Writing what’s not there
This week I’ve been working with a couple of first-time writers on new projects. They’re writing fiction-and their stories promise to be legitimately interesting. While I’m giving them feedback on their stories, I’m also trying to help them build a couple of writing habits that will serve them no matter what they want to write in the future.
The two tips here share a common theme: they’re both about finding gaps in your writing. In one case you’ll look for gaps to fill, and in the other, you’ll find ways to highlight what’s missing. If you get in the habit of looking for both, your writing will either improve, or it’s pretty darn good already.
1. “The smell of the sea was gone, and the water could no longer be seen through the hole.”
That’s a line from one of their stories, and it shows how evocative absence can be. Usually I’m the one urging authors to add more detail about what’s in a scene, but it can be just as powerful to note what’s not there.
As in the above example, this is a great way to highlight sensory details, but you could just as easily employ it to material things, policies, or evidence.
It’s a great technique to play around with. Where can you employ absence in your writing?
2. The little story inside the bigger story
One of the most impactful habits that I want my writers to develop is the ability to read their own writing and identify areas to build on.
When I talk about this I say something like, “find the lines that suggest a scene that you haven’t shown here.” You can find these spots pretty easily if you look—it might be the story of a conversation that you mention, but haven’t shown, or the story of a setting, context for a reaction, the history of an object—or any number of other things that occur to you.
It could be something as insignificant as a three-line story about how your interview in a coffee shop was briefly interrupted by the noise of the coffee grinder, or it could be something much more important that you mention, but on closer inspection realize that readers might not find as significant without more information.
Here’s how I like to do this in just two steps. First, I read through a piece and simply highlight things that might be give me a good scene to add. I use the comments feature and just add “story?” unless I have an idea already about what the story could be. In that case I add a few words to make sure I remember later—I don’t want to put the pressure on myself to have the same good idea twice. Second, I go to each comment and decide whether it does make sense to try to expand it. I tend to err on the side of trying, so I’ll write a bit. It’s easy to cut things out later, so I’d rather give myself more to work with.
Make your way through a draft of your work and I bet you’ll find at least a few things to highlight. Not all of them will deserve the extra attention, but some will, and they can make all the difference in how complete your work feels.
Try these techniques this weekend and see what it does to make your writing memorable and three-dimensional.