Description Difficulties
I’ve found a new author. Well, new to me.
I’ve always read a lot, but I went through a lengthy period where I rarely read anything new. Life was so busy and hectic that I wanted to know, when I sat down with a book, that I was going to enjoy it. I tended to re-read old favorites.
Now that I have moved and my days are less about just getting through them and more about enjoying them, I have been able to branch out. And I’ve come across Ruth Rendell.
The Baroness (I love how the English reward artists as well as CEOs) is a well-known (although not to me, apparently) and much honored author of murder mysteries. Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good English murder mystery? A cup of tea, a body in the library, a good old-fashioned butler looking down his nose at the man from the Yard (Scotland, that is) while Miss Marple or her equivalent saves the day.
I like a book with a clear point. It doesn’t get much clearer than a murder mystery. Once you know whodunit, you are done.
The thing, however, that I really want to say about Ruth Rendell is how masterful her descriptions are. I feel that this is an area where my own writing falls short. (Basically, I suck at description.) I don’t know why this is, although it is possible that in my early reading years, the descriptions were the parts I skimmed. I remember skipping whole pages of Ivanhoe, for example. It’s possible that I never really absorbed descriptive technique due to lack of paying attention.
It’s also possible that I am more of a verbal than a visual person, although I can conjure up mental pictures of people and places with ease. There is some major disconnect, though, in my brain when it comes to putting words to the mental pictures. I would be a total failure at that exercise I’m told happens early in police training–where someone with a gun bursts into the classroom, holds up the teacher and then flees, and the recruits are asked to describe the perpetrator.
The recruits, however, are taught to be more observant and probably given tips and tricks for estimating heights and weights. They improve. I probably can, too.
Of course, rookie police officers’ descriptions, of necessity, tend to favor clarity over the evocation of personality or a mood. That evocation is that at which Ruth Rendell excels. I think I’m going to have to study her writing a little more.
She’s written dozens of books, as both herself and under the name Barbara Vine.
How nice for me!
* I try to leave out the parts that people skip. — Elmore Leonard
