Writing well is first of all a matter of "show and tell." Instead of narrative, create scenes. Scenes engage the reader and engaging the reader's attention is what you want if you write for others to read.
I knew this.
Tuesday evening, Brandon arrived for dinner bursting with talk. He has not yet found the job he wants and his girlfriend's worry is getting to him. "She's more worried about herself than about me," he said. Approaching 30, she had told him when they first started dating that she saw herself having children at age 28 but she hesitates about marriage because of his current unemployment. "She didn't know me when I was making a lot of money. She only knew me in college when I didn't own a car until my sophomore year and supported myself with a football scholarship and work at the college workout center." Brandon and I discussed his situation. He kept saying, "I know that. I know that."
Feelings take center stage when they appear in consciousness. They push what we know to the wings where they don't even figure in the play at hand. Unfortunately we are often oblivious when feelings take over and we don't see the forest or the trees anymore but just the mist and rain and wind and cold.
Reading Renni Browne and Dave King's 1993 book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How To Edit Yourself into Print, this morning was I-know-that moment after moment.
Narrative is a second-hand report. Narrative describes; scenes make the reader experience what the writer is conveying. A scene takes places in real time. Events are seen as they happen rather than described after the fact. A scene conveys immediacy that grabs the reader's attention.
I know this from vipassana meditation. When the mind stops wandering and the focus is centered on the ordinarily ignored details of the moment, my perspective changes. From conceptual thinking I switch to experiencing. From remembering and analyzing I notice bodily sensations, cold, touch, movement. The immediacy is compelling.
Another I-know-that: Details, specific items rather than generalizations. Generalization invokes thinking. Specific items recall sensory experience. Taffeta conjures crispness and the silky texture. No wonder that McDonald's patents its product designs. People buy Apple computers because they are not generic like Windows computers made by Dell or Hewlett-Packard. You write that you are using a Macintosh laptop and the image of a streamline, aluminum case with the Apple logo glowing on the cover is as tangible as the touch of the key for F under your left index finger.
Henry James wrote narratives making his novels hard to read. Style has changed. We have been influenced by cinema and television and think in scenes. Writing, photography and videos all involve creating scenes. What moviemakers call cinematic in a novel is a style of writing in scenes, lending itself to "show not tell."
I didn't stay long at McDonald's this morning. I didn't have my MacBook with me. Somehow this morning I could not get the battery to charge. Without a computer to write into, insightful thoughts felt wasted. I didn't want to waste and keep on wasting. I drove to Asia Mart to get Napa cabbage to add to bonito-based soup for supper tonight. (By the way, I learned from Minda's Japanese friend that bonito was just another name for tuna!)
Back home I photographed the items I bought from the store. I brought out the Riffa softbox. It cast very little shadow. Supplementing that with a hard light for the background made a better picture. If I want to take better photographs I need to follow rules. Rules are not God. They do however have basis in experience. Why keep insisting on doing things the half-assed way?
Because the half-assed way takes less time. Am I serious about writing? Then I need to take the time to craft words and sentences. Writing journal entries and blogs are not the same thing.
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