Thursday, June 4, 2015

The Devil's in the Details: Finding the Descriptive Sweet Spot in Prose


After an April dedicated to poetry, I’ve moved to business writing and working on a novel as my two primary areas of linguistic focus.  The latter has me thinking more about how to make descriptions work without stopping the movement of the story.  One of the greatest challenges for many fiction writers is determining what level of detail to include.  Some writers over-describe, burden every sentence with unnecessary modifiers and every paragraph with distracting descriptions.  Others take the opposite extreme, pushing through a sparse plot without letting the reader visualize anything.

Unfortunately, no magic formula exists.  We may see easily when another writer has missed the detail sweet spot, but flail desperately when looking for it in our own writing.  And the target moves: some stories or books require more details than others, and more insidiously, some moments in a story or book require more detail than others.

With this in mind, this post will focus on an approach to resolving this dilemma.  Rather than embark on a quixotic quest to create a how-to that fits every situation, I will explore the function of descriptive details and how to apply that to writing in a given scene or scenario.

Whose Scene Is It?

Some characters require more details than others.  A person the protagonist passes on the street may get less visual description than the protagonist or primary antagonist.  Moreover, if the point of view in the story is limited, it might actually disrupt that point of view to linger on a description more than an encounter justifies. 

Think of story problems in math classes.  Teachers and test makers love to toss in extraneous facts to see whether the student can decide which details matter.  Prose writers face the same issue, but with the power to write out what doesn’t matter.

Focused Prose

Writing in a focused way does not mean focusing on everything.  Rather, it means focusing on what matters to the broader story.  This includes both the movement of the plot and development of characters.  Is the protagonist vain?  Then a description of what s/he sees in the mirror makes sense.  Is this a first-person narrative from the point of view of someone who hates his or her job?  Then the oppressive atmosphere or dull drudgery of the workplace matters.  In every description, think about what it contributes, either to a character or to the plot.  If it contributes to neither, either change it or cut it.

Scenery creates particular issues in this regard.  Before devoting a paragraph to a tree, a writer should have a good reason.  Identifying where action occurs might be one, if the location matters.  Describing snow swirling across asphalt can be nice, but the cold or treacherous conditions should tie into the story rather than merely abutting it.  Determine who is doing what and why, and write exposition that reflects or accentuates this.

Use Your Verbs

Sometimes a better word choice can eliminate the need for description.  Is a person walking, ambling, shuffling, or trudging?  Each of these words conveys a different image, a different attitude, much more efficiently than writing adverbs around “walking.”  Active, specific verbs create visual impact by showing movement.  In contrast, nouns and adjectives around passive verbs tend to sit still, and in doing so deprive readers of that impact. 

Consider what more often distracts you: a color that sits to your left, or a sudden movement in the same area.  The color may be beautiful, bright, and lush, but the movement pulls you to it.

Giving Your Writing Curves
None of this should discourage anyone from pursuing beauty in writing. Rather, pick your spots.  Music that is a wall of sound at one consistent volume is not music, but noise.  Similarly, writing that carries no ebb and flow does not carry a reader’s attention as well as writing that does.  Move through the work, giving details that matter without stopping the action on every page for those that do not, and you will hold your reader’s attention—or at least give yourself a better opportunity to do so.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Day 30!: After the End

Poem:

After the End

The climax arrived last week,
days or years after the prologue.
The earth has stopped shaking;

smoke plumes left the shells of buildings;
the dust that hovered for days
has settled on the ground.

This morning the hero looks out
from a porch three hundred miles away,
on a sunrise orange and red—

just like the one that announced
yesterday’s arrival, bright promise
of an ordinary suburban day.

He lingers, putters, walks inside
past a dormant phone to sit,
flips the television on,

passes the latest petty squabbles
and lands on Three's Company,
with Jack again in quite the pickle.

He sighs, a Mona Lisa smile on his lips
for a character who never wonders
what he might do today.
 
Commentary:
 
This is the final poem in the National Poetry Month challenge, so endings were on my mind.  The idea of what comes next has always affected me; I live in a world where projects move quickly and intensely, then end, and we move constantly between first and fourth gears, with little in between.  Gearing up can be hard, but it means moving into a stream of activity that resembles a plot: we know what needs to be done, and experience and instruction work together so we know how to do it. 
 
Stopping, though, means leaving the comfort of predetermined work and into the unknown, from the constant push through to needing to create the motion again.  I suspect this is true of any major ending; the transition is much more difficult than the action.
 
This poem explores the idea from the perspective of a hero after the ending action, trying to adjust to life in the denouement, in an almost cruel juxtaposition of sameness and change.  It uses a verb tense shift to contrast what was from what is, the remains of catastrophic change from a staid present.  Three's Company works as a layered choice showing both change and sameness; the formula stayed mostly the same even as the cast rotated, but exists now only in syndication with John Ritter having passed.

Day 29.5: The Theory of the New Parent

Poem:

The Theory of the New Parent

The diligent father-to-be studies,
Dr. Spock and What to Expect
stacked on the nightstand
pages folded, spine cracked.
 
He finds spare work time
to sneak to parenting sites,
browse expert advice
splashed in pink and blue.

He nods at younger,
vomit-streaked parents,
stifles a smirk at their
premature creases,

offers academic advice
and ignores politely
the baggy-eyed glares
they shoot in response,

wears an easy smile,
ready for anything—
until the sun’s rays shine on the
precious dewdrop from heaven

as he destroys fifteen diapers
and eighteen burp rags
in ten hours of
infant annihilation;

starts crawling ahead of time,
tests like a Jurassic Park raptor
to find the weakness in the
childproofing system;

sleeps sweetly for fifteen
minutes every night,
timing the next scream
with a parental eyelid drop;

and crawls diapered to the door,
reaches for a ladybug,
holds it in a chubby little hand
and devours it,

crunches happily while the last
parents-to-be look on,
suggest a ladybug-free diet,
and try not to smirk.
 
Commentary:
 
This penultimate offering in my National Poetry Month challenge is a self-deprecating look back at the early days of parenthood: the careful studying that preceded the births of my boys and the retrospective absurdity of my confidence in my knowledge.  I combined experiences from the babyhoods of each; artistic license is my friend.
 
The poem structure of four-line stanzas reflects the classical, rigorous approach to studying for parenthood, while the varying line-lengths, beginning with the birth itself are meant to reflect the splitting at the seams of expectations.

Day 28-ish: Anticipation

Poem:

Anticipation

It starts with a whisper,
a tiny notion that rises

and floats on the air,
bounces and swirls,

finds connections and builds.
A million invisible thoughts

collect, pull together,
take shape and puff out,

deepen and darken
from the edges in,

loom over the thick air
while heat and pressure

surge below, and a
world-sliver churns,

thickens till inevitable
burst washes over.

Commentary:

This leaves two poems remaining, to complete today, and perhaps that lends toward the thrust of this poem, the concept of anticipation building inexorably toward something.  The metaphor starts with a droplet of water vapor, builds, and drives through to the rainstorm that has to come in the end.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Day 27-ish: The Solo

Poem:

The Solo

The expressway exists as chaos;
cars and trucks streak past,
forward and backward,
weave along the asphalt loom
red and blue and black,
bright and dingy.
Smooth hums and angry roars
carve into every radio choice,
a cacophonous cast of upstagers.
But just now, a clearing emerges,
my car settles between
masses ahead and behind,
a solo dance in the middle
of the show-stopper.
I look around, and initial jitters
settle into the brief quiet,
a moment of contemplative
equilibrium with the driving world
before the rest of the cast
rushes in again from all directions.

Commentary:

This poem captures a rare moment on a busy highway, that time when the car is suddenly alone, if only for a few seconds.  It always feels oddly unsettling before it becomes peaceful, something I equate to performing a solo in the middle of a big group performance.

The metaphor I build here works to encapsulate that moment, and set it apart from the frenzy both before and after.  I try to let it linger a moment, like a drop of water holding to a leaf before it falls, while at the same time letting its evanescent quality show with the mass of movement before and after.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Day 26-ish: The Astonishing Wonder of the Forty-Year-Old Mind

Poem:

The Astonishing Wonder of the Forty-Year-Old Mind

At fifteen the male mind sharpens,
focuses on every word
to find tangential sex jokes.

After this we broaden
(though sex jokes linger,
couched in our brain center

like the flower’s stigma,
surrounded by pretty petals
but lingering at the core),

until at forty the brain
is no longer the flower
but the bees.

It darts in every direction
to pollinate the meadow,
at once recalling nectar in  

high school locker combinations
and the first warm squish of lips
on my lips twenty-five years ago,

the meaning of res ipsa loquitur
and the lurch of a world that stopped
spinning the days my sons emerged.

And yet, amid the swarming,
it skips the occasional daisy,
found again when I stumble upon

a novel, three days lost,
nestled gently atop the string cheese
at the bottom of the refrigerator

while the front edge of my hair
climbs back on its expedition
to locate my misplaced glasses.
 
Commentary:
 
I often marvel at the mind's ability to recall arcane facts and nuances of life experience, while failing to hold on to something like why I've left one room to enter another.  Aging can be a beautiful, maddening experience.
 
This poem takes on this constant contradiction, playing between the flowers and the bees in a meadow, touching on detailed memories and everyday slips of mind.  The movement of the poem, through youth to age, intentionally incorporates attaining and slipping of memories not as separate effects, but as two aspects of the same process.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Day 25-ish: Seeing Clearly

Poem:

Seeing Clearly

Late night in someone else’s city
I slink into the hotel bar,
a fifteen-hour work day behind me,
smiles that know me too well ahead.
Men and women sing here and I know them,
know what they will sing
and why.
I know Joe makes a great martini
and Dane is a living rainbow,
that Chrissie smiles a little less
when her boyfriend drinks here
and the woman with the senator
meets a different senator every week.
I know the room,
gritty and pristine at once,
lets the Steinway gleam classical
and still feel ragtime
through showtunes and blues.
I know to leave my glasses behind,
to let this tiny universe wash over me
in points of light that
spread out like a kaleidoscope
before Joe serves tonight’s
first drink.

Commentary:

This poem represents a scene, repeated may times while I was working out of town.  This came as part of the experience that did the most to lead me to my current career path, and in the process showed me a world very different from what I knew up to that point.

The poem is built on repetition, reinforcing a cyclical feeling within the moment, while simultaneously paced to feel like it is moving constantly forward, blending people and music and visuals as different swirling aspects of the nights there.

Day 24-ish: Spring Confrontation

Poem:

Spring Confrontation

The sun today shines down,
shimmers over April afternoon.
I walk with my son,
talk about the world while he

tosses back Minecraft analogies,
bright blue eyes looking up
from under brown hair
two weeks late for a trim.

A gang of Canadian geese lurks
over by the pond,
mills about in feather jackets,
honks smack about the ducks.

One looks over, snarl-beaked,
pushes up the bank.
The breeze pushes bare branches,
blows a plastic bag tumbleweed

across the road.  He stretches,
waddle-stalks forward and
charges, yells something about
my mother or his turf—

I don’t know (I speak Canadian
but I don’t speak goose).
The boy whimpers into my back,
face under my shoulder blades.

I have no interest in the goose,
his gaggle or his lady,
but I’m an American
and won’t back down.

I stand tall, puff my chest,
and step forward once,
glare into beady eyes
that falter and drop.

He calls out a parting,
impotent shot; tiny fingers
squeeze tightly on mine,
and we walk on.

Commentary:

This is a story-telling poem that captures a moment from earlier this month.  I used personification and some exaggeration for effect.  The poem also uses present tense to make the action feel more immediate.

The poem moves between characters and setting, an attempt to build a world both around and within the confrontation.  This works to both focus in on the moment described and frame it as just a moment within a broader context.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Day 23-ish: Three Haiku

Poem(s):

Three Haiku

On clear, quiet nights
pinpoints in a slate black sky
universe peeks in

Muscles strain today,
push forward, move beastly load
‘round the carousel

Sunset, here again—
color streaks red, orange, purple,
yields again to black

Commentary:

These poems may be read together or in isolation.  A haiku is a short form of poetry that originated in Japan.  Traditionally, the poem contains seventeen syllables, divided into three lines, with five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables, respectively, and focuses thematically in nature. 

The form, like most poetic forms, has been stretched outside these traditions over the years.  It should, though, say much with little.  In addition, a common element of haiku is juxtaposition, combining or shifting between two ideas that may be ambiguous or contradictory. 

Here, all three of the above haiku build from the idea of a cyclical world.  The first juxtaposes a quiet night with the appearance of an entire universe.  The second moves between the idea of big effort and that of a stationary carousel's grounded movement.  Finally, the third places the bright colors of a sunset in the context of the inevitable blackness that follows, while at the same time hinting that the color returns as inevitably as the black.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Day 22-ish: The Saturday Degenerates Club

Poem:

The Saturday Degenerates Club

From one to four they gather,
the same twelve grey heads
 
perched on bodies crammed together,
bent over two tiny tables
 
in the corner of the grocery store
right next to the liquor.
 
Fingers curl around red wine
in plastic cups, fifty cents a pour.
 
I’ve seen them in town,
where they shuffle, putter,
 
babble about grandkids,
disappear into themselves
 
from forty years ago.
But here they chuckle and hop,
 
jab elbows and swear,
exchange sex jokes and
 
complain about their kids.
One looks up and smirks,
 
winks at a twenty-something
who purses her lips and looks away
 
from the old men who refuse
to act their age.
 
I stand by my cart and watch,
smile and shake my head,
 
slip my phone in my pocket,
and sip my own escape.
 
Commentary:
 
I love seeing people act differently from what I expect of them.  Sometimes this means acting kindly when I expect a more directly selfish action.  Other times, it means seeing my expectations of age or gender or any -ism I didn't even realize I still had in me turned on its head.
 
In this poem, the manifestation is a group of elderly ladies and gentlemen who gather for every wine tasting at the local Kroger.  They seem to relish the moment, the escape from living as parents and grandparents to just enjoy the company of friends and wine.
 
I worked to frame the poem in a way that avoided judgment, positive or negative, focusing instead on the movement and images, both of the watchers and the watched.  The final couplets serve also to reveal the boundaries around my own time out there, using the cart and the phone as symbols of duty surrounding the moment.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Day 21-ish: Snapshot

Poem:

Snapshot

They stand in front of a bridge,
a nice connecting piece:
his world and hers, one.

Her head presses to his chest,
hair flowing over his shirt
like hair in love will do,

all wavy and happy,
the kind you can call tresses
and not laugh.

His hair is almost perfect,
a wisp in front curled up.
Even love gets windy.

Their eyes fix on the camera,
intense and distant at once,
happy or wistful or stoned—

who can tell, really?
No drug renders us
as vacuous as love can.

But the smiles…
Something feels amiss,
photographer-forced.

The noses don’t quite crinkle
as cutely as they ought.
The cheeks aren’t rosy;

the proper Glow is lacking,
just two pale people
who wear polite grins.
 
Did one of them stub a toe,
so the stretched mouths hide
a grimace and a smirk?
 
Maybe they came from the dentist,
a romantic Couples Root Canal
before paparazzi invaded.

An argument, perhaps:
strain of a day mouths forced
to curl against natural bent.

The ache of life on hold,
meetings and deadlines and coffee
waiting when they finish?

Or, just maybe, passion restrained,
a “We’ve been posing
for this damned picture

while we could be tangling limbs,
or rock climbing or reading or sleeping,
hurtling through a life too short

to waste on seventeen takes
standing in front of this bridge
for the likes of you.”
 
Commentary:
 
The concept of this poem is what we try to read into a single image, here a picture of an ostensibly happy couple.  The repetition of "love" comes with tongue planted in cheek, a word we use sincerely, but to cover many different situations and apply to people whose hearts we don't really know.

I played in this space with the idea of examining the way a couple looks, picking apart motivations and feelings from a single frozen frame.  We do so looking at accused criminals or lovers or kids squirming under inquisition, all attempting to use skills we believe we have to understand the inner workings of another's mind.

 

Day 20-ish: The River

Poem:

The River

The river rages and gushes,
carves its muddy banks,
 
pushes broken ice along,
bounces chunks on currents,
 
splashes and roars,
wet fury unfurled.
 
Only a week ago it sat,
a placid, frozen sheet,
 
held small feet up
while heat set in,
 
sank into serene surface
while water pushed up.
 
Outside and inside squeezed,
invisible, silent,
 
cracked the solid depth
till the surface shattered.
 
Commentary:
 
With spring comes new life: rain descends, trees blossom and bloom, animals wake and surge with nature's call to procreate.  With all of this comes a sense of surging emotions, and this poem works to use a spring scene to connect to anger.
 
The breaking into stanzas seems appropriate to reflect the breaking up of ice in a river.  The imagery is built around the concept of emotion that starts to build well before anyone can see or feel it, the burning and rising below an ostensibly serene surface, the quiet simmering before that surface breaks.  So much happens underneath what we see; this poem is an attempt to capture the underneath.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Day 19-ish: Words in the Wind

Poem:

Words in the Wind

It makes sense in my head,
a thought I sculpt for hours,
chisel, shape, unveil.
But the words leave my lips
and lift off,
blown dandelion seeds
that float, wiggle,
whorl on fickle winds.
They rise or drop,
split or hold together,
land in soft soil
or on concrete slabs
while I watch
and hold the empty stem.

Commentary:

This poem should strike a chord with anyone who has attempted to advise a child, an employee, a friend, or anyone else, only to watch helplessly while the advice dissipates as though never spoken at all. 

Thinking about the random ways dandelion seeds float, and the underlying connotation of wish-making as one blows, the image for me captured at once a picture of elegance and helplessness.  It is a very short piece, but within it I tried to blend hard sounds with soft (e.g., "whorl on fickle winds") to further capture that dichotomy, reflecting both the ease with which the words part and disappear and a note of bitterness watching it happen.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Day18-ish: Shootout at the Two A.M. Corral

Poem:

Shootout at the Two A.M. Corral

The sheep, long since counted,
lie dead in the pasture,
and someone must pay.
The usual suspects yell and strut;
the banker shouts down the office worker,
while the movie star shrieks at the doctor.
They kick up dirt and sod,
stomp and bellow around woolly carcasses,
till someone pulls a pistol
and the others jolt to action.
Shots echo from mind-corners
with grey puffs from black barrels;
synapses fire from all corners,
behind stuffed and brimming trash cans,
from tranquil beaches to corner offices,
an extended brainscape
behind wide-open eyes.
Chaos pushes hair out, stray shocks
on a head that pulls apart
while the clock ticks toward
another dust-cloud morning.

Commentary:

This poem peers inside a brain that refuses to sleep, something I and many about whom I care know all too well.  I start with the proverbial sheep but have them come in already killed off, letting the sheep play the role of Archduke Ferdinand for this particular war.

I let the characters and everything in the landscape reflect various concerns and desires that might flood a mind on any given night, an effort to give an allegorical feel to the action taking place while reflecting the chaotic feel in the mind of a person who just wants to shut it all off.

Day 17-ish: Boating in the Deep

Poem:

Boating in the Deep

We push off and start to row;
hard, steady strokes
ripple gently the quiet lake.
A bit of water pools,
tickles sandaled toes
and we laugh and flex,
proclaim our powerful rowing
will splash a whole lake
into our boat.
Farther and deeper
our strokes slow;
the laughter falters
while the pool rises.
We reach down,
find and cover the leak—
but another appears,
water bubbles in,
and we scramble.
Knees press wet metal;
fingers fumble over
patches and plugs and buckets.
We bail frantically the rocking hull,
shout competing instructions
while one oar floats
toward purple and red-streaked horizon
and the fading shore.
 
Commentary:
 
This poem reflects something most people have experienced at one point or another: the building up of concerns from something we can laugh off to a compilation that becomes overwhelming.  I worked to create a contrast between the idyllic scene and the human emotion within it, a reflection of an outside world moving quietly, steadily forward despite the human turmoil occurring within it.
 
In writing poetry, both this poem and more generally, I worked to avoid editorializing, letting emotional impact and any ideas emerge from the visual and auditory cues.  Hopefully this allows the poem to resonate very differently for different readers.