Brock Eastman
  • Home
    • Imagination Exploration News
    • eNews Signup
    • Imagination Explorers
    • Rate & Review Challenge
    • Welcome
  • Store
  • Fizzlebop
    • Dr. Fizzlebop
    • Fizzlebop Books
    • Fizzlebop Videos
    • Fizz Extras >
      • Fizzlebop Straw Rocket
    • Fizzlebop Lab Updates
  • Books & Writing
    • Middle Grade & Young Adult Books >
      • Parable Port >
        • Penguincast with J.R.
      • The Quest for Truth >
        • TQ4T Books
        • Questers
        • #TQ4T
        • Glossary
        • Resources & Activities
      • Sages of Darkness >
        • Sage Books
        • Hunters
        • #FightaDemon
      • Kingdoms of Color
      • Crimson Pulse Media
    • Picture & Board Books >
      • Bedtime on Noah's Ark >
        • Bedtime on Noah's Ark
        • Bedtime on Noah's Ark Activities
      • Little Lion Books >
        • Little Lion
        • Daddy's Favorite Sound
        • Mommy's Favorite Smell
        • Little Lion Activities
      • Afraid of the Light
      • Hippopolis >
        • Hippopolis
        • Hippo Activities
      • Saint Nicking at Night
      • Obby the Obot
    • Devotionals & Bibles >
      • Faith and Science with Dr. Fizzlebop
      • Edge of the Galaxy
      • Key Verse Challenge (Go Bible)
      • Go Bible
      • The Action Bible: Faith in Action Edition
    • Early Reader Books >
      • Imagination Station
    • Magazine Stories
  • Author & Speaking
    • Author
    • Speaking
    • Tyndale Summer Camp
    • Adventures in Odyssey
  • Parents & Teachers
    • Activities & Resources
    • Book Lists
    • Book Reviews & Interviews
Seek Adventure and Truth at Every Turn

Fragments of Imagination

5/23/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Written by Samuel Parker

When a day trip out of Las Vegas with his wife takes a turn for the worse, Jack is sure that he has the ability to get them home. But he drove into something far beyond reason.
 
Rescue comes in the form of a desert hermit, but hope fades as the couple realizes that the nomad has no intention of letting them leave. A chance encounter with a kidnapped runaway and her crazed abductor leads them all farther into the wilderness—and closer to the cold brutality that isolation brings.
 
At the edge of his sanity, Jack begins to learn that playing by another’s rules may be the only way to survive.

In a voice that is as hypnotizing as a desert mirage, debut novelist Samuel Parker entices readers down a dangerous road, where the forces of good and evil are as crushing as the Mojave heat. This is suspense in its purest, most unfiltered form.


Picture
Fragments of Imagination

There is a scene from the film adaptation of A River Runs Through It where the young Norman Maclean presents his father, his schoolmaster, with a piece of writing. Norman hands in his composition and his father marks it up with red, telling him “Again . . . half as long.” This happens several times until the writing is approved, thrown in the trash, and the boy runs off to fish.

The Art of Brevity

In a world where the mark of a “true” writer seems to be the word count tally of the day or week or month, brevity can be a sign of lack of discipline. However, brevity can be a valuable tool to wield and provide space for a reader to incorporate their own imagination into your story.

One of my favorite chapters in my book Purgatory Road has only 48 words. It looks a bit odd in book form, taking up less than a half page. But I feel it is one of the more unique chapters in the book, as it conveys so much more emotion, context, and suspense than what would have been accomplished at 10 times the word count. (For context, the couple is stranded in the Mojave for a long while when we arrive at this scene.)
17

Morning light skirted the eastern ring of the valley as gently as an Easter sunrise.

“Jack,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Jack . . . water?”

“No.”

“It’s all gone?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay.”

They drifted in a daze between waking and oblivion.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you left.”

“Nope.”

“Okay.”
 
Brevity causes you to be confident in the words you have chosen, and confident that the reader will add what is flexible and implied, giving them more investment and bringing the story to life with much more vividness as it becomes laced with their own imagination and memory.

One perfectly placed sentence can cut to the heart of a thought as quick as a Ginsu and with just as much ferocity. In fact, I think it can do more to impress on the reader the gravity of the story than burying them in superfluous prose.

The Sound of Silence

Music composition uses silence just as much as sounds. A pause or muted part allows the listener’s mind to wander, reflect, or ponder, as one writer said, “what it is that echoes in the silence.” [1] I would argue that sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter composition can accomplish much of the same effect. The problem that surfaces is our fear of trusting the reader to imagine our world in their own minds, to relinquish the keys of creation, and let a fragment echo in the silence and expand apart from the written word.

In Purgatory Road, I use fragments to a level that caused my editor a bit of concern. Sentences are not supposed to look like this; even Microsoft tries to flag our attention and scream “This is wrong!” Below is an example of something I like to do in controlling the pace of a narrative with single words:

Laura stared out of the windshield. The road ran off out of sight, disappearing into the horizon, mesmerizing in its seemingly magical disappearance.

Alone.

She thumbed her wedding ring in absentminded play, the sweat beginning to seep out of her skin, causing the band to roll freely around her finger. She looked at it, its jewel sparkling, shining in the rays streaming through the glass.
 
The “Alone” gets grammatically flagged, but as read, it causes the reader to stop. A bullet. Even if it’s only for a fraction of a second, the reader has to contemplate that word in isolation. It’s more forceful than saying “she was all alone sitting in the car.” Alone. There is something slightly menacing in reducing the clutter and getting down to the raw bone of what you are trying to say.

The world is not binary, so this bit of advice will not work for all occasions. Some things need explaining, some do not. But I would challenge you to look at your recent work, the one with the mega word count that you celebrated to your friends on Twitter about, and hear the voice of Norman Maclean’s father as you reread it: “Again . . . half as long.”
You may surprise yourself by how a more direct and simple word choice cuts down to the marrow of the story you are trying to tell.





 

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2009/08/silence_is_golden.html.


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    Follow me


      Picture

      Join Phoenix eNews

    Subscribe to Newsletter
    Picture

      Share a Joke.

      Tell us your joke and the answer.
    Submit
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    zazzle store

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    March 2019
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    November 2011

    Categories

    All
    Activities
    Adventure
    Adventures In Odyssey
    Barnes And Noble
    Bedtime On Noah's Ark
    Bedtime Routine
    Blizzard Sage
    Board Books
    Book Lists
    Bookshelves
    Brock
    Brock Eastman
    Career
    Christmas
    Clubhouse Magazine
    Colorado
    Contests
    Crimson Pulse Media
    Crimson Pulse Writers
    Crimson-sparrow
    Daddy's Favorite Sound
    Demon Hunters
    Devotional
    Dinosaurs
    Edge & Narro
    Edge Of The Galaxy
    Experiments
    Faith And Science With Dr. Fizzlebop
    Family
    Family Activity
    Family Fun
    Fiction
    Fizzlebop
    Focus On The Family
    Free
    Fun
    Galactic Exploration Collection
    General
    Get In The Show
    Guest Post
    Guest-post
    Halloween
    Harvest House
    Harvest Kids
    Hippopolis
    Holidays
    Hope
    HowlSage
    Imagination Station
    Inspiration
    Interview
    Interviews
    Ireland
    Irish
    Kids
    Library
    Lost Realms
    Mars
    Middle Grade
    Moon
    Nebula Chronicles
    New Release
    Parenting
    Picture Books
    Pirates
    Publishers
    Publishing
    Q&A
    Questers
    Readers
    Reading
    Reading Lists
    Referral
    Review
    Sages Of Darkness
    Saint Nick
    Saint Nicking At Night
    Science
    Sci Fi
    Sci-Fi
    Serial Stories
    Social Shoutout
    Space
    Space Exploration
    Spiritual Warfare
    Story Craft
    St. Patrick's Day
    Teaching Kids
    Thanksgiving
    The Quest For Truth
    The Runners Of Abra
    Thrones
    #TQ4T
    Warriors Of Aragnar
    Wasted Wood
    What Do You Want To Be?
    Write Early
    Write Often
    Write Well Contest
    Writing
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed

Services

Speaking
Publishing

Company

About

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
    • Imagination Exploration News
    • eNews Signup
    • Imagination Explorers
    • Rate & Review Challenge
    • Welcome
  • Store
  • Fizzlebop
    • Dr. Fizzlebop
    • Fizzlebop Books
    • Fizzlebop Videos
    • Fizz Extras >
      • Fizzlebop Straw Rocket
    • Fizzlebop Lab Updates
  • Books & Writing
    • Middle Grade & Young Adult Books >
      • Parable Port >
        • Penguincast with J.R.
      • The Quest for Truth >
        • TQ4T Books
        • Questers
        • #TQ4T
        • Glossary
        • Resources & Activities
      • Sages of Darkness >
        • Sage Books
        • Hunters
        • #FightaDemon
      • Kingdoms of Color
      • Crimson Pulse Media
    • Picture & Board Books >
      • Bedtime on Noah's Ark >
        • Bedtime on Noah's Ark
        • Bedtime on Noah's Ark Activities
      • Little Lion Books >
        • Little Lion
        • Daddy's Favorite Sound
        • Mommy's Favorite Smell
        • Little Lion Activities
      • Afraid of the Light
      • Hippopolis >
        • Hippopolis
        • Hippo Activities
      • Saint Nicking at Night
      • Obby the Obot
    • Devotionals & Bibles >
      • Faith and Science with Dr. Fizzlebop
      • Edge of the Galaxy
      • Key Verse Challenge (Go Bible)
      • Go Bible
      • The Action Bible: Faith in Action Edition
    • Early Reader Books >
      • Imagination Station
    • Magazine Stories
  • Author & Speaking
    • Author
    • Speaking
    • Tyndale Summer Camp
    • Adventures in Odyssey
  • Parents & Teachers
    • Activities & Resources
    • Book Lists
    • Book Reviews & Interviews