Be a Sponge!

No fiction story takes place in a vacuum. No matter how witty your dialogue, no matter how fascinating your characters, no matter how complex your plot, your story takes places in some sort of locale. But how much thought do you give to the places where your scenes take place?

True, not all scenes need or deserve intricate descriptions down to the minutes details. However, if you as the writer don't inject at least some semblance of location, your readers won't be able to "experience" the locker rooms, pine forests, chilly underground caverns, and other places where your characters interact with one another. So how can you paint places with a brush of reality? By being a sponge.

You may or may not need to keep a journal of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feeling of places you visit, but the idea is to record all of the above in your memory. Are you camping in the woods with family? Then use that opportunity to soak up your surroundings. Be still and notice the natural scents that waft through your campsite. Note the sticky feel pine bark where the sap oozes out (and notice how hard it can be to wash that stuff from your fingers!). Stare into the fire and imagine what words you can craft to describe those ever-shifting orange and yellow tongues of flame that leave behind glowing orange and red embers. Recall the cool dew that seeps into your running shoes as you walk through the damp grass. Notice the smoky smell that permeates your clothing. Impress all of these on your mind so that you can apply them later.

The same principle applies when you drive your neighbor to the hospital ER and you're waiting. The sights, sounds, and medicinal smells will be quite different.

Taking a trip by jumbo jet? Watch your fellow passengers and remember how some will slump in their seats with their mouths hanging open. Recall the background noise of the engines and rushing air as you cruise at 630 miles per hour. Don't forget your emotions when you're in the middle of your meal and the thoughtless nut in front of you suddenly reclines his seat backward into your face, nearly spilling your coffee.

By being a sponge and soaking up your life experiences, you'll have a steady supply of the raw materials to construct your own scenes. You'll be writing fiction with the feel of reality.

Say, while we're discussing the topic, do you have any favorite sights, smells, sounds, or tastes that you've "soaked up" to save for your writing?

The Color of Shadows

Monet's Saint-Lazare Station

“So what color is Aubrey’s top?”

My junior high creative writing students answer in chorus. “Blue!”

“All right. But what kind of blue? What shade?”

“Dark.”

“Fine. What shade of dark? Blueberry? Midnight? Cobalt? Indigo? Slate? Royal? Lavender blue, dilly-dilly?” At this point, their eyes fix on Aubrey’s shirt. Some squint. Like an Impressionist, they peer through lashes to blur the edges and get a general sense of the color. “Or are they the shade of your brother’s eyes when he discovers that you have ransacked his room again, violating his clear directive to stay out?”

Why would I press them so?

It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see.

~Henry David Thoreau

On another morning, we went out to look into the grass. Droplets of dew still clung precariously from the tip of each blade. They lay down on trash bags, tummy earthward, and peered among the leaves of grass. "Write all that you see," I adjured them. "And see what you cannot see when you're standing." After about twenty minutes, some began to whine. "I've written about all there is to write about?"
"Really? Have you really? Then look closer. There's a diminutive garden down there. Look. See it? How does it feel? The earth is damp; how does it smell?"

If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time. ~ G.K.Chesterton

The next day they examined a dead fish, a rainbow trout, to be exact--head still attached. After the girls got over being squeamish and the boys were done trying to think of things to say to incite groans from the stoutest among their fellows, they examined the fish from every conceivable angle.
Forty minutes later, as they were leaving for their next class, some asked, "What are we doing tomorrow, Ms. Clifton?"
"I think we'll examine a fish . . ."
"Again?"
". . . on the inside." More groans.
What motive could I possibly have to torture them so with the carcass of a pitiable fish?

Look, look, look, look, look! ~ Richard Halliday

One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.
~ Louis L'Amour

I want to awaken them to their world. I want them to truly see--what is, what almost isn't, and what could be.

No shadow is black. It always has a color. Nature knows only color . . .
~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir


Writers can learn much from visual artists. My younger daughter, who has two art degrees (illustration and photography), taught me a few things about painting that so easily apply to writing, also.

It's fun to go shopping with her because she puts colors and patterns together in ways that never would occur to me. Her artist's eye pairs them up for stunning effect. She sees the colors that went to make the colors, and she knows what will complement.

To the artist, gray isn't simply gray. It is white with the merest touch of black. It is a warm gray, with some yellow or red mingled in. Or a cool gray with the faintest blue undertone. The artist works diligently to arrive at the perfect color mix. Should the literary artist be less precise?

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect.

~Mark Twain

My daughter also taught me that shadows are not simply gray, that they have color. I still practice at seeing that color, but I'm learning. I want to write with the clarity and precision of an artist's careful eye.
Our gracious Lord gave us five senses with which to experience our world. May we use them to the full to communicate Him through our words.

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. ~ Annie Dillard

Note: Back in my college days, we read Annie Dillard's essay "Seeing." I recommend it highly.

Write on!
Because of Christ,
Sharon Kirk Clifton

Resource: Color list