Workshop:
Discover Words That Sing
“What is art
but a way of seeing” Thomas Berger
Do
you remember playing a game as a child where you put your hands into a bag and
guessed what was inside? Do you still remember your reactions to cold noodles
or squishy pudding? Then each item you touched needed to be clearly identified
with concrete words in order to see who guessed the most correctly. Generalized
words weren’t good enough.
No
sensory observation is considered complete until the fictional character’s
emotional response is included. When eating new foods, or hearing new sounds,
the concrete details help the reader recognize the character as more real as he
reacts to the senses. Just as word choices need to be specific, so do the
sensory details need to be definitive, externally as images and internally as
personal reactions, like the shriek or shiver to those slimy noodles.
Words
that sing into our manuscripts are not like a recipe where we add varying amounts
of sugar, but instead where breath beats as fresh as each new dawn. It’s an
ongoing process to keep them natural and vibrant and beautiful.
This,
I think, is what Mollie Hunter reminds us—to be conscious of this in our
writing and remember the sense of awe that accompanies our first experiences,
and not to diminish their impact.
Learn to tap out the code and hope someone hears and understands.
Action
Steps:
1.
Set up a study/research journal for yourself for
writing images, movies, images, and reading images and choose a time frame to
focus on one only. Either, weekly or monthly.
2.
Within each category consider both the verbal
and silent themes you want to be your backbone and watch for words and images
that will apply.
3.
Also take into consideration the sub-categories
that may be involved specifically to your story’s genre. The weather threat of
a catastrophic hurricane will be different in an historical, a contemporary, or
a sci-fi setting.
Share:
What code concept impacted you the most in this discussion? Why?
Read deep, marcy
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