My feet are magnifying glasses
I’m walking barefoot in my apartment. I love the touch of the smooth bamboo floor. Occasionally—when I haven’t wiped it for a while because I’m too busy with my work—I step on something I didn’t see and wouldn’t have picked up if my feet hadn’t registered it as big enough to care. I balance on one foot to check what got stuck under the other foot. I am always surprised by the size of my discovery.
A piece of sand, a tiny breadcrumb, or lint—they all feel bigger than they actually are. My feet experience my surroundings differently than my eyes. Of course, you say, our eyes and our feet are on opposite ends of our body. The eyes, high above the floor level, have a different point of view.
Writers work on story from different angles and use a variety of techniques to zoom in on a certain sensation. In movies, we notice a close-up or how slow motion extends an important emotional event so the viewer won’t miss that moment.
How do writers make the reader pick up on an important story element? How do they spotlight that fleeting moment—a minuscule movement—that otherwise might get lost in the story if they don’t take special care to bring it to the reader’s attention?
Slowing down the forward movement of your story builds tension and brings into focus an important detail. Slowing down does not mean you’re hitting the brakes. It doesn’t mean that the story slows down so much that it stands still. Slowing down is a change of pace—incremental, carefully crafted for the reader who needs to adjust to a new rhythm—to make space for revelations that make the reader’s heart pound.
Catching someone’s eyes, touching the other who seems out of reach—literally and metaphorically—opening or closing one’s eyes, these are instances that last split seconds.
The writer of a screenplay writes the scene of an important moment accordingly. But if the significance of a moment is revealed only later, the editor zooms-in or uses slow motion to create that crucial twist, that insight into a character’s emotional charge. Storytelling for a book requires its own set of tools.
The writer of a book can’t write: zoom-in or close-up. Their words have to create everything—the background and setting of the physical space, the hope and disappointment of the characters. They craft scenes for the reader to take it all in—the big sweeping movements and the brief, subtle moment in which everything changes. The reader might not see it coming, but the writer has to prepare the reader for what’s underfoot and help him take a closer look.
I’m curious—as a writer going from screen to book, do you enjoy the freedom of form a book gives you?
Are you challenged by the fact that you alone are responsible for the movie in the reader’s mind?
