Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Using the five senses
Compelling craft
You, the writer

In this chapter

·  Utilizing your senses

·  The danger of unfocused writing

·  The peril of summarizing too much

·  The importance of determining

Creative writing is the art of using words. That statement might seem simple, but it’s actually a truth so profound, many writers never get down to it. And it’s so subtle, many other writers who think they see it never, in fact, really comprehend it.

As an author, your business is with words. The practitioners of other arts, such as music and painting, deal with ideas and emotions, but only creative writers have to deal with them purely by means of words. Words are your raw material—your tools and instruments—to afford your ideas and emotions expression. Yet they remain limited to the extent of their expression, and their expression is limited to the extent of your skill in the use of words.

Skill—or what creative writers refer to as craft—counts and is always worth its cost in time and labor. Many beginning creative writers have an erroneous notion of the significance of the phrase literary craft. Many imagine it necessarily includes the idea of pomp, stateliness, magnificence, lyricism, richness, elaboration; that it’s something beyond, and in addition to, accurate, lucid description. It’s true, these elements sometimes may be present in good craft, but they’re by no means essential. When you express the mood you want to convey with accuracy, lucidity, and sincerity, then—consciously or unconsciously—you have practiced good craft. Craft is the result of self-expression, of being your genuine self for the reader via the appropriate use of words.

In this chapter, I show you methods of improving your craft by attempting to capture in words what your senses convey to you, by learning to recognize the dangers of generalizing and summarizing too much in your writing, and by knowing how to judge when your craft has been applied appropriately. Many beginning creative writers overlook the importance of craft in the interests of getting on to what they conceive of as the bright promise of their narratives. Here you learn that craft is not only crucial in generating your writing but also in reading it—that is, appreciating when it’s truly good or perhaps needs some improvement.

DEFINITION

In this book, craft refers to a proficient skill in the art of making something. Here, it’s creative writing.

Using the five senses

How often do you use your five senses in everyday life? Most all the time. How often do most creative writers use them when writing? Probably not enough.

The senses are the most amazing craft tool available to a writer, yet they’re also the most underused. I believe this is due mostly to simple forgetfulness. Writers tend to overlook some of the senses when they render descriptions. However, frequently including them enriches your writing and makes it more vivid and lifelike.

Arguably the most important tool in creative writing is observation. When you want to convey anything, you must highlight the colors, people, situations, and everything else around you by bringing your written world to life. More importantly, you use your five senses to convey to your reader a sense of belonging within your writing.

Observation brings in the five senses:

·  What can you hear?

·  What can you taste?

·  What can you touch?

·  What can you smell?

·  What can you see?

Using your senses is important to enable your reader to vividly experience your writing. Readers want to see and feel the world you envision—the background, the people, and the places. Readers want to smell the scene—what odors are there? Can you describe what the hint of a newly bloomed lilac is like or fecund garden greens simmering in a pressure cooker? Can your reader hear what you’re evoking—a dump truck depositing a load of gravel, a young woman angrily yelling at her lover, or the gentle stirrings of a Chopin melody drifting down from a second-story window? Do your characters speak in individualized voices and tones?

Can your reader taste what you have in mind? For instance, if your character is walking along a beach, can your reader taste the salt in the air? If your protagonist is in a pub, can your reader taste the subtle flavor of milk in the character’s pint of stout?

Lastly, can the reader feel the various elements of your writing? Touch can convey powerful emotion and accomplish much without the aid of dialogue. What about the softness behind a cat’s ear or the smooth quality of a lover’s skin? Touch heightens feeling in ways other senses cannot.

As we examine how each of the senses can be useful to your writing, keep in mind that it’s possible for your work to become overly sensual—to the point that it bogs down the pacing of your writing. If, for example, a character has just had a shouting match with her boss and proceeds to run down some stairs and out of a building, it’s best not to dwell on the polished mahogany railing or the staircase’s stained and frayed yellow carpeting. Given the circumstances, a simple “she rushed down the stairs and out of the building” will do.

DEFINITION

Pacing is the speed at which action takes place in writing.

The sense of sight

Because you normally see action within your mind when you write, observation is perhaps the most used of the five senses. Of course, for you, the challenge is to express what you see mentally, to translate the images to the page.

Remember that what your character sees is what your reader sees, and if you fail to describe very much, your reader won’t fully appreciate what you’re trying to describe. What does the character see? What’s in the background? What’s in the foreground? What surrounds them?

Here’s an example from the beginning of a novel titled Confederado, which casts the reader into the action primarily by way of observation:

Every time the hell bent little mare took a curve of the narrow wagon rutted woods road, Alvis Benjamin Stevens felt as though the animal was a splinter’s breadth from losing her footing and sending both of them sliding and tumbling into the mud and puddles of brown water passing beneath. It had been hard riding for what he figured the better part of seven miles. But as the trail straightened out and firmed in the midst of ascending a bald rise, Alvis took a chance to wheel and consider his pursuers.

It was a graceful maneuver, man and horse wheeling as one, the man as much the animal as the horse the man. All the more remarkable since Alvis Stevens was tall and rode high in the saddle. He had the look of the countryside about him: sun-browned skin and tangled hair that stirred in the wind like stalks of wheat. Hunted as he was, there was no panic in him and, indeed, one might remark that he moved with the natural ease of a hunter himself—that he likely had been a hunter of many things over the course of his young life, men not least among them.

In this passage, the reader receives quite a few vivid observations, despite the fact that the character is fleeing and the pacing is brisk. Despite the galloping, the reader is able to see brown mud passing beneath, and—when the horse wheels (a pause of sorts)—that the character is an accomplished rider, has been outdoors a great deal, and possesses hair the color of wheat—that is, it is blond. Such details lend depth to what’s occurring and offers clues about the character without getting in the way of the fundamental action.

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

One way many creative writers negotiate pacing and observation is to focus on one before the other and then determine which works best. Does a narrative in which action is established before the visual details are added work better, or is the reverse true? In my experience, the answer depends less on the kind of writer you are and more on the material you happen to be working with.

The sense of smell

The sense of smell can invoke powerful memories: a certain perfume might remind you of a former love, or perhaps it’s a lingering trace of Lucky Strikes cigarette tobacco or the strong odor of freshly mown grass. Smell often is an overlooked sense, but it contains the power to provide potent detail to your writing.

Here’s an example from a creative nonfiction piece titled “Satyr” that demonstrates how smell can be employed:

The first time I ever took notice of her was in a class—the subject of which now escapes me—in which the discussion had drifted fancifully off topic toward the question of whether there was more grass covering the planet or more sand. Though I was dozing in the back, as was my custom, I remember one of the serious, scientifically-inclined boys asserting there most certainly was more sand on account of the size of the world’s oceans and that most all their deep dark floors were covered with it. But to this Emily—that was the girl’s name—responded with something to the effect that those same deep recesses might instead lie covered in a dark waving grass that required almost no light: a grass that no one probably had ever even seen but that likely was as tall as trees and stood in stands that rendered miniscule the earth’s greatest prairies. Miles beneath the undulating surface, she maintained, it moved like corn in the wind.

The class had laughed at her when she had finished conveying her deep ocean vision and though I believed their opinions meant almost nothing to her, she had blushed nonetheless. I myself said nothing, did not move even from my drowsy reclining position, but in that moment Emily had won me as a devoted admirer and friend.

And we did become friends, our bond sustained by the most unlikely of variables and exchanges. I admired, for instance, how she smoked in the bathroom between classes, yet was never actually caught doing so even though everyone—teachers, janitors, students—knew her as the culprit. I liked the way in which the rancid tobacco odor would drift across the room to me in the one class I had with her. A student or two sitting close to her occasionally would wrinkle their noses in disgust at the smell, but for me, assigned to a seat on the far side of the room near the back, the wandering smell was a way for her to reach me. When it wafted my way and entered my nostrils it was as though she was sitting beside me so that we might witness the farce of yet another high school class session together.

Although this excerpt begins with seeing (both Emily and the underwater vision she describes), it’s the odor of her cigarettes that intimately defines Emily for the speaker. When the smell of the tobacco reaches him, it’s as if Emily herself inhabits a special proximity to him. Moreover, the smell of the cigarettes is used to augment her difference. Just as her unique oceanic vision is met with scorn by her classmates, so her singular smoking garners disgust from those sitting near her. For the speaker, however, Emily’s imagination and smoking are linked and define, in part, his deepening affection for her.

The sense of hearing

Most of what your reader hears comes from your dialogue, but that’s just one aspect of hearing. How many sounds other than talk can you hear within a given scene? What sounds can you conjure? Is there a distant train whistle? Perhaps a cacophony of car horns to represent the chaos of a bustling city. How about the irregular lapping of water against a boat? All these sounds have the capacity to deepen the realism of a given scene.

In the following example—the beginning of a creative nonfiction piece called “The Skeleton Woman”—the sound of a sports car engine arguably plays as important a role as the dialogue:

“Tell them I am going to show them what they are.” This from my mother while dropping me off at primary school.

She’d agreed to come to Parent Show and Tell Day but we had to report to the teacher what our visiting parent would be talking about. I leaned forward to hug her and she kissed me on the forehead. I always looked up at her, reluctant to go.

“Go on now,” she’d say after a moment.

But once I was out of the car I’d always turn around and wave, as if the hug and the kiss hadn’t been enough. She would smile a warm, slow smile and then shoo me on with a flick of her wrist.

I’d walk away slowly so long as I could feel her eyes on my back. But when I sensed them move and heard the car pull away, I would stop and walk back, watching as she pulled out onto the road in front of the school. Her car was very loud and rumbled like a faraway storm. Unless a teacher made me move, I would wait listening until it reached the place half a mile away where the speed changed from 25 to 55. Then I would hear the sudden burst of sound that came when Mama stomped the floor. She didn’t know it, but that was her real daily goodbye to me.

“Go Mama!” I would say in my mind and wonder if she heard me.

Her car was an old Mercury Cougar she’d bought years ago, before she quit her job. It had an engine called a V8, like the drink I liked.

“It’s getting old, like me,” she’d say sometimes, “but it’s still got plenty of power. More than three hundred horses’ worth.”

Not unlike the way in which the smell of cigarettes forms a connection between the speaker and Emily in “Satyr,” the sound of the Mercury Cougar functions as a basis of attachment between the boy narrator and his mother.

Yet the significance of the sound does not end there. The engine is very powerful, and the mother likes to drive fast, suggesting the car and the sound it makes may be a reflection of her personality. Moreover, the V8’s sound is compared to faraway thunder, which suggests foreshadowing: it’s possible something stormlike may occur later on in the narrative.

DEFINITION

Foreshadowing is a usually subtle advance hint of an action that will occur later in a narrative.

The sense of taste

Taste is perhaps the most neglected sense in writing. Eating can be a shared, sensual pastime. If your characters are eating, some of your readers will want to be involved and have their taste buds aroused, too.

The next time you write a scene with characters eating, hint at what they taste and how it might affect them. What do you liken Chilean cabernet to as your character sloshes it about his mouth? How about Colt 45 malt liquor? What does the vegetarian character taste when she bites into a sausage-filled quiche prepared by her prankster host? Are the brownies overcooked and rough against the top of a character’s mouth, or are they warm and gooey?

Keep in mind that taste isn’t just about food. During a passionate kiss, what do a character’s lips taste like? Are they sweet, bitter, or fruity? Even something seemingly mundane like licking an envelope before sealing it can deepen overall narrative realism.

In the following passage, drawn from a creative nonfiction book titled The End of the Mountains, a man is on the run in the Smoky Mountains. As you read, take note of the roles food and taste play in the excerpt:

The shadows were growing long when Columbus forsook the game trail and ascended the nearest ridge, where he knew the air would be warmer. He had been on the lookout for rock outcroppings in the hopes of discovering an overhang or cave. He had seen none, but he had discovered a bed of early ramp shoots near the game trail where a spring faintly welled up—one of those small natural pockets in the Smokys where the ground keeps moist and warm year round. The ramps he could eat, though they would intensify his odor.

In a stand of towering hemlocks he ignited his fire with rock, dried leaves, and brittle pine needles. The rising smoke, meager as it was, was thinned by the thick heavy boughs above. He had been fortunate to come across a roughly bowl-shaped rock and this he had filled with water where the ramps grew. When the flames were strong enough he sat the rock atop them and waited for the ramp leaves to soften, setting his boots and socks near the fire and scooting forward so that his feet and lower legs were closest to the heat.

A meal solely consisting of ramps most often would be deemed wanting, but after weeks of the terrible cavern soup, they seemed to melt in his mouth and revive him with their powerful freshness and warmth.

In addition to the freshness, warmth, and boiled softness of the ramps, the taste of the food described here is important for educating the reader about a unique regional dish. Ramps are leafy wild onions with a strong, garliclike odor. Seldom consumed in other parts of eastern North America, they constituted a common food item for poor mountain people. In the excerpt, a dish that would taste repugnant to most twenty-first-century readers comes across as a delicious meal for this hard-pressed mountain man.

The sense of touch

Touch is another neglected sense. Unless you can describe the feel of something within a scene, you aren’t involving all the readers’ senses. Can you describe the feel of a character’s thin cotton dress, the grittiness of sand, or the sting of salt against the skin? Or what about the feel of cool water around your ankles as you walk through the surf in early October? If a character is touching something, don’t be afraid to describe it.

The following example, drawn from a creation nonfiction piece titled “Home Court Advantage,” demonstrates how something as mundane as a gym floor can amaze a person who comes into contact with it—especially eighth-grade boys from a poverty-stricken school system about to play a basketball game:

Arrival. Off the bus and through heavy school doors into a lobby-like area, cheerleaders ahead of us, peeling off in search of a place to practice their hops and yells.

Then through another set of heavy doors and into a …

And here language fails us, the dim tangerine venue before us unlike any athletic facility we ever have encountered. A basketball court to be sure yet covered end to end by an orange carpet, made to appear even oranger by the weak sunburst light in which it is cast, emanating in conical shafts from bizarre hanging ceiling lights resembling black suspended jet engines. The wanting illumination also conspires to irregularly shroud sections of the bleachers and walls in darkness, affording the peculiar impression that in certain places this place spans indefinitely into some black dimension, elsewhere and forever.

Coach, speaking as we gape, looking back from yet another door he’s shoved open. “Stay here, fellas. I’m gonna see what locker room they want us in.”

Tye, first to recover, gaze dropping to the floor, kicking at it. “What the f--- is this?” Then looking up, eyes wide, lips parted in wonder. “It a f---in rug, man!”

And Lonnie, crouched on bended knee, prying and hacking at the surface with his white, deer-bone-handle knife. “It’s some tough s--- for sure, fellas. My blade can’t do nothin with it.”

Tye, yanking the ball bag away from the little benchwarmer whose duty it is to tote it, tilting it so that a basketball spills forth. We watch as it bounces on the floor—not so high as it would on a normal court and accompanied by a curious sound: heavy, muffled, and hollow all at once.

Lonnie, addressing us all. “This is some weird s--- right here, fellas. It ain’t even their school colors. Who puts a big ’ol orange rug on a basketball court?”

Scooby. “Maybe their principal’s some kinda f--.”

Meanwhile Tye, bouncing the ball slowly, head bobbing as he follows it, face cast in a rare studious expression. Then looking up in wonder. “Check it out yall. My dribble be soundin all funny and s---.”

Lonnie, flick of the wrist, knife rotating end over end toward the floor, striking the carpet, bouncing once, then abruptly going motionless and dead. He bends over, swooping it up irritably. “Man, this court is stupid. I ain’t never seen the like.”

And Me, silent through it all, peering around: noting the placement of the wall outlets, the barely discernible lumpy weld patterns on the big steel frames above the goals, the low hum of the orange lights shaped like jet engines, and the gentle billowing of the raggedy old cobwebs hanging here and there from the ceiling girders like tiny ghostly banners.

Then, kneeling down, gently tracing the rough irregular bristles with a forefinger, deciding I like it.

For these youngsters, the texture of this gym floor—the fact that it’s inexplicably covered by a carpet—is made all the stranger by their delinquent educational status and adolescent age. In the wake of one student bouncing a ball on the carpet and the other ineffectually hacking at it with a knife, the speaker, running his finger over it, concludes that he likes it for the very reason his teammates are uncomfortable with it: because of its novelty. It’s the sense of touch that leads him at last to this opinion.

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

Keeping all five senses in mind as you write is something of a tall order, especially for beginning creative writers. So one of the best ways to remind yourself of them is to keep a writing-prompt note on your desk or computer that asks: What can I see? What can I hear? What can I taste? What can I touch? What can I smell? You don’t have to overload your narrative with all the senses, but employing some of them, especially in key scenes, is important. Poor description gives the reader nothing, but great description necessarily involves successfully conveying the senses.