Week Five: "Literature, like life, is full of things."

At the beginning of this week’s work, we were introduced to the importance of objects in stories and the emotional link between the character and objects with the below passage. It was a really good introduction to the topic for me, and highlighted the importance of objects in a way I’d not considered before, so I thought I’d include it here:

“Objects that stand for emotions and ideas are a stock-in-trade of the writer. Objects have a way of carrying emotion that is both explicit and reticent. Readers love this combination of the explicit and the implied: they get enough but they always sense there's more. Which is like life.”

For our readings this week, I took the most from “Finishing Touch” by Claire-Louise Bennet and “Powder” by Tobias Wolff.

I admired the way Bennet told a story through the objects in her story “Finishing Touch”. The reader can see the importance of the various objects in the house to the narrator, and how the narrator enjoys that sense of materialistic possession. It’s very clear that the objects are part of the personality of the narrator and that they can tell us a fair amount about who she is.

The mention of the ottoman was quite an interesting choice, as for me the simple word immediately conjured an image in my mind of my nana’s old ottoman. Suddenly, the object was no longer static within the story, but had triggered an emotional response/memory in me as a

reader.

I liked the idea that something as simple as an object could get a reader to emotionally engage with a story, and I tried to toy around with that idea when bringing a locket into my story this week. For me, mentioning a locket in a story instantly creates the impression of lovers within the story, and I hope that the locket within my story can act as a symbol of love between my two characters, but also encapsulate a deeper meaning.

“Powder” by Wolff was another interesting story in terms of its use of objects. Wolff manages to create a strong narrative about father-son bonding and the significance of masculinity and power from a relatively basic story.

The significance of being able to drive through the snow became a strong symbol of the son’s admiration for his father, and the father’s strength. From the beginning of the story, the reader can see that the father and son are quite different characters, but as they drive through the snow, they become somehow united through the experience. Indeed, as the father drives through the snow, the son’s opinion of him appears to soften and turn to a sort of admiration.

The idea that an object could alter the relationship of two characters either positively or negatively appealed to me, and I played around with the idea in my own story. I thought it would be interesting to have Bradley give Morwenna the locket, believing it to be a symbol of their love, and have Morwenna reject it as a careless mockery of the fact that they are carrying out an illicit affair. Indeed, I’ve tried to create the effect that Morwenna is directly hurt by this gift, and even though it was designed to strengthen their relationship, it becomes the first wedge which forces them apart.

The lecture explored the importance of objects in a narrative on a deeper level, and I made the following bullet point notes from the things we explored:

- The objects around us shape our interpretation of the world – without objects, we wouldn’t perceive the world in the way we do – objects are fundamental to who we are

- Even a simple pen can mean a lot to us – we connect emotions to certain objects that we possess

- Possession can be both emotional and physical – we form a link with the people/objects in our lives

- Breaking something makes us feel a sense of loss – a diminishment of your personality - being dispossessed of your things is to lose a part of yourself

- Sometimes objects give us a feeling of safety and sometimes they act as a barrier/prison to us

- Putting an object in your story makes your story real to your reader

- A little detail in the background can evoke a whole world

- Objects exert power – either in a magical or theoretical sense – on the character

- Tools and instruments are very important in stories – they enhance or aid people in their tasks

- Gifts and presents are very useful and powerful objects to play with in your writing – the person who gives the gift is often given some degree of power and the character who receives the gift has to be grateful

- If objects are left on their own, they miss out on the opportunity to engage with the various plot threads – having a character interact/engage with an object demonstrates its importance

- Start with an object and see what you can stem from that object -> a boy found a stone on the beach – describe the stone – why is the stone important to the boy? – why did the boy pick up the stone?

- Don’t give too much information on the object; allow it to retain some of its mystery – too much explanation can “kill” the object

- Different people can have different opinions on the same object – is it beneficial to the narrative or to show differences between characters if they have differing opinions on an object?

In the seminar we looked into what Henry James called the solidity of specification in his book “The Art of Fiction (Part II)”. James highlighted the importance of faithfulness to reality in fiction as fiction attempts to represent real life by saying that “You will not write a good novel unless you possess the sense of reality, but it will be difficult to give you a recipe for calling that sense into being.”

We talked about the ways in which objects can allow us to explore our characters; grounding the character with mannerisms or specificities particular to them due to their relationship to the things around them makes them appear more like a real person. Indeed, every person has certain mannerisms, often ones that we don’t realise ourselves, so using objects to convey the character mannerisms in a story is highly effective.

The objects around the characters in our stories are the “props” and we discussed questions a few questions we could use to prompt us in our character development through the use of props. First, how do they define us? Do they help us? How do we react to them?

James comments that as writers we should “try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost” – the more you observe, the more you can write about. In our writing, it will help us to be more accurate if we imagine that we are observing the scene we’re writing instead of conjuring it.

In a progression of that thought, we started to think about the concept of deliberate looking – for example, what passes us by when we’re not actively observing? That being said, you don’t want to overdo it on the details in your writing. I started to think of the way that Agatha Christie writes; her writing style tells you everything you need to know whilst refraining from unnecessary details that weigh down the story.

This week, I watched the recent movie adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel “Rebecca”, and due to this week’s topic, I considered the importance of objects in that narrative, doing further research into the book itself.

For a while at the beginning of the novel, Mrs de Winter feels quite displaced at Manderley, and I believe that that is partially due to the presence of all Rebecca’s possessions around the house. Indeed, it is impressed upon Mrs de Winter at every turn that she is not the mistress of the house and that Rebecca is still very present in the house through her possessions remaining as she left them.

Rebecca’s possessions are one of the few things that the reader has to base an opinion of her character upon and therefore the objects in this story are fundamental to the narrative structure. We discussed the importance of explicitly explaining the significance of a given object in the seminar, and the example of “Rebecca” demonstrated to me that it is not necessary to tell the reader formally about the importance of the object. In actuality, the lack of an explicit explanation allows the reader a lot more freedom to form their own opinion on the importance of those objects.

In our seminar group we had different opinions on the need for explanation of objects. Some people argued that a story which didn’t explain things was disappointing and felt unfinished. Others argued that the open-endedness of not explaining certain things allowed the reader to engage with the story more as they have to make up their own mind.

For my part, I believe both approaches can be effective, depending on the type of story. Using the example of “Rebecca” again, the lack of explicit explanation leans into the genre of the story an reinforces the mysterious air of the piece. In a novel with more clarity, there is a greater for that explanation. Take in “The Great Gatsby”, Nick says that “Gatsby believed in the green light”, thus highlighting the significance of the object in Gatsby’s life.

Moving away from the subject of objects, we considered the nature of a short story and whether it necessarily needed to be a complete narrative. One of the other seminar members (I forget which unfortunately) remarked that “a short story is only a fragment in someone’s life and therefore by design can be open-ended”. The idea of this statement appealed to me, alongside the idea that a certain degree of ambiguity is allowed, and even expected, in a short story. There aren’t enough words for an explicit description and explanation of every minute detail, which can give the story more of a focus upon the narrative than the other features/details.

As writers, we aim to create a functioning material world that our readers can believe in, and the objects and décor we use can help us in that goal. They can denote the period of a piece and tell us a fair amount about the character. However, when a piece of writing has too many temporal specificities, it loses something and becomes unnecessary. As Jamie put it, the writer has to be good at “ironing it in” to the piece.

We also need to remember to be authoritative to make the reader suspend their disbelief so that they can believe in the truth of the story.

We then explored the concept of the six-word story and whether it was actually possible to convey a narrative, by looking at Ernest Hemmingway’s six-word story:

“For Sale. Baby’s shoes. Never worn.”

We remarked that this emphasises the power of the object; the fact that the shoes have never been worn resonates with us as readers and prompts us to ask questions of the story. What happened to the child?

Why didn’t they get to wear them? Why is the person selling them? Even with only six words, Hemmingway manages to evoke an emotional response in us and create a sense of tragedy.

To finish up the seminar, our seminar leader explained two terms to us which may prove useful at some point:

Metonym – a figure of speech characterised by substituting an object or action for a word or phrase. i.e. the pen is mightier than the sword

Objective correlative – an object which evokes emotion in its own right

This week’s writing brief directed us to create a story surrounding a specified skill. At first, I was struggling with this prompt as I wasn’t sure which angle I could tackle it from. To be honest, I didn’t have any ideas of which skill I could write about, or what narrative I could create around a skill.

Speaking with Jemima at our weekly creative writing meet-up broadened my mind on what constituted a skill and gave me some ideas to work with. I’d initially been thinking along the lines of skills which you learned as part of a career, but her story idea about playing cards made me realise that it could be a lot more simple than I was imagining.

I discussed my main story idea for this week with my seminar leader and she gave me quite a few things to think about. For example, my chosen object is a locket, and she reminded me of the historical significance of a locket; namely that the Victorians used to put a lock of hair of their loved one inside their locket.

In a literal sense, a locket is something which encapsulates something, whether that is the traditional lock of hair or a photo or something else. I tried a few different things inside the locket before deciding it would be more effective to leave it empty – see my writing post for this week to see the extract I wrote – it’s not very long, but I hope it can convey the ideas I’ve been considering.