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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” John F. Kennedy
Here we continue to look more intently at the language we
use on a day-to-day basis and examine ways to enhance it. It’s amazing how
often we speak in clichés and obviously we try to avoid them in our
writing—both fiction and non-fiction. We sometimes forget, though, that often
clichés came into being because of their unique and fresh way of perspective.
Although we’re focusing on poetry techniques in these next
exercises, the ability to capture a poetic eye freshens all our writing—across
styles and across genres. Vignettes also require this type of insight due to
the sparseness of length.
Non-fiction pieces are also brought alive with poetic images
and metaphors. Here’s another excerpt from an essay by Patricia Hampl in “I Could Tell You Stories.” Note how her
description combined with simile draw us to share her experience.
“The stranger’s
remark, launched in the dark of the Greyhound, floated across the human
landscape like the lingering tone of a struck bell from village church, and
joined all the silence that ever was, as I turned my face to the window where
the world was rushing by along the slow river.”
Action Steps:
Practice Clichés
1. Take well-known clichés and
shift them around. Make a list of as many common ones that you can think of and
then crisscross them just for fun. Some will be hilarious and ridiculous. And
some might spark a new phrase.
Example. “Flat as a pancake, good
as gold” becomes flat as gold, good as a pancake.
2. This is really entertaining in
a small group of writers and rather surprising at some of the images that can
come to the surface.
3. Practice shifting old concepts
around until they become new and fresh.
Share: Choose one or two of your favorites. Why—funny or
serious?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Poetry is ageless; we
each step into it at the right moment for us.” Liz Rosenberg
In a lecture at Vermont College, faculty author Carolyn
Coman discussed the autobiographical nature of our work as writers and pointed
out the need to change facts into fiction while at the same time keeping hold
of the emotional journey. Incorporating poetry principles into our work helps
to feed that emotional reservoir—especially as non-poets. The language and
process help us ‘see’ in a different way. And maybe as in the quote above, it
may become our time for poetry.
Applications
It provides an emotional link. If your character is stuck
somewhere, pick a word, the place where he is, the feeling he’s experiencing
and use it as a beginning point. See what opens up.
Writing poetry for fun and practice keeps your language
fresh.
Poetry expands the use of metaphors that can shape your
novel like mirrors and echoes.
And even if writing poetry is still not appealing—just
reading it will add to your own use of language and cadence.
Action Steps: Develop a Concept (from one word)
1. Free write the word light.
2. Choose a few ideas. Write one
as a brief descriptive sentence or as a simile.
Ex. The light steadily grew like moonlight
climbing over a ridge.
3.Write a prose paragraph either
for yourself or a character experiencing light. Put in reactions, feelings,
memories etc.
4. Write a poem
from the prose.
Share: Did a new thought or feeling come up that wasn’t
there when you started? I had no idea the poem was going to end up in a prison
cell when I started seeing a thin beam of light.
Read deep, marcy
Here is an example from one of my
original rough drafts.
The light slid through a chink in the door.
I
reached to embrace it, feel its warmth
I remembered how my cat used to stretch and
purr
in
sun puddles.
Dust dances in its beam as if following the
trail
to escape.
It
snaps shut, leaving the linger of another time,
another
day.
When
will it break the doors
and
flood my cell.
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Thresholds are
necessary in the creative process in giving an idea somewhere to go.” Tim
Wynne-Jones
Change, no matter how small, can create mental and emotional
chaos as you turn into a different direction, physically or emotionally. To
cross a threshold though requires a choice, even if it has been forced upon you
like a refugee fleeing his war torn land. All sensory memory is heightened and
sharpened. It is not just the moment that is at stake, but the journey that
follows it. Thresholds become part of our soul shadows as much as our physical
bodies cast their shadow. And the question can linger. “Did I choose the right
fork in the road?”
Metaphors can open several tension points as choices
challenging beliefs, values and possibilities, either personally for a main
character, or in relationship to family or society.
For example, when
we personally cross thresholds we deliberately make a choice to
step into new stages, probably never to return: a passage of some moment. It
can include walking away from a place, or a relationship, or choosing to no
longer be who we were a few minutes earlier. Often that moment of decision
become a life metaphor or signpost.
For example, in the novel, The Hero and the Crown, protagonist
Aerin made that crossing when she arrived at her first dragon slaying. “Talat halted, and they stood, Aerin gazing
into the black hole in the hill. A minute or two went by and she wondered,
suddenly, how one got the dragon to pay attention to one in the first place.
Did she have to wake it up? Yell? Throw water into the cave at it? Just as her
spear point sagged with doubt, the dragon hurtled out of its den and straight
at them.”
Despite the moment of hesitation Aerin acted upon all her
preparation and stepped into a new role as a dragon-slayer. The threshold
changed her life.
Don’t forget though that some of the most powerful metaphors
can also be ordinary. For example a tree is often used as a symbol or metaphor
of growth and life. In reverse though it can also impact a story by exposing
lies and shadows. Fairy tales and folk tales are rich with living images in all
forms. Scriptures too remind us that choices spread beyond immediate actions.
“For the creation was
subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay.” Romans 8: 20-21 NRSV
In the opening of the movie Penelope, as a curse is laid upon the family for their refusal to
take responsibility for their actions, the tree in the courtyard falls into
immediate decay. Yet it doesn’t die. Instead it remains as a visual image
reminding the family descendents and others of the curse. Even if they try to
pretend it doesn’t exist, the tree stands in judgment as a silent metaphor.
And it silently raises immediate story questions such as why
are women willing to marry into this family? Do they not believe in the curse
or do they not care?
So consider too what metaphor warning could your own
character not see or acknowledge?
Or what warning does she represent to others? Silent metaphors woven
into your setting can speak in volumes.
Action Steps:
1. Put your character into a
moment of choice. Overwrite all the sensory details in the initial draft. Then
write up the brief scene twice, once for each possible decision: to flee or fight,
or to submit the accepted ‘dogma’ either socially or personally.
2. Then choose either a threshold
metaphor, or a very ordinary image as a metaphor such as Penelope’s tree.
Share: What word in your brainstorming was the funniest and
which was the saddest?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Creativity involves
breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different
way.” Edward Debono
Also in the prologue as Kiri feels her mother’s pain, “A great, blinding whiteness filled Kiri’s
mind. ‘Mother,’ she whispered. The word sank into silence like a warm stone
dropped into snow. A coldness
spread from Kiri’s stomach out to her fingertips.”
The whiteness of the outside winter: the cold, the numbness,
the expanse, now internalize in Kiri as fear. Whenever she becomes fearful she
feels the whiteness. When she approaches a threshold to cross over, the
whiteness comes and she retreats. “Around
her an emptiness was opening, drawing her down into its still white heart, down
to where she must not go. Something waited for her in that white
stillness.”
After she heals Garen, the whiteness leaves. The internal
cold becomes external. “Shivering with cold, she huddled over the
fire. A warmth inside her spread slowly out toward her numb fingers and feet.
She knew that Garen’s body would recover.”
With the third metaphor, the song, Kiri is linked to her
past, her present, and her future. The reader is pulled into the atmosphere of
Kiri’s life by the songs, which sustain and undergird her. In the prologue when
Ana finds Kiri in the tent and begins to coax her to leave she asks if Kiri
knows the song. And Kiri remembers her father singing it. And at the edges of
her memory other people too.
Again eight years later she begins with a song as she and
Mali sing the sun into the sky. As she and Mali go to heal they each sing, “Wind, hear my song.” When Kiri realizes
the Mali has died she joins the wind, “her
own voice in the song for the dead.
The storm caught up her words and scattered them across the driving
snow.” Next she becomes silent in song until she heals Garen. Then the
wolken comes back for her to give her vision, to name her. “Singer to the sun, caller of the wind, your power is your song. I name
you Amarra, she who speaks with the wind.”
Because the reader has been able to identify with Kiri all
along through the metaphors of within,
and whiteness and song we recognize without explanation that she has reached
resolution when, “Kiri lifted her arms
and began to sing.” We have been brought into her language.
Action Steps:
1.Using the list poem from earlier, repeat the process
beginning with either “Fear is a…, or Song is a…,. Or do both.
Share: What feelings for your character surprised you when
put into one word?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“It’s impossible to teach anyone to write a poem. But we can set
up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen. We can create a field in
and around us that’s fertile territory for poems. Playing with words, we can
get to the place where poems come from. We can write and make discoveries about
who we are and who we might become whether or not we truly commit ourselves to
becoming poets.” Susan Goldsmith
Wooldridge.
A good example of how these metaphoric concepts
working across age and culture to enrich emotional resonance and discovery can
be found in The Listening Silence,
by Phyllis Root. The prologue sets the character, the theme, and the atmosphere
for this story through three metaphoric connections: within, the whiteness, and the song. By anchoring these images
in the prologue, rather than by introducing them in flashbacks during the
narrative, the author sets up reader identification with Kiri immediately, and
catches the reader up into the story’s movement without slowing the pace later
to offer background explanation.
In the prologue Kiri is a five-year-old left in
her tent alone while her mother searches for the missing father during winter.
Kiri’s mind drifts until she goes beyond her tent into the korlu where she
hears crying. Then from within the
korlu, she sees the white snow, the frozen lake, and the trees. Hearing an
animal outside the tent, she goes within,
hoping to see her parent’s tracks. She goes within her mother when she calls and feels her death.
When the narrative resumes eight years later the
reader recognizes that this ability to go within is a part of Kiri’s character. She makes decisions and
choices for herself based on her willingness to go within or not. She is willing to go inside animals and nature
but resists people. There is too much pain there and her fears stop her. To go within people can bring healing and
Kiri struggles with herself to become a ‘Healer’. It is an integral part of her
character, but her resistance to who she is sets the conflict. Because of the
connection the reader made with Kiri as a five year old, the reader can see and
feel and understand along with Kiri as she tries to balance a five-year-old’s
understanding with the approach of adulthood.
Her character is one of Healer and she
recognizes that in the end. When it matters most she goes past her own personal
fears, first to heal a wolken, then Garen, of whom she has always been afraid,
and through healing them by going within to
meet their needs, she finds her own peace and acceptance of who she is.
“She could not go within to heal him. Something
waited for her there, something that knew her name. And suddenly there was
stillness……..but here, at the center, was a quiet as vast and white as winter. Here
within Garen, beyond that edge of his pain, was the place of healing that Mali
had told her about.” The Listening Silence
Action Steps:
1. How might you use the metaphor of “within” to
translate to your own character’s emotional core?
2. How can you translate it into a thread
metaphor for your story?
Share: What do you see as an integral metaphor
as a part of your character?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Metaphor does that. It helps us explain ourselves
to ourselves. It helps us explore and examine forces that we cannot otherwise
come to terms with.” Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen suggests that the language of metaphor is as
natural as breathing in everyday life,
“and her sisters—poetry and story” are as well. When she and her family
experienced a difficult season she says, “Everything
I felt during those dark days, the way I approached mortality, the way I
prayed, the way I had to view the world, was in terms of metaphor.”
The movie Green Dragon helps audiences experience that level of force when
lives are thrown into upheaval and tragedy, at almost a moment’s notice, and
never to be restored as before but can be reconciled. One DVD jacket cover for the movie simply states: “A
story from a war that has been forgotten. When Tai arrives at Camp Pendleton,
he is confronted by a camp filled with despair.”
Commissioned to translate for the refugees, Tai
forms a friendship across cultures, and begins the healing for himself and his
people. Multiple stories intertwine. In one thread, a lonely American cook
teaches a young orphan to paint, bringing beauty into the stark surroundings.
From devastation, loss, and grief come love, hope, and new beginnings that
cross time and barriers. Art, in many forms, becomes the metaphor, which they
learn to speak across their dark days, within themselves and across the many
cultural/language barriers.
One skill to develop a language
that crosses emotional and experiential boundaries, whether cultural,
generational, or extraterrestrial, is to become fluent in abstract, especially
with metaphoric ability—poet or not.
We can develop this language by
looking for ‘poem seeds’ whether we actually write poems or not. We go behind
the visible surfaces to find the meanings behind our words, our images and
memories.
Action Steps:
Develop
Images
List Poems
1. Write
a list poem. This works well for non-poets to get past the inner critic and
just write for fun. It also helps get us in touch with abstract concepts.
Choose
one of the following words: hope,
love, faith, trust, beauty and do a cluster brainstorm for it.
2. Now write up your thoughts as a list poem adding whatever new ideas rise
to the surface as well. Keep writing the repetition in each line: hope is…,
or I believe beauty…, or set up as a question; is love…, or can love be found
in a …..?
3. Leave it alone for a day or two
then come back. Now go down your list of images. Can you change each line into
a metaphor?
For example: hope is ...a
waterfall. / Hope is a
waterfall like rushing wind.
/ Hope is an hourglass waterfall.
Although you may not end up using the words themselves, the
practice will help you connect to the emotion you want your situation to
generate, whether in your character’s heart or your reader’s. Being able to
identify the emotional flow enables you to write a richer scene.
Share: What word did you choose?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“The conscious use of
mythic themes and tropes-that is elements and language that reflect either
figuratively or literal use of images, symbols and folklore-is the key
ingredient, allowing authors to explore realistic themes on a symbolic level.” Julie
Bartel
In her book, Dreams
and Wishes, Essays on Writing for Children, Susan Cooper makes a comparison
between writing and fantasy. “Fantasy is
the metaphor through which we discover ourselves. So it is for the writer, too.
Every book is a voyage of discovery.
… The work begins with a deep breath and a blindly trusting step into
the unknown.”
This sense of anticipation, curiosity and courage that
accompanies all beginnings provides a helpful insight into the writing process.
Some days we are ready for adventure and some days we are not.
Susan Cooper also states that, “We are all at the mercy of the quality of the imagination we inherit.
The book can never be better than that.” And alongside that statement she
says that no one can write fantasy on purpose, that like poetry it won’t come
on demand. This idea is extremely freeing. If each work is discovery and a new
land, then if we don’t respond to our ‘inheritance’, we don’t discover
ourselves either, nor discover the symbols that engage us, or those we need to
share.
Speaking of poets and writers of fantasy she states that, “Both deal with images, and with their links
to and within the unconscious mind.” By doing so as writers they tap into
the archetypes of behavior and emotion—variations on the same theme, “until he achieves his goal, his quest.
Fantasy, of whatever kind, may seem to be picking you up and carrying you away
but in fact it’s taking you
right back home. All fantasy
involves metaphor.”
Action Steps:
1. What is one of the main
thoughts in word/image/or emotion that is a crucial thread in your narrative?
2. Whichever you chose make a list
of possible connections with the other categories. For example if you choose
the word laughter then make a list of how that can translate into images or
emotions. Or vice versa.
3. If you have made your list with
positive threads now reverse it into negative words and images and emotions.
Share: Were you surprised by any images? Why?
Read deep, marcy
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