Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
What I will ask is your opinion on whether each new topic should get a new thread or should we just have one running thread. Some have already voted.
Please feel free to comment on our discussion regarding descriptive narratives.
And if you have a subject you would like help with... post away. I think this thread is a great idea and do not want to see it die away. So much good advice has been offered the writer already.
To join the thread, please ping JamesP81.
You have a decision to make, my friend. Are you trying to write a novel for mass consumption, or a novel for a fairly narrow audience of historians? It's up to you, but I would put in enough historical content to keep the average layman up to speed with the significance of events as they unfold. The method you use to reveal this information is important too...but more about this in a moment.
3. I was told I needed to infuse my knowledge, findings, and interpretations into the book. What the person suggested was that I step out of the narrative and add my insights...Can't I have the characters do that for me. Speak my findings and interpretations?
That's your method right there. Honestly, there's very little in ANY story more boring than page-long paragraphs of narrated exposition, and the less of it you can get away with, the better.
No doubt you've already read Michael Shaara's Killer Angels. Shaara is masterful at delivering absolute REAMS of genuine history through the mechanism of putting you in each general's head as the story moves forward until, by the middle of the book, you understand why Pickett's charge was inevitable as the rising of the sun. Shaara uses a sort of stream-of-consciousness style to show the reader the internal struggle of Longstreet as he wrestles with two facts: One, he must give the order to attack the Union center head-on in the morning, over half a mile of bare upward slope, and two, that attack will not only fail, but will cost them the battle and quite possibly the entire war.
You can see how this approach translated to the movie Gods and Generals in the case of union Colonel John Buford, played by Sam Elliott, when he stands up and speaks Shaara's lines out loud:
"Meade will come in slowly, cautiously, new to command... And then, after Lee's army is entrenched behind nice fat rocks, Meade will attack finally, if he can coordinate the army. He'll attack right up that rocky slope, and up that gorgeous field of fire. And we will charge valiantly, and be butchered valiantly. And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chests and say what a brave charge it was. Devin, I've led a soldier's life, and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this."
That's a case of novel exposition carried straight on through to the silver screen...by putting in the dialog. When you put in exposition, put a lot of it in this way. Also,do it just enough to make it make sense. Don't show off your extensive knowledge just to show off.
And there's another point to make: If it doesn't contribute to the story, cut it out. Be brutal. The essence of the story is the story, the interaction of characters and the struggle and/or journey of the protagonist. That's what keeps peoples' attention...they want to know what happens next.
[Cue Forrest Gump voice:] And that's all I've got to say about that.
Holy Smokes! You're writing a biography!
If that's your purpose, fine...but otherwise you've got to learn to show and not tell. Don't tell us what Jackson's childhood was like, write a vignette from it. Don't lecture us about Jackson's lectures...put us in the mind of a VMI cadet who's sitting through one. Don't talk to us about how Jackson was teased...show us a scene in which it happens.
Please.
Hi Carton; all Well it looks as if this thread is going to survive! I see the discussion is on action and description.; If anybody has a better symbol to put up go for it! I vote to keep all the topics on one thread since we don't really have enough people yet to split up between two or three threads by topic.
Actually, that is not in the book. It is just an example of how I write descriptive narrative to show as an example so others could comment on it.
As for your other comments... I absolutely agree.
I am halt between two opinions on that right now. But I think I am going toward the Civil War buff. Not historians, for I am not one of those, but I enjoy the subject. I don't need much exposition.
That's your method right there.
Since I am the most comfortable writing like that, I will continue to do so.
Also,do it just enough to make it make sense. Don't show off your extensive knowledge just to show off.
Sage advice.
If it doesn't contribute to the story, cut it out. Be brutal. The essence of the story is the story, the interaction of characters and the struggle and/or journey of the protagonist. That's what keeps peoples' attention...they want to know what happens next.
Just worth repeating.
Question to all --- what symbol do I use to maintain paragraphs when I post a picture?
I should go to the HTML sandbox I guess....
A thought on action; it's vital. I liked the description of the Mossad agent's fight with the police. Well done and graphic and spare.
Carton I also liked your description of Jackson's early time at the Academy. Loved the details of his wiping off chak from the board until his uniform was gray (a symbol of things to come) and his sitting by a coal fire.
There is big action and little action.
Here's Big Action from 'Desolation Island' by Patrick O'Brian:
"As Moore's hand came down, Jack automatically stepped aside; but he was still stupid, he moved slow, and the recoiling gun flung him to the deck again. On hands and knees he felt for the train-takle in the smoke, found it as the darkness cleared, and tallied on. But for the moment he could not understand the cheering theat filed the cabin, deafening his ears; then through the shattered deadlights he saw the Dutchman's foremast lurch, lurch again, the stays part, the mast and sail carry away right over the bows.
The 'Leopard' reached the crest (of the wave). Green water blinded him. It cleared and through the bloody haze running from his clothes he saw the vast breaking wave with the 'Waakzaamheid' broadside on its curl, on her beam-ends, broached to. An enormous momentary turmoil of black hull and white water, flying spars, rigging that streamed wild for a second, and then nothing at all but the great hill of green-grey with foam racing upon it.
"My God, oh my God," he said. "Six hundred men."
Of course this is the very end of the long description of the running fight between the Leopard and the 'Waakzaaheid'.
Not only action, but interior chracterization ---Jack's deep regret for loss of life even though the enemy was doing his best to kill Jack and all his crew.
Here's small action, from McCarthy's 'The Crossing' (I don't know how to do italics, either) :^(
this is when the doctor comes to try to extract the bullet out of Boyd.
(The doctor) selected from their fitted compartments in his case his tools of nickel steel. Sharpnosed scissors and hemostats some dozen in number. Boyd watched. Billy watched. He sroppeds the instruments into the pan ...(the woman) blassed herself and bent and reached and took hold of the rag that bound the poultice and lifted it and slid her thumb beneath the poultice and pulled it away. It was of matted weeds and dark with blood and it came away unwillingly. Like something that had been feeding there. She stepped back and folded it from sight in the dirty sheeting. Boyd lay in the flickering light of the votive candle with a small round hole a few inches above and to the left of his nipple.
And it geets even more graphic.
With both examples, an enormous amount is at stake -- life itself.
I don't think you'd want this kind of description if nothingwere at stake. When it is, it's gripping.
Yikes, excuse my mispellings. I promise on a copy of Dickens that I will use spellcheck in the future.
Hope that helps. I will read over your selections.
Placemarker ...
bump
I'll see your bump and raise you one reply.
We were talking about descriptive narratives and you read the bio I wrote on Jackson and said (quoting from memory here) Whoa, are you writing a biography.
You said to show and not tell. Then you asked me if I read descriptive narratives and I answered no. I thought about my answer over the weekend and would like to amend my answer.
First, back to the show and not tell. Maybe I am an anomaly - but I would read a "tell" if it was written well. Margaret Mitchell in Gone With The Wind writes pages of tell interspersed with show when she is writing the biographies of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara. At fourteen, when I first read the book, I had no problem reading it. (In fact, it came in handy when I critiqued my prof's article for a journal and told him he was wrong on a Gerald fact. He didn't believe me, so he handed me a copy of GWTW and I found the quote in a few minutes)
So tell versus show is an argument that I see writer's having... but, for me, if the tell is well written and engaging, yes I will read it.
Where I will not read descriptive narrative is when it is describing something I cannot visualize. For example - as great as Lord of the Rings is - I get restless in Tolkein's detailed description of Middle Earth because I can't visualize where the Entwash is flowing. I have impatiently read paragraphs of room description down to the flowers on the damask wall covering because I really don't know what vermilion looks like without getting a paint swatch from Sherman Williams. Or the detail of dresses - where the flounces and ruffles are.
Tom Clancy's descriptions bore me because he seems to be showing off his knowledge. I have no clue what he is talking about when he just starts throwing weapon systems at me.
I am a person who enjoys a book. If it is good, I do not want it to end. So, if I am engrossed - tell and not show does not hinder me and neither does a lot of descriptive narratives as long as they are well written and I understand or can "see" what the author is trying to convey.
I think many if not most here will agree that the really important rule is that rules can be broken. Rules can be broken, you just have to be good enough to carry it off. Every rule they give you about writing can be broken in a certain situation.
That said, the rules define craftsmanship and excellence. So learn the rules, use them, and you’ll then be able to break them to good effect.
Thus, showing is better than telling, usually. But not always.
Present tense is better than past tense, usually. But not always.
“Blah blah blah,” she said is better than “Blah blah blah,” she breathed, usually. And so on.
The secret is that you have to be good enough to carry it off.
Fast forward almost thirty years to a fourteen year I knew who almost threw the book down because of the background. Where was the action? Why was this included? Was it necessary?
Probably not. But when I asked her what the rush was she said that she just didn't see the need for this "stuff".
I got to participate in a fascinating discussion on whether books are dying out because of TV, movies, and things like graphic comics. That the thought of sitting down with a book on a rainy afternoon was becoming a think of the past and soon...books would go the way of the horse and buggy. People do not want to invest the time and energy of reading a book.
I said I do not believe so because people will always need heros, but of the 15 people in the room, I was the only one who thought the "novel" was not on the endangered species list.
You’re jaded. :->
But seriously, you have a good point. Novels are not endangered, I don’t think, but sometimes it seems like they’re being pushed away, into a niche market. When you consider that there’s more population now, you’d expect a bigger market for novels.
Internet, gaming, movies, they’re putting a hurting on reading in general. I guess there’s too much competition for our free time.
As for description, people (myself included) need to slow down and read it. But the attention-impaired probably find it hard to read.
No - I was the only one in the room that said the novel was not dead. :)
Here is the main thread. Welcome!
To start a new thread today.
Today is my birthday!
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