Prepared by: Rhéal Nadeau
Posted on: March 8, 2003
Reposted on: January 11, 2004
Reposted on: January 16, 2005
"One picture is worth more than ten
thousand words."
(Chinese proverb)
"Every picture tells a story." (source
unknown)
There is a lot of truth in the sayings
above.
Conversely, readers and
writers know how a few well-chosen words can draw a detailed picture.
This exercise tries to merge those ideas.
Often, a scene, a photo, a drawing, can
tell an entire
story - without any
action, any words, any interpretation or explanation. You might have
such
scenes in your memories.
As an example: a few years ago, I was
visiting a
cemetery in Buffalo, reputed
for a number of famous graves and impressive monuments. But two images
stuck in
my mind...
In the mausoleum section, on a stone with
a man's name
(with a military rank,
as I recall), were scotch-taped a hand-drawn father's day card, and a
photo of
a young boy.
In another part of the cemetery, a neatly
tended grave,
with fresh flowers and
a topiary (a small shrub carefully sculpted into a spiral). The single
gravestone had the names of two men, both in their thirties, who had
died
months apart.
In either case, how much can we imagine of
the lives of
the people involved, of
what they had meant to the people in their lives? Could I write a novel
to
evoke such emotions? (Yet, I hope I have done this, in two short
paragraphs.)
So here is the exercise: in 100 to 300
words, describe a
scene that evokes an
entire story. This can be a scene you witnessed, or one you imagine.
Use simple
descriptive language, and remember to show, not tell!
While my examples above describe scenes
without people,
this is not an exercise
requirement - but if you do include people, remember to describe a
single
moment in time, as if you had only a photo of the scene.
When critiquing, look at what you imagined
from the
scene. Also, look at the
writing: what parts of it were most successful at creating those
images? What,
if anything, got in the way of the image - the author intruding with
interpretation; a lack of detail, or too much detail; etc.
Exercise clarification:
I guess my exercise description wasn't
clear enough...
The intent of the exercise is to describe
a static
scene, without action - a
picture, like a photograph or a painting. The parts of the exercise
that were
supposed to make this clear are:
Often, a scene, a photo,
a drawing,
can tell an entire story -
without any action, any words, any interpretation or
explanation.
and:
if you do include
people, remember to
describe a single moment in
time, as if you had only a photo of the scene.
In spite of this, I am getting submissions
with more
action than a Jackie Chan
movie. I'm kind of curious why - was I really that unclear, or are we
so
geared to having action at all costs?
So, to clarify: the intention is to
capture a single
moment in time - without
action or explicit movement. (Implied movement is fine - in fact
desired - the
goal is to have the moment suggest the actions surrounding the scene to
the
reader.)
Therefore, when writing a submission,
remember that you
are looking for a
single revealing moment, from which the reader can figure out the
entire scene.
When critiquing, then, look for any sign
that the author
is "cheating" by
describing an action explicitly.
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: March 16, 2003
It's been a most interesting week (well it
always is,
but particularly so this
weekend), and one with some surprises for all of us.
First, it was very hard for many of the
members to do a
static scene (or a
frozen snapshot in the middle of an action scene). Certainly, we are
told,
repeatedly, to use action, to use active verbs, to avoid passive
writing - and
that is good advice. But like any advice, it's only good to a point: we
can't
write just action action action.
The second lesson, pretty much the one I
was aiming at
in the first place, is
that often "less is more". If we give the reader too much information,
we
leave nothing to the imagination - and the imagination is where a story
really
takes place.
Because we allowed re-submissions (just
for this week),
we were able to see
this at play more clearly: the later versions tended to be much more
sparse,
focusing on a few significant details, and were thus more evocative,
letting
the readers fill in the blanks. The idea of the significant detail is
an
important one, and I hope this exercise helped us better understand
this
concept (it's one the best writers have mastered, so well that it's
hard to see
it at work!)
Beyond that, as always, I was interested
in the variety
of approaches. Some of
the scenes conveyed highly dramatic events, others small moments of
"ordinary"
life. Some scenes started by describing a broad scene, then zoomed in
on one
or two details; others started with the details and built up to the
bigger
scene. Both worked, both have their place - and each achieves a
different
result, in the end.
What was interesting in many of the
submissions is what
was left out: not
mentioned at all, yet fully present by implication. Often, the absence
of
something is as significant, or even more, than what *is* present (or
shown).
Sometimes, the submissions suffered from
authorial
intrusion: the writer
simply saying what was going on instead of showing it. This could be as
broad
as editorializing, telling us what a scene *meant*, or as small as
attaching a
label to name something: something as simple as saying "the mother" or
"the
father", which implied background knowledge not present in the scene
itself.
Again, can we demonstrate the relationship instead of just declaring
it, can we
trust the reader to understand that if we present a man and a young
girl in a
certain context, they are likely father and daughter? How would the
scene
differ between that relationship and, say, if the two were strangers?
I hadn't realized when I wrote this
exercise just how
challenging it would turn
out to be (but that's not a bad thing, after all it's why we're here.)
That
challenge is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that on the Archives
web
page, I put that exercise under "Miscellaneous" - not because it
doesn't fit
into any of the other categories, but because it crosses categories,
including
elements of show-versus-tell, setting, story-telling, characterization,
etc.
I look forward to running this exercise
again in the
future - now on to the
next one!
Rhéal
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: January 22, 2004
Wow - what an explosion of activity last
week! I don't
have the
actual stats, but it has to have been one of our busiest weeks ever
The results were similar to the first time
we ran the
exercise,
in terms of how people approached the exercise, and how successful they
were. Once again, many were unable to avoid action (sometimes a lot of
action); in many cases, the critiques pointed out a single image from
the described scenes which could be use to summarize the whole.
Another common problem was authorial
intrusion, or POV
problems
- the writer telling the reader some of the information (in some cases,
information not present in the picture being drawn.) For example, a
number of submissions made statements about what had happened just
before the moment being described, rather than letting the reader see
the signs of that. In the same way, in some submissions, the writer
interpreted events or named objects - think of the use of a word like
"expensive" for example. Is that a quality that would be obvious to a
casual observer (and if so how)? Is that bit of information even
needed?
One key to the most successful submissions
was what
details
were presented to build up the picture. Too much detail drowns the
reader and loses focus; too little leaves the reader adrift not knowing
what's going on. Learning this balance is a key skill for writers.
There was also a bit of confusion about
how to interpret
the
exercise requirement to describe a single moment. For example, can a
static scene contain odors or tastes? (Answer: yes, as long as those
are static, not changing.) Similarly, is it violating the exercise
restriction to say, for example, that “John walked”? Possibly - but not
necessarily. If the character isn't leaving or arriving somewhere, but
in transit, then having that character walk can still represent a
single moment during that walk. But that's kind of pushing the limit of
the exercise...
To conclude, the key to this exercise is
how well we can
visualize a scene, then pick out the significant details. This is a key
skill for any writer, in any form or genre of writing! So think about
your submission, and the other submissions you read, and try to see how
we can improve our ability to imagine and portray a scene.
All in all, some very good work, and I
hope everyone who
participated learned something new (or even better, relearned something
old!)
Rhéal
Patricia Johnson 's
wrap-up
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jan 2005
Many comments were made about how tough it
is to write a
successful scene
for the Every Picture exercise. This week's critiques brought up many
interesting discussion points. For instance, without authorial
intrusion
there is more room for reader interpretation of a scene. Having people
in
the scene was hard to detail and still follow the exercise
requirements.
Some writers thought the most effective way to complete the exercise
would
be to exclude using people altogether. Someone noted that the subs that
most closely follow the exercise requirements tended to be poetic,
prose
poems.
Several writers said it was difficult to
describe a
scene without action and
using no telling, only showing. Most scenes require action to make them
interesting.
The nature of the exercise opened story
interpretation
more to the reader.
Layering of description enabled readers to reach their own conclusions
of
what could have happened in the scenes. Someone mentioned that a static
description is a lot different than something that has movement, and
even
descriptions without action can and should move. Using the imaginative
lead-in wording "as if" allows for writing the exercise more as a scene
and
less as a photo snapshot.
How do the senses of touch, sound and
smell relate to
the exercise
requirements? A bowl of brown shriveled apples with a fly upon them are
different smelling than a bowl of apples with dew and stems and leaves
of
chartreuse. Totally different smells are evoked in the reader from
those two
descriptions -- rotting wine pungency versus tart spring-apple scent.
It
would seem that evoking certain senses without authorial interpretation
can
be achieved.
I think that the author can mention some
forms of
movement and reference
certain action and verbs without intruding or using his/her imagination
to
interpret. Perhaps the keys are the 'one moment in time' concept and
Rhéal's
idea that 'the goal is to have the moment suggest the actions
surrounding
the scene' to the reader. The stopped action of scenes and photos can
be
described, as noted in the two following examples. A book falling off a
shelf caught in mid-fall is certainly not described by anyone as
'flying off
into the sunset', a hand slapping a face as the person is caught
rebounding
is not seen as a 'love-pat', a curtain "standing" out from a window
indicating wind and movement (surely no one would starch a curtain to
stand
out from a window).
Thanks to every one for participating in
the exercise
and making it a good
practice experience.
.
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.