THE ICE PICK

Description, by Monica Wood. (Elements of Fiction Writing series) Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999. 171 p. ISBN 0-89879-908-2 pbk. $12.00.

Made up of the details you select that engage the senses and help readers "see" your story, description "is the creation of mental images that allow readers to fully experience a story."

Beginning with a chapter that explains how to choose the "telling detail" that makes a story come alive and drive it forward without overwhelming it, Wood discusses how to write good description and use it to make your prose fresher and stronger and your story better and more memorable.

She says that "showing and telling are equally powerful and important descriptive techniques." She explains their differences, their uses, and when and how to apply them, depending on the effect you want to achieve. In describing "something wildly disappointing or moving or confounding," for example, "a scene almost always does the trick better than narrative."

Wood discusses how to use description to keep your story moving and how to create "context" for a complex story, or one that has lots of characters or extends over a long period of time.

Through many examples, Wood shows the interrelationship of description with dialogue and how description can improve your characters’ dialogue. For example, the use of setting and character actions during a conversation can make the dialogue come alive and also influence what the characters say.

She discusses the impact of point of view on description. Age, gender, education, ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and occupation will all affect how your viewpoint character sees things. And she addresses the problems of describing your viewpoint characters without resorting to clichéd mirrors and ponds or having friends gush over your characters’ appearance.

Wood analyzes description in relation to style and shows how the two are interdependent.

The chapter on setting may be especially important for science fiction and fantasy authors, who must create whole worlds without boring their readers with large blocks of description.

Her last two chapters address special descriptive problems (animals, weather, emotion, and sound) and give tips and tricks you can use in revisions or when you’re stuck.

Each chapter has a summary "wrap-up" section to give you an overview and more examples, and there is an excellent index.

Wood explains things clearly and simply and with humor, making the book an enjoyable one to read.

No matter what kind of fiction you write, you have to be able to handle description and do it well, for "description is not so much an element of fiction as its very essence."

If you do not already have the 1995 hardback edition, I highly recommend this paperback reprint.

{Published in SF and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, July 2002.}

THE ICE PICK

Show, Don’t Tell: a Writer’s Guide, by William Noble. Middlebury, Vt.: Paul S. Eriksson, 1993.

Although out of print now, this excellent book is well worth looking for in your local library or out-of-print bookstore.

If you’ve ever been told "show, don’t tell," or wondered what that meant or how exactly to go about doing it, this book was written for you!

"Showing," versus "telling," is writing your story in such a way that "readers can become part of the story that unfolds before them." It means bringing out "the dramatic side of any incident or circumstance." Readers "want to be caught up in the drama, to feel what the characters feel and to settle into the place the story puts them in." "Showing" comes "from our imagination, not from a series of lecture notes that explain what is actually happening."

Beginning with how to create a dramatic opening, Noble goes through the process of story writing, explaining how to "zero in on where the drama lies" and "create a sense of immediacy" through metaphors and similes, dialogue, characterization, viewpoint, choosing details, plotting, pacing, and description. He advises authors to "make transitions sharp and neat. (The quicker the better, keep the bridges short)" to prevent loss of attention when changing scenes.

In one chapter, he explains how to properly use melodrama as an effective writer’s tool. In another, how to use incidents in your story to create movement and thereby drama. And he includes a chapter on how to dramatize or "fictionalize" nonfiction.

Narrative can be made more entertaining by injecting tension into it, perhaps through emotional or physical conflict, or by using anecdotes--"a story inside a story"--to dramatize prose, develop reader involvement, and make your characters "blossom." For example, in a bland description of a desert, "a brief reference to buried Indian tombs and the vengeful spirits which protect them would probably get the reader’s attention."

The index is excellent, and there is a bibliography of classic books on writing and of articles from The Writer www.writermag.com and Writer’s Digest www.writersdigest.com that discuss showing versus telling.

I highly recommend this wonderful book.

{Published in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, July 2001.}

THE ICE PICK

Make That Scene: a Writer’s Guide to Setting, Mood and Atmosphere, by William Noble. Middlebury, Vt.: Eriksson, 1988. ISBN 0-8397-5708-5. $17.95.

One of the first questions readers ask is "Where am I?"

This book shows how to create the physical setting to develop a sense of place, a background, against which your story will play, and how to develop the mood within that setting.

Noble explains how setting can be used to add vividness, develop a plot, establish or influence a character, build tension, or act as a major character itself. He shows how to use details, time, dialogue, and action to establish setting.

He specifically addresses stories where you cannot "write what you know," namely those set in the future and those in the past. Too often, he says, writers load their scenes with description to achieve authenticity, when two or three telling details might be all that is needed. "The important details, no matter what kind of story we write, involve specific colors, shapes and textures."

He explains that to choose the most telling details, you can imagine yourself there and see what two or three things strike you the most. Or you can remember a similar experience in your life. If you are writing about a first date, for example, ask what things stick in your mind about your own first date.

"Atmosphere (or mood) is what the reader feels as the effect of the setting settles. It is the writer’s way of injecting life into the stiff details of the locale."

It is generally not good to have the setting and the atmosphere match--an argument in the midst of a thunderstorm, for example--but Noble explains when you can do that and when it is better avoided.

He says that what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste make the difference between the "one dimensional" and the "imaginative scene." Describing scenes, clothes, and a different way of life is not enough. "To take us alive into another period of time, the senses must be invoked. . . . History, the future, other worlds, other mindsets, it doesn’t matter. The senses make it all come alive."

Noble shows how you can influence mood and atmosphere not only by the five senses, but by physical description, point of view, change of pace, tone, the music of your words themselves, and even the nostalgia your characters express.

There is also a section on the special mood requirements of genres, like horror.

The index is excellent and there is a great bibliography for further exploration.

I highly recommend this book.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter, July 1999. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Sept. 2000.}

THE ICE PICK

Scene and Structure, by Jack M. Bickham. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999. Paperback ed. (The Elements of Fiction Writing) Includes index and appendices. ISBN 0-89879-906-6. $12.00.

Unlike most how-to-write books, this one emphasizes the actual framework of story writing, answering the "how do you get there from here?" and "what do I do next?" kinds of tactical planning questions.

If you want to learn how to construct a short story or a novel, this book can tell you how to build it scene by scene with clarity, flow, logic, readability, and rhythm.

Bickham explains basics like starting and ending a story, deciding how long the individual scenes and the story itself should be and whether or not to include subplots, plus more advanced concepts such as: linking your scenes through transition and sequel, handling scenes started by non-viewpoint characters, flashbacks, and all-dialogue or all-action scenes.

He teaches fiction’s classic structural patterns and says that a thorough understanding and use of them "frees the writer from having to worry about the wrong things, and allows her to concentrate her imagination on characters and events rather than on such stuff as transitions and moving characters around, when to begin or open a chapter, whether there ought to be a flashback, and so on."

You probably noticed the use of the word "her" in the above quotation. Bickham used feminine pronouns throughout the book to refer to writers and masculine pronouns to refer to readers, a quirk that I found very distracting (I kept looking back to see whom he was referring to) and very annoying (as if women were the only ones who had writing problems).

That fairly minor complaint aside, this book is a treasure. It shows how cause and effect underlie the structure of fiction and how you can use this to create everything from your story’s master plot to all of your individual scenes through statements of your character’s goal(s), introduction and development of conflicts, and the tactical disasters (for your character) that should end each scene and drive your story forward.

There are chapters on using tricks to control the pace of your story, how to fix common errors in scenes, and plotting. He even has a chapter on chapter structure, covering such things as how long a chapter should be and whether or not chapters should coincide with scenes.

He gives you ideas, like using 3x5 cards to keep track of your character’s goal in each scene and using colored pencils to help you maintain control over complicated scenes.

The index is excellent, and appendices contain excerpts from published works showing what is explained in the text. This is not an easy book, but I highly recommend it for serious writers.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. May 1999. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Nov. 2004.}