(Updated February 19 with link for Houston Writers Guild short story contest)
***
Anybody else still in a quandary about the show vs.
tell issue of story writing? Right, me too. So, when I received an email from
fellow writer Leah Hinton about a way of catching readers’ attention, I asked
to reproduce it for this blog. Leah modestly gives another friend credit for
this discovery but – I’ll let her tell it in her own words.
She writes: I was recently talking with my friend
Thomas who teaches advanced placement psychology at a local Dallas-Fort Worth
area high school. He does a neat experiment with the student. Each is given a
sheet of paper with one of two sets of instructions (although all students
believe they have the same instructions).
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| Image by Pexels for Pixabay |
Half are told to “listen to each sentence spoken
aloud. On a scale of one to five, with one being hardest and five being
easiest, how easy is each sentence to say?”
The other half are told to “listen to each sentence
spoken aloud. On a scale of one to five, how easy is it to visualize
(italics mine) what is happening in each sentence?”
Students may mark the scale provided on their sheets
of paper for each sentence but that is the only note they may make during the
exercise.
The sentences are then read aloud. They include
sentences such as:
·
The
silent soldier sat stoically smoking a cigarette.
·
The
mischievous miscreant pounded the pavement of Paris.
·
The
devious daughter delighted in dangling dinner in front of the dog.
The list is about 20 sentences long. Each
is spoken clearly, quickly, and never repeated. Each contains alliteration
(same letter sound at the beginning of words adjacent of closely connected) and
is heavy on adjectives (descriptive words).
Once the students have marked their
scores, the teacher divides them – half on one side of the room who were
instructed to listen for ease of speaking, the other half for those instructed
to listen for ease of visualization. The students still do not know that each
half had different instructions. Then the teacher asks:
·
“Who
pounded the pavement of Paris?”
·
“Who
smoked the cigarette?”
·
“Who
dangled dinner in front of the dog?”
The groups of students raise their hands
to answer, and the first with a correct answer scores a point for their side.
Every year Thomas has taught AP psychology
and this class, the side of the room that visualizes the statements (as opposed
to judging the difficult of saying the sentences) has scored more points. The
side that visualizes can usually recall and get correct 80-90 percent of the
follow-up questions after hearing the sentence only once, when said quickly and
clearly.
The side of the room judging the
difficulty in saying the sentences usually has very little recall of the actual
sentence content.
I thought, Leah continues, this was a
really cool experiment and it got me thinking. Do we write in such a way that
compels our readers to visualize our story? For some readers, this is their
natural way of processing a story. For others though, they need a little extra
to deeply become immersed in the story. Are we providing an avenue for all
readers, regardless of processing style to take in our work? This isn’t solely
a concern for fiction writers. Visualization makes ideas and concepts “stick”
so foundationally, it could be effective in nonfiction as well.
So, how do we do this? Two ways to make
our writing more visual are by establishing images and concrete details.
Think about this. (I’d say close your eyes
but then you wouldn’t be able to read any further!):
A man walks into a bar. He sits. He orders
a drink from a server.
There’s very little detail. (Now you
probably understand the point of Thomas’s use of alliteration and adjectives!)
Without little to go on, each of us has probably pictured a different bar. A
club, a pub, the bar from the TV show Cheers, or a neighborhood sports
bar with a television on every square inch of wall space.
Even the man will have been different for
each reader. Some will have pictured an older gentleman, some a young
businessman. Some might have pictured a dock worker or a late night stop for a
first responder after a hard shift.
Where does the man sit? In a booth, at the
bar, on a wooden chair with a spindle back?
Is this a martini, shaken not stirred,
kind of man? Or does he want a club soda or a beer or a bourbon served neat or
an unsweetened iced tea or a tall glass of water?
Without images and concrete details, the
reader can’t know what the author intended.
I challenge you to dig up an older piece
of work, maybe something you weren’t pleased with, and consider adding
establishing images and concrete details of the character, time, and setting to
enhance your readers’ visualization process. But this isn’t 18th-century
Britain, so don’t worry, you won’t need to spend three pages describing
wallpaper.
***
Leah Hinton is a well-published author of
short stories, poetry and plays. She also teaches writing for students ages 10
and older, with adult and teen mentoring programs. Contact her through her site .
***
Hey, it’s me again! Now that we’ve had fun
with that visualization exercise, how about trying it further, with a few more
of the story contests from my inbox?
Now – April 1: the Houston Writers Guild is accepting submissions for its “Women’s Voices” contest. Stories
can be either fiction or narrative nonfiction, written from a female or
female-identifying point of view and be a source of inspiration and empowerment
for women. All authors, regardless of gender, are welcome. Fee: $25 for
members, $85 for nonmembers. Cash prizes for top three entries and all receive
feedback from contest judges. See the site for details.
Now – April 30: Granbury Writers’ Bloc’s quarterly contest for 1,500-word stories. Fee: $20. Cash prizes for top
three stories and every entry gets feedback from professional writers and
editors. Fee: $20 first entry, $15 each subsequent entry in same quarter.
Repeats July 31, October 31, and January 31.
Now – April 30: The Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Manuscript Contest. Winners receive complimentary
registration to the WLT’s 2021 Agents & Editors Conference September 17-19.
Contestants need not have a completed manuscript or be Texas residents. Fee:
$55 for WLT members, $65 for nonmembers, both with written critiques. For those
who prefer not to receive critiques the cost is $25 for members, $35 for
nonmembers. See the site for details.
Now – June 15: Best First Sentence Contest from Thrillerfest. Contestants must be registered for Virtual
ThrillerFest XVI or be ITW members. See the site for examples of
winning sentences.
