I spent a lot of time in Scotland this year, for family reasons.
Any time I could, I went outside: to walk in the woods – swinging my arms carefully to avoid the tall, triangle-leafed stinging nettles or stooping to squeeze between my fingers the low-growing wild garlic.
On other days I was magnetically drawn to the coastline – making my way over the dunes or rocks, through the powdery, dry sand that shifts underfoot, to the glistening ridges of packed sand beyond the high-tide line of stranded bladderwort seaweed.
Crouch down above the high-tide line to dig your fingers into the sand and you’ll first feel the warm, granular top layer, that seems soft and forgiving, only to quickly encounter a harder layer of cool, damp sand, resisting you. Dig closer to the water line and the wet sand will flow in and close around your wrist, like it wants you to stay.
The Writer’s Lens
Consider the last line of the previous paragraph. Is the landscape I wrote about friendly? Or is its grip sinister?
If this was a story, you’d have to keep reading to find out.
As a writer it’s almost impossible to write about any experience without it turning into a metaphor for something else. We can’t help ourselves.
And that’s exactly what I want you to remember this week.
Writing Is About Creating Connections
Sometimes “Writing” seems like an ambitious and complicated aspiration.
Do I have anything important to say? Who am I to ask people to listen to my words? Who’s going to care about my characters’ trivial adventures when the whole world is [gestures vaguely] like this?!
It’s important to remember that most people don’t have big, grand adventures every day. Or often.
Even if your characters are getting into dramatic scrapes in worlds we’ll never visit, the moments when your readers connect with them, will be the ones we recognize from this life: the moments of connection; the flash of nostalgia; the smell of a long-lost comfort food.
If you want to connect with readers, give them tiny, everyday experiences they can relate to. The more specific, the better.
Stand The Test of Time
Jamaica Kincaid’s 1978 short story “Girl”, is a list of advice on how to be a woman. But not just any woman.
Through the details Kincaid choses, the reader is invited to make assumptions about who is speaking–from their gender to their age, to the geographical location:
“Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap…This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease…this is how you grow okra–far from the house because okra tree harbors red ants…”
But it’s not just a list of instructions. They, along with the occasional editorial comment, add up to a larger story in which the older woman imparts warnings and advice and leaves the reader with questions: Does the speaker want the ‘girl’ to be the kind of ‘good girl’ who just does what people tell her? What exactly does the last line of the story mean?
It’s a short pieces that ignores all the ‘rules’ about story structure, and yet people are still sharing it, 43 years later.
What We Notice
I believe “Girl”’s lasting popularity has a lot to do with the specificity of the details in this story. They are what make it stand out. They are what root it in a particular place and a particular voice.
So don’t feel you need to aim to create something grandiose, pregnant with “capital-M-Meaning’.
Just focus on telling a story that feels like it’s happening somewhere specific, with moments your readers can enter.
And you do that by focusing on the small, everyday, universal details:
- The smell of the tea roses on the bush by the bench where you sat with someone you loved;
- The slow shuffle down a hospital corridor, repeated so often, you’ve memorized the posters on the wall: “Join the Rock Choir: Thursday evenings in the parish hall” “We buy second-hand mobility devices–call for a quote”;
- The texture of the sand on the beach, where the wind off the ocean whips away your tears before you have to explain them to anyone…
Don’t worry about what your ‘point’ is; what grand lesson readers must draw from your writing.
Focus on the tiny moments, the delicate sensations, that make up a life, and the story will emerge.
You’re a writer.
Write first.
Figure out what you’re trying to say, in the process.
Keep writing,
Julie
P. S. Need more practice turning everyday moments into key scenes in your stories? Consider the StoryAWeek newsletter: 52 weekly lessons and writing prompts. Find out more.
To Do Now
- It’s nto too late: join us in StoryADay November. Sign up here
- Pick a number of days that you will participate. Post your goals here
- Leave a comment below, confessing your remaining fears (and let me reassure you)
And I’ll see you in the comments, next month!
