Association Three: Back to Perfection

This week, it’s back to description.  It might be obvious by now that I just love description.  My favorite writing exercise (along with writing Wikipedia-style summaries of characters I invent) is to describe objects, places, or people, usually to no point or purpose.  To that end, I’ve been thinking of the best kind of description: the short kind.

You might instead call it the efficient kind.  I might love description, but I won’t tolerate entire paragraphs devoted to one person, one miserable car.  What gives the greatest shudder of pleasure when I read is that perfect one-liner.  

"Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it."

It's a Little 'Too' Quiet in Here: Writing an Atmosphere

photo credit: National Weather Service

I’m going to step away from being OCD about description, and get OCD about something slightly different this week.

Atmosphere changes a story. Unlike plot or thematic content—speaking to the audience’s sense of logic or intellect—atmosphere appeals almost entirely to the emotions. Like “immersion” for video games, atmosphere in narrative does the work of removing readers from their own time and place. And subject matter, characters, and language that look fun and sunny in one piece of writing turn warped and frightening when the narrative’s atmosphere changes.

"Well this place seems relaxed and friendly!"

“It Came from Planet Plothole”: What I Learned about Writing from Ed Wood, Jr.

I am a gigantic bad movie fan.  Battlefield Earth, Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Shadow, The Beast, Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York; classics all.  I’ve watched hours of Mystery Science Theater 3000, allowing Joel and/or Mike and the Bots to subject me to piles of dreck: Escape 2000, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Thing that Couldn’t Die, Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell.  I’ve listened to “The Flophouse” and “How Did This Get Made?” as they marvel at The Room, Birdemic, Foodfight!, and Gymkata (“The skill of gymnastics.  The KILL of karate!”).  I love the listless acting and the scenery-chewing; I love the cardboard props and forced-perspective monsters; I love the motivations of characters the audience isn’t privileged enough to know; and I love the hard crack my suspension of disbelief makes when it finally snaps.  

You might think that slogging through hours of mediocre “art” and “entertainment” would amount to little more than An Amazing Colossal Waste of Time for me, but hear me out; I promise I’m going somewhere with this.