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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“I love doing
something like this because you’re dealing with some of the best poetry that
anyone’s ever written. And this poetry involves deep emotions: love and
gentleness and caring.” Actor Scott Glenn
It is important that the emotional resonance works. Regardless of genre, symbols and
metaphors as echoes can come from art or music, from sports or food, and many
other ordinary sources. What would the Siren’s song look like in a Dr. Who
episode? What nectar filters through a romance? Taking a familiar symbol and
redesigning its purpose enhances resonance.
The film Simply
Irresistible adds an echo of fairy dust to the heroine’s cooking. Although
I personally did not like the film Waitress,
I admired all the pie creations. The foundation began with a strong echo of
small town America by using a local diner, pies, and struggling waitresses.
In the sci-fi series Firefly,
episode two, incorporates a confrontation between the Captain and an old
adversary by echoing old westerns. They meet in a deserted area, with snipers
up on the hills instead of wooden buildings. The self-designated ‘mayor’ rides
up on horseback with her posse. The setting provides familiar emotional
territory in an unfamiliar future.
Metaphors help create “a holy curiosity” by capturing our
attention. They catch us up and we pause instead of racing past words. Like
Moses we turn to see why the burning bush is not consumed. We allow the
concepts to soak slowly into our emotions.
In the movie, The
Seventh Stream, grief-laden widower Quinn is a man of logic. He believes in
only what he can see and feel and “sometimes not even that.” When a mysterious
woman appears in their fishing village he cannot accept that she is walking off
the pages of a legend.
However, he recognizes her inner turmoil instantly and her
emotional pain strikes his heart. With her pure heart insight as a selkie, a
seal in human form, she discerns his loneliness and uses it to build a bridge
of communication, a bridge of possibility. Gradually both Quinn and the
audience begin to accept the truth of what she is and identify with the
emotional echo both share. Reality and imagination intersect.
Action Steps:
1. For yourself, or for one of
your characters, choose a painful emotion. Then write a short scene where
another person bridges that pain with healing by use of metaphoric symbol or
image.
2. How does that touch make the
pain better, or at least bearable?
Share: What echo did you choose?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Three women cackle
over a steaming pot? We know we’re in the presence of evil, thanks to William
Shakespeare, even though these three women may live in Winnipeg and ride
motorcycles.” Jack Hodgins
Symbols as
Allusions and Echoes
Often we can find our echoes of metaphor, symbols, and
allusions through our personal history, literature, scripture, folk-tales,
songs and culture. These characters, phrases, and patterns continue to add
depth and enrich resonance to our readers.
Jack Hodgins, A
Passion for Narrative, points out that we can add depth by making stories
connect to other stories by allusions, or implied comparisons, or with passages
that echo passages we recognize from somewhere else. Usually these are
characters, phrases or patterns that make us think of other stories that have
had an effect on us. Boy—raft. Dust bowl—Depression. Cowboys—West. These are
familiar touchstones in American literature. But we’ve also incorporated other
allusions into the cultural history: Holy Grail, Voyages, Hobbits, and Aliens.
We need to keep “listening” to our stories. Don’t force a
symbol, or theme, but watch and see through the brainstorming and drafts what
rises to the surface. However, once you see the comparisons, or know some
themes, look for ways to enhance them naturally.
If a particular metaphor keeps echoing through the work
examine it for the potential to either become a symbol you incorporate, or keep
as a symbol for yourself writing towards it without stating what it is.
According to Hodgins, although being aware of the reason
behind it can add more depth and richness and humor when done well. For your
reader though, it is better to be so subtle that it’s almost unnoticed.
Although it’s really not necessary that your reader get the echo reference,
however, if you choose to use it you must know what it means, and use it
properly so that you’re not misinterpreting the basis. The other possibility is
completely reversing it, as in a parody.
Action Steps:
1.
In the most recent movie you’ve seen what memory
echoes did you notice—either as positive or negative—that applied to you
personally?
2.
Consider your most favorite movie and identify
the echoes you respond to in it.
3.
If you have a favorite genre in movies, what key
metaphors or connections do you expect to see?
Share: Did you discover any surprises in the characters, the
phrases, or patterns?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Every poetic image,
therefore, is to some degree metaphorical. It looks out from a mirror in which
life perceives not so much its face as some truth about its face.” C. Day
Lewis
A tree is often used as a symbol or metaphor of growth and
life. However, in reverse, it can also impact story by exposing lies and
shadows. Fairy tales and folk tales are rich with living images in all forms,
literally and figuratively. 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, a curse is laid upon the family for their refusal to take
responsibility for their actions. The tree is the courtyard falls into
immediate decay as well. Yet it doesn’t die. Instead it remains as a visual
image reminding the family 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 raises 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? Or because it was a tree did they believe that growth would come again to
restore life?
What metaphor warning could your character not see or
acknowledge? Or what warning does she represent to others? Silent metaphors
woven into your setting can speak into volumes of interpretation.
Action Steps:
1.
Brainstorm a list of growing vegetation, or
other geographic elements, that could be a metaphor for loss to your
protagonist and then be restored at the end of his ordeal.
2.
How do you hope your reader will interpret it?
Share: What did you choose and why?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Art washes away from
the soul the dust of everyday life.” Pablo Picasso
Reading for
Interpretation
This creates opportunities for both perspective and voice.
What part of a scene or image do you want the reader to understand the most or
identify with? Two well-known
poets have used the same source with startling differences while at the same
time remaining true to the story they explore.
The Fall of Icarus by
Breughel
1. Read over the following interpretations of the myth of
Icarus. What do they have in common?
2. What do they each choose as the special focus point
either in theme or detail?
3. Both poems were written in response to the same painting yet
they both reflect the actual myth itself as if they hadn’t seen the painting.
How?
4. See number three exercise in movie prompt at the very
end.
William Carlos Williams, “Landscape
with the Fall of Icarus”
According
to Brueghel
when
Icarus fell
it
was spring
a
farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole
pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wing’s wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite
unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning.
Musee des Beaux
Arts by W.H.
Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Which version affected you the most? Why?
Action Steps: Movie
Prompt
1. Take one particular scene from
a recent movie you’ve already watched and put it on pause. Whether you like to
write poetry or not pick out words and phrases from the visual sight that you
would incorporate in a poem, with the idea that a reader may, or may not, see
this ‘painting’ for themselves.
2. Write a poem based on your
selections just for the fun of it.
3. Do the same exercise for a
visual scene in your own novel.
Share: Did you notice anything in this scene that you missed
the first time around?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“Creativity is itself an act of optimism.” Edward Albee
Literal to Figurative
Language
Not every sentence needs the depth of imagery or else the
whole becomes diluted. However using figurative language can enhance a key
quality, or theme, or conflict. The best ones are the subtle images that speak
softly into our hearts.
For example, information boards and kiosks, from local
hiking trails to prestigious museums, have one common note. “You are here.” The
X marks the spot. These literal markers add a sense of safety and security
emotionally. Disorientation in physical surroundings often can result in immediate
stress. Adventurers may react with an adrenaline rush of excitement, but for
others it can raise fearful memories of no measure of control.
In the movie Moonacre,
orphan Maria Merryweather is introduced to her new country home as her new
uncle takes her around the land, marking out boundaries, and giving clear
warnings as to where she should not go. He refuses any explanations for dictated
external dangers and her confusion. He tells her what she may and may not do,
and then dismisses her with curt exits.
Left with only a partial map of her new surroundings, she
attempts to find some solid ground emotionally and figuratively as she tumbles
into even more bewildering situations.
Action Steps:
1.Take your character to the home
of a relative that she never knew existed. Literally or figuratively, close the
door behind her. How does she get her bearings in this place?
Share: What emotional roller coaster does it unleash?
Bonus Exercise: This
next suggestion comes from the Nature Writing
Handbook. “In this exercise we will
attempt to change literal language into figurative language. In each sentence,
the underlined word is used literally. Write a sentence in which the word is
used figuratively.”
Given Example. “The
aspen leaves trembled in the wind. (response¾The
Northern lights trembled in the Alaskan night sky like the thoughts of a mother
sleepless with concern for her baby)”
Some additional sentence examples for practice included
different aspects of nature.
“1.The porpoises swam beside the boat.
2.The flowers drooped under the hailstorm.
3.The volcano exploded quite suddenly.”
Read deep, marcy
Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into
images.” Albert Camus
Metaphor Connections
in Sentences
Using the right choice of metaphors and similes to partner
with verbs can give sentences an extra kick without being obvious. It can
sometimes be a silent way to enhance emotions, danger, mystery, and curiosity.
They give the readers of sense of satisfaction when the connections fit the
circumstances but also can create confusion when the link is even slightly off
the intended mark.
Author Ron Koertge offered this example in a writing workshop.
Take a sentence and list five or more possible images. Then choose the most
effective.
Sentence example: “In his rage my father would bang on the wall like a
---------.”
“Hammer,
or wrecking ball, or baboon, or caged gorilla.”
Rage—bang is the main concept, so it will make the metaphor
more accurate to use hammer. It visually gives the reader the sense of
repetition in the anger.
The key here is to follow through the possible thought and
“see” it as an image. Watch the sentence unfold as a silent screen. What do you
need to come next?
If for instance the wrecking ball is chosen, then there is
no next sentence or scene. Everything has been demolished. And the original
beginning indicates this is a repetitive behavior.
A caged gorilla doesn’t make sense either, as they would
most likely shake their bars but not pound repeatedly. And general images of a
baboon are often of pounding his own chest.
When some of our sentences seem too passive we can play with
other verbs or word associations to strengthen the image we want to linger.
However, like purple prose, it is not for overuse either. But when we want a
hint to the story atmosphere, or characterization, these connections can help
build a stronger sentence and image.
Action Steps:
1. When you next read a book in
your favorite genre pay attention to the images and emotions that the author
quietly indicates through individual sentences.
2. Note which ones make sense to
you and which make you stop to reread the sentence.
3. Look through your own draft and
look for your own connecting images to see if they still fit the atmosphere.
Share: Where you surprised by any you found—either
positively or negatively?
Read deep, marcy
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
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