Bread, Cheese And Wine For The Imagination

Bread, cheese and wine...that sounds like a recipe for yumminess.  The fact that I was born in Wisconsin and even lived in France at one point made me quite a connoisseur of bread, cheese and wine. Yet, a few years ago I was on a mission of life improvement.  This meant that I had to cut out bread, cheese and wine. That was such a sad day and there was a small funeral at home as I buried my wine bottle next to a baguette and brie. Not really, but that was my way of cutting out the fat in my life.

You may be wondering right now why my dietary restrictions are related to writing at all.  Don't worry I will explain.  As I was working on chapter eight, I needed to begin using descriptions to show the reader a setting, a house and how the design inside this house gives much understanding into one of the characters of the story.  Still confused?  Still wondering how it relates? Well, don't worry I will be getting to the point soon.  I promise I am.

As I was writing the long descriptions I remembered an author I read years back, whose name I will not divulge here, but who came highly recommended by a friend.  I started reading this book and after I was only five chapters into the story I set it down.  This author gave descriptions of everything in very exact detail.  I have only stopped reading a book because I could not relate or get interested in the story twice in my life and this author was one of those times.  In addition, I never read another book written by this same author for fear of the same result. The thought of all the descriptions made the story too heavy and boring for my imagination and then I did not want to read that again.  In my opinion, the descriptions and the absolute detail of everything bogged down the story too much for a reader to easily continue into the story.

So as I was writing the descriptions of this house in chapter eight I remembered that author and that unfinished book and I realized that there was a balance that needed to be achieved. I did not want too much detail that it bogs down the story. Yet, I did not want to leave the description so lacking either that the reader can not even find the house in their imagination. When just enough description is given to a scene or a place or even a person you can bring them up in your mind and create them into your imagination so that as you are reading the story you are walking with the character and you are inside the castle or the house in a city or the country depending upon the tale.  A good description places you as the reader into the scene without bogging you into the quicksand of too much description.

You are still wondering why I started out talking about food and wine and why I have now made you hungry.  Well, as I was writing the descriptions of the house and thought of that author who I did not care for and whose descriptions were just too wordy, I thought back to myself and my writing. I know when I tell a story to friends and family that I sometimes get lost in the details and can get a bit wordy. (My parents just had a sudden need to laugh out loud and don't know why yet.)  I did not want that for my writing.  I want the reader to be able to ignite their imagination when reading so that I give them the outline of the picture and then they can fill in the picture with color.  As I put in the description and the reader's mind creates the picture I want to give them enough so that they become a part of the story.

Still lost as to the bread and wine analogy?  Well, as I thought of how I would create the descriptions of the house for my scene and how it needed to also represent the character in the story I started to think of it like dieting. I had an image in mind when I started my voyage of self-improvement and to get there I had to cut out the bread and cheese in my life for a while or at least cut back on it.  Then as I continued with chapter eight and the description of the house I knew that I again had to cut back on being too descriptive or too wordy with my details.  I had to give the reader enough to be in the scene and have confidence in the reader enough that they would fill in the colors with their own palette.

Often as we are writing we also need to cut out the fat. We want to give the reader all the details we see in our minds but then they are lost in our imagination and not their own.  As writers we want to ignite their imagination but we also need to have confidence in the reader that we give them just enough to make them crave the story but not feel as if their are overly fed the details. We want them to be able to smell and see an image of flowers and not get allergies from the fields of flowers or feel consumed by them. We want the reader to smell the bread baking in the oven and the warmth it brings to a home.  As we are writing we want the reader to start to think to themselves, "You know, I am all of a sudden hungry for warm bread with brie and a glass of wine."  We do not want to give the reader so much that we not only made them hungry but also feel as if we then ate their meal in front of them without giving them a bite.

I knew that as a writer I needed to be less wordy in the descriptions and cut fat out of my writing.  So as I sit here popping open that wine and slicing into a nice soft brie to put into a warmed baguette I will toast the reader and say, "Are you hungry yet? Would you care to join me?"