Use Images to Deliver Ideas
The Writer’s Book of Wisdom by Steven Taylor Goldsberry Philosophy and abstractions should be packaged and sold in gift boxes. Because concept is noncorporeal (you can’t see an idea), you…
Philosophy and abstractions should be packaged and sold in gift boxes. Because concept is noncorporeal (you can't see an idea), you should place expository sentences next to descriptions.
In The Farthest Shore, from The Earthsea Trilogy, Ursula Le Guin does this in striking fashion in her rendering of the dragon dying on the beach:
…the sand for yards about was blackened with the poisoned dragon-blood. Yet the creature still lived. So great a life is in dragons that only an equal power of wizardry can kill them swiftly. The green-gold eyes were open. …
Le Guin places her exposition between two of the most visual details. Her abstract sentences are pure analysis. Deduction, concept, idea. And where do we find this dry reflection? Between images.
Provide for your ideas a medium of images and stories.
Scott Francis is a former editor and author of Writer's Digest Books.
