The Writer's Mentor - Ann Douglas, Caroline Joy Adams, Elizabeth Bowen

"[Hemingway] understood...that what the writer knows but omits will show up in what he writes as a sense of unstated depth that is more powerful than any attempt to describe the indescribable can be. Good prose, Hemingway insisted again and again, must be like an iceberg, seven-eighths submerged; like dynamite packed under a bridge..."

- Ann Douglas

This idea speaks to me as I struggle to express my character's thoughts. My mind screams SHOW, DON'T TELL but perhaps equally powerful is that which I do not tell or show, that which hovers in the background. I should also give Hemingway another go - I've only ever read The Old Man and the Sea and that was a long time ago.

"Sensory details are critical to powerful writing because they can set a mood; evoke a huge array of feelings; trigger memories for both your character or your readers; and draw them into believing that they are right there, in that scene, in that moment, inside your character's mind."

- Caroline Joy Adams

I want so much for people to be inside October's mind, to feel what she feels and see what she sees. It is my greatest hope for my work.

"One cannot 'make' characters, only marionettes. The manipulated movement of the marionette is not the 'action' necessary for plot. Characterless action is not action at all, in the plot sense. It is the indivisibility of the act from the actor, and the inevitability of that act on the part of that actor, that gives action verisimilitude*. Without that, action is without force or reason. Forceless, reasonless action disrupts plot. The term 'creation of character' is misleading. Characters pre-exist. They are found. They reveal themselves slowly to the novelists perception - as might fellow traveler's seated opposite one in a very dimply-lit railway carriage."

- Elizabeth Bowen

*Verisimilitude means giving something the appearance of being true or real. I had to look that one up!

I identify with the comments here about characters and it applies to my setting too. People ask me why I set my novel in Arizona. I didn't - the novel set itself there. It say down and said "here" and I said "Okay, I can work with that."


All quotes are from Ian Jackman's The Writer's Mentor. I'm really enjoying the short pithy chapters with their delicate drops of wisdom. I highly recommend it to anyone in the editing process.