Writing Outside the Box

Several years ago, I drove to Joshua Tree National Park for a writers workshop and discovered another kind of writers block: writing inside the box.

The leaders introduced themselves and a park ranger who was standing nearby. She introduced herself, then said "I am going to take you for a short walk on a nature trail. Please follow me."

The woman next to me shrugged a non-verbal "Huh?" Yes, I thought, we came to write, not to study the flora and fauna of the desert.

We followed her up the trail. She stopped at a Yucca, described its life cycle and pointed to its cream-colored flowers. A man stepped forward and asked, "How does this figure into the workshop? I'm not interested in writing about plants and animals."

The ranger smiled. "What color comes to mind when I say Fire Truck. she asked.
We replied with a unanimous "Red."

She continued with "Grass?" and we all said "Green."

Then she held up a card and asked us what color we saw... RED

I heard myself and others say "Red." but somebody behind me said "Blue."

Yes! I thought. The word is red but the color is blue.

The ranger had made her point. The natural world doesn't speak the language of words. It speaks the language of color, sound, smell, taste and touch. We were in our semiotic heads, not in our sensory bodies. Our writing would remain in a sensory desert until we learned how to turn off the interpreting mind to really see and hear and feel what we were looking at, listening to and touching.

As the tour continued, she led us out of the boxes we had built around our thinking and into the world of in-the-body awareness. We looked, listened, smelled, touched and tasted. When we returned to the outdoor pavilion and the leaders of the workshop, we were ready to take our writing out of those boxes too.

JulianneQJohnson said:

That sounds like an awesome workshop. I've been working on my descriptive passages, and that's very helpful.

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Without that ranger's participation, the workshop would have been mediocre at best. Turned out she was a writer herself. Someday I'll post the poem I wrote. It was my response to her tour, not the workshop itself. My poem might have been mediocre too (probably still is) if she hadn't taught us to filter our descriptions through our main character's sensory perceptions rather than through our authorial mindset.

I'm not one of those writers who thinks he should always show and never tell. Writing can breath with showing and telling. Show on the peaks, for example, when your readers are holding their breath. Tell in the valley's when they are pondering what they experienced on the peaks.

But I do think that showing is more likely to produce reader-centered descriptions, and therefore enhance a reader's presence, make them feel like participants, not spectators. Whereas telling is more likely to produce writer-centered descriptions, which can make readers feel like they are standing outside your poem or story--merely watching.

Be interested in reading your ideas about descriptions. Perhaps a new post? Let me know. Thanks!