{"id":7,"date":"2015-01-08T14:38:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T14:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zachbarnesonwriting.wordpress.com\/?p=7"},"modified":"2015-01-08T14:38:03","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T14:38:03","slug":"observe-experience-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2015\/01\/08\/observe-experience-write\/","title":{"rendered":"Observe, Experience, Write!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writers observe everything. \u00a0But Zachary<\/em>, you might contend,\u00a0doesn’t everyone see everything? \u00a0<\/em>Ah, nope. \u00a0It’s the\u00a0difference between\u00a0hearing<\/em> music and\u00a0listening<\/em> to music. \u00a0One requires active participation, and one does not. \u00a0Writers\u00a0are human-shaped sponges, absorbing experience, digesting it, and turning it into meaningful prose.<\/p>\n

Just try it. \u00a0Step back from a group conversation when it’s not your turn to talk and listen with your eyes. \u00a0What are people saying? \u00a0How are they saying it? \u00a0Do their faces and body-language agree? \u00a0When you’re driving to work, what are the trees saying, what is the ground whispering? \u00a0Ask questions and actively seek answers. \u00a0Seeing rather than simply being is the first step toward empathetic writing.<\/p>\n

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t always a great practice. \u00a0Someone introduces themselves to me and what do I do? \u00a0Like a highly-functioning\u00a0sociopath, I listen to\u00a0the timbre of someone’s\u00a0voice and gauge whether it dances,\u00a0skips, drags, or grates rather than\u00a0actually comprehending\u00a0their damn name<\/em>. \u00a0It’s a process that leaves me with my foot in my mouth 97.2% of the time, but adds another aspect of nuance to my writerly tool belt. \u00a0A good trade? \u00a0I think it can be, as long as you politely ask for the name to be repeated without sticking your own foot deeper into your gullet.<\/p>\n

Varied observational and participatory experience allows for varied prose. \u00a0Notice I didn’t say\u00a0good<\/em>. \u00a0‘Good’ comes after tens of thousands of hours of keyboard-face-smash until the gibberish finally becomes semi-coherent and more importantly, your own.<\/p>\n

Instead of tending toward clich\u00e9, a writer who actively catalogues the goings-on around him will be able to say something fresh about a particularly ordinary subject. \u00a0I personally love\u00a0personification, and here’s an example (most of which got cut in the most recent draft, but that’s okay):<\/p>\n

“The shop before us slouched into the ground, tortured black wood out of place beside fa\u00e7ades of stone. As his\u00a0posture suggested, the whole of the building looked on the verge of collapse; He\u00a0shed his coat of gritty plaster like flaking skin. Deploring windows peered out through begrimed cataracts, too dirty for even the most contentious light-beam to penetrate. Rotten shingles fell like dandruff, and his\u00a0mouth–the door, that is–was in the worst shape of all. Festooned with rot and fungus and mold, a gap-toothed grin indeed.”<\/p>\n

So I challenge all\u00a0writers to observe and describe and then copy\u00a0it down. \u00a0Stray from clich\u00e9 and, if ye be a brave soul, post those descriptions\u00a0in the comments! \u00a0Happy writing.<\/p>\n

(As a side-note–an end-note, really–I\u00a0<\/em>intended<\/strong> to title my first post [title of your post here]. \u00a0Yup. \u00a0Just my strange sense of humor that probably makes me look less net-savvy than I had hoped.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t steal\u00a0my words. \u00a0They’re mine. \u00a9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writers observe everything. \u00a0But Zachary, you might contend,\u00a0doesn’t everyone see everything? \u00a0Ah, nope. \u00a0It’s the\u00a0difference between\u00a0hearing music and\u00a0listening to music. \u00a0One requires active participation, and one does not. \u00a0Writers\u00a0are human-shaped sponges, absorbing experience, digesting it, and turning it into meaningful prose. Just try it. \u00a0Step back from a group conversation when it’s not your turn to talk and listen with your eyes. \u00a0What are people saying? \u00a0How are they saying it? \u00a0Do their faces and body-language agree? \u00a0When you’re driving to work, what are the trees saying, what is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":157,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2015\/03\/10\/legit\/","url_meta":{"origin":7,"position":0},"title":"Legit","date":"March 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I think that Stephen King is a good author-ly voice to heed. He certainly knows how it's done--he can buy all the groceries he wants, now! In fact, I think he's hit the nail on the head. The nail is the problem, of course. And King might have been defining\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Inspiration\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1300,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2016\/06\/16\/cussin-and-bigotry\/","url_meta":{"origin":7,"position":1},"title":"Cussin' and Bigotry","date":"June 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"No matter what you think about self-censorship, I believe that it is very important to at least have thought about the issues and be able to provide a reason to back up your stance. Without overemphasizing the scope and reach of our work, we writers need to understand how our\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Censorship\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":188,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2015\/08\/19\/character-pain\/","url_meta":{"origin":7,"position":2},"title":"Character Pain","date":"August 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Character pain sounds like a bad thing, and it is. Audiences don't like it, writers don't like writing it (the empathetic human beings among us, that is), but nothing could be more quintessential to high quality entertainment.","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Bones\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}