pretty writing…walkin’ down the street…pretty writing…

Hi, folks! Andi here with her Friday installment of various things writing/reading related.

First–don’t forget about Sacchi Green’s book giveaway! Click here for the details!

Okay. Today, I want to chit-chat a bit about description. Not just as a writer–that’s something all writers deal with, actually–but as a reader. I read a lot. I read across genres, and I read lots of nonfiction. I love travel writing, books about history, anthropology, and forensics, and I totally dig books that deal with historical effects of weather. Yeah. I know. Total geek. But a couple of really good writers along my path have both told me that in order to be a better writer, read. Read everything. Don’t just read one genre or one type of literature or nonfiction. Read as many different kinds as you can, and many different authors, from many different eras. Read award-winning books to see what kinds of things judges look for when gauging literature or nonfiction. Doing so will provide you a foundation for building good instincts about what “sounds” good when you’re reading and writing.

I say that here because I’m one of those readers who will stop at a passage–usually a description–that grabs me by the throat and makes me think: DAMN I want to write like that! So not only am I reading as a reader and (hopefully) getting immersed in the story, but I’m also reading as a writer, and trying to figure out how to make my work stronger and hopefully, better.

I found one of those writers recently. So keep on if you want to know who it is.

I’m currently working my way through Laura Lippman’s stuff. My mom turned me on to her, and for those of you not familiar with her work, she’s won practically every award there is to win in mystery. She writes the character Tess Monaghan, who lives and works in Baltimore. Tess was a newspaper reporter before she got canned and kind of fell into private investigating. She’s a wonderful character–acerbic, immature, cranky, competent, incompetent, quirky. One of those people you’d love to have as a friend because she will not let you down, but someone you probably don’t want as a lover because she’ll drive you right up a wall.

Lippman also incorporates gay and lesbian characters in her books, and they’re multi-dimensional. In most of her books thus far, she deals with the uneasy relationships sometimes between men and women, Tess’s issues about that and with self-image, and she addresses issues that affect many women, like eating disorders (The Sugar House, 2000), domestic violence and stalking (The Last Place, 2002), and homophobia against a backdrop of Edgar Allen Poe, who’s buried in Baltimore (In a Strange City, 2001).

Lippman’s stories are often gritty and painful, as we both want to kick Tess’s ass for doing or saying something stupid and we want to root for her to pull her head out. Most importantly, we see ourselves in her flaws and mistakes, which makes her so realistic that you’d think Lippman was writing about someone who does, in fact, exist (who knows? Maybe she does…).

Anyway, Lippman’s dialogue and characterization are excellent, but it’s her descriptions that really grab me, both as a reader and a writer. How about this, from In a Strange City:
Jerold Ensor was a tall, cadaverous man with bloodhound-droopy features. His face was so sad Tess wondered if she had missed the news about some large-scale tragedy–an assassination, a war, a natural disaster, the imminent departure of the Orioles for Washington. With that face, Ensor should have been an undertaker or at least a professional pallbearer. But the effect was undercut by his voice, a high tenor popping with Baltimore vowel sounds that he couldn’t quite suppress, although he seemed to be trying. (p. 151)

This, from In Big Trouble (1999):
Mrs. Conyer’s hair was set in stiff, careful waves, and her makeup was expertly thorough. Not just a little lipstick and mascara, but the whole deal, from foundation to eyebrow pencil. For all that, she was a woman better described as handsome rather than pretty, with blunt features that looked like a hasty first draft for a face. (p. 85)

And how about this, from The Last Place:
The Old Thurmont Highway was not easy to find, but Troy Plunkett was. Tess overshot the unmarked road at least twice and drove so far out of her way that she almost hit Camp David. It turned out there was a Thurmont Highway, an Old Thurmont Highway, and this narrow stretch of falling-apart farmhouses, which might have been called the Older-Still Thurmont Highway. Tess didn’t see any signs of life in the littered yards, most of which were posted with NO TRESPASSING signs. She did see the name Plunkett lettered on several of the old mailboxes, however, and at the end of the road she discovered the No-Name [bar]. A concrete rectangle on the edge of a cornfield, it looked like a good place to sit out a nuclear war. (p. 65)

And Mr. Plunkett? Here:
Troy Plunkett was a small man, with the bristling belligerence peculiar to runts. He wore cowboy boots beneath his tight grimy jeans, and the heels were hooked on the lowest rung of the chrome stool. If there had been no rung, his legs would have swung free, several inches above the floor. (p. 67)

I love her place descriptions, too:
Her neighborhood was plain, verging on desperate, block after block of boxy wood-frame houses. Rentals, by the looks of the yards, which were shaved closer than a new marine’s skull. (The Last Place, p. 76)

Southwest Baltimore was an object lesson in what can happen when a neighborhood’s ballyhooed renaissance falls short of the mark. Dingy and defeated, it reminded Tess of someone who jumps from one rooftop to the next, only to dangle by his fingernails from the downspout. (The Sugar House, pp. 82-83)

Good descriptions give you an image without propping themselves up with clichés and reliance on passive voice. They paint pictures for you rather than just saying something like “Southwest Baltimore tried to gentrify once but wasn’t successful.” Descriptions serve as anchors in narratives, pulling a reader into a place/era/mood, and they are often characters themselves. So if you haven’t read Laura Lippman, give her a try and see what happens when everything craft-wise works: characters, dialogue, descriptions, setting, pacing, plot arcs. It’s quite a treat and only makes me want to try harder to achieve that.

All right, all. Thanks for stopping by and happy reading!