AN ENVIABLE BELLY

Greetings again, fellow writers! After this week, I’ll be posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Life’s gotten a little crazy for me. Here’s today’s installment:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 2: The Eye of the Beholder (Part 2)

In writing description, we can call upon the eye of memory. One way to reshape the memory is to take an event from your life such as the death of your father and give the experience to one of your characters. See what he does with it. Another idea is to take two events from your past that are years apart and put them together in an interaction between characters. Or describe two or more versions of the same event. If the experience was emotionally moving for you, that emotion will likely transfer to your character.

Another tool is the growing eye, as McClanahan defines it. This means looking at an object and seeing it with emotional and spiritual insight. The Pacific becomes not just an ocean but is personified.

One challenge is to describe something most people consider beautiful. Rather than put a label or judgment on an object, start with considering the subject. An example is Richard Selzer’s description of a vase of tulips: “The long stems had been impaled on a bed of spikes and wired such that the distance hydrocephalic blossoms would respond to the least current of air.” The same technique can be used for something commonly thought of as ugly.

Ugh. This description of tulips is creepy. I assume this isn’t part of a romance novel unless it’s a love story between zombies.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Caesar Flickerman, the man who has hosted the interviews for more than forty years, bounces onto the stage. It’s a little scary because his appearance has been virtually unchanged during all that time. Same face under a coating of pure white makeup. Same hairstyle that he dyes a different color for each Hunger Games. Same ceremonial suit, midnight blue dotted with a thousand tiny electric bulbs that twinkle like stars. They do surgery in the Capitol, to make people appear younger and thinner. In District 12, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person, you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of survival. A plump person is envied because they aren’t scraping by like the majority of us. But here it is different. Wrinkles aren’t desirable. A round belly isn’t a sign of success.

Maybe I should move to District 12. Uh, never mind.

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I’ll be back on Tuesday. See you then!