Words are, obviously, the way we writers make our living. We try so hard to paint a picture that our readers can see, relate to, and understand. Unfortunately, there are times when words just aren’t enough.
Think back to any major event of your life, one that was so
encompassing and involved so much emotion that it changed you forever. Now think about how you were able to describe
it to others. Did your words truly capture
what you went through?
I’ve hit this situation numerous times throughout my life,
from my daughter’s premature birth to the role I played in multiple combat
deployments, there have been a lot of time where the story just couldn’t convey
what was going on. How do you describe the
heart palpitations you got from that bullet that hit a tree you were in front
of just three seconds earlier? How do
you capture the fear you felt looking at your newborn child struggling to
maintain her heartrate and breathing?
Some of this has to rely on the reader being able to
properly understand and sympathize through visualization, but even that’s
limited based on personal viewpoint and experience. It can be very frustrating for a writer to
work his or her experiences into a story to give it a better feel, only to
discover that the work only gets about 25% of the meaning across because
interposing words and feelings is lacking.
(side note – the closest I’ve come to making this process truly work was with
Salvation Day while describing what Mike Faulkner was going through with his
child and wife’s deaths, and even that didn’t fully re-create the
experience(fictional though they may be))
I’d be curious to know what books or stories you feel were
able to adequately convey the fullness of such an emotionally transformative
event.
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