Observation
An Element of Fiction
Good writers know how to spring an image (or a character or a scene) alive with a crucial and telling detail. It could be a smell, an item, a vocal tic, or anything that brings the image alive for the reader.
Now, try to come up with a telling detail in a scene or about a character that you haven’t observed. That you haven’t really looked at.
I think Georgia O’Keeffe puts it wonderfully when she says, “In a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small, we haven’t the time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
We have to take the time to look. If the subject we’re writing about is important to us (and it had better be) then, surely, we can make or take the time to scrutinize everything about it. That will give you the telling detail that will in turn bring your writing alive.
Flannery O’Connor puts it succinctly, “The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always.”
When we’ve observed something fully, we usually also know how best to describe it — try to describe something you’re not familiar with, it’s a groping in the dark, and the reader will sense that.
Virginia Woold noticed that once you have observed something well, the words will arrive: “I should notice everything — the phrase for it coming the moment after and fitting like a glove.”
Ayn Rand, too, values observation highly when she says, “Your characterizations will never be better than your power of observation.”
And let John Gardner have the final word in summarizing the value of observation: “That close scrutiny is one among many elements that make up the practice of fiction; let it serve as a clue to the value of authentic practice — and to the waste and harm in fictional malpractice.”
Okay, I lied. I’ll have the final word. When Gardner talks about authentic practice, he is talking about truth in writing. He is talking about us relating in words what we have truly observed and relating it truly. Anything less than that he calls fictional malpractice.
An apt term, I think.
Actually, I’ll yield the final words to Henry James: “Be someone on whom nothing is lost.”
© Wolfstuff
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