Talks on Writing English. First Series

by Arlo Bates

This elaboration of particulars is somewhat out of fashion. Particulars are grasped by the eye so quickly that the deliberation of words is apt to destroy proportion, while it is also true that the reader is in danger of forgetting the beginning before he reaches the end.

It is perhaps worth while to give an example of the abuse of this method, since all inexperienced writers have a tendency to mistake a catalogue for a description. It is manifestly idle to pile up particulars, unless they are kept subordinate to some central thought. Here is the description of the heroine of a modern English novel, “A Chelsea Householder:”—

To begin, then, Muriel was tall, with a slight, erect figure, a quick step, and an air of youth and vigor which did the beholder good to look at.[7] Her face was oval, as nearly oval at least as a face can be in which the chin is a good deal more pronounced than is usual in classic beauties. The cheeks were pale, paler than they had any business to be, judging by the rest of the physique, the most noticeable fact in point of coloring being that the eyes, hair, brows, and lashes were all of the same, or pretty nearly the same, color—a deep, dark brown, inclining to chestnut above the temples, from which the hair was brushed courageously back, so as to form a small knot at the back of the head. Her eyes—not, perhaps, by the way, a strikingly original trait in a heroine—were large and bright; indeed, brighter or pleasanter eyes have seldom looked out of a woman’s face, their beauty consisting less in their size and color than in this very vividness and brightness, which seemed to shine out of the irises themselves. For all that, the face in repose was not exactly a bright one, or rather the brightness came to it only by fits and starts, its prevailing expression being a somewhat sober one, a sobriety giving way, however, at a touch, and being replaced by a peculiarly sunshiny smile and glance.

This is not the whole of the paragraph, but it is enough for our purpose. There need not be a better example of how not to do it, or of how much may be said about a thing without conveying any definite idea of it. For my own part, I have no idea whatever how Muriel looked, and long before I got half through her verbal portrait I had ceased to care. Few faults are more common than this furnishing a list of particulars in the expectation that the reader will construct therefrom the picture which the author has not been clever enough to make clear—a method, it might be added, not unlike the system of punctuation adopted by the late so-called Lord Timothy Dexter, who put all the points together at the end of his book, and directed his readers to distribute them at their own pleasure.

It is hardly needful to remark upon the prime necessity of clearness in description, but it is perhaps not amiss to remind beginners that it is not possible to picture a thing which the writer does not himself see. If he is writing of an imaginary landscape and speak of a tree, he should be able if he choose to count the branches of that tree as clearly as if it in reality stood before him. Unless he know whether the heads of the flowers tip to the right or to the left, whether the sheep on the hillside of which he writes are nearer the fence on the one side or to the stone wall on the other, unless he can with inner vision actually see the shape of the heroine’s head and the length of her fingers, the slope of her neck and the folds of her gown as if she were in bodily presence before him, he cannot describe any of these things. He cannot tell what he does not know. More than that, he cannot tell to others as much as he knows; so that unless he be able to see a good deal more than he wishes to impart, he will fail to convey as much as he desires.

It is of importance to cultivate the habit of visualizing things, if one intends to describe them. The mind should be trained to conceive of them as visibly before it. This is the only way of arriving at the power of vivid portrayal. It is easy to go through the books of great writers and select those which show that the authors have this power of visualization. If a writer has it not, no skill of diction or of construction can avail to supply its lack.

In Description we have again occasion to emphasize the rule which was given in Exposition: proceed from the near to the remote; from the physical to the mental; from the obvious to the obscure. Homer, surpassed in happiness of epithet by Shakespeare only, affords abundant illustrations of this point. He says, for instance: “Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked;” “shields smooth, beautiful, brazen, well-hammered.” The particulars are given in the order in which they would naturally be observed. That the wheel is round and that the shield is smooth, the eye perceives at once. The second glance adds the fact of material, and so on.

What is meant by taking up the physical before the mental is illustrated by the following sentence from a theme picturing the appearance of a harbor in the West Indies:—

In the distance I saw six or seven vessels in quarantine for yellow fever, all flying yellow flags.

The process of the mind is here reversed. The spectator sees the flags and reflects that they indicate quarantine for yellow fever. It is not, as a general thing, well to intersperse these mental comments. It may properly be done in a case like this, because in reading, as in seeing, the mind is likely to inquire what is the signification of the yellow flags; and it is well to answer this question in order that the reader’s attention do not wander in search of an answer. If this is to be done, however, the physical appearance which gives rise to the interrogation should be given first. To reverse the order is something like giving first an answer and then the conundrum to which it belongs.