A Harsh Numbness Descended to My Entrails, Writhing There

Whoops! A harsh numbness as opposed to a cheerful one? The numbness actually descended, writhed later? Is it strategic to discuss emotion (or lack of it) in terms of entrails?

Here’s why not. Ever start watching an old movie only to become dismayed by the music? The melodramatic facial expressions? A plot so obvious it seems a sixth grader contrived it? Although you’re dying to know who Tony Curtis was or how the young Tommy Lee Jones looked (blond and great!), you give up. No novelist wants readers doing that.

Tip: Tastes change.

Obvious as that seems, what you learned to read in what my folks called “their youth” (see how language changes?), that’s unlikely to be what you want to write right now.

So what’s different?

~ Concept.

It may have been true since Ecclesiastes that “there is no new thing under the sun,” but as Donald Maass puts it in Writing the Breakout Novel:

What about your premise? Is it truly a fresh look at your subject, a perspective that no one else but you can bring to it? Is it the opposite of what we expect or a mix of elements such as we’ve never seen before? If not, you have some work to do.

It’s a bittersweet irony that readers enjoy familiarity—but never too much of it.

~ Characterization.

Readers loved Dickens not despite the unctuousness of a creep like Uriah Heep or unmitigated greed of Ebenezer Scrooge, but precisely because the good and bad guys were unquestionably identified. Now, though, every bad guy is in some way good, and every good gal overcome by fatal flaw. In pretty much every book, today’s characters are full-bodied, passionate and resilient, but usually wrong-headed in at least one way.

~ Plot.

A great divide exists between those arguing that literary fiction is never about plot, while genre fiction is never about anything else. But writing coaches like Lisa Cron or Jessica Page Morrell, not to mention agents, publishers, and readers themselves, like to see high stakes. Unlike the meandering beauty of the 19th century novel, what sells—and gets read—is a causal chain of events that are neither improbable nor overly predictable.

~ Language.

Today’s fiction has its own share of overwrought agony. It also has examples like these, retaining the rhythmic intensity of yesterday’s sentences with the acute diction and metaphor that contemporary readers hope to encounter:

When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had travelled across a desert of living sand.—Kevin Brockmeier, A Brief History of the Dead

Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.—Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

 I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.—Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Of course you want to read on. They sound like right now—at its very best.

Hush, or Understatement, Subtext, and Whispering

Let’s start with a picture. After all, aren’t novels one picture after another of characters—both inside and out?

What do you see? This Bernini sculpture, which you can view in Rome’s elaborately decorated Santa Maria della Vittoria Church, has a story behind it.

The title, “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” clarifies that it’s a male angel, and that his hand, yes, indeed, is exactly where we suspected but were reluctant to admit. Is the angel really doing that? Yes.

Here’s a closer look. 

What captures the ecstasy? The Saint’s flung-back head, the arched body, the open mouth, the foot bodiless enough to seem devoid of bones. The sculpture melds earth and heaven—keen awareness of body with the ultimate transcendence of it. The sculpture conveys all this with such subtlety that without the tantalizing suggestion, much of this might go unnoticed. What a terrific recipe for fiction.

Tip: The more readers discover emotion, rather than being bludgeoned with it, the happier they'll be.

How does that work?

~ Understatement.

Intense emotion, such as tragedy, disaster, euphoria, or ecstasy needs implication. Because readers already know how they feel about such events. The more you “tell” them then, particularly with judgments like “horrible,” “painful,” “terrifying,” or joyous,” then the less readers can feel what they already do without your help. Abstract words, especially over-used ones, separate readers from plot, much the way adding the word “rapturous” to Bernini’s title would only interfere. Just as he uses the subtle folds of the marble—and what that implies—to make his point, use the events—not the descriptions—in your novel to make yours.

~ Subtext.

Literally what’s “beneath the words,” subtext involves what characters say indirectly.  A wife reluctant to confront her husband overtly might observe, “You needed another fishing rod?” A father might freak at his daughter’s low-cut, skin-tight tank top, and mutter, “Is that all you’re wearing? “Meaning implied but never vocalized both mimics real-life interaction and leaves readers free to interpret. This resembles the way one can scrutinize Bernini’s sculpture and infer the feelings of the angel and the saint.

~ Whispering.

With rare exceptions, the more intense the emotion, then the more subtly and quietly you ought to describe it. Defy this rule of both craft and psychology, and the likely result is melodrama, or a portrayal that feels sensational rather than emotionally gripping. Neither reader nor writer wants a novel to read like a tabloid.

How do you whisper? 

• Use concrete language that evokes one of the five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell.
• Avoid judgmental conclusions like “anguished,” “devastated,” or “heart-stopping.”
• Focus more on what happens than how scary or wonderful or terrific it is.

Here’s the ultimate understatement: trust your audience. Bernini did.

Dealing with the Devil in those Details

For novelists and everyone else, detail sometimes involves a trick, curve, mystery or problem that’s invisible until—it’s too late. The phrase evolved from “God is in the detail,” and the author of triumphant details certainly achieves a succinct universality unavailable to mere mortals.

Since details are the stuff that novels are made of, how does the devil infiltrate?

~ Tedium.

   

The less new you can make it, then the faster you should say it.

~ Melodrama.

If someone’s dying or a country’s being raped, resist the temptation to explain that this is horrible. Let vivid, understated details convey the point for you.

~ Repetition.

            Why say it specifically, then generally? Or the other way around.  This inadvertent habit

            insinuates condescension. In other words, it presumes that readers can’t figure it out

            without a few versions. So don’t patronize. Even accidentally. Even if you certainly never

            intended ill will. Or insulting your readers is the last thing you want. See how annoying it

            becomes in no time at all?

~ Self-indulgence.

With rare exceptions, detail enhances story only when it enriches character and/or plot. Make the setting reveal character and heighten tension.

~ Uniformity.

            Don’t keep piling up similar details. No matter how vituperative the villain or angelic the

infant or pure the snow, provide nuance and dimensionality.

~ Significance

“Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life” (James Wood). Emphasize the details you want readers to notice. This sounds silly! But it’s easy to distract yourself with the vividness of an image or sound of a sentence and lose track of what matters about this scene.

~ Approximation.

“The truth of the story lies in the details” (Paul Auster). You annoy readers by

confusing the location of Times Square or crucial dates of  WWII. You also annoy

readers by trampling psychological and moral truth in the characters you create.

~ Fogginess.

“Nothing is less real than realism,” Georgia O'Keeffe observed. “Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.”  No matter how autobiographical your fiction, choose details to reveal pattern and cement credibility. Offer the focus that reality cannot.

Tip: If the detail isn’t adding, it’s subtracting.

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.

Whispering Really Is Okay

Please don’t shout!!! Hear those exclamation points shrieking at you? Of course you do! Annoying, isn’t it? We read fiction—and just about anything for that matter—for entertainment, information, illumination. But we don’t read so someone can tell us what to feel or think. Nor do we read to feel like a well-meaning but rather bad, stupid dog.

Yet most writers occasionally shout. Maybe we can’t help it. Our images, themes, and observations are that important. And if they are? Implication is the way to convey them. Because when someone shouts, folks stiffen up, cross their arms over their chests, grit their teeth, or flee—not a single response you want to evoke in your readers (or anyone else).

For most writers, the ending elicits the loudest shouting. Naturally. Almost as bad as reaching the end of the journey with your characters, you’re now at the end of your chance to convince readers of—whatever you desperately hope to convince them of. Truth is ambiguous. Love is better the second time around. Men are only physically stronger than women. War is almost never the answer. 

It doesn’t matter what you want to say, whether it’s true, how passionately you believe it, or even how well you communicated it in your novel. Inside a voice whispers, “They won’t get it.” Or, “They’re not convinced. Tell them again.” Or, “You’ve tried to show for three hundred pages. Now it’s time to tell.” Or, “Last chance! Go for it! Don’t lose this last chance!!!!!!!”

Alas, no. If there’s ever a time to whisper and insinuate, it’s the last chapter, page, paragraph, sentence. This isn’t the time, well, to be right. Rather, it’s the time to write well. It isn’t the time to prove your thesis. It’s the time to leave readers with an image—one as fleeting as the last dim colors in the evening sky. But equally memorable.

So no shouting just before “The End.” Also avoid these varieties of shouting:

Boldface.

Italics.

CAPS.

One-sentence paragraphs.

Explaining why tragedy is truly tragic.

Melodramatizing why tragedy is truly tragic.

Over-used, overwrought words like “anguish,” “yearning,” “smitten,” etc.

Telling what you showed or will soon show.

Exclamation points!!!

Tip: Hoping to convince or inspire? That’s only human. But novels do it with plot.