do character names start with the same letter or sound similar?
• Does every symbolic reference make complete sense on the literal level?
• Do you weave imagery into motifs, or recurrent patterns?
• Does every single subplot link to the central one?
• Are your themes tied both to the protagonist and to each other?
• Do you divide sentences for rhythm, variety, and clarity?

 Responding to all these questions sounds like a lot of work. It sure is. Novelists are supposed to work hard so readers don’t have to. Occasionally, you’ll have no choice: The plot or theme or psychological exploration simply demands a certain amount not of obscurity, but of complexity. Just be able to honestly justify asking your readers to “work.” And never put them on duty more often than you can help. 

Private Jokes Are No Joking Matter

Did you hear the one about the hen at the hectic intersection? Yawn. The only thing funny about a well-worn comic moment is someone thinking it’s funny. But genuinely “funny”? That matters. It doesn’t just give novels depth and texture beyond basic plot and theme. Humor makes novels better simply because everybody likes to laugh. And private jokes are the best of all.

So. Take a second to picture yourself with a spouse, partner, or dear friend roaring with laughter over—something hilarious only to the two of you. This is a special kind of funny. Whether slapstick, witty, subtle, or all of the above, it feels personal. No one else quite gets it. That’s the point.

Personal humor (or anything else for that matter) is special. It feels slightly illicit, which most of us find sensual. A private joke involves a clique, if only of two, so it’s exclusive. In-group humor depends on insider information and is thus a commodity. All great, but can you do that in your novel? Of course.

~ Set the scene.

Bad jokes inundate with context. Decent jokes offer almost enough. Great jokes hint what the audience needs to know, preferably in advance and just clearly enough to command attention without being obvious.

~ Plant seeds.

Good jokes, in fiction and everywhere else, build slowly, often in three’s: A vague reference, a slightly more pointed one, then—whomp!—the punchline.

~ Use slightly esoteric references.

If you never ask readers to stretch for dim recollections about Paul Bunyan, Walter Cronkite, the Uncertainty Principle, or Teddy Roosevelt, then no private joke is possible. Private jokes depend on a somewhat arcane reference clicking into place.

~ Suggest rather than state character behavior.

Forget those tedious assumptions about prom queens or neurosurgeons. Instead, give your astronaut or whatever traits that plot forces to the surface. Humor flourishes with the surprise of foiled expectations.

~ Use the five senses.

A good joke is not just something you hear or read, but one you can at least visualize, and, ideally, connect with viscerally.

~ Mix and match.

Blend graphics, word play, irony, and burlesque. Besiege us in more than one way and—we’ll love your book all the more for the fun we’re having.

Tip: Charm your readers not just with public jokes but private ones.

Look at Me!!!!!!

A friend asked me to look over her realtor’s listing of her house. The EXCITING copy I read offered exclamation point after exclamation point! New listing! Priced to sell! Cute! Quaint! Comfy! Just what you’re looking for!

Perhaps. But I’d rather be shown the reasons why it’s just what I’m looking for. Specify that, and you can omit all the in-your-face manipulation, which won’t convince me, anyhow. Exclamation points, caps, and even some instances of italics are like SHOUTING IN THE READER’S FACE! And, as the always understated F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.” How funny can that be?

Exclamation points are symptomatic of a larger problem. How much do you trust your reader? How much do you trust your own words? If you mistakenly believe you feel that trust, or hope that grinding your teeth hard enough will make it so, all is lost! You’ll state. You’ll tell. You’ll bludgeon. You’ll smear your scenes with abstractions.

Don’t reduce emotion to vague abstractions like “anguish,” “terror,” or “ardor.”

Don’t tell us what to think. You won’t convince us, just annoy us.

Don’t think that describing character emotions helps readers feel them. That’s just another way of saying “Quaint! Comfy! Just what you’re looking for!”

Do imply. The best clues are the ones readers just barely absorb.

Do offer imagery. If we can see, hear, taste, smell, or touch it, that’s when readers experience the scene right along with the characters.

Do understate. The more tragic and dramatic the emotion, then the more quietly you should whisper when conveying it.

If you don’t trust your readers and your novel, the best way to address that is to revise until you feel good about what you’ve written. Real evidence on the page helps you relinquish control to offer readers the inference they prefer. Yes, this involves the risk that they might miss something you long to share.  But it’s always better not to make your point than to pummel readers with it.

Tip: Unless there’s a fire (!) or someone needs help (!), not a bad idea to pretend that exclamation points and other intrusive gimmicks don’t even exist.