Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Making it seem real
Dynamic details
You, the writer
Now that you’ve applied judgments to your use of craft and details—both of which usually are located on the more formulaic side of the creative writing spectrum—it’s significant to keep in mind the general maxim that creative writing is not truth. It is an illusion; it is a lie that makes us realize truth.
When you read an excellent work of fiction or poetry, you become aware of something new about the human condition. Life, as the cliché tells you, often is stranger than fiction. Events in real life occur at random; you function every day in the midst of a million chaotic forces that conspire to shape your existence. On the other hand, events in fiction and poetry are engineered to resemble life, but they rely on craft and description to come anywhere near embodying it. For creative writing to work effectively, you must insert a dream inside your reader’s mind, which enables them to suspend disbelief and believe the fictional story is plausible.
This concept brings me to the notion of verisimilitude, or how much truth is in a creative work. The idea has its roots in the ancient Greeks’ theory of mimesis: the imitation or representation of nature. They generally believed that for a piece of art to hold significance or persuasion for an audience, it must have grounding in reality. This idea laid the foundation for the evolution of mimesis into verisimilitude via the Italian heroic poetry of the Middle Ages. No matter how fictionalized the language of a poem might be, through verisimilitude, poets had the ability to present their works in a way that could still be believed in the real world.
DEFINITION
Verisimilitude is the degree of lifelike reality present in a creative work.
With the development of the novel, these elder notions of verisimilitude gave way to instruction and a pleasurable experience. A novel, although fictional in nature and fact, had to facilitate the reader’s willingness to suspend his or her disbelief. Verisimilitude became the means to accomplish this mind-set. To promote the willing suspension of disbelief, a fictional text needed to have credibility. Anything physically possible in the worldview of the reader or humanity’s experience was defined as credible. Through verisimilitude, then, the reader was able to glean truth, even in fiction, because it reflected realistic aspects of human life.
Applying this notion to all the genres of contemporary creative writing in a simplified way might sound something like this: the way people and events are structured are going to have to be believable, or else readers are going to call shenanigans on your work.
To underscore the importance of verisimilitude and how creative writers grope for it, here’s an example from the book SCHOOLED. Note how the writer tells, shows, switches writing genres, and employs quotes in an effort to “get at” the verisimilitude of the material in question:
B— died alone one spring mid-morning in a single vehicle highway wreck two weeks after I kissed her, running off the road without any cause or reason anyone could determine. Several months later, A— dove head first through an upper floor dormitory window, was withdrawn from school by her parents, and sent away, circumstances equally unfathomable, causes unknown.
*
Sitting at my writing desk, morning sun on the back of my neck, dwelling upon those occasions in my life when events have occurred that seemed already familiar—that I already somehow knew. Thinking too that my way of writing is not unlike those occasions: that I am only discovering what I already know. And that I was meant to know it all before. I am a time traveler: my past becomes my destiny in the symbols I set now to paper.
Yet another morning, at my desk, sun on my neck, forming characters slowly, gently, as a calligrapher might, with a black felt-tip pen, careful to afford them their slight leans and rounded curves, attempting to infuse them with warmth.
*
“None of the acceleration options has been shown to do psychosocial damage to gifted students as a group; when effects are noted, they are usually (but not invariably) in a positive direction.”
—Nancy Robinson
*
In my waking mind, I hold their images to me.
Then I set them down in grass, push away the clouds, and summon the wind to curve round their brows like kisses.
If I were a better writer, I would breathe life into these girls.
They would play out their lost lives with my words.
If I were a better writer, I would summon them from their oblivion and give them to the world.
*
Poem given to me by B— (Spring 1992)
For all her learning, the meaning of this eludes her.
Oak leaves blown across endless fields.
The succession of lovers who have held her,
possessed of hands as soft as hers,
watching as she sleeps with eyes grown weak
from endless paper trails.
In dream she wanders empty, lonely places,
A wayward blizzard of unstable molecules,
Until a shadow being arrives to gather her,
Felt more than seen: rough, dirt-stained hands,
As gentle and as warm as the upturned ground in May.
Let’s consider briefly the progression of this writer’s struggle for verisimilitude. It begins with telling: mere reportage of dire events that have befallen two female schoolmates. In the next section, the reader joins the writer at his writing desk, as if the writer is inviting the reader to appreciate his challenge and help him make sense of what he has told.
The writer offers his own particular philosophy of writing, but when he forms his words, the reader discovers in the next section that they merely constitute a quote about how well adjusted gifted youngsters tend to be. Moreover, they quote is made to appear ironic when, in the next section, the writer laments the girls’ adversity in a short poem and shares with the reader how he would do them justice if he were a better writer. Yet because he is not, he offers another quote in the final section: a poem given to him by one of the girls prior to her death. And indeed, this is the best verisimilitude the writer can offer, because he feels he lacks the requisite writing tools to render either of the girls himself.
Now let’s consider another description of a female character in which the writer seems confident enough to present her circumstances. In the following passage from the novel Confederado, the protagonist encounters his eventual love interest for the first time:
Glancing down at the old men, Alvis followed their shared gaze across the room to a circle of youths among whom stood a slender figure in a black bombazine, cut low in the neck and possessed of long angel sleeves which fell away from her arms, above the elbow to the hem of her dress. Her naturally curling tresses were raven black and glossy, and around her neck was a band of black velvet with a black onyx cross. The conspiracy between her dark beauty and unusual attire afforded her an otherworldly quality which captured Alvis’s attention in a way that forced him to stare longer and harder than he intended, so that when she suddenly turned her eyes full upon him, it was apparent she had sensed his watchful look for some time.
Having been discovered in his staring, there was nothing for it now but to approach her and make his introduction. She had turned back to her circle of friends, but when Alvis came to stand at her side she cast her frank, disconcerting gaze upon him once more. Up close she was beautiful to be sure, yet it was her eyes, her grey-green eyes, that chiefly denied Alvis attention to everything else. Their expression, though soft, blunted all inquiry or analysis. Cleopatra might have had such eyes, he thought to himself.
“Alvis Stevens,” he said, bowing slightly. “May I have the honor of the next dance?”
“I do not make it my habit to dance with men I do not know,” she replied coolly.
“Then, by all means, let us dance and come to know one another,” countered Alvis with a smile.
“Poor, poor provincial,” she mocked, but her own slight smile was inviting. “Is this what passes for cleverness among your acquaintances?”
“I confess I have little cultivated imagination or wit,” said Alvis. “I am only a plain, simple fellow, but one who can see to the end of his nose with extreme clearness.”
At this she laughed warmly and placed her hand upon his offered arm as the next song began. She moved gracefully and, in the middle of the room, danced upon feet so light as to make her appear to drift at times. Alvis, for his part, though a passable dancer, was made to feel not unlike a clumsy draft horse by comparison. The concentration her dancing exacted of him foiled all conversation, and when the song concluded he had gotten no further than her name.
She declined to dance with him a second time though she smiled at him warmly. When pressed as to her reason she grinned mischievously and replied, “Caprice de femme enceinte!” before turning from his uncomprehending face to take up the arm of a red haired confidante whom she addressed as Arabella. Walking across the busy room, heads leaned together, they giggled suddenly and looked back at him before continuing on into another part of the house. He shrugged and made for the nearest tray to collect a glass of bourbon.
To feel nervous in a potentially romantic situation is a natural human reaction, and the writer plays off that archetype here by turning the tables on his forward male protagonist and having him both outwitted and out-danced by the young woman.
Simultaneously, however, a certain connection is established in the way the two converse and make light of each other and themselves. This tension is something to which most all readers can relate, and the touch of humor at the end—the protagonist’s inability to understand French and his decision to resort to bourbon—bring the scene’s verisimilitude home with a flourish.
DEFINITION
An archetype is a recurring pattern or model from which similar patterns or models are drawn. Characters, action, and even writing itself can be archetypal.
To sum up verisimilitude, remember that you need to remember your written characters and events almost as if they really exist. The reader needs to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell them. But more than that, the reader needs to “feel” that they’re real, that somewhere in the universe, what you’ve written conceivably happened.
This form of total immersion in a piece of writing can have curious side effects. It leads to a certain level of divorce from reality, involving spending large amounts of time living in your imagination. You might even find yourself talking to your characters in your head, holding conversations with them. This might feel odd, but it’s actually a phenomenon many of the best creative writers regularly experience. And if it’s the price of extraordinary creative writing, it’s a rather small price to pay.
The least you need to know
· Be sure many of your details are concrete.
· Be sure many of your details are significant.
· Employ proper judgment when weighing pacing against the number of details you employ.
· Endeavor to have your details create a written reality that seems lifelike.