writerjenn

 Reading an essay on the passenger pigeon (hey, I've said it before, I'll read anything), I came across these lines:

"Historical accounts of Adirondack passenger pigeon sightings are few not because the birds were scarce, but, I suspect, for the opposite reason.  Commenting on a bird so extravagantly abundant was to state the obvious."

Passenger pigeons were once so common in North America that they were literally unremarkable.  They are now extinct.  Numbering in the millions, perhaps even billions, before 1800, they were scarce by the late 1800s and are gone today.  

The lines quoted above made me look around at my own surroundings to see what is so common that I rarely bother to mention it in my own writing.  I thought of pigeons in the city, gray squirrels and robins in the suburbs, clover and dandelions.  It's hard to believe any of these could ever become extinct, but that's what people thought about passenger pigeons too.  

There's no reason to limit this to plants and animals.  What about paved roads and gasoline-powered cars?  Telephone wires?  My point is not to play a guessing game about the future, fun as that is, but just to open my eyes to what's around me right now that I don't notice because I see it all the time.  To comment on the extravagantly abundant as well as the rare.


The quotation and the pigeon facts cited here are from Edward Kanze's OVER THE MOUNTAIN AND HOME AGAIN: JOURNEYS OF AN ADIRONDACK NATURALIST.

I've been thinking about what gets left out of a book.  Naturally, we need to leave out the boring and the irrelevant--but what I'm talking about here is the choice not to describe a major event in explicit detail.

For example, in the book TWILIGHT, the main character, who is also the narrator, is absent from the climactic battle scene.  Its results are reported to her later, with few details.  Yet it wasn't until I was discussing this book with another writer that I realized this--I had a, "Hey yeah, we never did get to see that battle!" moment.  My sense is that I felt no lack in TWILIGHT because sometimes, the dark doorway is scarier than whatever we might see beyond it.  It's like in the movie JAWS: the shark is more threatening when it's a strain of ominous music, a dark shape, and a fatal splash, than when we finally see the cheesy mechanical fish.

But oh, how tricky this can be to pull off.  If done wrong, it can lead the reader to feel cheated.  I suppose the decision to veil a significant scene must be based on a solid rationale, a gut feel for the most effective way to build the story, and not on a fear to enter the scene. 

First, because I always love a book giveaway, I'll let you know that Kate Messner's "pre-owned" ARC of Linda Sue Park's KEEPING SCORE is up for grabs.  Follow the link for details.  Now for our regularly scheduled programming:

I'm thinking about description today, since that will be the focus of my next editorial pass through my WIP.  The current pass is focused on plot and pacing.  During this pass, I've decided that my pacing is much better, but I could use more description.  This has always been a weakness of mine.  I'm something of a minimalist; if you liken my writing to visual arts, my stories would be more like sketches than photorealist paintings.  I like to put in the details that matter, the few and telling details, and let the reader use those clues to fill in the rest. Only sometimes, especially in early drafts, I tend to skimp too much.  While I do cut when I edit, I'm one of those writers who has to add more than cut during revision.

It's not that I don't admire the deep, lush, rich descriptive passages that many writers do so well.  I've mentioned Updike's THE CENTAUR a few times before, and since I've just reread it, this example is uppermost in my mind.  Updike's descriptive passages are not just evocative of setting; they relate to plot and theme as well; they include symbolism and help with characterization.  And boy, are they beautiful (even when what he's describing is not beautiful).  I admire them; I just can't write that way myself.

Of course, description can be done badly, too.  There are books in which chunks of description are just plopped right into the text, bringing the narrative flow to a standstill.  As a reader, I tend to skim or skip when I hit those snags.  That may have led to my disenchantment with long, detailed descriptions.

So here are my best thoughts on description:
Description should not only be evocative; it should matter somehow to the characterization, theme, or plot.
Details should be relevant.  Only tell the reader what s/he really needs to know.
Only tell the interesting parts: the quirky, or funny, or chilling, or repugnant.  Whatever it is, it should be fascinating.
Don't rely on stereotypes.  Tell it the way it is, not the way everyone thinks it's usually supposed to be.
Appeal to all five senses.
Read poetry for great examples of how words can be used for maximum effectiveness and depth.  Pay attention to the sounds of words as well as the meanings.
Allow the reader room for imagination. 

That's what I aspire to, anyway.