Neal Abbott's Blog, page 3

The Case For The Oxford Comma

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In English grammar, a comma is a punctuative that separates words, phrases, and clauses. Disagreement exists now that did not when I was young (that’s because there was only one rule and the introduction of change is somewhat recent). The discrepancy has to do with what is known as the Oxford Comma. It is called that because it is the older and standard rule as listed in the Oxford Style Manual. Sometimes it is called the serial comma. That’s because it is used when items in a series are listed in a sentence. For example: “I packed for the trip my journal, my walking shoes, and my snorkel.” The last comma before and is the Oxford Comma.

Why The Change?

The reason for the change is because some say the and implies the comma and it is not necessary. Sometimes it is, or confusion ensues. What is interesting is that the proposal for change is not truly based on any linguistic reasons. The change was put forth by the publishing industry. To leave out an unnecessary comma saves space, which saves money in the publishing industry. How cheap do you gotta be? These are the same geniuses who changed two spaces after a period to one, and for the same reason. Let that sink in – the argument the Oxford Comma is not coming form linguist or professors, but printers looking to shave a few pennies from the cost of printing. I declare shenanigans!

Clarity

What someone wrote a book, and stated on the dedication page, “I dedicate this book to my parents, Barbara Bush and Jesus Christ.” This statement omits the Oxford Comma. Is the writer saying his book is dedicated to four people, or that his parents are Barbara Bush and Jesus Christ? The Oxford Comma would clear that up. Or what if I said, “I had over for dinner last night a couple of prostitutes, Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein.” Am I calling Bill and Harvey a couple of prostitutes, or were they there along with the prostitutes? The Oxford Comma would let you know for sure.

A Real-World Problem

This is not all hypothetical things for grammar nerds to argues about. He absence of a comma recently led to a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. Maine’s Oakhurst Dairy was sued by some of its drivers over backpay due from overtime. Maine state law at the time stated that workers are not entitled to overtime pay for: “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods.” The argument was that a lack of a comma after shipping that it is the packing “for shipment or distribution” that’s not eligible for overtime and not the distribution itself. Only with a comma would “distribution” have been included as one of the series of activities ineligible for overtime. The drivers won and the dairy had to pay. A proper Oxford Comma would have kept this from becoming such a problem.

The Oxford Comma is not only based upon common sense, but decades, even centuries of uninterrupted use. The proposal for change did not come from language people, but book and newspaper folk. It has no legitimate claim to change anything. Let’s keep the Oxford Comma. If anyone tries to make me change, they’ll have to pry the Oxford Comma from my cold, firm, determined, and stubborn hands.

 

 

“Looking At ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ as a Writer”

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Ernest Hemingway once said that a story is like an iceberg. The ice you see is the words on the page and rest of the ice that remains underwater is the rest of the story. As we know, most of the iceberg is under water. In other words, Hemingway is saying that most of the story is not written on the page.

The Title

Hemingway was a master of the writing principle of saying it without saying it. His short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is a perfect example. Let’s begin with the title. A white elephant is rare. In southeast Asian culture, a king would give a white elephant as a gift to another king. But you couldn’t put an elephant like this to work. So it sat about, idle, and eating everything. The term “white elephant gift” has come to refer to a gift that the receiver doesn’t want. So from the title alone we know someone is going to offer to give something to someone and they don’t want it.

The Simple Operation

The setting is a man and a woman having a drink at a train station waiting for the train to arrive and take them to Madrid. They day is very hot, which tells us that the discussion is heated. They are not yelling or fighting, but they are feeling the heat, at least, the woman is. The man is trying to convince the woman to have an operation, one which he calls “a simple operation” and “not even an operation at all.”

The operation involves letting air in, but where he does not say. He insists that afterward they will be happy just like before, but one gets the sense they were not too happy before at all. They woman states that she knows some people who had this simple operation who were not so happy afterwards, despite what the man insists.

The man says he doesn’t want her to go through with it if she doesn’t want to, but the manner in which he continually tries to persuade her says otherwise. She is willing, but only because she does not care for herself, only him, and making him happy.

The man tells her that afterward they can have anything they want, but she disagrees. Clearly, whatever this simple operation does, it removes something she wants, but he doesn’t get it, because, like the woman, he only cares for himself and has no regard for her.

Use Of Imagery

So what is this operation. The text tells us that the side of the tracks that contain the white hills, the unwanted gift, is dry and barren. She looks to the other side of the tracks and sees the opposite. Hemingway writes, “Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.”

In contrast to the lifeless side of the tracks with the hills, the other side shows signs of life, prosperity, even fertility. Clouds and rivers, trees and grain, all this lie in contrast to the dreary countryside. The woman is drawn to this side, as if she prefers it. She is at a stretch of train tracks, which symbolize a choice, this side or the other side.

Her choice is between fertility and barrenness and whether or not to have a simple operation. It seems clearly that man wants her to have an abortion, but she doesn’t want it. Still, she is willing to make him happy. Sadly, she accepts his white elephant gift.

As an author, notice how Hemingway uses dialogue, setting, imagery, and even the title to help tell his story. Keep in mind there is still plenty of ice below the water. Try to develop the skills and work them into your overall creative writing craft. Great writers are always great readers first. They don’t knock off other writers, but they always learn from them.

 

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Relationships & Intimacy in Creative Writing

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I have always defined fiction as interesting people doing interesting things. This brings together the two great elements of story crafting, character development and plot development. Between the two I have always found character development to be the most difficult and the most rewarding. I have done many things to add layers to my characters. I have given then all the Briggs-Myers Personality Exam and I have given them associated mental disorders. I have divided them by the anneagramic personalities and by the major segments of types of dreams. But from my experience, the secret to tremendous character development is to explore the relationships between my characters.

Readers Relate To Relationships

Let’s face it, no man is an island. We all have relationships with other people, both those close to us and those on the fringe of our associations. These relationships can be good or bad, but we all have them. So when we read of a character who struggles with a relationship with someone, we can put ourselves in their shoes. Likewise, when boy meets girl and boy agonizes over how to get her to notice him, we all shake our head and empathize along.

Readers want to relate to characters, but readers will relate to relationships because they are so universal. The more prickliness you put in the relationship between any two characters, the more readers are invested because they want everything to work out well. The more you conceal, but let you readers know that something is concealed, the more they will read on to see what you’ve got hidden on the next page for them.

“Into Me I See”

I once heard a relationship expert define intimacy as “into me I see.” In other words, the level of intimacy between any two people shows us more about those two people than we would have known about them singularly and without the relationship. Think of your own life. How do you relate to your spouse or your parent? The level and type of intimacy a man has with his wife or his father shows us more about him than we could have known of if there never were a reference to these other people.

If this is true for you and me, then it’s true for our readers. Likewise, it will follow with all of our characters. When you demonstrate relationships that are rich and complex, so becomes our understanding of these people. If I wish to describe interesting people doing interesting things, that means some people will work together or sometimes other characters will try to undermine certain characters. The bonds between all of these people are demonstrative as to who they really are. You can give wonderful personalities to your characters and make them as unique and individual as possible. But when you show how all these people get along, you have found the hidden treasure of more interesting characters, which cannot help but make for better stories.

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Loonies & Literature

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Even considering the most well-adjusted among us, everybody is somewhat bonkers. If you say you are not, that’s the poof you are! Nothing makes your characters more real and induvial that to make them act a bit nutty. The field of psychiatry has given all these good names and descriptions for different disorders and tendencies, so why not use them?

There is one group of odd behavior.

Paranoid personality disorder– characterized by irrational suspicions and mistrust of others.
Schizoid personality disorder– lack of interest in social relationships, seeing no point in sharing time with others.
Schizotypal personality disorder– characterized by social isolation, anxiety in social situations, and odd behavior or thinking.

There is another group for erratic disorders.

Antisocial personality disorder– a disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy, and usually a pattern of regular criminal activity.
Borderline personality disorder– extreme “black and white” thinking, instability in relationships, identity and behavior often leading to self-harm.
Histrionic personality disorder– attention-seeking behavior including inappropriately seductive behavior and shallow or exaggerated emotions.
Narcissistic personality disorder– a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Preoccupations with fantasies, including a sense of entitlement.

Still, another collection centers on fearful disorders.

Avoidant personality disorder– feelings of social inhibition and social inadequacy, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation and avoidance of social interaction.
Dependent personality disorder– psychological dependence on other people.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder– characterized by rigid conformity to rules, moral codes and excessive orderliness.

Not only do mental ticks make your characters unique and real, it makes their own decisions an obstacle to overcome. Your prose becomes much more entertaining for your readers. And what’s more, it’s fun!

 

Top Ten Most Compelling Characters From Literature

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A great novel has compelling characters. That can mean many things. They can be compelling because they are heroic or compelling because they are disgusting. Here is a list of (in my opinion) the Top Ten list of the most compelling characters from literature

10 Nabokov’s Humbert – The professor from Lolita is compelling, if not more than a bit creepy

9 Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – Every ad telling women they can have it all needs to be followed by an ad for Madame Bovary

8 Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin – The verse-novel of this title character is the ultimate sorry, not sorry tale (or is it not sorry, sorry?)

7 Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – His credentials have been given a boost recently by the excellent BBC show

6 Tolstoy’s Count Pierre Bezukhov – He goes through so much to finally get the girl of his dreams

5 Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Compelling, or not compelling? That’s not even a question!

4 Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby – Rich and handsome, so what that he’s a bootlegger and a crook?

3 Joyce’s Leopold Bloom – How many other people in books have their own day named after them?

2 Lee’s Atticus Finch – Maybe the most beloved character in all of American literature

1 Hugo’s Jean Valjean – Talk about your full character arcs, Valjean has been through it all

This is my list, and it’s just my opinion. I’d love to hear what you think. What would your top ten be like? Tell me in the Comment section below. And please like and share this article with other bookworms

 

 

Chekhov & Ambiguity

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Anton Chekhov is held up as the paragon of Minimalism. To me Minimalism is another way of describing good writing. In fact, I once heard Minimalism called Essentialism. Everything in the text is essential to the text.

To include the unnecessary is therefore bad writing. This is more than in details given in scenery or physical descriptions, it also has to do with subject matter and theme. No one ever called Chekhov an activist writer. Such he would abhor. One of the greatest contributions Chekhov ever made to the realm of Creative Writing was perfecting and demonstrating the craft of Ambiguity. None achieved it better with the possible exception of Shakespeare.

The Unbiased Observer

“It seems to me that the writer should not try to solve such ques­tions as those of God, pes­simism, etc. His busi­ness is but to describe those who have been speak­ing or think­ing about God and pes­simism, how and under what cir­cum­stances. The artist should be not the judge of his char­ac­ters and their con­ver­sa­tions, but only an unbi­ased observer.”

Chekhov does not use his prose to take a stand. Instead, he expertly raises questions he never answers. He has enough regard for the reader to handle that task. The manuscript serves to raise the questions of life and bring up the pros and the cons and give the reader something to think about. The reader can take what Chekhov raises and intelligently discuss such important and universal messages with others who have read Chekhov, even with those who have not.

The Proper Problem

“You are right in demand­ing that an artist should take an intel­li­gent atti­tude to his work, but you con­fuse two things: solv­ing a prob­lem and stat­ing a prob­lem cor­rectly. It is only the sec­ond that is oblig­a­tory for the artist.”

When we speak of fiction, we are talking about Creative Writing, not Didactic Writing. If someone wants the answers to life, then they should turn to the essays written by philosophers. If they want the tools to hunt for the answers for themselves, let them pick up a volume of Chekhov, whether novel, short story, or play.

Chekhov understands the real secret of story-telling: there is only one story. The one story is what it means to be a human. We are all different, but our problems are the same, our difficulties are similar, and our struggles are universal. Chekhov masterly tells this one story over and over. The variation is merely the differences in plot, but in the end, they tell the same one story. And these variations of the one story perform the same task, asking questions without answering them.

Horse Thievery

“You abuse me for objec­tiv­ity, call­ing it indif­fer­ence to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: ‘Steal­ing horses is an evil.’ But that has been known for ages with­out my say­ing so. Let the jury judge them; it’s my job sim­ply to show what sort of peo­ple they are. I write: you are deal­ing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beg­gars but well-fed peo­ple, that they are peo­ple of a spe­cial cult, and that horse steal­ing is not sim­ply theft but pas­sion. Of course it would be pleas­ant to com­bine arrow with a ser­mon, but for me per­son­ally it is impos­si­ble owing to the con­di­tions of tech­nique. You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Oth­er­wise, the story will not be as com­pact as all short sto­ries out to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for him­self the sub­jec­tive ele­ments that are lack­ing in the story.”

The end of this quote reminds me of Hemingway’s concept of story writing. He compared it to an iceberg. The words on the page are the visible part of the iceberg and the rest of the iceberg is the remainder of the story. The unseen part of the iceberg is the majority of the iceberg. So most of the story is actually unwritten by the author.

A great deal of this underwater iceberg portion of the story is the judgments one may make. You may recognize this quote by Chekhov. It is probably the most famous saying of his along with the moonlight quote used in an earlier part of this series. The conclusions are to be drawn by the reader, not the writer. Stated another way, it is not the job of the writer to answer the questions of life, but just ask them, as well as debate them with the use of narrative, dialogue, and all character interaction. It is the reader’s job to come up with the solutions regarding human existence.

Authors are neither preachers nor philosophers. Or, at least if they are elsewise, they do not practice this specialty while in the role of author. Now we all know that writers and readers. Not only that, but reading fuels our writing. In fact, I’m careful to watch what I read as I work on a project knowing it could color my text. My challenge to all the Creative Writers who are reading this is to get a hold of some stories by Chekhov. Try a novel, a short story, and a play for starters. Read one of each and look for this ambiguity. Look for ways you can use this to expert your writing. But don’t sell yourself short. You should also read Chekhov to look for the tools in answering the difficult questions of life. This is why he wrote in the first place. You will be a better person and a better writer.

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Chekhov & Character

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One of the greatest Russian writers, and that’s saying quite a bit, is Anton Chekhov. This is the second of the three-part series on his approach to Creative Writing.

The Hero’s Actions

“In the sphere of psy­chol­ogy, details are also the thing. God pre­serve us from common­places. Best of all is to avoid depict­ing the hero’s state of mind; you ought to try to make it clear from the hero’s actions.”

When I first studied writing, one of my professor’s constant criticisms was that I needed to give all of my characters a quirk. That is advice I still offer today, but I didn’t take to it at first because I really didn’t understand it. I recall sitting in his office complaining that he wanted this guy to have an eye patch and that guy to have a false leg and that I didn’t want to write a bunch of pirate stories. It was there I began to learn about making characters as specific and individualistic as possible.

But these physical quirks were nothing if they had nothing to do with the character. The best way to make a character truly unique is by his actions. You find his worldview and his motivation so that you can wind him up and let him play. And if you do this effectively you will never need internal monologue to tell us what the person is thinking. We will know their mindset by their action.

Good Writing

“You under­stand it at once when I say, ‘The man sat on the grass.’ You under­stand it because it is clear and makes no demands on the atten­tion. On the other hand it is not eas­ily under­stood if I write, ‘A tall, narrow-chested, middle-sized man, with a red beard, sat on the green grass, already tram­pled by pedes­tri­ans, sat silently, shyly, and timidly looked about him.’ That is not imme­di­ately grasped by the mind, whereas good writ­ing should be grasped at once—in a second.”

So if we need specific details to make characters as unique as possible, then the more details, the greater the specificity of the character, right? Wrong! Too many details muddle the image. Pretty soon you have so many details that you have none.

Not only do superfluous details of a character get in the way of seeing him for who he is, but it obscures whatever action he may engage. From Chekhov’s example just listed above, the point the writer needs to get across is that the man sat on the grass. To go into an array of specifics about the man and the grass get in the way of the fact that the man sat on the grass. Good fiction writing is wrapped up in action, not physical details.

The Writer As Chemist

“That the world ‘swarms with male and female scum’ is per­fectly true. Human nature is imper­fect. But to think that the task of lit­er­a­ture is to gather the pure grain from the muck heap is to reject lit­er­a­ture itself. Artis­tic lit­er­a­ture is called so because it depicts life as it really is. Its aim is truth—unconditional and hon­est. A writer is not a con­fec­tioner, not a dealer in cos­met­ics, not an enter­tainer; he is a man bound under com­pul­sion, by the real­iza­tion of his duty and by his con­science. To a chemist, noth­ing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objec­tive as a chemist.”

I lost the desire to make any character likable or unlikable quite a long time ago. When I learned to grey my characters, make neither white heroes or black villains, I dropped the need to force them to be a certain way. Our good guy’s flatulence never smells like treacle just like our bad guy’s suffering can make us shed a tear.

So Chekhov’s notion of the writer as a chemist is a clear description of what our attitude towards our own characters should be. In the end it is not so much hero versus villain, good guy against bad guy, but protagonist and antagonist. These protagonists might do some vile things and these antagonists may seem perfectly justifiable. They are antagonists only that that they oppose the protagonist in getting what he wants.

Character development is one of the most difficult aspects of story writing simply because it is so involved. I will spend months plotting and outlining a novel before I begin a first draft, and most of that time is working on the uniqueness of my characters. Let’s face it, the most amazing of stories turns into a snooze fest if the actions of this tale are performed by flat characters. Chekhov’s advice helps me, and I hope I does you some good, as well.

Chekhov & Scenery

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The five best writers who have ever lived (as I see things) are William Shakespeare, Homer, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. To me, these men show the skill of excellent writing to a much more advanced degree than any others.

Now name three works of each of these men, two for Homer. I believe most people, especially those more bookish, could do that with four of the five men. But I fear that even well-read folk could not even name one work of Chekhov’s. I can’t explain why his catalogue is not more familiar, even though he has the name recognition. The next few articles will take quotes from some of his private correspondence, now published, and particularly his advice on writing. It has done me a world of good, and I hope every writer takes these things to heart.

The Unfired Gun

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

Chekhov is classified as a Minimalist, and is an expert in that sphere. Along with Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy, Chekhov is one of my favorite minimalist writers.

I fear Minimalism has a bad reputation. It’s falsely thought of as being sparse. But the truth is all good writing is Minimal writing. Nothing goes into a story that does not belong. Anything else is purple prose, the darlings that must be murdered.

A True Description Of Nature

“In my opin­ion a true descrip­tion of nature should be very brief and have the character of rel­e­vance. Com­mon­places such as ‘the set­ting sun bathed the waves of the dark­en­ing sea, poured its pur­ple gold, etc.’ — ‘the swal­lows fly­ing over the sur­face of the water tit­tered merrily’ — such com­mon­places one ought to aban­don. In descrip­tions of nature one ought to seize upon the lit­tle par­tic­u­lars, group­ing them in such a way that, in read­ing, when you shut your eyes you get the picture.”

Scenery and environment, along with weather, the layout of a room, the appearance of a house, may be seen vividly in the mind of the writer. There is the temptation to cheat and fill the text with descriptions of these details. Such writing becomes the dark and stormy night that is typical of bad writing.

Let your reader fill in as many blanks as possible when it comes to physical details. They want to anyway. And such unnecessary details when provided by the author become a literary Hamburger Helper there only to stretch out prose and pad the word count. Give these details when they are part of the story, and this means sub-text.

 

The Full Moon

Chekhov and I would cringe at reading someone tell us that the moon was full. His advice was to instead have that full moon perform some action, as with his example in his quote:

“For instance you will get the full effect of a moon­lit night if you write that on the mill­dam, a lit­tle glow­ing star­point flashed from the neck of a bro­ken bot­tle, and the round black shadow of a dog or a wolf emerged and ran, etc….”

And again, this gleaming moonlight is never a superfluous point. It is noted only as it genuinely contributes to the story telling. For example, I set my first novel in the fall, October to be specific, and one week in October to be even more specific. Do I say it’s fall or October? No, I describe two fallen leaves blowing across the porch just as the main character and his brother-in-law agree to some misdemeanorous contract. One blows against the brother-in-law’s shoe and the over blows over it and the main hero steps on it. I’ve told you it’s fall and gave a scene with action that is also a portend of how the hero with betray his brother-in-law. This is how subtleties in the details of physical descriptions can be used as a story telling tool.

Chekhov wrote many letters and gave enough writing advice in them to fill up a book. These are just a few. We will see some more in the next two articles. I hope these are useful to you the writer. If you find them so, please Like it and Share them with others. And let me know what you think in the Comment section.

Deep Characters

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The Characters in your novel have layers, just like ogres, and onions, and parfaits. If for some reason you want your Characters to be flat and boring, then read Rudy Anaya. But if you want your Characters to be interesting and stimulating, each needs to be as unique and individualistic as possible. There are a few things the Creative Writer may want to keep in mind to spread out the dimensions of your Characters.

Childhood

We are all shape by our childhood, so why wouldn’t our Characters be, as well? You don’t have to detail the events of childhood to show how they affect the Character. For example, James Tyrone, the patriarche of the Tyrone family in the Eugene O’Neill play Long Day’s Journey Into Night, is a skinflintery miser. That may sound like it feeds into every Irish stereotype, but O’Neill lets it slip that James grew up dirt poor, so he felt compelled to cling to every cent he could. This not only shapes him as a Character, but feeds into the story itself, in that James is too thrifty (let’s be kind) to spend money on a good doctor for his wife or his youngest son. Even as a much older man, his actions, based upon the type of person he really is, are shaped by his childhood.

Relationships

There are some novels where the relationships of all the Characters is the story. But even in tales not so based, the Characters in all tales are affected by how they relate to others, friends and family, and foes alike. Pick one of your Characters. Did he get along with his parents, or does he still have daddy issues? Is he married? Does he dote on his wife, or is the marriage strained? Who are his friends? How does he treat them? It is clear how these relationship go far in determining what kind of person each of your Characters are.

Livelihood

What your Characters do for a living matters. Moby-Dick just wouldn’t work if Ishmael sat on the Executive Board of Greenpeace. In Faulkner’s The Hamlet, Flem Snopes is who he is based upon his work, but only because it demonstrates his takeover of the town – from the general store to the horse exchange, the story reveals him basically because of his work as it reflects the advance of his Character.

Hobbies

It is easy to provide pastimes for your Characters that mirror your own interests. I would love for all my heroes to be baseball fans. Certainly, I’d write about what I know, but there needs to be variety in my Characters, so there needs to be a difference in their hobbies. Maybe I need some Characters who enjoy opera and others who listens the Opry. While I’d like for my favorite Characters to de dedicated to Mozart, maybe I should have someone listening to Cool Moe Dee once in a while. But the hobbies should reflect the personality. A rock shaper should have a patient and meticulous nature, while a photographer might be known for his perspective on the world.

Worldview

We all have an outlook on life. Our Main Character may be Catholic or an Atheist, Republican or Democrat, given to hedonism or dedicated to sacrifice. Worldview has everything to do with what a person wants, and what someone wants moulds the individual motivation. Our Characters need motivation, each must want something very specific. What motivates out Characters begins with every one of their worldviews.

All these add layers to your Characters and makes sure they stay interesting. But this is of course only a starting place. You can think of many other layers to add to the richness of their personalities and details to fill out their being. Let me know Comment section what else you include in your character development. And please, Like and Share this with other writers you know.

 

A Cinematic Novelist – David Lean

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I recently saw an interview where a person said that the British film director David Lean was a Cinematic Novelist. He went on to explain what he meant. David Lean used the elements and the environment to help with both character as well as the story. I agree, and I have included an example from a few of his movies.

Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

An American Major escapes a Japanese POW camp and ends up in a small village. Soon he leaves in a boat with supplies and water. When he runs out of water, he drinks from the river and becomes ill. Lean portrays this with the river widening and becoming sluggish, and a hot sun beating down.

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Lawrence leads an army of Arabs in a land assault of Aqaba. All the guns in Aqaba are pointed toward the sea because no one could come out of the desert and attack, but this is what they do. The last part of their trip, and the most difficult, required crossing a stretch of desert so formidable it is called the Anvil of God. Once across, they refresh themselves at an oasis and successfully attack Aqaba. Like a weapon, they were beaten upon an anvil and tempered in the water. Thus, they became an effective weapon.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

When Yuri and Lara first encounter each other it is on a trolley. They sit one in front of the other. A small girl runs the opposite way from the trolley, and only Yuri and Lara look out at her. The trolley stops and they get up to exit, along with several others. They incidentally bump into each other, and from this they exchange a very quick glance. Immediately after this, you see the pulley-wheel on the trolley cable, and sparks shoot out. We see not only their personal compatibility, but how sparks fly at even a small glance.

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

A schoolmaster’s wife has an affair with a British officer during the trouble. At one point they meet in the woods for a little dalliance. As they are fooling around, the wind soughs in the tops of the trees, which imitates a heavy breathing sound. You also see two strings of spider web that twist about each other. After this, a pair of dandelions has their spores blown away until the two stalks are bare.

A Passage To India (1984)

A British woman in India inside a cave hears and echo, panics, and falsely assumes he was sexually assaulted by an Indian doctor. Once outside, she sits and tries to calm down. she looks up and sees a daytime full moon. The moon is itself not a source of light, but only a reflection. This incident reflects the racial undertones between the Indians and the British.

David Lean is my favorite filmmaker. But I believe to call him a Cinematic Novelists is a stretch. Not that Lean fails to use the details of element and environment to tell the story and contribute to the character, but that few novelists ever get around to doing it. My advice is to watch a few of his movies. You’ll be entertained, as well as fashioned into a better storyteller.

 

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