We may think we are born
being able to "see," yet I find we don't come naturally to the kind of observation good writers achieve. We can teach ourselves to see, however; we can practice seeing, until it becomes second nature.
I recommend that the beginning writer frame a view or vista as if putting it within a picture frame. Indeed, it is good practice to take a photograph and write of what is in it. The book I have used with students is Bound for Glory, late Depression-era (1939-1943) photographs in color published by Harry N. Abrams, with an introduction by Paul Hendrickson; these photos have the advantage of being some distance from our immediate experience and holding some unfamiliarity for us. They are strange enough, you might say, that we can view them with new eyes, without preconceptions, which is a good place to begin.
I ask students to examine one of those photographs, to describe what they see, to tell me what is happening in the photo. There is movement, in such an examination, from content to meaning, from the specific details seen to what the configuration of these details might mean.
The details of the photograph which stand out for the student writer become the bones of the description. Meaning becomes the flesh on those bones, and needs to fit the facts of what has been seen. One cannot be making stuff up out of nothing. The particular selection of details implies a motion in the photo, a narrative of some sort, a configuration which leads to understanding.
With practice, a writer can move from describing photographs to framing a live and moving vista in a similar way, looking at the view as if through a picture frame - what is in the view, what is the motion of that configuration, what does it mean?
The careful writer is never ashamed of his enthusiasms nor of his ignorance. Indeed, ignorance mixed with humility is a great virtue for writers.
So the beginning writer can start to ask, in a variety of contexts, what is important in this scene, how is it arranged or configured, what motion does the arrangement suggest, and what does it all mean. Understanding what it means is really the middle part of the operation: between seeing what we see and recording what it means, we have to make selections about which details are important, how they might fit together, and how that configuration might suggest some greater notion.
Admittedly, in actual practice, the process of selection which leads to understanding starts at the very first moment of seeing, and continues through the last moment of recording our observations; yet we need to underline "understanding" as a distinct part of the writer's task, so that we might begin to appreciate how we arrive at that point where we know what we have seen.
This, obviously, is a discussion I haven't finished. I think I have been circling and trying to come to terms with this aspect of writing for all my years as a writer, and I'll have to continue examining it.
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