About the author
 Christopher
Meeks
writes for and teaches creative writing
at CalArts, and he also teaches English
at Santa Monica College. He has
published four nonfiction children's
books and written many short stories.
His stories have been published most
recently in The Santa Barbara Review,
The Southern California Anthology,
Rosebud, and upcoming in
Writers' Forum. His first
full-length play, Suburban Anger,
was mounted in 1993 at the Playwrights
Arena in Los Angeles.
In August 1997, his play Who
Lives? was staged at the 24th
Street Theatre in Los Angeles, and its
good reviews have other theaters across
the country considering it now. The
play earned several grants for its
production, including one from The
Pilgrim Project, a group that assists
plays that "ask questions of real moral
significance." For seven years, he was a
theater reviewer for Daily Variety,
and he wrote a column for Writer's
Digest for two years. His
screenplay, Henry's Room, won the
Donald Davis Dramatic Writing Award.
Specifically Speaking
by
Christopher Meeks
Sometimes a good line zings in like a mosquito on
a mission from the Minnesota woods. When I hear or
read a good line, it often catches me off guard and
makes me see my world in a new way.
Recently, it was finals week at the California
Institute of the Arts, which meant I had final
projects to read. In the story I began with, a
student described the veins on his grandfather's
hands as "swollen ropes." Another student wrote
about a maypole from her youth that had brightly
colored ribbons "hanging in glorious tendrils to the
grass." Those are the kinds of analogies and details
that give writing life, whether you're writing
fiction or not.
It occurred to me then, too, that some people
think good writing is all about good grammar. Good
grammar alone is box architecture. A square,
cinder-block building may stand, but there's nothing
exceptional about it. It has no personality, no
feeling, no style. It's a house, but not a home.
Here are some ways to add life to your writing.
-
Details, details, details:
Use specifics to create images and appeal to the
senses. Try this simple exercise.
-
Be impulsive:
Create your structure, and, then, get lost in
the moment.
-
Similes and metaphors:
Pick up your favorite reading material—from Tom
Robbins to Time magazine—and you'll see
that similes and metaphors evoke images.
-
Set the scene:
You have to be general long enough to set the
scene. Then, get specific.
-
Use active verbs:
"Spot fell to the floor, dog tired" tells a much
better story than "Spot is tired."
In high school and most of college, English class
bored the hell out of me. Why? I didn't see the fun
and freedom in language—I didn't grasp that it was
something to be handled like film, that images could
be slammed against each other, or similes and
metaphors could carry me to new heights. Perhaps my
teachers didn't know this either, or I just didn't
absorb it. Now, ironically, I teach English, and I
try to lead students to this water's edge. One of
the points I try to make to them—and now to you—is
that beyond grammar is the idea of writing with
specifics.
1:
God is in the details*.
This simply means that you should avoid the general
for the specific. "How was the dance?" you might ask
a friend. "It was nice," as an answer, may not tell
you a lot. In contrast, "I danced with Daphne
Richards who wore white shorts and a royal blue
sweater, and when I held her during Bruce
Springsteen's 'Back In Your Arms,' I could feel her
skin was moist from the previous dance, and I could
smell her perfume, which reminded me of orange
blossoms" speaks volumes.
Words such as "nice," "good," "fun," and
"awesome"—and all stand-alone adjectives in
general—don't have as much power as when you create
images and appeal to the senses.
I have an exercise to help you work on this
skill. It's in three parts. Try this: Go
outside with a pencil and paper to where a stranger
might pass. You might sit on a stoop in front of
your house or at an outdoor cafe.
Describe a person or an object by giving
details—just write on your paper without a lot
of thinking, much like a sketch artist begins a
sketch.
After that, come up with a simile of this
person or object by using the word "like," as in
"He is like a ____________." Just fill in the
blank. Come up with two or more, and again write
as quickly as possible.
Now create a metaphor by saying the person or
object is ___________. Again, fill in the blank.
For example, one person I tried this with went to
an ice cream vending machine and wrote: A) "
'Klondike, the Original' says the silver wrapped
square with blue ink. There's a picture of an
Eskimo. The machine says it 'accepts $1 bills' and
to 'insert face up.' B) The ice cream square is like
an invitation to all my needs. It is like a
cigarette ad—so much promise. I can be fulfilled. C)
It is locked up. It is unreachable. It is Emily
Dickinson, where need is greater than attainment."
I am constantly impressed by the results of this
exercise. Even people who do not write very often
come up with some amazing lines.
2:
After creating structure, let yourself get lost in
the moment.
Again, harking back to earlier columns, don't feel
you have to write a perfect first draft. Allow
yourself to be imperfect. I find the best writing
comes when you know what you want to say in general
(or from an outline), but then you allow yourself
some fun in saying it. Allow yourself to be
impulsive. Try out sentences or thoughts that
stretch you. You can always erase them later. As in
the exercise above, if you just do it without
spending a lot of time pondering, good things will
come.
3:
Analogies—similes and metaphors—are important.
Similes and metaphors are one way to get specific.
They don't come tripping naturally from my fingers.
Hence, I don't worry about creating them in a first
draft. I'll often do a polish where I specifically
look for moments to insert a simile or metaphor.
Similes and metaphors are designed to evoke
images—they are specific.
To provide examples to my class of the rich use
of simile and metaphor, I sometimes grab a book by
Tom Robbins, such as Jitterbug Perfume. Some
critics say Robbins goes overboard, but that's what
I love about his work. His analogies come like a
runner's breath, one automatically after another.
For example, I just opened the above book to (how
perfect for the moment):
...They stopped to catch their breath after the
rigorous descent. There, sitting against the base of
the cliff, sequins of sweat sewn to their brows,
they regarded one another as pilgrims—or
survivors—do. Kudra folded her hands over her
uterus, where some very strange little swimmers
recently drowned. Alobar issued a sigh that was
shaped like a funnel: a full quart of beet juice
could have been poured through it. (p. 148)
Notice the analogies: Sweat is described as sewn
sequins. The travelers are pilgrims, survivors.
Kudra's abdomen is described as her uterus—an
important point—and the "swimmers" you can guess.
Last, a sigh is compared to a funnel—quite unique.
Come up with your own unique comparisons.
If you like a more "normal" or nonfiction example
of analogies, I offer you this from Time, May
17th issue:
The Chickasha twister settled in like a plow,
ripping an 80-mile gash northeast through a corner
of Oklahoma City and several suburbs for an endless
four hours. Thousands of Oklahomans heard the shriek
of the warning sirens gradually overwhelmed by a
sound variously described like a locomotive, or a
screaming jet engine, or nothing on Earth.
That certainly gets you into the moment, much
more so than, "A big dark thing came down on the
city creating a big noise. It ruined houses and made
a mess." As you read a book or story you like,
underline good descriptions and lines you love.
4:
Writing is a dance between the general and the
specific.
Despite what I said in rule #1, you need the general
to set the scene. Then you get specific. Back and
forth. Ursula K. Le Guin in her excellent book,
Steering the Craft, describes this process as
"Crowding and Leaping." If you're telling a story,
fiction or nonfiction, you first have to quickly get
into the who-what-where-when-why-how in a general
way before getting into specifics. You then focus on
an event, a crowding of details, before leaping to
the next event.
In playwriting and screenwriting, you the writer
choose which scenes to show. Between each scene is a
leap. Other than the rare film or play, you do not
show every single minute in a person's day.
Even in such non-narrative and "dry" situations
as writing a software manual, you set the stage by
describing in general what a function can do before
giving the exact details—the keystrokes and
effects—of how to work the function. A good software
manual leads the reader into understanding why
something is important or what it does,
before getting into specifics. Trying to understand
a poorly written manual shows you how important
specifics can be.
5:
Use active verbs.
"Spot is tired. Jim is happy." One of the biggest
ways to make your writing more interesting is, after
you write a first draft, seek out and destroy forms
of "to be." This means "am," "are," "is," "was,"
"were," "be," and "been." Replace them with more
active verbs. "Spot fell to the floor, dog tired.
Jim swooped Jill up in his arms and licked her neck
like Spot might." Already the situations and
sentences are getting more interesting.
You won't be able to replace all forms of "to
be"—nor should you—but getting in the habit of using
active verbs also will take you into metaphorland.
Sirens don't literally scream, after all (no vocal
cords), and winds don't literally whistle (no lips),
but such active verbs can paint a scene well (even
though there's no paintbrush.) Active verbs are
great tools to use. Use them.
A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and
cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering
thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy
mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the
wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the
feathers firm too near the sun.
John Steinbeck (1902–68), U.S. author.
Writers at Work, "On Publishing" (Fourth Series,
ed. by George Plimpton, 1977).
A bad book is as much of a labour to write as
a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's
soul.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), British author.
Point Counter Point, ch. 13 (1928).
God is in the details.
Architect Mies van der Rohe is most famous
for his Seagram's Building, one of the first
"international style" skyscrapers. He may or may not
have been the first to say this, no one seems clear.
It may have been Flaubert. Does it really matter?
Illustration: from Jonathan Evans,
www.artville.com
|
