Monday Mission Cheat Sheet

Tomorrow's is going to be hard, so I'm posting a few hints and examples in advance.

This week's mission is to write a post that is all anecdote: no rumination, no epiphany, no resolution. I know it doesn't sound hard, but it is. The idea came from a John Gardner writing exercise in his classic writing book, The Art of Fiction. His version was:

"Write a description of a barn as seen by a man whose son has just died. Do not write about the man, his son, or death."

And that's the idea here, too. Write an anecdote. Any anecdote about anyone or anything you like. Do not include the point of the anecdote, but try to make it clear anyway. Expect that this will take you about twenty times longer per word than you are used to in a blog post.

An example:

"On a late September day when Frances was about ten months old, I took her to a big park on the shores of Lake Ontario. The sky was a silvered blue, reflected in the lake, the plants still green and flowering. I'd dressed her in a new pair of bright orange cords in 6-9 months that were still way too big, and a short-sleeved white onesie with orange flowers near the collar.

"She was just learning to sit up. I walked the park's trail with Frances either in the stroller or in the bjorn, depending on her whims, and pointed out the flowers and birds and small animals and children playing on the slides and swings. She waved her arms mightily.

"The colour of her pants and shirt set off the green green grass and blue blue lake and sky so beautifully that I had to have a picture. I set her on her bum facing the lake, and snapped at least a dozen shots from behind. The one that hangs by paperclip on my office wall is my favourite: her large blond head precariously balanced, her round sweet arms held out to either side, the way the white of her onesie draws the eye to her inexorably. I look at it every day.

"Immediately after the photo was taken, she fell over backwards, whacked her head on the hard ground and started to wail. There were no more pictures that day."

Fun, eh?

I'm not claiming this is a work of art or a paragon of the form, but here are a few pointers:

1. Be careful with where you set the beginning and ending. You want to include enough to set the stage, but not so much that readers have a hard time figuring out what the point is.

2. Be selective with details. Don't include everything you remember, just enough to a) have the anecdote make sense (narrative clarity) and b) give readers some clues about what you're driving at. I've told you the broad outlines of what we did that day, enough so you'll understand why I wanted to take a picture (hopefully) but not all about our treck through the adjoining marsh and watching fish jump between the bullrushes. I didn't tell you what I brought for the snack or whether she ate it. I didn't tell you how often we switched back and forth between bjorn and stroller. Because those details weren't relevant.

3. Be descriptive but not judgemental. In the parlance of fiction writers, "show, don't tell." Don't say that "so-and-so was a jerk," just describe exactly what he or she did and let the reader draw the conclusion. Don't say "she was happy," or "he loved it"; tell us what he or she did ("she squealed 'thank you!' and gave me a big hug") or how he or she looked ("he frowned, threw his hotdog on the floor and stomped on it") that told you what they were feeling. I know. It's hard. You can do it.

You'll notice that in the example I don't tell you it was sunny or warm, but you know the sky is blue and she's wearing short sleeves, so it's obvious. I don't say that we had fun, but I hope you can tell how much I enjoyed it from my descriptions of what I saw and showed to Frances. I don't tell you she's having difficulty balancing in her sitting position, but I hope I've left you enough clues that you could sense she might fall. And when she did, I don't tell you that I felt guilty. I just say that I didn't take any more photographs.

I also don't tell you why that memory is significant to me, or what I learned from it, but I hope you can tell. (Can you? What do you think it was?)

Alternatively, you're reading this and thinking, "I didn't get any of this out of your anecdote, Andrea. You are a hack."

Anyway. Like I said, this one's hard. I've been trying for years and I still haven't written a barn description that I'm happy with. But I think bloggers (myself included) often don't trust the intelligence of readers enough; we make things too obvious by writing out the anecdotes and then every single little thought about it that led to our epiphany, which is then spelled out in detail, sometimes leaving readers feeling as though they've been hit over the head with the meaning stick. This is a good way to practice a form of writing that still (when it's well done) conveys meaning and significance while being more open to interpretation and more entertaining. Who always wants a moral to the story?

And here you thought that all you had to do was write an anecdote!

Posted by Andrea at April 8, 2007 11:21 AM under Monday Mission

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