"Snapshots" -- Looking through the photo lens to capture the physical detail of a scene.
Ma put he kids to bed and did some sewing till they fell asleep.
vs
Ma kissed them both, and tucked the covers in around them. The lay there awhile, looking at Ma's smooth, parted hair and her hands busy with sewing in the lamplight. Her needle made little clicking sounds against her thimble and then the thread went softly, swish! Through the pretty calico that Pa had traded furs for.
-Ingalls Wilder
Little House in the Big Woods
The baker listened to the woman.
vs
The baker, who was an older man with a thick neck, listened without saying anything when she told him the child would be eight next Monday. The Baker wore a white apron that looked like a smock. Straps cut under his arms, went around back and then to front again where they were secure under his heavy waist. He wiped his hands on his apron as he listened to her. He kept his eyes down on the photographs and let her talk. He let her take her time. He'd just come to work and he'd be there all night, baking, and he was in no real hurry.
-Raymond Carver
A Small Good Thing
Thoughtshots - A writer's ability to communicate what a character is thinking and feeling at a given moment. They:
· draw frames around stories and essays
· place events in a context and give the reader and the writer a reason to be interested
Thoughtshots are another way to include detail in your writing. A thoughtshot allows the writer to pause and reflect on a particular event or a detail. For example, you could write “My mother always sat down in front of the television after dinner.” But a thoughtshot would be far more interesting to read. Here is an example:
I don’t know why my mother always sat down in front of the television after dinner.
Perhaps it was the only time she really had for herself. My sister and I always
had to do the dishes. My step-father usually went out to the garage to work on
the old Buick that he always thought he could get up and running someday.
Maybe Mom just liked being alone with her game show. She always watched
Jeopardy with Alex Trebeck. I think she thought Alex was handsome and smart.
Maybe she dreamed that Alex would come into our living room one day and swoop
her off to game show land. Mom knew a lot of the answers on Jeopardy, and she’d
call them out to the television as if those contestants could hear her. “Where is China!”
she’d yell. I always thought it was sort of dumb, and I remember one time my best friend
Angela was over at my house. She heard my mother and looked at me like I was weird.
A thoughtshot lets you go deeper into your own mind, and it allows you to go deeper into the mind of someone you are writing about. A famous writer named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said that “When we read we meditate with other minds.” A thoughtshot lets you do that as a writer, and sets things up so your reader can do that, too.
Here’s an example of a thoughtshot from Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
The jolts that took the pilot had come, and now Brian sat and there was a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming roar of the engine—a strange feeling of silence and being alone.
He was stopped. Inside he was stopped. He could not think past what he saw, what he felt. All was stopped. The very core him, the very center of Brian Robeson was stopped and stricken with a white-flash of horror, a terror so intense that his
breathing, his thinking, and nearly his heart had stopped.
Seconds passed, seconds that became all of his life, and he began to know what he was seeing, began to understand what he saw and that was worse, so much worse that he wanted to make his mind freeze again.
He was sitting in a bushplane roaring seven thousand feet above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack and who was either dead or in something close to a coma.
He was alone.
In a roaring plane with no pilot he was alone.
Baby Steps or Exploding a Moment
Baby steps are used to describe and action step by step—or baby step by baby step. For example, you could write “He walked through the doorway.” Or you could use baby steps and write:
Babysteps give the reader meaningful details. Another way of thinking about baby steps is called “Exploding the Moment.” It’s when a moment is slowed way down—like in the movies. The following is an example of an exploded moment written by a 5th grader.
The Lead
One of the things that you will want to think about is the beginning of your essay. This is called the “lead.”
You will want the beginning of your writing to be very interesting and to lead the reader into the rest of the piece of writing. Here are some examples of good leads from some famous authors.
“I was six years old when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength.
--Amy Tan
“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.”
--Jay McInerney
“You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.”
--The Woman Warrior
“The name my family calls me is Morning Girl, because I wake up early always with something on my mind.”
--Michael Dorris
“Suddenly everything stops.”
--Alison James
“Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again.”
--Stephanie Vaughn
“The doorman of the Kilmarnock was six foot two. He wore a pale blue uniform, and white gloves made his hands look enormous. He opened the door of the yellow taxi as gently as an old maid stroking a cat.”
--Raymond Chandler