On imagery and other things
Sep. 23rd, 2005 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithWherein ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaygo gets swept along in a stream of consciousness--you have been warned.
Interesting post bymatociquala about the book one dreams of writing and the book one ends up with. Then came this comment about writing the book one dreams of, and then having to live with it.
All that describes isn't imagery.
The thing I noticed about a couple of the works mentioned--THE LAST UNICORN, STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING--was the evocativeness of the prose/poetry. The first few lines pull you in, drag you into a world you never thought to visit. And before you know it, you're there, in the middle of it, digging out the answers to the questions the author posed and asking even more that aren’t answered and may not ever be. But whether they ever are or not, the place moved from the page into your brain, then to your heart. Came alive for you, opening inroads into you that hadn’t existed up to that point.
The best books are two-way streets.
John Le Carré is a favorite of mine when it comes to imagery--I mention him during any panel I happen to be on when the subject of fave writers comes up. I can wax at length on the subject. I can no doubt be quite boring. That being said, his use of imagery, imho, is among the best I have ever encountered--I don't feel I have any particular gift in that aspect of writing, and I admire the hell out of it when I feel it's done well. By done well, I mean that it contributes to the mood and pace of the story without overwhelming it, that it functions as an insight into character by allowing the reader to view a slice of the world through a character's eyes.
The first time this was really driven home to me was when I read a review of OUR GAME. The reviewer complimented Le Carré's use of imagery, highlighting one simple phrase as an example..."gables fat with snow."
Amazing how one three-letter word evokes so much. The roundedness of piled snow. The thickness. The paleness. The heavy, dull sound it makes when it slides off a roof and hits the ground, like a low-pitched whump. All that punch with a three-letter word. Economical, that.
Another example comes from TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, which is one of my desert island books. In the scene, George Smiley arrives at a house to question someone:
It was pitch dark inside the car. They had turned off the road and were passing over the gravel. Black walls of foliage rose to either side, lights appeared, then a high porch, and the steepled outline of a rambling house lifted above the treetops. The rain had stopped, but as Smiley stepped into the fresh air he heard all round him the restless ticking of wet leaves.
The description of a bridge leading from East into West Berlin, with a sentry tower that even the snow avoids. From A MURDER OF QUALITY, one of his first, the act of eating a sandwich in an hotel room brings with it a feeling of comfort because Smiley had done it so many times before. It's a simple sentence that ends a chapter, and with a rush informs the reader of Smiley's past life as a spy, and a backstory of hotel rooms and hasty meals and posting letters in public boxes, never with the front desk.
The thing is, Le Carré was never bad at imagery, at least that I could see. He was never redundant. First there were the glimmers, and then he just got better. That led me to believe that some things can't be learned, only uncovered, polished, sharpened. This is one place where Kostova lost me in THE HISTORIAN, the repetition of some of her imagery. It wasn’t that it wasn’t well done in and of itself, but that we had already seen it. One description of precipitous gorges is enough if it's too much like the one before. At that point, it's just words on the page, describing the scene. That's not description. That's not imagery.
From the imagery, we move on to scene setting, which to me is imagery spread thin and mixed with plot, character, and pace, otherwise known as Business. Evocation plays a role here, too, though it's much more subtle, and I don't think it's coincidence that Le Carré excels at this as well. Ensuring that the action the character performs to fill time between spurts of dialogue reveals something about them in addition to bridging the areas between the quotation marks. Do they fidget when nervous? Fine, but how? Furtively? Expansively? Pacing the room or sitting curled in a chair, picking their nails? The former character might not surprise you with an emotional outburst. The latter might, depending on what came before.
I should insert here that I hate thinking up business. During the draft stage, I'm still working out arc and plot, and the last thing I want to worry about is what Niall is doing in the meantime. He's smoking altogether too much in this draft, and everyone has examined the ceiling at one time or another. I say I'll fix it in the rewrites, but I all too often run out of time. And then I'm stuck with words on a page that pretty much stay on the page. Placeholders for the words that should have been.
The worst stories start out on the page, and stay there.
How does this play into the concept of the book I want to write, or wish I could write, or fear to write? Will my reach forever exceed my grasp? Or do I possess some quality that glimmers now, but will explode into full-blown, searing supernova at some point when the time is right, and the plot, and the character. Will it all burn brightly for the comparatively brief time it takes to write the story, then cool down and fade to cinder until all that's left is the memory of how it felt?
If I'm lucky enough to do it, will I even realize what's happening? That's a question--when you write the book of your life, are you aware enough of yourself as a writer to know it? Or is it all the same words, the same struggle, the same one-in-the-morning-and-how-the-hell-do-I-end-this-chapter that it was all those times before? Until someone reads it and tells you that no, this one is different. And you wonder how the hell it can be so different when it felt the same.
kaygo gets swept along in a stream of consciousness--you have been warned.Interesting post by
matociquala about the book one dreams of writing and the book one ends up with. Then came this comment about writing the book one dreams of, and then having to live with it. All that describes isn't imagery.
The thing I noticed about a couple of the works mentioned--THE LAST UNICORN, STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING--was the evocativeness of the prose/poetry. The first few lines pull you in, drag you into a world you never thought to visit. And before you know it, you're there, in the middle of it, digging out the answers to the questions the author posed and asking even more that aren’t answered and may not ever be. But whether they ever are or not, the place moved from the page into your brain, then to your heart. Came alive for you, opening inroads into you that hadn’t existed up to that point.
The best books are two-way streets.
John Le Carré is a favorite of mine when it comes to imagery--I mention him during any panel I happen to be on when the subject of fave writers comes up. I can wax at length on the subject. I can no doubt be quite boring. That being said, his use of imagery, imho, is among the best I have ever encountered--I don't feel I have any particular gift in that aspect of writing, and I admire the hell out of it when I feel it's done well. By done well, I mean that it contributes to the mood and pace of the story without overwhelming it, that it functions as an insight into character by allowing the reader to view a slice of the world through a character's eyes.
The first time this was really driven home to me was when I read a review of OUR GAME. The reviewer complimented Le Carré's use of imagery, highlighting one simple phrase as an example..."gables fat with snow."
Amazing how one three-letter word evokes so much. The roundedness of piled snow. The thickness. The paleness. The heavy, dull sound it makes when it slides off a roof and hits the ground, like a low-pitched whump. All that punch with a three-letter word. Economical, that.
Another example comes from TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, which is one of my desert island books. In the scene, George Smiley arrives at a house to question someone:
It was pitch dark inside the car. They had turned off the road and were passing over the gravel. Black walls of foliage rose to either side, lights appeared, then a high porch, and the steepled outline of a rambling house lifted above the treetops. The rain had stopped, but as Smiley stepped into the fresh air he heard all round him the restless ticking of wet leaves.
The description of a bridge leading from East into West Berlin, with a sentry tower that even the snow avoids. From A MURDER OF QUALITY, one of his first, the act of eating a sandwich in an hotel room brings with it a feeling of comfort because Smiley had done it so many times before. It's a simple sentence that ends a chapter, and with a rush informs the reader of Smiley's past life as a spy, and a backstory of hotel rooms and hasty meals and posting letters in public boxes, never with the front desk.
The thing is, Le Carré was never bad at imagery, at least that I could see. He was never redundant. First there were the glimmers, and then he just got better. That led me to believe that some things can't be learned, only uncovered, polished, sharpened. This is one place where Kostova lost me in THE HISTORIAN, the repetition of some of her imagery. It wasn’t that it wasn’t well done in and of itself, but that we had already seen it. One description of precipitous gorges is enough if it's too much like the one before. At that point, it's just words on the page, describing the scene. That's not description. That's not imagery.
From the imagery, we move on to scene setting, which to me is imagery spread thin and mixed with plot, character, and pace, otherwise known as Business. Evocation plays a role here, too, though it's much more subtle, and I don't think it's coincidence that Le Carré excels at this as well. Ensuring that the action the character performs to fill time between spurts of dialogue reveals something about them in addition to bridging the areas between the quotation marks. Do they fidget when nervous? Fine, but how? Furtively? Expansively? Pacing the room or sitting curled in a chair, picking their nails? The former character might not surprise you with an emotional outburst. The latter might, depending on what came before.
I should insert here that I hate thinking up business. During the draft stage, I'm still working out arc and plot, and the last thing I want to worry about is what Niall is doing in the meantime. He's smoking altogether too much in this draft, and everyone has examined the ceiling at one time or another. I say I'll fix it in the rewrites, but I all too often run out of time. And then I'm stuck with words on a page that pretty much stay on the page. Placeholders for the words that should have been.
The worst stories start out on the page, and stay there.
How does this play into the concept of the book I want to write, or wish I could write, or fear to write? Will my reach forever exceed my grasp? Or do I possess some quality that glimmers now, but will explode into full-blown, searing supernova at some point when the time is right, and the plot, and the character. Will it all burn brightly for the comparatively brief time it takes to write the story, then cool down and fade to cinder until all that's left is the memory of how it felt?
If I'm lucky enough to do it, will I even realize what's happening? That's a question--when you write the book of your life, are you aware enough of yourself as a writer to know it? Or is it all the same words, the same struggle, the same one-in-the-morning-and-how-the-hell-do-I-end-this-chapter that it was all those times before? Until someone reads it and tells you that no, this one is different. And you wonder how the hell it can be so different when it felt the same.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:55 pm (UTC)And at least with Shakespeare, Sophlocles, and Aeschylus I'd argue against the idea that you only get *one* great work. I could (and have) gotten by quite happily with those dramatists works as my only stuff to read before.
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Date: 2005-09-24 03:43 pm (UTC)The first time through a work, it's the characters that drag me, but I think welldone imagery and description help accent and define character so that as the book proceeds, you realize you're trailing a fully-formed being through the plot, one with a history, demons, dreams. Later, it becomes one of the spurs to reread, as I know the joy of finding new images and angles in a particular work.