Efficient writing, conveying the most information in the fewest words.

[Logos&Eidos]

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. the problem is that i can't draw thus I'm stuck trying to use words to paint a picture in the audience's mind. This is will require the use of several times the words to do the work of of even a few panels. Another problem is what I've come term my "graphic-novel sensibility", i love the visual medium for it's explicitness. There is little question or debate on what a character or an item or an environment is supposed to look like, when it's image is right in front of you. In book descriptions of things are brief and often piecemeal revealed as they become relevant. Creative use of adjectives implies rather than states things about a character place or thing.

What are some the techniques used to condense information for a speed and fluid delivery to the audience. How might I impart my"vision" to the audience, instead of having them for their own through the tacitity of normal descriptive techniques.

 

[Svrtnsse]

A few days ago I wrote this post: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/13700-beginners-guide-writing-descriptions.html

It should give you a few pointers on what to include in your description in order for the reader to see what's there. Basically, just include enough for the reader to make up the reset on their own.

The post only talks about what to show and not show though. It doesn't go into detail about much else, like conveying emotion etc.
A lot of that comes down to what words you chose for your descriptions. Some words are more positively or negatively charged than others, even though they can be used about the same thing.

Let's say you're setting up a scene in a forest on a very early morning. You have some elements that are necessary to include for the right visual cues: there are trees, there are layers of fog on the ground, the sun has not yet come up, but it's bright enough to see.
Now let's try and put some emotion into this.

First:

Slowly, little by little, the forest awoke to greet the day. Faint pre-dawn light filtered in from the east, and thin wisps of fog danced among the trees.

Second:

Reluctantly, night released its grip on the forest. In the east, the sky burned a pale yellow, and tendrils of mist crept up among the trees.

The examples describe the same thing, but give the reader very different impressions of the same scene. The first one is more positive as it uses happy words like awoke, greet, and danced. The second is more gloomy as it uses negatively charged words, like reluctantly, pale, and crept.

To sum it up.
First decide what elements you want included in the scene, then decide what mood you want to go for.

 

[Helen]

What are some the techniques used to condense information for a speed and fluid delivery to the audience.

I find that re-reading and re-writing sections of a story at a time helps enormously.

 

[Velka]

Never underestimate the power of simile as a means of description. Although, I am probably not the best person to take this advice from as I would probably write an entire (failed) novel using nothing but simile and dialogue if it had any chance of succeeding.

That aside, similes if used appropriately, and a little creatively, are a powerful tool. They are a very efficient way to evoke meaning/understanding/familiarity in a single sentence.

 

[Chessie]

Hi, not to sound negative or anything but I'm beginning to believe that whatever way works for you to communicate a story across, then writing rules be damned. I think colorful narrative contains all of the don'ts just sprinkled in there with a bit of sugar here and there.

For my work, I love to add bits of information and weave it into the narrative: he touched her smooth black hair, his throat was milky white, the evergreens blended into the night....while still telling the story. What I'm saying is that you don't have to worry so much about describing every bit of detail of setting/character into your story right away. Let it unfold organically.

One thing that's been helping me lately is that--before writing my scenes-- I do a prewrite by hand on setting, emotions, props (used for dialogue), visual, smells, sounds, tastes, and sensations the pov character is going to experience. Let the readers fill in the world from the protagonist's perspective...and then let them use their imagination to do the rest.

"He sat, she stood" is a great read on this topic and its inexpensive on Amazon. Best of luck to you!

 

[Feo Takahari]

I feel like there's a misleading assumption in the opening post. Let me see if I can explain it . . .

My English teacher made me read a poem about how you can "take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide," or "drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out," but his students "tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it." I think there's an assumption, in prose as well as poetry, that there are things you can do with writing besides beat it with a metaphorical hose. That is to say, "What is the meaning? I need the meaning! Got to have the meaning!" isn't the only approach you can cater to.

Maybe I'm totally misreading you (I had a hard time making heads or tails of your post), but it sounds like what you're trying to do is describe a scene so thoroughly the reader doesn't need to imagine things. But whether you're describing a scene as briefly as Cormac McCarthy, or writing pages and pages of description like Paula Volsky, you're never going to give a full and complete impression of the scene--and for that matter, you don't do that in visual works, either. Artists stylize, creating images that are beautiful even if they don't represent reality. Why shouldn't writers do the same, playing around with language as artists play around with images?

I have no idea if I'm making any sense here. I hope that was at least a little useful.

 

[Terry Greer]

Ken Follet, once in an interview I think, said that he always redrafts totally afresh for that reason. He'll sit down with a printed copy of his work and proof that - then type it all into a fresh document - no cut and paste. He said that it forces him to rethink what he'd written and condense it simultaneously so he had less to type.

I don't know if I'd have the patience or discipline to do that - but it makes total sense to me.

 

[skip.knox]

There's also an assumption in the OP that there exists some way to imprint one's own vision of a scene onto someone else's brain. There's no way to know that. The other person *always* sees things you did not. This is true in music, in painting, in literature, an all art. I've stopped trying.

It's all I can do simply to get a scene down on the page in such a way that it satisfies me. Then it passes through a few beta readers and they usually have comments that help me make a few adjustments. After that, I'm done.

At some point, I have to send my baby out the door. People are going to read it. Some of those people will skim over that descriptive scene and it will barely register. Others will read it and love it, but their version of it will be rather different from what I had imagined. Others will read it and love it and it will be exactly what I intended and I'll be all proud of myself. Others will hate it. I'm not responsible for my readers. I'm only responsible for the story.

I may be going too far here, but perhaps Logos&Eidos is saying s/he is the person not satisfied with the description. If I'm right in this, then first one must understand *why* one is unhappy with the passage. Only then can one begin to address the how of improving it.

 

[spectre]

Rely on the reader, don't presume that you have to convey every aspect of a scene to the reader. There is inquisitiveness to reading a book just by human logic. Symbolism can be effective in doing this, you can also use techniques of writing that won't spell out every emotional facet of what is happening, but is a common play on human sensibility. For example try:

The kid looked at me and said, but Johnny didn't have to.

Instead of longer writing like this:

The kid's face was expressionless and he turned to me and said...

In the example I was thinking about when you tell your kid clean up your mess and in defiance they jut look at you and say, Johnny didn't have to. The reader based on their experience will fill in those gaps but it isn't effective in every case. You may have to use specific descriptions to get your feeling across and if you precede a statement like the one above with an appropriately emotional scene, then the silent description will shine through and you can save your extra words in the book.

So techniques might be:

-symbolism
-writing out appropriate sentences in your paragraph reduces the number of sentences you need to paint a picture
-structuring your word use to be descriptive and not conjunctions that robotically link one part of the sentence to the next makes them more fluid (maybe that's what a preposition is and that's not sarcasm either).

 

[psychotick]

Hi Logos,

I think before you look at condensing your narrative etc, you need to examine another question - why? There is nothing wrong with using long flowing descriptions. There is nothing wrong with using shorter ones. This is largely a matter of style. (Unless you are doing a comic book of course where space is limited.)

For my money Donaldson is probably the finest fantasy writer out there. His descriptions are long and flowing and absolutely beautiful. (The need for him to take his prozac is another issue entirely!) And there are many other works out there that follow a similar vein. If you ever get the chance read Free Live Free by Gene Wolf. It's poetically beautiful. But that style of writing won't work at all for Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. There you want action and pace.

Read what you've written and then ask youself instead a few simple questions. Is this what I want? Does it convey the images I want to convey? The emotion? Is the tempo right for the book, the genre and the point in the story? Does it sound good when I read it out loud?

Then when you've answered those questions think about whether you want to add or subtract words.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

Hi Logos,

I think before you look at condensing your narrative etc, you need to examine another question - why? There is nothing wrong with using long flowing descriptions. There is nothing wrong with using shorter ones. This is largely a matter of style. (Unless you are doing a comic book of course where space is limited.)

For my money Donaldson is probably the finest fantasy writer out there. His descriptions are long and flowing and absolutely beautiful. (The need for him to take his prozac is another issue entirely!) And there are many other works out there that follow a similar vein. If you ever get the chance read Free Live Free by Gene Wolf. It's poetically beautiful. But that style of writing won't work at all for Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. There you want action and pace.

Read what you've written and then ask youself instead a few simple questions. Is this what I want? Does it convey the images I want to convey? The emotion? Is the tempo right for the book, the genre and the point in the story? Does it sound good when I read it out loud?

Then when you've answered those questions think about whether you want to add or subtract words.

Cheers, Greg.

Personally I'm mixed over long flowing description, while beautiful it also to feels a little obstructive. I view Simile in a similar light, even though i know why they are used, to quickly convey information and mood, by drawing a parallel between what is being described and the elements used in the description. I came up with a simile to described an a near enraged protagonist's voice,"hard and sharp as a blade of obsidian" Google obsidian blades and you'll get the connotations, obsidian blades are hard incredibly shard but also fragile. this works especially for my protag because he is a man who doesn't look or sound likely the typical manly protagonist. His voice is a little high and he's naturally soft spoken,so when angry or commanding he can put no bass into his voice because it simply isn't there.

My love of the visual medium leads me to want to impart some measure of the efficiency that an image has for conveying information.

 

[skip.knox]

It's a little ironic that, although you emphasize your love of the visual medium, the example you chose is auditory.

To me, the master of the telling phrase is Raymond Chandler. He was brilliant at finding the one detail in the room that could conjure the entire room. I *think* that comes in part from going into a lot of rooms, and in part from exercising the writer's imagination to envision that room precisely in order to pick out the one detail. And if you watch him carefully, you will see that Chandler isn't trying to describe the room, he's trying to evoke the *feeling* in the room.

 

[Svrtnsse]

[...] he's trying to evoke the *feeling* in the room.

I think this is absolutely central. Much as I go on about describing what's important and what the character sees and all that, if you get the feeling of the setting right, you gain an enormous amount of description over just showing that it looks like.

 

[Chessie]

And I think for many writers (myself included) channeling emotion to the reader is the hardest part. At least doing it consistently. Which is why editing is so important. Missed it the first time? Or the second? There's always more chances to add depth to your story. Build it up in layers and don't worry about getting it perfect right away.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

It's a little ironic that, although you emphasize your love of the visual medium, the example you chose is auditory.

To me, the master of the telling phrase is Raymond Chandler. He was brilliant at finding the one detail in the room that could conjure the entire room. I *think* that comes in part from going into a lot of rooms, and in part from exercising the writer's imagination to envision that room precisely in order to pick out the one detail. And if you watch him carefully, you will see that Chandler isn't trying to describe the room, he's trying to evoke the *feeling* in the room.

An auditory simile was born out of necessity, I could write a physical description for that character. However there wasn't a good to the description for What he sounded like when enraged. The simile was initially going to use broken glass, however that was to mundane and didn't carry the right connotations. The blade of obsidian however encapsulated everything that i wanted to say. I endeavor for direct to the point without begin dull prose.