Two Timing

Another way to improve your descriptions.

So, we’ve been talking–intermittently–about descriptive writing. I believe it started with me mentioning that I don’t think I’m very good at it. Then, last Tuesday’s Tip was the I look up and I see… exercise.

Today, I have another exercise for you. Once again, I don’t remember where I got it and will have to add that information if and when I can.

The idea is this:

Take a scene, a setting, and describe it twice in such a way that the passage will convey completely different moods. You might use words that impart a sense of danger and dread in one iteration and then sketch the same scene in joyful and exhilarating terms.

For example, here’s some practice writing I did for this exercise. Try not to consider this the best example of my work, okay? It’s just to give you an idea of how to explore this. In this case, it’s two descriptions of the same boat ride:

Hundreds of rolling wavelets marched toward her like an advancing army, broken only when the jet ski roared by. Looking at the dark slice it cut through the gun-gray water, her heart beat in sudden panic. That chainsaw buzzing of the motor. . . .the accompanying sound of the dozens of horror movies she and Eddie had watched in their teens. Maybe it was that subliminal memory of blood and gore that was making her feel queasy and not the unstable floor beneath her feet rocking and rising and falling with every shudder of wind and water, giving her the sensation of an earthquake’s aftershock.
Hundreds of rolling wavelets marched toward her like a crowd of eager children on parade, the procession broken only when the jetski bounced across the shimmering wake bubbling out aft. Looking at the gray-green line the other craft sketched through the green-gray sea, her heart lifted. The darker patch was there in the water, in her life, but it was behind her now, and she was free of it. Maybe it was that subliminal sense of liberty that made the simple act of balancing on the gentle rise and fall of the deck as exhilarating as surfing.

So, any purple prose aside, do you get the idea? Give it a shot. And if you’d like to share the results, feel free to post your work in the comments.

Happy Writing!

Make them less skippable

Digging into descriptions.

Last Friday, I wrote about finding Ruth Rendell–an excellent writer–and how much I admired her facility with description (description often being the “parts that people skip”). I also mentioned that I was not so good at descriptive writing. (“Suck” is the word I think I used.)

That got me thinking about description, and I remembered a couple of writing exercises that seem very useful to me. It seems appropriate to include one in this here Tuesday Tip.

Unfortunately, I can’t immediately remember where I found them, but I will be looking through some of my really-helpful books and including those titles in future Friday Finds and Tuesday Tips. So, when I locate the source of these ideas, I will come back and update this post. Meanwhile, the best I can do is to acknowledge that it did not originate with me.

Anyway. . .

The exercise can be called “I look up and I see. . . .”

What you do is this.

Sit down with a notebook and maybe a timer. I think a notebook–the actual old-fashioned kind with pages that requires you to hold a writing utensil in your hand is better–but you could use a new-fangled computer-type notebook if you must. It’ll mean you may be somewhat more restricted as to location, but it will save you that pesky transcription step if anything you write looks worth saving.

Now, this is an exercise, so it’s quite possible that what you write won’t seem worth saving–and that’s okay. We’re priming the pump, greasing the wheels, and implementing assorted other industrial clichés.

Set the timer for ten minutes. (If you’ve only got five minutes, fine. If you’ve only got two, use the two you’ve got!)

Your starting point is the following phrase: I look up and I see. . .

So, write that down, and finish the sentence based on what you can look up and see. Describe what you see literally and figuratively, and keep going until you run out of things to say. At that point, shift your focus, jot down another I look up and I see. . . , and keep writing.

Every time I’ve done this, I’ve been really astonished at how well I can describe things when I really look at them and focus on it. In fact, some of these practice writings are distinctly non-sucky.

Got your notebook?

Got your timer?

Ready, set, go!

The parts that people skip*

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

Writing up “that ravell’d sleeve”

The Scottish Play.

Yikes. I’ve quoted from the Scottish Play.

I’m not sure, but I think I’m okay, since I didn’t say it out loud. I’m going to take the chance, anyway. Especially since the headline and quote are such a stretch to get me to what I want to talk about: why writing makes me sleepy?

That’s what I’m wondering this Wednesday. Writing makes me sleepy, and I don’t understand it. You could be charitable and say it’s because it’s really hard work, but I don’t think that’s it. Because, the thing is, it’s the same kind of sleepy that I get doing a crossword puzzle–and that’s just recreation.

Does this happen to any of you? I write for a while, and regardless of how well it’s going, I start to feel like I want a nap. My eyelids get heavy. My brain gets fuzzy. I want to lie down. ( guess it doesn’t happen when it’s going really well. When it’s going really well, you feel like God on maybe the fifth day. You just want to keep going–whether you ought to do so or not. (I think this explains giraffes.) Under ordinary circumstances, however, writing makes me very sleepy.

I have no scientific proof of this, but I’m wondering if the sleep centers in the brain aren’t near the portions that govern language. Does stimulating the one stimulate the other? Or is it the other way around? Are they so far apart that sending all the electrical activity to one area deprives the other of some much needed stimuli? I guess that would only work if we were talking about the language center and the keep-awake center. Is there such a thing?

You see what a successful “wondering” this is? That’s because I have absolutely no basis for forming an opinion. I can theorize in a complete absence of all data. This is otherwise known as guessing. Or “blowing smoke.”

What do you think causes this phenomenon?

Well, you think about it for a while.

I’m going to go take a nap.

Bad to the bone

Try to be, anyway.

This is a tip about getting past that streak of perfectionism that is keeping you from achieving your goals.

Somewhere along the line, most of us got the idea that doing something badly was–well–a bad thing. Maybe we missed a fly ball on the softball field in second grade, and the next time teams were chosen, we were one of the last players picked. Maybe it started earlier–like when we got yelled at for spilling our milk.

Mistake = bad. Dangerous, even.

In the interests of survival, we started to be careful. We started to try really hard to do things “right.” Over time, that can be paralyzing.

But, there is an easy way around it. Just decide to do it–whatever “it” is–wrong. Announce that intention, if necessary. After all, how can someone blame you for not getting it “right” if you’ve already told them you are intentionally doing it wrong?

If that sounds crazy, let me tell you a story about the first play I ever wrote.

The first draft was promising enough that Abingdon Theatre Company was willing to give it a public reading. Jan Buttram, the artistic director, being an experienced playwright and a wise woman, suggested we should have a private reading first. “If you hear it for the first time in front of an audience, you’re not going to be able to hear it,” she said.

So, we had the private reading, and I got some very valuable feedback. I went off, with great enthusiasm, to do a re-write. And promptly froze. Oh, no! What if I ruin it? I wasn’t sure how I’d come to write it in the first place. It seemed to me there was a good chance that, in re-writing it, I would lose whatever had made that first draft halfway good.

I was so stuck that I went back to Jan some weeks later and announced that we would have to cancel the reading. In a further demonstration of wisdom, she said, “No, we’re not going to cancel. We can always read the version you have now. Meanwhile, why don’t you go back and try again? If you don’t get anywhere, don’t worry.”

I sighed and groaned and gnashed my teeth–and I went home to try again. When I got there, I remembered “We an always read the version you have now,” and I promptly saved the file under a new name. Then, I said to myself, “Okay. You’ve got the original saved. Now, you’re going into this version, and you’re going to ruin it.”

The re-write began to flow. We read the new version, and that is the version that launched my great playwriting adventure. Once I gave myself permission to do it badly, I did just fine.

Try it.

90 days!

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

It has been exactly 90 days since I started this blog. And this is the 90th blog entry. (Actually, it’s the 91st, since there was one day where I posted a quote from Jordan Roth as a second entry.) The point, however, is that there has been at least one blog entry every day for the last 90 days. If you think that’s easy, you have never tried daily blogging.

So, pardon me, while I take this opportunity to celebrate!

Do you think I should have cake? I think I should have cake.

The only problem with that is that it would require me to bake a cake. And then, because my husband doesn’t really like cake (can you imagine?!), it would require me to eat the cake. The whole cake.

I’m thinking that would not be a good idea, since in addition to setting myself the goal of daily blogging, I have set myself a goal of losing a little weight. But, oh! Cake!

Never mind. Virtue is its own reward. (If you believe that, we should discuss the purchase price of that bridge in Brooklyn.)

So…no cake.

There is, however, one reward: a built-in topic for today’s post. Yee-ha!

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

If I can manage another 90, I will have 180 days. Nearly half a year.

I think it can be done, but it’s surely not the sinecure I thought it would be when I walked blithely and blindly into this. If I had looked up the word “sinecure” in advance, I would definitely not have thought it was the proper term. “Sinecure” means a job both easy and providing a salary. However easy I thought blogging might be, I was well aware there was no salary involved.

That’s not to say there haven’t been compensations. I’ve enjoyed hearing from my subscribers. I’ve enjoyed knowing I have subscribers. And now I get to enjoy a sense of achievement. Because…

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

(Maybe I will have cake.)

Journeying

Structure for writers.

Today’s Friday Find is another book that is an invaluable resource for writers–and fairly interesting for readers and filmgoers who have an interest beyond passive absorption of entertainment. If you’re interested in structure, you will get a lot out of The Writers’ Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler.

I think so highly of The Writers’ Journey that I bought it twice. Lent it to someone. Never got it back. I hate that. Sometimes, when that happens, I growl and vow never to lend that person a book again while adopting a zen-like resignation to the loss of the book.

The Writers’ Journey, though–I have to have a copy of that on my shelves.

Here’s the story behind The Writers’ Journey:

Christopher Vogler was (may still be, for all I know) a Hollywood development executive. Inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, he created a legendary 7-page company memo for screenwriters. Expanding on that work, he developed the book, The Writers’ Journey, and continues to teach classes based on these ideas and techniques.

The basic premise is that there are archetypes and stages in every hero’s journey–and that a successful story (movie, book, play) is a hero’s journey.

As a director, I have used these principles to help me help playwrights analyze and rewrite their plays. As a writer, I’ve tried to do the same with my own work. (Always a little harder to find the objectivity there, of course.) As a movie goer, I have been fascinated to watch these archetypes and journeys play out in almost every good movie I’ve ever seen.

You can get an overview of the stages of the hero’s journey on Mr. Vogler’s website: here. Just click the link to “Hero’s Journey.” The text of the original 7 page memo is there, as well as an adaptation called the Heroine’s Journey.

It’s fascinating stuff. And the whole outline is there. All the basics. The book, however, expands on this outline and offers a wealth of examples. It’s well worth a read.

Happy journeying.

What is it with zombies?

I’m not talking about cocktails.

I’m talking about the horror movie monsters.

Now, it should be noted that I don’t know much about zombies. I have a horror of horror movies. I will only watch one if an actor I particularly like has needed a job badly enough to do a horror movie.

I know they’re called the Undead. I’ve heard they eat brains. (Really? And we like this?) I know that they are reanimated corpses. (Ugh.)

I did once see From the Dead of Night (because I like Lindsay Wagner). It didn’t shed any light on our pop culture fascination with zombies. It wasn’t even that scary. I mean, I was able to turn the light off that night and go to bed without any hesitation.

Maybe they weren’t very good zombies?

I don’t know. But I am wondering today about why zombies have become so popular. Surely, someone has done a study on this phenomenon? Is it our fear of death manifesting in another, albeit creepier, vision of an afterlife? Is it some metaphor of a civilization gone numb and “dead” and controlled by outside forces (Facebook?).

It’s undoubtedly a current craze. Witness this infographic that made the rounds in 2009, “How to Write for the American Theater.” Matt Slaybaugh’s tongue-in-cheek flow chart does give prominent place to zombies.

What is it with zombies? Does anybody know?

Untidy Murder

A Maybe Miracle

I may be premature in announcing this to be a Monday Miracle, because it hasn’t actually arrived yet. However, I did get an email notification that the book has shipped.

Shipped, I tell you!

And you tell me, “We don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Explanations are in order.

Once upon a time, when I was about twelve, I discovered a series of murder mysteries written by Frances and Richard Lockridge. They featured a pair of amateur detectives, Mr. and Mrs. North. They featured them, in fact, in a series of 26 novels, a Broadway play, a film, and a couple of TV and radio shows.

I don’t remember which book I read first. I do remember I got it out of my grandmother’s library one summer. And then another and another.

They were smart books. Funny. Full of the flavor of NYC in the Forties and Fifties. Unusually for the time period, it was usually Mrs. North who figured out who the murderer was.

Over time, I read them all. And I wanted to be able to re-read them all at will. Thus, they were high on my list at used book stores and flea markets. I picked them up here and there, and then, some time ago, a number of them were re-released. I was able to find them at regular book stores.

For years now, I have had 25 of them on my shelves. Untidy Murder, written in 1947, was the lone volume missing. Twice, I have nearly had it. The internet greatly facilitates the search for ancient tomes. When I have remembered to check, copies of it have appeared to be for sale. But twice, I have ordered, had the order accepted and, subsequently, gotten a “We’re sorry, we no longer have that book” email.

Just two weeks ago, I decided to spend part of the $40 I did not have to pay my doctor (thank you, President Obama) on Untidy Murder. It was a splurge. Out-of-print and in demand books are not cheap. I ordered it. And five days later, I got the “We’re sorry” email.

Undaunted and determined–it’s the last book in a forty year search–I remembered that another copy was available, for a higher price, and I ordered it again.

Yesterday, I got the email that it had been shipped.

Hooray!

I haven’t read Untidy Murder in a long time. How great to finally, finally, finally have the whole series! I’m excited.

Now, it should be noted that these are not first editions or anything. They are simply good reading copies of “good reads.”

But isn’t that what a book is for?

The rain it raineth every day

Shakespeare!

I would like to propose a drinking game. Not a real one. I don’t really hold with drinking games. I just like the idea of an ongoing treasure hunt for a particular something. For example, there was once a famous NYPD Blue drinking game. (It may only have been famous in the NYPD Blue fandom.) People were supposed to have a drink whenever particular characters did particular things.

The point of a drinking game associated with a TV show is that each show has repetitive lines or behaviors. The game acknowledges those repetitions and gets some fun out of them–assuming you actually think it’s fun to pass out and wake up with a hangover.

Since I don’t think that’s fun, let’s not call this a drinking game. Let’s call it–I don’t know–padiddle is taken–let’s call it “Flapdoodle.”

Flapdoodle acknowledges that blogs may also have repetitive themes or phrases. Players of Flapdoodle are now looking for one of those that I already know I repeat: references to and/or quotes from Shakespeare. Upon recognition of such a thing, the player should leap to his or her feet, turn around twice, flap his or her arms, and yell, “Flapdoodle.”

(Any player at work or in any otherwise inappropriate environment may make a discreet mark on a piece of paper to remind the player to do the Flapdoodle Dance later, in the privacy of his or her home. We work on the honor system.)

Players may also suggest other significant repetitious ideas or phrases via email or the comments below.

Every Flapdoodle Dance is worth 1 point. Any player who amasses 20 points may thereafter be known as a Flapdoodle Dandy.

Heavens to Murgatroyd! This is what happens when I run into writers’ block and can’t think of anything to post!

But, honestly, the Flapdoodle post is much more fun than what was originally behind today’s headline. So, maybe tomorrow we will continue to look into the “rain that raineth every day.”

Flapdoodle!

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Writing