Weather, Ambiance, and Clothing. The basics of story descriptions
This is Jazz writing. I'm a software engineer aspiring to be a literary author. I discovered that a mixture of structure and creativity works best for me in my writing journey. In this newsletter, I share my breakdowns, readings, listings, and anything in between and beyond to accompany you and me in our unique, adventurous writing journey.
The Weather
How many times have you started a conversation by talking about the weather? It gets things rolling. That should be the case with literature, too. Well, that would be a bland starter in most cases—however, it is a great tool to set the mood in the following paragraphs.
In this section, I'm going to list a few examples from Roald Dahl's short story: "Katina":
Here's a passage describing the swift arrival of spring:
The freezing winter had passed, and now, almost before anyone knew it, spring had come. It had come quietly and swiftly, melting the ice on the lakes and brushing the snow off the mountain tops; and all over the airfield we could see the pale-green shoots of grass pushing up through the mud, making a carpet for our landings. In our valley there were warm winds and wild flowers.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (pp. 2-3). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
And a description of the upcoming evening:
It was beginning to get dark. There was a sunset behind the ridge over in the west, and there was a full moon, a bombers’ moon, climbing up into the sky.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (p. 3). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
What's the point of describing the spring if rain is not going to follow:
But on the third day the clouds dropped down over the mountains and slid into the valley.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (p. 4). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
The rain will follow hard, indeed. Look at this simile:
The rain made a noise like a sewing machine on the roof.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (p. 4). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
And here comes the silver lining:
The next day the skies cleared and once again we saw the mountains.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (p. 7). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
The Clothing
Neil Gaiman says:
“When you have a lot of characters wandering around, you need to help your reader…And one of the ways that I’ve always liked to do that is what I call ‘funny hats’…You give your character something that makes that character different from every other character in the book.” -Neil Gaiman
You'd probably agree that describing clothing would make your characters vivid and real. And, if they have "funny hats," readers will remember them better. Roald Dahl describes the clothing of the titular character, Katina, in the same story mentioned above. This is a war story, and we find Katina injured at the beginning of the story. How to connect from bleeding to a trivial matter of clothing. Dahl does it like this:
There was blood running down the left side of her face. It ran down from her forehead and dripped from her chin on to the dirty print dress she was wearing.
Dahl, Roald. The Complete Short Stories (pp. 1-2). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Clothing can be used to convey how a character feels about others. In Trail's End, a short story by Mark Jonathan Harris, we see how a child perceives his father's looks:
While most of the fathers wear short sleeves and khakis, his father is dressed in pressed tan slacks and a blue sports jacket; thankfully he’s skipped the tie. Trail's End
The rhythmic and symmetric description also works very well. Two pairs of dual pieces of clothing: "short sleeves and khakis" and "pressed tan slacks and a blue sports jacket."
After this sentence, the story continues with a simple and effective metaphor:
His mother has armed herself against the sun with oversize sunglasses and a wide-brim, floppy hat that seems better suited for the jungle. Trail's End
We can see another pair of two-piece information: "wide-brim, floppy hat."
We soon find out the reason for the sarcasm:
He fears the other Iroquois will think his parents old and odd, another excuse to make fun of him. Trail's End
The Ambiance
With just a few words on the ambiance, readers can find themselves right in the middle of the story. Harris uses several distinctive ways to describe a quiet night in a boys' camp in the "Trail's End":
the soft chatter of his counselors binds him to his bed.[...]
hushed voices, comforting, like a nightlight in the dark[...]
talking in a low voice, barely above a whisper[...]
for a moment, the only sound is the hiss of the kerosene lamp Trail's End
Can you hear hushed voices and subtle ambient sounds in a quiet room? This is the power of describing the atmosphere of a place masterfully.
The week in links
My posts and notes
Can you write a formulated short story?
'Under what circumstances should editors retract published work?'
Interesting reads
Book titles
Titles have long been considered to be the single most important piece of advertising for a book, from Daniel Defoe’s sixty-five-word tapeworm summarizing The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York … to the iconic, minimalist, then-still futuristic 1984 of George Orwell’s masterpiece.
I, too, have my tales of renaming woes besides serious doubts: a publisher trusts that I can deliver 90,000 publishable words but not a mere ten that sum those up pithily? We’re wedded to our titles. They’re the equivalent of the movie industry’s elevator pitch, our business cards. Still, “Authors, as a rule, are poor judges of titles and often go for the cute or clever rather than the practical,” as Nat Bodian states in How to Choose a Winning Title.
https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/04/03/the-perfect-title/
Where does the story start?
There is a glorious moment in almost every manuscript where the editor realizes, “Aha! THIS is where the story starts!” and breathes a prayer of thanks that the author does indeed have a book. Their labor has paid off, we discover, and we don’t have to send a diplomatically worded editorial letter suggesting they start again from scratch.
This moment is usually somewhere in pages 34-50.
As an editor, I’m still carefully reading every word of the subsequent pages, spotting craft issues and great phrasing and sentences and paragraphs to salvage from the sea of not-bad-writing-just-meh. As a reader, I’m jittering in my seat, yelling (sometimes literally) “But what do you WANT?? What’s HAPPENING?” and startling the heck out of my husband who would just like to process some databases, please, at our coworking table.
https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/04/02/get-on-board/
A powerful flash prose
Our editors chose these pieces as exemplars of the power of flash prose to convey complexity of emotion within the constraints of concision.
The genius of this piece is how Simon calls upon heavy concepts and emotions with everyday language. https://www.craftliterary.com/2024/04/01/forty-eight-hours-in-miami-christina-simon/
Hermit crab essay
A hermit crab essay is one in which the writer uses an existing form such as a letter, a quiz, or a product review, as a structure for their writing.
https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/crabby-hermits/
Interview with the author, Nora Decter
On the voice:
In the forefront is voice. I’ll forever read anything Nora Decter writes because of her keen understanding of how to wield voice. The voice in this novel is darkly funny, but that’s dialed up and down depending on the moment. I hadn’t considered how much calibration is needed to make voice pop, giving texture to different experiences and moods, until I noticed what Nora accomplishes in What’s Not Mine. Here’s an example in a single paragraph
Rachel León: Let’s start with voice. I’m wondering how you maintained its energy and electricity throughout the lengthy revision process.
Nora Decter: Hmm. Voice is so tricky to talk about. I tell my students that voice in writing is ephemeral, slippery, but you know one when you meet it on the page.
ND: [...] Parental authority is a restriction in their world, and I think it’s as simple as that: I like writing with restrictions.
On restrictions:
RL: What do you like about writing with restrictions?
ND: Now that I’ve said it I don’t know what I meant exactly, but I do feel it’s true. A deadline is a restriction, an assignment is one—so in the past a lot of my restrictions have been outwardly imposed by school and writing programs. [...] So, in summary, restrictions irk me, but I know they’re necessary: they can propel you forward.
On plot:
ND: Yes! Personally, I do not worry about plot. Making stuff happen in a logical but surprising way is the easiest part of writing for me. But I do need to have a strong sense of a person and a place and maybe a tone or atmosphere, and once I have those elements, I find I always know “what happens next.” https://www.craftliterary.com/2024/03/29/hybrid-interview-nora-decter/
These were some excerpts from the interview. It's a highly interesting interview to check out.
Why bother?
It’s humbling to try to write another poem. For many poets sitting at the same spot on the couch holding the same mug of tepid coffee, looking out the same window, the great question is often “why bother?” Indeed, if in a particular maudlin state of mind, the next question becomes “why bother living?”
The person sitting on that couch, sipping that tepid coffee does not literally commit suicide, but the poet, in that moment, can die just the same.
“Let me repeat: all this has been said over and over,” he writes. The creative act is not merely about doing something new. It’s also a form of repetition–and the chutzpah–of going for it anyway. https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/the-sisyphean-poet-on-facing-doubt