twovictorianladies

I haven’t written anything here for the last few days, just because I’ve been so busy with tearing my novel apart and putting it back together again. (Then there’s the obvious issue of earning a living, but we won’t talk about that.) Last night I went over and over one scene, trying to get it right. It’s one of the very few places where we get to hear one secondary character’s own voice, rather than seeing him through the other characters eyes. Since he has so few opportunities to make his case, I found that I was over-writing the scene, trying to make my point – or rather, make his for him. It was much better when I backed off and tried to include a lot less exposition as explanation and just let him speak his own words.

On my way into work today, I was listening to a piece of music that hammered that point home for me. It was written by a little known folk singer from the mid-west, and the power of this one song literally leaves me shaking sometimes. And yet the songwriter managed to create that very powerful image without really stating his point at all.

The words of the song are the ramblings of a man getting ready to go on a trip. As we listen to his stream of consciousness, we learn that he’s going to Memphis for a big meeting; that it’s spring; that his wife is a bit worried about what might happen but he isn’t – this is just something that he feels he should do. As the song continues, he arrives in Memphis on the bus, looks for a cheap hotel, goes to clean up. He mentions the garbage piled up on the street corners – figures it’s too early for the pickup. And then we learn that the year is 1968 and he is in Memphis hoping to shake hands with – who else? Dr. King.

And that, my friends, is where the song ends.

We all know what happened at that big meeting Memphis in April of 1968 and the huge loss to the world when Dr. King was assassinated. But by leaving the song on the note of hope, the songwriter managed to make a much stronger impression than if he’d written another verse describing the assassination itself.

I long to be able to write like that.