See Something...Say Something

You’ll recognize that slogan from a popular crime prevention campaign, but forget that connection for a moment. Think with me about what it means to see the significance of something and put that significance into words. Too often we’re guilty of passive observation, or, in biblical terms, we “have eyes but do not see” (Jer. 5:21). That leads us to write a meaningless description of it.

Creative coach Eric Maisel offers a good example of this. “One Saturday morning in Paris I step out from the apartment building where I am staying onto the rue Saint Gilles,” he writes. “Across the street is ‘something’—now, how shall I describe that something? I could say ‘on the other side of the street a father and his three children are approaching.’ How little that description would capture of what I feel to be true about those figures! If I wrote such a phrase and left the matter at that,…I would be playing it safe. I would bore you to tears” (A Writer’s Space, 165-66).

Since Maisel is a Jew, he immediately realizes that this is a Jewish family returning home from temple. (“Though I don’t know how I know that,” he admits.) He notices there is no mother in this group—why? They are in a hurry—why? The children are laughing—why? As a writer, he has a choice: He can notice these details and deduce their significance, or not. And if he doesn’t grasp the significance of what he sees, he can’t describe it to us.

“Writing is interpretation,” Maisel notes. “You are obliged to offer yours. If you want to say nothing, offend no one, tell a happy little tale, and otherwise act the innocent, that choice is available to you. Just remember that even then you are saying something and that we are watching” (A Writer’s Space, 169).

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. His most recent book is Hard Times (Warner Press: 2019). He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.