JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #41
February 25, 2021
Many years ago, I used to believe that when I wrote, as many people I respected had claimed of themselves, I was simply stenographer to the movie in my head, writing down what I saw and heard and felt as the imagined movie played out. About fifteen years ago I read an author’s interview in which he said that he visualized with words, that there was no movie in his head until he had come up with the words to elicit it. The more I thought about it, the more I introspected about the process of writing, I realized that this was also true for me. Although now and then a crisp, clear image might arise in my mind, for which I strive to find words that capture it, for the most part the words create the pictures as I write, rather than the other way around.
The way I used to explain this idea was to say, imagine hurling a ream of paper as high into the air as you can--now capture in words precisely what happens next. Some persnickety writer might take a shot at it, describing this sheet of paper fluttering to the left, that sheet wafting to the right, another gently rolling, six sheets stuck together sliding along a slipstream, but it’s unlikely they’d be able to account for all five hundred sheets and everything else that happens in the room or around the trestle bridge where the pages have been launched. A more perspicacious writer might reach for a comparative metaphor, perhaps likening the paperfall to something familiar like snow or leaves, but this too will never capture the uncountable number of precise details that comprise the chaotic event.
The key of course is that as writers we are never required to write down the images in our minds in all their exacting details. Besides the problem that language and imagery capture non-compatible information, features and details that simply cannot be translated one into the other, such writing that attempts to capture every detail would be tedious to read. No one would ever want to finish it. The key to writing evocative prose, and to capturing the ideas in our heads that comprise the story, is to find synechdochal details, features of the scene or idea that suggest or limn the larger details. We must provide the most important and salient details and allow the reader to fill in the gaps, as they will, if what we provide is suggestive of the rest.