I've posted on a personal dream that came true over at Novel Spaces. I hope you can drop by.
Also, my article on "Peter Elbow and the Real Voice" is in the latest volume of the Illuminata. I discuss the issue of voice in relationship to Peter Elbow's book Writing With Power.
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Showing posts with label Peter Elbow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Elbow. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Friday, November 26, 2010
Where Words Get Their Power, at Novel Spaces
I'm posting over at Novel Spaces today on the topic of Where Words Get Their Power. I hope you'll drop by for a read.
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Sunday, November 21, 2010
Lushness Revisited
Language is such a weak medium at times. In my last post I spoke about wanting lushness in what I read, but I don’t think I conveyed exactly what I meant. At least one commenter mentioned enjoying the “spare” prose of Hemingway, and Hemingway is actually a favorite of mine. How could I enjoy “lushness” and still enjoy Hemingway? It’s because lushness in my mind has nothing to do with wordiness. Lushness gives me sensory details, gives me emotional intensity, and gives me images.
Consider, from A Farewell to Arms, “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
Or:, from The Short Stories, “They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he lay down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally, the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.”
Though Hemingway is generally considered to write “spare” prose, these scenes of his are “lush” to me. Image piles upon image. I can see these scenes with absolutely clarity. I can feel myself inhabiting them. And though more subtle than in the “tiger” scenes I posted last time, there is an underlying current of powerful emotion singing through these words.
In contrast, here’s a scene from John Cheever that I found in Peter Elbow’s Writing With Power. “We drank in the garden. It was a spring day—one of those green-gold Sundays that excite our incredulity. Everything was blooming, opening, burgeoning. There was more than one could see—prismatic lights, prismatic smells, something that sets one’s teeth on edge with pleasure—but it was the shadow that was most mysterious and exciting, the light one could not define. We sat under a big maple, its leaves not yet fully formed but formed enough to hold the light, and it was astounding in its beauty, and seemed not like a single tree but one of a million, a link in a long train of leafy trees beginning in childhood.”
With the Cheever piece, I’m OK with “garden” and “spring day,” and then I’m lost all the way until “big maple.” Then I’m lost again. What is a “green-gold Sunday?” Why tell us there “was more than one could see.” Of course, there was. There always is. The writer needs to give us enough sensory details to help us create what is there. Cheever doesn’t even try. He confounds us with the overuse and misuse of “prismatic.” I can vaguely picture prismatic lights, but prismatic “smells!” And take “astounding in its beauty?” How much of a lame copout is that? This piece, although wordy, is the opposite of lush. It’s almost lifeless.
So, if lush isn’t the right word for what I want in a scene, that is sensory detail, emotion, and images, what is the right word?
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Consider, from A Farewell to Arms, “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
Or:, from The Short Stories, “They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he lay down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally, the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.”
Though Hemingway is generally considered to write “spare” prose, these scenes of his are “lush” to me. Image piles upon image. I can see these scenes with absolutely clarity. I can feel myself inhabiting them. And though more subtle than in the “tiger” scenes I posted last time, there is an underlying current of powerful emotion singing through these words.
In contrast, here’s a scene from John Cheever that I found in Peter Elbow’s Writing With Power. “We drank in the garden. It was a spring day—one of those green-gold Sundays that excite our incredulity. Everything was blooming, opening, burgeoning. There was more than one could see—prismatic lights, prismatic smells, something that sets one’s teeth on edge with pleasure—but it was the shadow that was most mysterious and exciting, the light one could not define. We sat under a big maple, its leaves not yet fully formed but formed enough to hold the light, and it was astounding in its beauty, and seemed not like a single tree but one of a million, a link in a long train of leafy trees beginning in childhood.”
With the Cheever piece, I’m OK with “garden” and “spring day,” and then I’m lost all the way until “big maple.” Then I’m lost again. What is a “green-gold Sunday?” Why tell us there “was more than one could see.” Of course, there was. There always is. The writer needs to give us enough sensory details to help us create what is there. Cheever doesn’t even try. He confounds us with the overuse and misuse of “prismatic.” I can vaguely picture prismatic lights, but prismatic “smells!” And take “astounding in its beauty?” How much of a lame copout is that? This piece, although wordy, is the opposite of lush. It’s almost lifeless.
So, if lush isn’t the right word for what I want in a scene, that is sensory detail, emotion, and images, what is the right word?
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Monday, October 25, 2010
Writing With Power
I'm reading Writing with Power by Peter Elbow, and I'm finding some really good stuff as well as a few items I disagree with. One thing he says that I like has to do with design flexibility. He says essentially that an outline planned out before you write is like: "a plan you work out for travel in an unfamiliar country; it usually has to be changed once you get there and see how things really work." I know writers who use outlines to great effectiveness, but I believe a risk of outlining is that the result can turn out flat and stale, without spontaneity. Oftentimes as I'm working on a book, I'll find my mind running off onto tangents that turn out to be far more creative than what I'd come up with, or could come up with, after careful conscious consideration. The conscious mind just isn't "playful" enough to generate the best twists and turns.
Another thing Elbow points out is that too much conscious rewriting can often wring all the fresh juice out of a piece. It can end up making your prose plod instead of sing. I realized this a long time before I read Elbow. And I have a suggestion about how to deal with the issue for anyone who writes. Anytime I'm going to make substantial changes to a story, more than just revising a few words or correcting grammar, I save two copies of my file. I usually call them “Storyorg” for the original, and “storynew” for the other. Then I only work on the new file. This way, if I revise all the life out of a paragraph, I can always go back to the original and copy and paste that paragraph back into the new story. The original is sacrosanct, untouched except to provide a safety net so I can revise the new file with an axe and not worry about cutting anything out that’s important.
By now in my files, I actually have 3 or 4 versions of some of my stories. I have the original. I might have a piece that is revised to be shorter, or revised with a different ending. Or I might have a piece that I’ve altered into a horror story from what was originally a mainstream piece. As long as I’ve got the original saved, I feel completely comfortable hacking a story to shreds and letting the chips fall where they may.
Many of the stories in my collection, Bitter Steel illustrate this process. I don't think a story in that collection reads exactly the way it did when it was first released. Some have been dramatically revised. But I still have that original tucked away safe and sound in my files.
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Another thing Elbow points out is that too much conscious rewriting can often wring all the fresh juice out of a piece. It can end up making your prose plod instead of sing. I realized this a long time before I read Elbow. And I have a suggestion about how to deal with the issue for anyone who writes. Anytime I'm going to make substantial changes to a story, more than just revising a few words or correcting grammar, I save two copies of my file. I usually call them “Storyorg” for the original, and “storynew” for the other. Then I only work on the new file. This way, if I revise all the life out of a paragraph, I can always go back to the original and copy and paste that paragraph back into the new story. The original is sacrosanct, untouched except to provide a safety net so I can revise the new file with an axe and not worry about cutting anything out that’s important.
By now in my files, I actually have 3 or 4 versions of some of my stories. I have the original. I might have a piece that is revised to be shorter, or revised with a different ending. Or I might have a piece that I’ve altered into a horror story from what was originally a mainstream piece. As long as I’ve got the original saved, I feel completely comfortable hacking a story to shreds and letting the chips fall where they may.
Many of the stories in my collection, Bitter Steel illustrate this process. I don't think a story in that collection reads exactly the way it did when it was first released. Some have been dramatically revised. But I still have that original tucked away safe and sound in my files.
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