I picked up
a story the other day written in the 1950s. Here's an
extract:
"Two
storys high and built of granite, rose the Georgian
house, but the porch and its pillars were of red,
conglomerate stone. They broke the unbending gravity of
the grey front with a touch of colour. Behind rolled blue
hills, now melting into the splendour of gold and orange
above them; while southward, beyond a little park,
extended meadowlands, wooded ridges, and fields of corn
yellowing to harvest..."
Phew! It's
all very poetic but you'd be lucky if a publisher read
past the first sentence - we're simply not supposed to
write like this anymore.
Conversely,
I was researching for a radio interview recently and
tried to find modern examples of locality description -
failing to find very much at all. I was surprised
actually at how little description modern authors use.
I did find
this, by Kathy Reichs, to use as an example:
"The
building stood alone on an acre of land that was entirely
enclosed by an electric fence. Surveillance cameras
dotted the barrier's upper rim, and powerful floods lit
the perimeter..."
Do you
notice how much more succinct and direct this is compared
to the example above? And by the way, this is about the
only piece of description in the first 100 pages of
Reich's novel!
Even
physical descriptions of people are kept very brief in
modern works - and are usually only inserted to help us
understand the mind of the 'describer' - that is, the
main character/s.
Modern
fiction is all about action - people doing things,
thinking, making links, engaged in puzzle solving and
obstacle tackling. Gone are what we take for granted.
What things, places and people look like are only
included if they are unusual or pertinent to the plot.
I get
emails about this all the time. 'Where can I find a good
resource to teach me about description?' 'Well, you
probably can't,' I have to say. It's not specifically
taught anymore, because, I would imagine, it's not a tool
you're going to use much as a modern author!
I guess
it's because of the communications boom of the past 50
years.
Because of
TV, movies, the Net etc, most of us know what things and
places and people look like. We only need shorthand notes
to work out for ourselves what a 'blonde attorney' or a
'old warehouse' might look like. So descriptions of
'flowing golden tresses across her pin-striped jacket' or
'aging stone and broken glass amidst rusted girders'
become redundant, even gratuitous.
Today,
readers just want the story and nothing much else. Here's
an example from Patricia Cornwell. First line of a novel:
"The
late morning blazed with blue skies and the colors of
fall, but none of it was for me..."
She's
established time, date, the mood of the protagonist - and
managed to intrigue the reader too - in just under twenty
words! Now that's succinct - and a lesson to us.
If you read
a lot of bestsellers - which I do - you'll see there's no
real trick to writing popular fiction - it's more to do
with discipline. The best writers seem to know when to
hold back and almost disguise the fact that they're
writers at all. The story, plot and characters are
everything and the only things that drive the novel.
Any
superfluous wordage is excised - and don't be fooled by
the finished products you buy off the shelf. Modern
novels are ruthlessly edited, pared back, honed and
rewritten, sometimes numerous times by editors,
proofreaders and by the authors themselves to achieve
what seems like effortless, but tight writing.
They have
to be - we readers want only the best now. And, if we
want to write best-selling fiction, we must also learn to
write, and rewrite, be ruthless with ourselves and our
craft to achieve the best results.
Remember
the old adage - and it can apply extremely well to modern
fiction, whether it be description or any other prose
related activity: "When in doubt, leave it
out!"
