[stylist] Hemingway quote

Mon Oct 10 05:42:55 UTC 2011

Chris,

The Old Man of the Sea wasn't overtly descriptive, just enough to 
give the idea of what his life was like. The skiff he spent nearly 
the whole book riding in, gave hardly any description, we had no idea 
what the boy looked like that he dearly  loved, or even how old he 
was. Granted the story was about proving himself and getting older 
and that sort of thing, and it was a short book but probably the 
economics and focus on the old man was the point and not so much what 
town he came from, what his features were in detail. He described 
eating dolphin as just being a horrible thing to do without salt or 
lime, but he didn't go into detail like it tasted like a piece of 
rubber tire that just splashed through the 3-day old baking summer 
puddle in the gutter of Havana. Again this too applies to 
sognwriting. If one knows what the video or story is in the head so 
well, you'll write from that perspective and I think accounts for 
much word economy, which in turn helps the imagery and description. I 
agree on the blindness perspective, that is to say let it be just 
natural rather than a blindness evangelistic piece, unless that is 
the purpose, but for the average reader that's probably not of 
interest. That would apply for anything. As mentioned in an 
earlier  post where the author I read spent an inordinate amount of 
time going on and on and on about some  relationship that was really 
insignificant in the story as a whole, but very little on the death 
of his father, that  too is out of balance and makes the reader feel 
cheated I think. This is very much like acting. I'm not an actor but 
I know good acting when I see it and I know what makes it. It's the 
actor that is the part, not just imagining the part that makes it 
believable. They come at it with more conviction, emotion, 
genuineness, dynamics, improvisation, and just a different place than 
someone who simply memorizes a script and recites it back on camera 
trying not to sound like it's been memorized . Same goes for 
writing.  There's been some songs I've written that when written I 
nearly couldn't finish singing the line as it choked me up because I 
felt the line's meaning inside because I was that person rather than 
observing. . Yeah so I am totally into the Hemingway  quote of having 
it all down in the head first and write from there. Reading his quick 
bio on -line, many of his book's topics were written  shortly  after 
similar experiences he had personally so he took advantage of 
that  in his writing. Man his life sure was riddled with ups and 
downs though, until his final down when he took his own life. 
Evidently it was a genetic thing as his father   did the same, as 
well as his siblings. Evidently a genetic malady with the 
inability  to metabolize iron leads to emotional and mental issues. 
Of course I don't think they knew what it was back then but confirmed 
in the  mid 90s it seems based off medical records. I do think it is 
important though in our writing to make descriptions par. It's the 
difference of abstract reading with no depth perception compared to 
3D.  Back to the object writing I misphrased as SOC writing in a 
recent post, if we are the object during that writing, rather than 
just looking at it from the outside as an observer, the describers 
come more easily. At any rate, I really enjoy reading your stuff. As 
was mentioned you write very economically and I do think from a 
character's  experiential perspective, even if you didn't actually 
live every detail

Brad

On 10/9/2011  07:55 PM Chris Kuell said...
Hey Brad,

I've heard the gist of that quote before, and now it's got me 
thinking. I'm currently winding up a novel about a blind massage 
therapist caught up in a sticky love triangle, and after writing the 
first 5 chapters in third person POV, I started over again and have 
been writing it in first person. The reason for the change was that 
1. people generally prefer the stories I've written in the first 
person , and 2. I wanted potential readers to be inside the head of a 
blind guy. It's been interesting, but very challenging to pull off an 
entire novel. I belong to a critique group, and 2 'complaints' I've 
received are that I never describe my main character, or my other 
characters visually, with the exception of one luscious female, but 
even then it's a description of her fabulous body, and the reader, 
like the character, knows nothing about her face, eyes, smile, hair, 
etc... I know all the books about craft tell you that you need to get 
in a description of your main characters early, and I've noticed that 
most novels do. But, in Hemingway's novel 'For Whom the Bell Tolls, 
the main character has a fling with a former female prisoner, I 
forget her name but it begins with a P (Pia?), and Hemingway 
describes only her short hair and the hat she wore. I've tried the 
remembering-a-photograph technique, but it strikes me as awkward and 
I cut it out.

The second criticism is that people are interested in technology, or 
how my character 'does things. This is where your Hemingway quote 
came to mind. I know how Dan, my character does things, and I've 
mentioned a few, but I haven't gone into detail, which I feel is 
appropriate. He's got a computer with a screen reading program, which 
I mention in chapter 1 with about that much detail, and from then on 
he just uses his computer. I don't mention how he tells time, or pays 
his bills, although at one point I say a friend helped him go through 
his mail. I say he takes the bus, but I don't say how he finds the 
bus or puts his money in the little thingee. He cooks, but I don't 
describe how he cooks, etc... In part, I think it's more natural--I 
mean, if he wasn't blind and you said he cooked a lasagna, you 
wouldn't want to know how. And in part, I just think it's awkward. 
Several years ago I read a novel with a blind character. The 
character lived in Baltimore, and to the author's credit (it was a 
sighted writer), she'd obviously done her research, and showed it 
off--too much, in my opinion. She stopped the flow of the story every 
time she had to take half-a-page to describe how the blind lady did 
the mundane things we all do in life.

Anyway, your post made me think of it.

chris

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Brad Dunse

If you think the Tallahassee Bridge is a certain part of a Native 
American song...
you might be a songwriter. --Capt'n Frank

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