Novels, stories and screenplays aren’t the only things that need a setting. Poetry also relies on the visual to convey a sense of mood and meaning. But when writing a poem, a great deal more depends on how you choose to decorate.
Setting the scene in a poem can be a tricky bugger to get right. Finding the right mix of appropriate and illuminating detail, without swamping a poem with surplus, extravagant description, is like trying to balance a human pyramid on your shoulders: one slip and it can all topple into an obscure and meaningless jumble of parts. When setting the scene, stay sharp, and think hard about why you’re including certain elements of a place and discarding others. Only this scrupulous selection of detail can keep a good poem from turning fuzzy.
When writing, don’t be tempted to include every single detail you pick up on. If you’ve been working on a poem for a while, you’ve probably thought about it a great deal, mulling things over in your mind, working on new ways to describe the scene, the events, the characters. It’s easy to build up a vast storehouse of descriptive phrases and symbolic meanings, most of which you’re quite chuffed with. But when it comes to piecing it together into a poem, you need to get out your fluff filter. It’s unlikely that everything you’ve thought of can go in, even if you’re writing an epic, so it’s up to you to pick the parts that do the most work.
It’s important to try and build up detail in an efficient and effective way. OK, that sounds more like a statement from 52 Brilliant Ideas for Your Business Plan than a writing guide but don’t ignore it because of fears it may impede your creative urge. With poetry, it’s not so much about setting a visual scene as setting an atmospheric one. Of course you want to paint a picture, but aim to use your images sparsely, allowing them to accumulate, to build on one another until they create or embody the mood of the whole poem. Even if your single images don’t say a great deal in themselves, if you control them, they’ll work cumulatively, complementing one another to create a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
Another similar setback to writing powerful poetry is a lack of clarity. If it’s in the right place, then a descriptive image doesn’t have to be long and complex to pack a punch. Don’t dress your images up with clumsy adjectives purely for the sake of appearances. A wrong choice may distance the reader from the image, forcing them to think too hard about what you’re trying to say – what exactly are the contemplative leaves? Even a more pertinent image could steer a reader’s interpretation too firmly, railroading them into a particular understanding: ‘her unkind gaze’. It’s hard to stay subtle, but remember that in most cases, when placed well, a concrete image is sufficient on its own.
Used with caution, metaphorical images – those that hint at something more than the image itself – can add a great deal to a poem, turning it from a literal description into a powerfully symbolic and personal piece of writing. But beware – metaphors used too often have another name, clichés, and it’s best to stay well clear of anything you recognise from everyday usage. Instead, invent your own metaphors. Pick objects that you associate with emotions and experience and ask yourself why? What is it about an inanimate object that brings to mind an ethereal, emotional equivalent? When writing, you should find metaphors popping up almost naturally – your own mind’s way of helping you comprehend the subject of a poem. Use your instinct, and pick the ones that really make you think, the ones so poignant and evocative that they literally make your heart pound.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Who's got the map?
Whether your plot is driving your work or following in the wake of your characters, there are certain techniques to getting from A to B without losing your passengers. Try the classical approach...
While every book is different, almost all classic plots go through a number of stages: beginnings, initiating event, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, change and conclusion. It’s these stages that a reader subconsciously expects to find when reading a novel, and by omitting them you can risk losing your audience. Of course, you don’t have to use the classical structure when writing – deviating from it can lead to some surprising and rewarding places – but it’s always best to learn the rules before you go renegade.
Every story has to have a beginning, an event that kick-starts everything else into motion, that disrupts the life of a character. This provocation – posh folk call this the ‘initiating event’ – can be a cataclysmic external change, like the breakout of war, or something internal, more personal to a character. It can be something so slight as to be almost unnoticeable.
It’s this initiating event that gets the ball rolling, that sets events in motion. It’s the thing that forces your characters out of their comfortable, everyday world – their once upon a time – into one that is strange and alien. When plotting out events, this initial provocation doesn’t have to come straight away (look at the extended opening of Sophie’s Choice), but it should happen fairly near the beginning. It’s the conflict that will make your characters act, either by choice or by necessity, and it’s their reactions to it that bring them to life, and make a plot worth following.
The effect of this initial event – this trigger – is to awaken your characters from an inactive state. In other words, it establishes a quest for them. Almost all classic stories can be read in this light: a character wants or needs something, and goes off to find it. Of course the plot for each new version of the story is different – they might need to find a lost love, be looking for meaning and self-revelation, seeking revenge, trying to get hold of some cash, growing from childhood to adulthood; it might even be laughable (think of poor old Don Quixote) – but the underlying story remains the same. A character’s quest doesn’t have to be external or physical – it could be a psychological or emotional journey. And the quest can change – although if your character starts out looking for power and ends up seeking love, the transition has to be believable.
When plotting, it’s vital to understand how the quest affects your character psychologically. You have to establish resistance for your character to fight against, obstacles they have to overcome. Why? Because paradoxically, the narrative surprises that prevent the character from enjoying a smooth journey to their goal are what pull the story forwards. Your characters’ responses to these setbacks and conflicts – their ‘critical choices’ (posh folk, again) – are what keep readers interested. This resistance can be anything: another character, a global catastrophe, a domestic misunderstanding, a love interest who’s not interested – but what it must do is provoke your character into making critical choices, and acting them out.
The result of these actions is the climax. A man’s father is murdered by his uncle (initiating event), the man decides to get revenge (critical choice) and murders his uncle (climax). The critical choice and the climax might occur almost in the same moment, or, as in Hamlet, they can take almost the entire length of the text to play out. A climax isn’t always the final stage in a plot, however, and you can have more than one, but they have to lead to something, otherwise why did they occur? If a climax doesn’t change a situation, then it’s spectacle – action for the sake of action. Climaxes are the culmination of your characters’ responses, and should change their emotional or physical status. If the surprises, critical choices and climaxes you use in your work don’t lead to this change, readers may end up disappointed.
While every book is different, almost all classic plots go through a number of stages: beginnings, initiating event, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, change and conclusion. It’s these stages that a reader subconsciously expects to find when reading a novel, and by omitting them you can risk losing your audience. Of course, you don’t have to use the classical structure when writing – deviating from it can lead to some surprising and rewarding places – but it’s always best to learn the rules before you go renegade.
Every story has to have a beginning, an event that kick-starts everything else into motion, that disrupts the life of a character. This provocation – posh folk call this the ‘initiating event’ – can be a cataclysmic external change, like the breakout of war, or something internal, more personal to a character. It can be something so slight as to be almost unnoticeable.
It’s this initiating event that gets the ball rolling, that sets events in motion. It’s the thing that forces your characters out of their comfortable, everyday world – their once upon a time – into one that is strange and alien. When plotting out events, this initial provocation doesn’t have to come straight away (look at the extended opening of Sophie’s Choice), but it should happen fairly near the beginning. It’s the conflict that will make your characters act, either by choice or by necessity, and it’s their reactions to it that bring them to life, and make a plot worth following.
The effect of this initial event – this trigger – is to awaken your characters from an inactive state. In other words, it establishes a quest for them. Almost all classic stories can be read in this light: a character wants or needs something, and goes off to find it. Of course the plot for each new version of the story is different – they might need to find a lost love, be looking for meaning and self-revelation, seeking revenge, trying to get hold of some cash, growing from childhood to adulthood; it might even be laughable (think of poor old Don Quixote) – but the underlying story remains the same. A character’s quest doesn’t have to be external or physical – it could be a psychological or emotional journey. And the quest can change – although if your character starts out looking for power and ends up seeking love, the transition has to be believable.
When plotting, it’s vital to understand how the quest affects your character psychologically. You have to establish resistance for your character to fight against, obstacles they have to overcome. Why? Because paradoxically, the narrative surprises that prevent the character from enjoying a smooth journey to their goal are what pull the story forwards. Your characters’ responses to these setbacks and conflicts – their ‘critical choices’ (posh folk, again) – are what keep readers interested. This resistance can be anything: another character, a global catastrophe, a domestic misunderstanding, a love interest who’s not interested – but what it must do is provoke your character into making critical choices, and acting them out.
The result of these actions is the climax. A man’s father is murdered by his uncle (initiating event), the man decides to get revenge (critical choice) and murders his uncle (climax). The critical choice and the climax might occur almost in the same moment, or, as in Hamlet, they can take almost the entire length of the text to play out. A climax isn’t always the final stage in a plot, however, and you can have more than one, but they have to lead to something, otherwise why did they occur? If a climax doesn’t change a situation, then it’s spectacle – action for the sake of action. Climaxes are the culmination of your characters’ responses, and should change their emotional or physical status. If the surprises, critical choices and climaxes you use in your work don’t lead to this change, readers may end up disappointed.
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