Apologies to cat lovers–and to my own lovely kittens, who will be shielded from reading this post. But the old “skin-the-cat cliche” popped into my head overwhelmingly in response to a few words in an old essay I was reading by John Grierson, the god of documentary film, called “First Principles of Documentary.”
Here’s the background: in the early 1930s, when Grierson was writing, documentary film was brand new, a hugely powerful and rapidly evolving form of expression. He made hundreds of reality-based films but he also felt it was vital to THINK about what he was doing and try to define it. Here he’s struggling with the fact that every reality-based film was being called “a documentary,” when in fact the differences among them ran the gamut from silly bits to monumental cultural stories. But it’s the WAY he expressed this that grabbed me. Listen…
They all represent different qualities of observation, different intentions in observation, and, of course, very different powers and ambitions at the stage of organizing material.
Sounds awfully abstract, I know–and what does it have to do with fiction anyway? Bear with me, because as I read it and let those evocative terms (bf. mine) turn over and over in my mind, I realized he was suggesting not just a guide to evaluating categories of reality film, but a way of lending sense to the decisions a fiction writer makes when writing descriptive prose.
So here (with apologies) is Grierson’s wisdom re: description and its uses, the fiction writers’ version. Adaptation by me…
When you write description, there is always a strategic purpose behind it. The words you choose, the mood you decide those words will evoke, the formality level of the diction–none of these factors can be arbitrary. You might fly blind in your first draft, but by the time you reach the final stage, you should be describing images, actions, reactions, etc. in language that supports the strategy behind the scene they are part of.
Example: I’ll give three descriptions of a wife approaching the coffin of her husband, who has died suddenly of unknown causes.
(1) The young woman broke away and lurched toward the coffin. Bending over it, she covered the young man’s hands with hers and made a moaning sound so feral it seemed to be coming not from a human at all, much less from the slight, dazed woman–only a girl, really, who had entered the room so tentatively. Losing her footing, she half-knelt against the coffin and, almost inaudibly, erupted into a series of slow, spasmodic sobs.
(2) Ellen bolted for the coffin, her eyes impossibly wide, whimpering at the loss, the unutterable loss of him, of them. Horror and disbelief were everywhere in the room, everywhere in the town, so fresh and raw they robbed her body of feeling. She staggered and fell hard against the coffin, oblivious to the bruising pain, oblivious to the blood that trickled from the new scrape on her knee. Raising her head she let out an unearthly moan that seemed to go on forever. The mourners watched in silence, in impotence, until finally, the funeral director stepped forward and coaxed her gently back to her seat.
(3) The widow put on one heck of a show–breaking out and throwing herself on the casket, whooping and moaning as if she were some kind of hyena. After a while, cutting short the show, the undertaker looked at his watch and came forward to end the embarrassment. After a few tries at unprying her from the deceased, he grabbed her by both shoulders, pulled her off the remains, and led her back to the green room or wherever you go after an Oscar-winning performance like that one.
Three different go-rounds, three different strategies–(1) observational, empathetic, but detatched; (2) fully feeling the tragedy; in and out of her consciousness, as well as the collective consciousness of the mourners; (3) ironic, cruel, unfeeling–maybe psychotic (if the death was a murder, perhaps the murderer).
Any experienced fiction writer must be able to do what I just did here–to understand the game at a given moment, and be able to find the right style, and shift gears or turn on a dime to play that particular game.
Many good young writers are not quite there, only because they don’t yet know how to override their deepest human impulses in order to get a job done. Is (3) too monstrous, too cruel? Not if your job is to get inside the head of a cruel monster. Is (2) too lyrical or flushed with feeling for your comfort? Not if your job is to get inside the emotions of a young woman maimed with grief, and a devastated community.
And if you need an ethical reason to justify plunging into areas you would normally shun in yourself, the reason is simple: the story needs it. The story and its needs trump everything. They determine everything you do and how you must do it, even if the effort frightens or embarrass you.
Whatever your story needs…you’d better GET IT.
Did you think a life of fiction writing would free you from ever having to work for a boss again? You’re wrong. Your boss is the story. And when you write a story, long or short, you are in total bondage and service to that “boss” for the duration.
But I told one white lie above. There is one more boss, an uber-boss, the boss-of-bosses behind the story, and it’s you.
That’s right. The ultimate and absolutely final truth is that when you create a story, its people, and its world, you, like the Wizard of Oz (but more effectual, one hopes) are behind it all. Even though the story, like a ravenous baby, may seem to dominate everything, its life (like that of your baby’s) lies in your total control. For it to thrive, you must willingly take that control. And here’s the crazy part: once you really are in control–irony of ironies–it will seem as though things are exactly the opposite: that the story, like life itself, is simply HAPPENING.
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