WORK:POVandDescriptionExerciseForCritique

Point of View

And

Descriptive Power

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

(biography and bibliography at http://www.simegen.com/bios/jlbio.html )

The other day I received an email with a superb compliment both to one of my published novels in the Sime~Gen Universe, and to our online writing school, WorldCrafters Guild from M. Kathleen Crouch, the Guild's new Teaching Assistant, and a professional nonfiction writer studying my work for technique. I quote her here with her permission adding my comments in ( ). Return to the Workshop top page to read more:

I've just finished reading parts 1-4 of "Sime Surgeon" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg. ( -- an early draft of the Doubleday novel Unto Zeor, Forever which won the Galaxy Award. Sime Surgeon's early draft is posted as part of our school's free textbooks. ) As I was reading the introduction to Part 5, Jacqueline's comments "Drama, story, is Art, and the substance of that art isn't paint-and-canvass or sound, or color, or clay or marble. The substance of that art is emotion.", I realized that for the first time, there was a connection between the way I perceive the world as an artist and the way I describe the world in my writing.

Her next comment, "The way I found of gaining control of this material is somewhat the way that graphic artists control and trick the eye by using perspective lines. Perspective is the secret to "composition" - to guiding the eye around a graphic in a sequence that allows the brain to gain an interpretation of the whole thing as the sum of its parts, not as a jumbled pile of randomly assembled parts." suddenly showed me why I was getting bogged down in my writing. I've been striving to create a new algorithm for fiction based upon what others have used and it wasn't working for me.

I need to create my own algorithm - a blending of my skills in both art and language. I've been able to do this with my poetry, but haven't succeeded in my work in progress; mostly because I've been afraid to pour too much description in to the stories. But not giving enough description to tie the characters to their setting/world has prevented me from being able to get beyond a major stumbling block.

I 'see' and 'feel' what my characters are doing and feeling in my mind's eye and I should be writing what I 'see' and 'feel' so that others can visualize the setting/world and how it affects my characters; how they respond to it and each other is a basic part of the story.

For the first time, someone has spoken to me on a level that I understand using parallels that make sense to me. For that, I would like you to pass on to Jacqueline Lichtenberg my sincere and heartfelt thanks.

M. Kathleen Crouch

When I found this message in my mailbox, I immediately wrote for permission to use it here because Kathleen has hit upon a very important point -- the role of DESCRIPTION in drawing the reader into your story.

I found it fascinating that my notes to the web-edition of the rough, early draft of my first award winning novel sparked her understanding of this very important point, and prompted me to want to explain in more detail.

Concurrently, we had just given the online class in Point of View by the editor of the remarkably successful E-publisher www.dreams-unlimited.com , Bonnee Pierson. That class focused on what an editor looks for in Point of View skills. Whether an editor buys a particular manuscript depends very much on the author's demonstration of mastery of Point of View.

These two skills, description and point-of-view are the major strong points in my own first published novel House of Zeor, bought in 1973. It is currently available on the web for free reading on BiblioBytes at http://www.bb.com/looptestlive.cfm?BOOKID=1540&StartRow=20 .

I have many, many comments from fans admiring the vivid and memorable descriptions in House of Zeor. I have had no less than three well qualified script writers attempt to translate that book into the visual media simply because they felt the description was so vivid that the book would make a good movie. They failed, as I knew they would.

Study House of Zeor line by line. There's very, very little description in it at all. What description there is generally is misunderstood by readers -- and the more visually oriented the reader (e.g. a professional graphic artist for example) the less their idea of what things look like coincides with my own.

Why does House of Zeor strike readers as intensely visual? What is the trick that casts that spell over the reader? How can you learn to do that yourself?

The trick is a composite of techniques I learned from the Famous Writer's School and from studying Star Trek: The Original Series on television.

Two techniques form the core of this Descriptive Power trick -- Point of View and Selectivity.

With the choice of Point of View and with the tightness of that point of view the writer controls the depth of emotional involvement of the reader in the events of the book. The writer controls the meaningfulness of the events of the plot to the reader. The writer controls how much the reader identifies with the character and the character's plight.

For more on this see the posted logs of the class sessions for the WorldCrafters Guild course Editing the Novel at http://www.simegen.com/school/fiction/novel/editing/ especially class #9.

One of the first choices a writer must make before starting to write is choice of POV -- which character's shoulder your camera is sitting on, which character's thoughts you're listening to, and how many characters will be treated as POV characters -- and choosing which characters will be POV characters. We have many Workshop posts available on this topic in our Workshop section, http://www.simegen.com/school/workshop/ .

The form of the plot, the nature of the events, the theme, and sometimes even the genre all hinge on that choice of POV characters.

To find the right POV character, ask yourself "Whose story is this?" That person is the POV character -- the one whose decisions make things happen that actually change his/her own Situation. The POV character is the one who learns a great lesson or changes his ways because of the consequences of his own actions becoming visible to him.

The tighter the POV the more intense the reader's emotional identification with the character. The Single POV structure is the strongest and you can make that "tight" by being careful not to let the reader know anything the POV character does not know.

That is the structure of House of Zeor. One POV character -- and the reader knows what he knows, learns what he learns, feels what he feels, understands what he understands, and sees what he sees -- and nothing else!

The story is told from the PERSPECTIVE of one individual who is on an adventure outside his normal world.

Given that tightness, how do you get the reader to see that POV character's world, to smell it, taste it, to understand it at a gut level?

This is where writing Craft and Art intersect as Kathleen noted in her message.

She wrote: "a blending of my skills in both art and language. I've been able to do this with my poetry, but haven't succeeded in my work in progress; mostly because I've been afraid to pour too much description in to the stories. But not giving enough description to tie the characters to their setting/world has prevented me from being able to get beyond a major stumbling block."

"enough description" -- think about that.

How much is enough?

Is it quantity that makes description work to draw a reader into the story? Is it precision of description that captures the reader's imagination? Is it your vast and unusual vocabulary that casts a spell on the reader's dreams?

When a critique circle or an editor tells you that you have "too much" description, or "not enough" description, do you rewrite by adding or subtracting words identifiable as description?

If you add more words appealing to the senses, "the sewer smelled like rotten eggs" - "the speakers distorted the loud music into pure noise" -- "the decibel level made the music a tangible pounding against his skin" -- and on and on -- what will the editorial comment be?

More than likely the editor (who is not a writer and knows what's wrong but not necessarily the right thing to do to fix the problem) will complain "this is all tell not show." Or "the story sags at this point" -- or "the story doesn't develop fast enough -- cut more." Or "this is wordy."

So how do you add more description wordage without breaking the mood, impeding the flow of the plot, making the reader skip boring stuff and thus miss reading some vital bit of information, or making your editor tell you to cut scenes you feel are vital to your story?

How do you write description without TELLING rather than SHOWING??? Description is TELL.

"The red dress had a full circle skirt with a three inch wide hem, big white buttons down the front, a deep V neck with a floppy collar and huge lapels, and long sleeves with cuffs halfway to the elbow."

Under what circumstances must you describe that dress in such terms? And how do you know when to do a detailed description like that? What else can you do that's more effective than this kind of description?

The tool that answers those questions is called SELECTIVITY.

A paragraph of description on a dress brings the development of the story to a stop. It slows the pacing of the plot. It directs the reader's attention to that dress, like a "tight close-up" would in a TV show.

All the reader sees in that whole restaurant is that dress. (You didn't know the dress is in a restaurant? That's the effect of description - it excludes everything else but what is described.)

By SELECTING to describe that dress, you have given it emphasis. The reader who is still interested in your story now expects the dress's exact appearance to play a vital role in his/her comprehension of the CLIMAX of the story. For example, an imposter will show up later wearing the same dress, except the buttons will be beige instead of white -- and the reader will be expected to figure out that the character is an imposter from that clue.

If the dress will not play a vital role in the meaningfulness of the climax, not be part of the plot or its resolution of the conflict, then DETAIL should be left out.

Cynthia had chosen her dress for this lunch date very carefully. It was critical not to appear sexually available, but as a model, she had to display what she had to sell. So she picked her red coat-dress that was suggestive of Marilyn Monroe's famous pinup picture and a touch of very expensive perfume.

Now, the reader who remembers Marilyn Monroe can see Cynthia's dress, the hair do, the nail polish, the sling-back sandals that go with it all -- can see Cynthia perfectly. The other readers just know she's wearing a red coat-dress -- and some may not know what a coat-dress looks like. What will they do? They will visualize their own most gorgeous model wearing some sort of cover-up-but-reveal-everything dress. They won't see crinolines because they've never heard of them.

As a writer, you need to decide not WHAT the reader sees -- but how important it is that a particular detail be accurately seen by all readers.

Only items which are absolutely necessary to the plot-line that climaxes at the end of the book are to be hammered into the reader's mind with precision.

For the most part, (except in a mystery) the reader will squirm under that hammer and resent it. Many readers will just skip those descriptions and then blame the writer for what seem to be inconsistencies later on in the novel.

Readers prefer not to be forced to visualize things exactly as the author wants them to.

Many writing students who participate in critique groups are lifelong voracious readers. Most professional writers are voracious and eclectic readers. We are usually readers before becoming writers. As a result, it is the beginning writer who is most likely to give a critique like a reader -- rather than like a writer.

Such readers will tell you honestly that they want the writer to describe -- that they love long, long passages of description -- that they need to visualize everything exactly as the writer visualized it in order to like the story.

But much of the time, such readers believe they are reading description when they are in fact not!

The more visually oriented a person is, the less wordage they need to read to make an IMAGE pop into their minds in 3-D and 256 colors!

What they really want is the carefully SELECTED DETAIL that does not DESCRIBE but EVOKES the image.

There are two master-key techniques for SELECTING for EVOCATION.

1.POV character's MOOD

2. Japanese Brush Painting

1. MOOD --

When you set out to write a chapter or a scene, you SELECT the POV character's mood.

In your own life, study how your own mood colors your perceptions of everything around you.

When you're depressed, a blue-sky sunny day is depressing because it's so stark, so open, so devoid of character. When you're happy, that same blue sky is the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen. When you're scared, the bright day beats down on you and reveals all your faults to everyone. When you're sunburned, the bright day seems threatening of pain. When you have plans contingent on it not raining, the blue sky is welcome -- unless the plans require a dark, rainy day.

Watch yourself for how your eye picks out details that support your mood, agenda, hobby-horses, etc. Study how other people do this to themselves. Study how sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures evoke MEMORY -- it's a brain function, and you can find texts about this phenomenon. There are probably many such texts posted online by now, or your library can supply them.

When you know your POV character's mood, you can use this technique to look out from the little camera on his shoulder which is your eyes within the story and SEE with his eyes what details would LEAP out at him because of his mood.

Then instead of TELLING NOT SHOWING "John was in a rotten mood." You can SHOW NOT TELL by picking out two details from his surroundings that he would SEE in that particular light because of his mood. You never use the words "mood" or "rotten" -- you leave the reader to deduce John's mood from the details he sees -- and the rest of the whole that they fill in for themselves.

Make the reader work. Make the reader participate in creating the images, the room, its furnishings, its windows, it's wall paper -- and its occupants. By sketching the furniture style, you can EVOKE for the reader the style of gestures the characters are using because you have given the reader an idea of the social level where they live.

So the POV character's MOOD helps you select with your Artistic Eye what details to describe, and which ones to leave out. A sad person doesn't NOTICE the happy details.

2. JAPANESE BRUSH PAINTING --

When I was a teenager, I watched a series of how-to shows on TV (mid-1950's). One of them made an immense impression on me - about Japanese Brush Painting. By the merest suggestion of a line or curve, carefully selected from the whole image, you can trick the mind into "imaging" the whole image. People see what is not there. And they believe they saw it -- they believe more firmly and absolutely than if they'd seen a photograph which included every detail.

The exact same trick is used by the writer who SELECTS what details to focus the reader's mind's-eye on, thus freeing up the reader's imagination to supply all the missing parts of the image.

By engaging the reader's visual imagination to fill in those gaps, the writer draws the reader INTO the texture of the story, plot, character's emotions -- the whole multi-dimensional matrix of the fictional artform.

It is what Leonard Nimoy, in our interviews with him in the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! calls "Open Texture."

The key to making your word-painting convince the reader you described every detail is to not-describe every detail -- to SUGGEST those details that are missing by artfully choosing the one or two details to describe.

Get the reader to describe it to themselves and they'll be more ready to believe it's real.

Here's a classic exercise to seat these techniques in your mind.

The setting is a carnival pitch at night -- neon lights, merry-go-round, Ferris Wheel, slides, Fun House, Haunted Cave Ride, House of Mirrors, prizes for marksmanship.

Two sets of characters you must write about:

A) Young couple in love, totally absorbed in each other as the young woman prepares to propose marriage to the man. This is a flashback in a novel about them in later life -- perhaps as grandparents -- this was the happiest night of their lives, and everything was fantasy-picture-perfect. Three scenes: 1. They arrive at the carnival, 2. They have fun, and discover more about each other's characters -- details that indicate marriage is their only recourse, 3. she pops the question and he says yes, and they depart in ecstasy on cloud 9.

B) A teenage girl running away from home is being stalked by a rapist. Three Scenes: 1) She arrives at the carnival and flings herself into the crowd sure she can become invisible and lose her stalker. 2) She goes into some of the rides or the Fun House with a crowd -- seeing people LIKE her stalker everywhere. He really has found her and is playing cat-n-mouse. 3) In the House of Mirrors, he terrorizes her to a fine pitch, and finally corners her. (choose a resolution -- he rapes her; she escapes with injury or without, they fight and she kills him (or vice-versa) -- "resolution" means after that last scene, she's not being stalked anymore, ever. Do not have someone rescue her -- she has to get out of this herself.

You may use supernatural elements to underline the mood or resolve the conflict in either or both scenarios. You may set it on another planet, among nonhumans -- or in a Unicorns Fantasy setting -- historical setting -- RPG setting -- underwater city setting -- whatever you choose. I'm not going to limit length -- but if you want comments on a posted work, don't make it too long, or if it's long, be sure there are no words that don't say anything.

In both exercises, make the reader see, feel, smell, know, understand that carnival pitch -- be sure that in your mind it's the same carnival in both scenarios, perhaps one you've been to. In one scenario, it's a romantic fantasy, and in the other a sinister horror. The reader should know that in both cases, we're in the same place, the same identical carnival and it's a real (realistic) place.

You may connect these two exercises into one story if you like.

Turning the benign sinister is one of the oldest cliché's in writing -- but it's one that works and is still saleable today. This morning I saw an episode of Roswell on the WB Network where a carnival turned sinister.

If you can succeed at this exercise, you can sell your fiction.

When you've completed the exercise, you might want to post it to the WorldCrafters Guild's boards for commentary. We're starting a new section for this purpose, so if you can't locate that section yet, watch WorldCrafters-L for further announcements -- or email simegen@simegen.com