Look before You Write: Applying the Lessons of the Visual Arts

by Paula Fleming

We've all had the pleasure of reading a story and "seeing" the landscape, characters, and action in our mind's eye.

As writers, we want to evoke this same pleasure in our readers. So we use description.

Instead of saying merely, "A man lit a fuse and ran away before the building blew up," we describe the man, describe the way he's set the explosive, and describe the building that's going to blow. We also describe the alley he hides in, the people he sees pass by in the street beyond, and the urban geography he runs through to escape the blast. We may even describe the inside of the target building, as the man imagines it: perhaps the city-state's corrupt (or so he believes) clerics are seated on thick cushions, robed in green silk embroidered with yellow birds and flowers, with their winged feline familiars perched on pink marble pedestals. Ê

I don't know about you, but I'm already rather fond of the winged feline familiars: either this guy better have a darn good reason for blowing them up, or they better survive the blast!

Because we want our readers to "see" our stories, we clearly share a purpose with visual artists. What lessons can we learn from the visual arts, and how can we apply them to our writing?

Point of View

When an artist draws, paints, or photographs a subject, they choose the point of view that they feel will make the most effective impression on the viewer. Or they may render the subject from many points of view and decide which is best by looking at the results.

As writers, we also choose a point of view that we think will be most effective in telling our story. Often the point of view suggests itself intuitively. Perhaps a character's distinctive voice speaks insistently in our head, and it's apparent that this character will narrate the story. Or maybe, to get a good look at a fascinating character in action, we want to tell the tale from the POV of a less interesting character (e.g., Sherlock Holmes mysteries are much more effective when told by Dr. Watson than by Holmes himself.) Sometimes our choice is dictated by a desire to withhold information from the reader; a plot, for example, is much more surprising when described from its victim's POV than from its perpetrator's POV. Sometimes we are drawn to the most "sympathetic" character—the character with the kindest intentions—to be our POV character.

We often make perfectly valid POV choices by intuition alone. However, it can't hurt to check that intuition with some conscious thought. Let's work through this process with The Truthsayer's Apprentice by Donato Giancola.

The focus of this piece is very much on the guy on his knees. We see him in very realistic looking arm locks, and the expression on his face perfectly describes how it feels to be grabbed by the hair. Everyone in the scene is looking at him; we see the other characters' faces, but not to know about them so much as to see that they are focused on the captured man. This is his story.

Now let's consider what happens if the POV shifts. Let's move 180 degrees. We are now just behind the woman. Her face in profile fills about a third of the picture's foreground. In the background is the scene she is viewing. We pay close attention to the expression on her face. What's important is how the capture of this man is affecting her. ÊIs she happy or sad about it? This is her story.

Shift POV again. Now we're standing behind the captive, to the left of the current scene. (The lighting in the picture would also be coming from the left of the frame rather than the right, as in the actual picture.) The backs of the three men behind the captive occupy the foreground. Between them, we clearly see the twist of his arm and the sweat on his cheek as his face is twisted up. And at the center of our attention is the face of the man pulling the captive's hair. This is his triumph; he's going to get an answer, or that sword is going through the man. This is his story. The woman isn't in the picture.

Same action, same characters . . . three different stories.

What's in the Picture?

Another choice both writers and visual artists make is what to include in our stories and pictures, respectively. We've probably all had the experience of dreaming up a really cool world as a setting and then being frustrated because we can only show little bits of it without bogging down our story.

We need to frame, or set limits around, our stories. But where to set those frames? Does our story need to be told on a panoramic scale, where people are barely differentiated specks in a landscape of conflict? Or are we telling a claustrophobically intimate tale of the unconscious conflicts playing out in one person's psyche?

In our example at the top of this article, do we need to describe the wider religious/political/socioeconomic canvas upon which this fellow is setting bombs? Or can his targets be vaguely powerful people, his city-state be a vaguely Mediterranean/Middle Eastern place, his detonating technology of a vaguely magical nature . . . while the details of the story lie in his efforts to untangle his messy morality? We can tell the same story twice, but based on what details we include, we in fact tell two entirely different stories.

Let's explore these choices further by looking at Unwelcome Guest by Larry Elmore. Notice the lock on the cabinet on the right. Notice the stoppered bottles, lidded pots, and small bound casks on the shelves. Notice the books on the shelves! Notice the open wooden beams across stucco—"Tudor-style" architecture—and the garb of the shop owner. Even the wood of the floorboards is lovingly detailed in the mellow lamplight. What's not detailed? The visitors. Aside from a glimpse of booted feet and a bearded face, we know only black cloaks. The artist's decision to give us no more detail than that keeps our focus on the shopkeeper and our concern on what's going to happen to him. We're not overly distracted by interesting visual tidbits about the visitors.

What's Left Out?

Just as we describe different elements included in our story in different levels of detail, we also elect to leave out many things. In the example that begins this article, our readers perhaps don't need to know that the man had goat cheese on a day-old bread heel for lunch, that the plaza on which this alley opens was the site of the last Emperor's coronation, or that one of the clerics in the building had a fight with his wife this morning. Or maybe one or all of those details would bring the story to life for our readers. How do we decide?

Let's take a look at Julie Bell's At Battle's End. We aren't shown the fleeing or fallen foes, nor do we see blood on the snow or trees still smoking from ill-aimed magical blasts. The two character's faces are rendered with strong planes and clear expressions of both weariness and determination. The bleak, whitely lit landscape echoes the weariness; the regular order of the trees echoes the determination. The artist didn't place a hawk or a songbird on a tree limb. She doesn't show us what these two people are looking at. She doesn't fill in the landscape behind the trees by, say, showing us the corner of a barn or a split-rail fence. Instead, our focus is on these two people's emotions, shown in their facial expressions and the slump of their shoulders and reinforced by the landscape behind them. By leaving out any number of details she could have put in, the artist makes the scene effective.

So pay attention to visual art. I've used fantasy art as examples in this column, but any kind of art will do. Don't just like it or not like it. Question it! Think about the choices the artist made—the point-of-view angle, the details they put in, all the potential elements they left out. Then consciously bring those same choices to your writing. You'llÊmake your stories come to life in your readers' "eyes."