3 Writing Tips from Poetry: For Softer Scenes
I’m nowhere near the writing league of Mr. Eliot, but dang, I still feel his asthmatic-style-pain.
Whenever I’m struggling to find the right word, I turn to poetry. And it helps. A lot. So in the interest of sharing personal best practices, here are three poems and their related writing tips for softer scenes, such as a character professing true love:
1. Use soft sounds for softer scenes.
I suppose this is obvious, but it always helps to see a master at work. My all-time favorite poem for soft sounds is Summer Remembered by Isabella Gardner. I love how Gardner moves through words with gentle s, m, wh, and n sounds…And then brings them to life by contrasting their soft qualities with harsh tones like ‘pizzicato plinkle’. BTW, I’m pretty sure she made up the word plinkle. Go Isabella.
Summer Remembered
by Isabella Gardner
Sounds sum and summon the remembering of summers.
The humming of the sun
The mumbling in the honey-suckle vine
The whirring in the clovered grass
The pizzicato plinkle of ice in an auburn
uncle’s amber glass.
The whing of father’s racquet and the whack
of brother’s bat on cousin’s ball
and calling voices call-
ing voices spilling voices…
The munching of saltwater at the splintered dock
the slap and slop of waves on little sloops
The quarreling of oarlocks hours across the bay
The canvas sails that bleat as they
are blown. The heaving buoy bell-
ing HERE I am
HERE you are HEAR HEAR
listen listen listen
The gramophone is wound
the music goes round and around
BYE BYE BLUES LINDY’S COMING
voices calling calling calling
“Children! Children! Time’s Up
Time’s Up”
Merrily sturdily wantonly the familial voices
cheerily chidingly call to the children TIME’S UP
and the mute children’s unvoiced clamor sacks the summer air
crying Mother Mother are you there?
***
2. Bring your scene to life with texture and detail
No one describes the tiny details that encapsulate a big picture like D H Lawrence. In the poem below, all the chick does is run a wet washcloth over her shoulder, but you’re there, adoring her as much as the author.
Gloire de Dijon
by David Herbert Lawrence
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.
She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.
***
3. Check all five senses.
Sometimes (actually, a lot of the time) I struggle to grab the ‘hook’ that brings a scene to life. When I have that trouble, I run through all the five senses my character may be experiencing: sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste. In my writing, I often go first for the obvious choice—sight—in order to build a scene, but the other senses are often far more powerful. A great example of this is below. Although the poem is arguably no love scene, it still hits you over the head with all five senses. You’re there, feeling the full punch of the author’s experiences in WWI.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
***
Up next week: poetry tips for action scenes!
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