Narrative can be flat and as boring as a laundry list, or use many pieces of the scene to draw a word picture.  The technique of painting a picture with words involves making it dimensional by using sounds, aromas, climate, emotions. That way, rather than a cardboard cutout, it gives the reader a full image of the scene as it moves the story along.

This series will explore the use of words to make characters and places come alive. It truly is an art. A little too much and it sounds overblown and unrealistic. Or perhaps the “picture” is so full of unnecessary adjectives, that the reader has no real feeling for the picture the author is trying to create. Too little, and it misses the mark.

So, let’s see what it takes to draw a picture with words through examples:

ROBERT LUDLUM – THE BOURNE LEGACY

Instead of something like: He was cold and had to escape so he decided to climb through the grate, in two paragraphs Ludlum has drawn word pictures that inspire tension, tell us about the protagonist’s peril, a sense of the person, the type of space he must navigate and finally, his sense of  freedom.

Bourne shivered, by now chilled through and through. He glanced up, played his beam over the refrigeration vent. Heading back down the center aisle, he clambered up the stacks until he came to the grate. Flipping open the switchblade, he used the spine of the blade to unscrew the grille. The soft light of dawn flowed into the interior. There appeared to be just enough room for him to squeeze through. He hoped.

He rolled his shoulders in toward his chest, squeezing himself into the aperture, and began to wriggle from side to side.  All went well for the first several inches or so, and then his forward progress abruptly stopped. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He was stuck.  He exhaled all the air out of his lungs, allowed his upper body to go slack. He pushed with his feet and legs. A crate slid and tumbled, but he had inched forward. He lowered his legs until his feet found purchase on the crates below. Locking the heels of his shoes against the upper bar, he pushed again, and again he moved. By slowly and carefully repeating this maneuver, he was at last able to get his head and shoulders through. He blinked up into the candy pink sky, where fluffy clouds rose up, shifting shapes as he rolled by beneath them. Reaching up, he grabbed the corner of the roof, levered himself all the way out of the semi and onto its roof.

(NOTICE THE SYMBOLISM OF THE FLUFFY PINK CLOUDS TO PUNCTUATE FREEDOM.)

PART 2 will take you to a dark place.

Related posts:

1. The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 2
2. The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 3