 Mystery: August 07, 2024 Issue [#12674] |
This week: The Distant Third Edited by: Carol St.Ann  
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The key to the art, is craft.
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We know First Person stories feature “I” and “me”, and Second Person features “You”. Both are personal. The reader is either the author’s confidante or a very close relationship exists between the two.
The Third Person, on the other hand, is more distant. Quite possibly even an outsider, whose pronouns are “he”, “she”, “him”, “her”, “they”, and “them”.
Yes. They naturally identify at a distance.
This can be enjoyable, to be sure. Personally I love being told a good story, and good writers can easily draw nail-biting tension from a reader with good dialogue and description.. Others entertain and engage me with catchy turn of phrase writing.
But when we want to bring our readers closer, to give them characters they can love (or hate, as the case may be), and fully justified in what they feel, we need to craft.
One way to describe this would be as a painter, paints a scene of a lake with some swans. A vacation town that I frequent in summer boasts hundreds of artists everywhere because of the beautiful scenery surrounding the area. I watch them create a scene in a few seconds on a canvas, and think to myself, Oh, how I wish I could do that. What a magnificent site to behold. I turn to walk away figuring the painter is done with this one. But I see s/he’s mixing some colors together.
Figuring they’re going to start a new painting, I stick around to watch again. But when they take the brush and put it to the painting, I can barely refrain from calling out, “No no no! Don’t touch it. It’s perfect.”
Ah, but the artist has more to share. Indeed, this is when the real work begins and the living conveyance of what he wants the viewer to see and feel is created. This is craft at its finest.
So, we, who want our readers IN the story with us must also craft our words until they draw the reader in. There are many ways and techniques to accomplish this.
One way is to avoid filtering words that reference the senses, such as saw, see, heard, hear, smell, smelled, taste, tasted, and feel, felt keep the reader at a distance, sometimes as far as outside the story, looking in. But we can change this with edits and crafting.
One might write a first draft that looks something like this. (Note all the filters):
Maria looked at the thermostat and saw that it hadn’t changed. Her hands felt like ice and she didn’t see her gloves anywhere. She was cold, frustrated, and tense.
She thought she should get to her car to get warm. She decided to run to the car and pulled her coat tighter.
When she opened the front door, she saw that there was more snow, and the wind was blowing harder than she thought. She felt afraid. Snow blew in, all over her floor, and she didn’t like that, because she takes very good care of her house. But she knew she should not worry about that now.
The driveway was slippery and she was afraid she would fall, but she made it. She wasn’t sure the car would start but it did. And as soon as she could see through the windshield, she headed for the hotel.
•=====•=====•
Consider crafting this just to remove the filters:
Maria checked the thermostat again and huffed. Her warm breath hovered in a momentary cloud. She pulled her coat tighter and snuggled into the hood, then rubbed her quivering hands together. They were nearly numb. What had she done with her gloves? Frenzied glances to and fro didn’t help. She simply had no idea where they were. No matter. Her best chance would be to get to the car.
Gloves or no gloves, these temperatures could be deadly. She had to make a run for it. The heat would take a while, but it would come on, and she’d be all right, at least for now. Saving her life was worth a little frostbite.
She snatched her keys from the table and pinched the wool collar tight around her neck. When she turned the door knob, a gust of wind blew the door inward, bringing the icy snow in with it. For once she didn’t care. She reached back to pull the door behind her, but missed and nearly fell on the slippery steps before she could grab and close it. Though slipping and sliding the thirty-feet to her car, she managed to keep from falling.
It seemed like forever before the heat surrounded her, and the ice on the windshield cleared enough for the wipers to do their job.
“It’s now or never,” she said aloud through clattering teeth. Closing her eyes, she counted. “One, two, three,” and turned the key. With a deep sigh of relief, she backed out of the driveway and drove with slow caution down the iced road, toward town and and the safety of the hotel where the advisories had instructed everyone to go until the blizzard was over.
•=====•=====•
This is only one of many ways to draw the reader in closer. But it’s a favorite of mine. Now, this little snippet is nowhere near perfect. Nowhere near ready. But it’s an indication of how beginning to craft really changes the tone of our writing. It’s one way to get the backbone of your story on paper. Everyone knows the first draft sucks. It’s a given. The story wants out and we must obey. But first draft should never be the final draft, right? We could always do better. For me, crafting is the fun part. In fact, sometimes, my first draft is something only I can understand. It’s kind of a shorthand version of whatever it is. I’m trying to convey.
Just thought I’d share this with you this month. I’d love to hear some ideas and techniques that some of you use when you begin crafting your stories, and I hope you’ll share them. In the meantime, take care and enjoy the craft!
Happy writing until we meet again!
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