Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“All real art comes from the deepest
self—painting, writing, music, and dance, all of it that in some way nourishes
the spirit and enriches the understanding.” Frederick Buechner
The reality of common day-to-day activities can also be
developed into shadows, as both passages from long ago or as foretelling to the
future. These symbols also have the potential to tap into echoes and allusions
and metaphors that build a bridge to both.
For example, in our early draft we just write everything
down as it comes to us through our senses. Usually we lean on ordinary words
for basic descriptions. Then we go back through to paint in feelings and
scenery and ambiance. But sometimes we’re still stuck with the ordinary because
it’s so familiar that other thoughts or phrases just won’t come to mind without
sounding artificial or planted.
Memories can be quite elusive when it comes to recognizing
their truths. We tend to look at them through filtered lenses, rose-colored for
positive and shaded for negative, automatically changing their initial reality
and impact.
But our sensory memories don’t cloud the recall. Whether we
appreciate them or not, just a brief taste, or fragrance, or sound can catapult
us in an instant. Or, at the least, we have an emotional reaction to the input
and don’t know quite why. And the senses sharpen the pleasure or the pain, even
when we try to forget.
In the historical romance “A Memory Between Us,” by Sarah Sundin, army nurse Lieutenant Ruth
Doherty remembers her past well. In fact, so well, that she has built a
protective emotional barrier around herself to keep it locked up. She stays
focused and stays professional. And if it should try to derail her, she turns
to well-honed defense mechanisms to lock it back.
But eventually she takes a step towards love, accepts a kiss
for a brief moment of yearning and then the sensory memory attacks, robbing her
of present happiness, and skidding her backwards when: “His breath stank of beer and sausage. He ground the broken watch glass
into her wrist, ground the truth into her head: ‘You’ll never get rid of me.
You’ll always see my face.’”
And so she runs from the present honorable man, convinced she
will never be freed from the pain.
Action Steps:
1. Make a sensory list for your
character. From each category choose her most favorite memory, and her most
horrible memory. Which one is the most dramatic, or the most humorous? Look for
a place in one of your scenes to use this memory to create friction with
another character.
2. Choose a turning point memory
in your own life, or for your character. Write it up with as many details as
possible. Don’t worry about overwriting it. Pour in sensory specifics.
3. Now color code the sensory
highlights as if you were filling in a stained glass window or a
paint-by-number. Which color is predominant?
4. Next re-write as a scene capturing
that particular focus or echo.
5. If you have written the scene
as fiction—now redo as non-fiction or vice versa.
Share: What differences did you see between the two? How did
your emphasis of focus change between the imaginary and the real?
If
it’s not too personal, please share one phrase of that scene.
Read deep, marcy
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