Manual For Fiction Writers, Block, Lawrence [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

result would be deadening. Because we don't see the girl any better after she's been thus described than we did before. We know that the disembodied narrator likes the way she looks, but we don't know what she looks like, nor have we been given any reason why we should believe that she's pretty, that her clothing's attractive, that her grin is cheerful and her eyes warm.

The same two sentences, I might add, would be somewhat less objectionable in first-person narration, where everything is deliberately filtered through the perceptions of the narrator, whose reactions to phenomena are a legitimate part of the story. Even so, this isn't very good writing. The modifiers are not descriptive but judgmental.

These judgmental adjectives are handy. While they're a natural refuge for the lazy writer, who finds it much easier to dictate the reader's reaction than to take the trouble to sketch in a picture, they're useful as well when one doesn't want to waste space describing something of minor importance. If a bit player strides by carrying a blaring transistor radio, it may be simpler to call it harsh and obnoxious than to discuss the nature of the music played and its decibel count.

It all depends, of course, on what you're trying to do. I wouldn't care to propose any rules here. There are no good and bad adjectives?all have their place, even good and bad. Nor would I want you to think too much about what I've written here while you're doing your own writing. Afterward, though, when you reread what you've done, you might want to see whether your modifiers, your descriptive words, do the job you've given them. Should they be more or less specific? Should they be more descriptive? More judgmental? Are you trying to control the reader's reaction? Should you aim for more show and less tell? Have you overloaded your prose with adverbs and adjectives? Or have you gone overboard in the other direction, being rather too sparing in their use?

I'll wish you the best. I'm just breezing along with the joyous breeze, floating on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

CHAPTER 40

Writing With Your Eyes Closed

WRITING'S SO hard I can do it with my eyes shut.

Now that I've got your attention, let me explain. Some of my most productive time as a writer of fiction is spent seated at my typewriter with my fingers still and my eyes closed. In this fashion I'm able to see a picture within my mind. Once I've seen and experienced it, it's a much simpler matter to open my eyes, hit the typewriter keys, and convert what I've seen into prose and dialogue.

Suppose I'm about to write a scene that takes place in some minor character's furnished room, a setting I haven't previously described in my work-in-progress. I'll sit back, close my eyes, and let an image of that room come into my mind. The picture I create in my mind may indeed be that of a room I've visited sometime before in real life. It may be wholly imaginary. Most likely, it will be a combination of elements, containing aspects of rooms I've seen, rooms I've read about, images that linger in the back of the mind from plays and films and conversations.

When you think of an apple, what picture comes into your mind? No particular apple, I don't suppose. You've doubtless seen thousands, from Macintosh to Cezanne, and while they certainly don't all look alike neither do they hang around in the memory as individuals. But all of those apples you've seen and smelled and held in the hand and chomped into have merged in the mind to the point that you conjure up an image when you hear the word apple.

But let's get back into that imaginary room. I'll see it first from the doorway, say, if that's where my viewpoint character stands when he takes his first look at the place. I'll pay some attention to the furniture. There's a bed, of course. And a chest of drawers. Any chairs? What do they look like? A rug on the floor? Linoleum? What kind of shape is it in?

Pictures on the wall? A calendar, perhaps? Is the bed made? The room itself?is it neat or disorderly? Any windows? Curtained or shaded or what?

How big is the room? Does the bed take up most of it? Just how much room is there to move around?

Now the answers to these questions derive both from the demands of the story and the picture with which my mind has supplied me. In other words, certain things about the room are predetermined by what's already been established about the person who inhabits it, his character and his circumstances. The action which will take place in the room is another predeterminant; if somebody's going to find something in the closet, for example, the room has to have one. But other elements of the room?a floor lamp with a fringed shade, a fireplace that's been sealed off and painted over?may have nothing to do with the demands of plot and characterization. They're just part of the scenery.

Furthermore, I may never mention or describe them when I write the scene.

This is an important point. This process of visualization is not designed solely to enable the writer to describe what he has seen to the reader. That may not even be its primary purpose. Visualization is most valuable to me