The Limits of the Language

The absolute hardest part of this writing gig we have embarked upon is working within the limitations of the language. Because, one must admit, the English language in particular is not truly up to the task we often ask of it. Philosophers are well acquainted with the problem; their existential dilemmas are often too complicated and too vague for the language to adequately do the job they need. Language was invented by our ancestors to accomplish concrete communication tasks: there’s a lion behind you! Or the figs down by the stream are ripe. Language has a difficult time with ideas that are less concrete.

For us writers of fiction, this inadequacy becomes most apparent when we try to deal with emotion.

Think about it. The English language is horrible at describing the experience of emotion. Take the word “love.” We “love” our children, but “love” doesn’t really fully express the depth and breadth one feels the first time we hold our newborn child. The emotion is too complex to be simply “love.” I “love” my dog too, but it isn’t the same, nor is the “love” we have for our favorite sports team, or musical group. Yet, in each case we “love.”

You can’t even tell your sweetheart you “love” him more than anything else in the world. It’s the same thing your five-year-old nephew says the same thing about the new toy firetruck he got for his birthday.

It’s not the same thing, but we are limited to using the same word.

The same thing can be said about pretty much all emotions, but especially the stronger ones: love, hate, rage, disgust, etc. The words simply do not bring across the depth of the emotion. Maybe much of this is due to overuse. How many pop songs have been written over the years about “love?” So many that it doesn’t mean anything anymore?

So what’s a fiction writer to do? The language is inadequate to the task we present to it, yet it is the human emotions that fuel our fiction. Without emotion, there is no point to writing. Yet folks have been writing fiction and poetry for generations using this same tool of language. How do they do it?

Over generations artists, poets and writers have devised a couple of ways to work around the shortfalls of the language. And they work.

The first tool is actually metaphor and simile. Instead of trying (ineffectively) to describe the emotion felt when holding your newborn son for the first time, you link it to something else, like: “I looked down at his tiny face, my little creation, my flesh and my blood, and knew here was the future. The future lay sleeping in my hands, but that future depended on me, on the decisions I made, on my ability to nurture it into fruition.”

It’s not wonderful, but makes my point. Nowhere in that passage does the author ever use the word “love.” Instead, she links it to something else that the reader can understand and use to experience the emotion at hand. Shakespeare’s “…Juliet is the sun…” is not to be taken literally. It is meant to express the way Romeo felt about her.

The second tool is more subtle, somewhat harder to pull off. It also has two parts. The first is the technique of using the situation and the physical symptoms to let the reader experience the emotion. Using the newborn as an example again: “She accepted the little bundle from the nurse and clutched it close to her breast. His little eyes were closed. He was sleeping peacefully. Mary gazed down at her son and thought her heart was going to burst right from her chest. Her eyes filled with tears. “Hi, Derek,” she murmured. “I’m your Mommy. I’m so pleased to finally meet you.”

Again, the word “love” was never used. Instead, the author uses the situation (a birth) and the symptoms (heart bursting, happy tears) to point the reader in the right direction. The reader is smart; they will figure out what you’re trying to say. (Unless you simply blow it. Then a re-write is in order. That can be fixed.) This is much of what the writing instructors mean when they say “show, don’t tell.”

The second tool is the gradual buildup. The newborn baby doesn’t just appear. It’s arrival is preceded by ten months of sickness, discomfort, and emotional rollercoasters for the mother. The father (if intimately involved) experiences the same things, but second hand. The process of pregnancy involves a long, gradual buildup that eventually takes up more and more of the parents’ physical and emotional life. All of which makes the arrival of the newborn even more of a cathartic event. The trick here is that if the reader can be convinced to fully experience the buildup, they will experience the catharsis with little or no help from you. They will provide the emotion; you’ll just have to point them in the right direction.

And it will work no matter how you tweak the plot. The couple who have gone through the ups and downs of a full term pregnancy—and the readers who have grown to identify with them—will experience the same emotions at the end of the pregnancy as the characters, whether the result is a healthy baby, or a stillbirth. In fact, in the case of the stillbirth, you probably wouldn’t need to do much more than mention the tragedy. The reader will feel the tragedy more than you could hope to describe.

And that’s the trick to writing about emotion. It’s all about leading the reader to the edge of the emotion you want, then letting the reader take it from there, with you providing only a few physical descriptions when necessary, or a metaphor to point them in the right direction.

Otherwise, all you can do is yell “There’s a lion behind you!”

Prose Need Help? Try Poetry.

A friend, who happens to be an excellent writer and editor, has a rule I would like to share with everyone because I think it is very good. Her rule is to read some poetry before you sit down to do any editing or re-writing. My only change would be to simplify it. I think it should read: read some poetry. Period.

But…but…I can hear the objections already…I don’t write poetry. I don’t even write fiction. Why should I spend my precious time reading poetry?

Another quiet voice says what many are also thinking: I don’t even get poetry.

I know, I know. I understand. I’m nowhere near a great poet myself and I haven’t made poetry (particularly modern poetry) a central part of my studies. However, I do read poetry I like and I will tell you why, then you can decide whether you should too.

Years ago, when I was in college and trying to get my feet wet in this writing gig, my roommate suggested I take a poetry writing class. The reason? My writing, though adequate for the beginner I was, lacked magic, lacked the music and beauty of language. He thought a term or two spent studying and writing poetry would help improve my prose.

He was right. (He was a very intelligent man. I was intelligent enough to see that and take his advice). After studying and writing poetry for a while, I began to write prose that was more poetic, with more of the beauty in language. Better.

Cool. But you still don’t write poetry, you say, or fiction. You still don’t see how reading or writing poetry can help you.

Consider this, whether you’re writing a humorous blog about the perils of family life, or a four-volume annotated history of The War of The Roses, you write description. You write scenes containing action. You may even write scenes containing dialogue. Wouldn’t these scenes be improved if they were more poetic?

The study of poetry (even if “study” just means reading a couple of your favorite poems to open your writing session each day) can help your writing in three important ways:

It teaches you to think and write in metaphor and simile.

If you don’t know what metaphors and similes are, I suggest you look up the definitions. Even in the driest of academic papers, the use of metaphor and simile can imbue (I always wanted to use that word) your work with deeper shades of meaning. It can also save time and space. “Walking through Bagdad on an August afternoon was like walking through an oven on broil.” gives the reader a richer mental picture than a hundred descriptive words about temperature and dust.

It teaches you to harness the native power of the rhythm inherent in language.

There is a rhythm to every language. The rhythm differs depending on what the language is trying to do. A speech to a political rally is going to have a different rhythm than a description of a peaceful mountain meadow, which is going to be different than an argument between spouses. Since the poetic form is usually short and consciously uses rhythm and meter, it is easier to see how the poet uses it to reinforce the message of the words she’s using.

It teaches you to write concisely, making every word count.

Poetry, by definition, is the use of supercharged language to evoke an emotion or idea. Thus, more than most other forms of literature, the poet searches intensely for the perfect word for what she wants to say. It not only has to have the right definition, but must have the perfect connotation and associations, the perfect allusions, and (see above) the proper rhythm. Reading good poetry gets your mind in the habit of writing with the fewest, most powerful words.

So, let’s say I’ve convinced you to try reading a little poetry as part of your writing habit. Now you ask me, what poetry should I read? There are thousands of poets. Shelves full of poetry books. Which ones should I read?

Well, read the ones you like. Don’t torture yourself. It will do you no good if you dread picking up the book every day. (Actually, if you don’t like it, you probably won’t pick it up much at all). So, go down to your local bookstore and find a collection. There are hundreds of them too, with titles like “A Treasury of Poems,” or “Best-loved Poems.” Something like that. Read a poem a day and mark the ones you like.

Personally, I like the English Romantics: Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron, with a little Tennyson thrown in for kicks. I also like e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickenson. All have much to teach us. That’s why they are considered “Great” poets.

And then there is Shakespeare. Many of his plays, particularly the dramas, are written in verse.

Most of all, find some poetry you like and read a little—say one poem—every day as you sit down to work on your writing and see what effect it has on your work. I’m willing to bet it will be better.