Clinical Relief with Poles

Could it be that this is the final push?
I'm hitting Tethered Light again, and hitting it hard. These short breaks are truly beneficial: reading through my opening chapters yesterday, they felt new and alive, as though they had been written by someone else.
So, what did I discover?
Technically, they are as tight as the skin on a snare drum.
(You're gonna love this link!)
I was listening to the latest Rush album the other day. Neil Peart is surely one of the most technically accomplished drummers of all time.
He opens one track solo, buzzing one-handed on the snare (and it's not a regular buzz either - think of a military snare pattern), whilst dancing around the toms with his other hand. Bloody hell! To a drummer, there is a magic in those opening few seconds.
But to listen to it beyond that perception, it is little more than a barren introduction to a piece of music. In short, it's not very exciting and is rather exclusive.

I found that I could quickly identify those moments in my opening where I have been a little too clinical: I recognized them because they felt the wrong side of sterile.
I fixed them by hitting the reader's senses. My opening gambit was devoid of sounds, and the introduction of a single line refreshed the magic:

Silence fell from the heavens, dusting the crests and the valley - a silence tempered now and then only by the shrill and distant chatter of emerald-crowned hummingbirds.

Of course, once I had identified the missing element, I still had to define it.
The words distant and only reinforces Penpa's alienation; emerald-crowned adds to that rich and majestic theme of royalty; dusting mimicks the cold snow. I chose hummingbirds because they are the smallest birds, and because they have an exotic quality. I made them plural because they are not alone - they have the family that Penpa so craves (aw, poor Blinky doesn't quite cut it for her, not least because, while the hummingbirds chatter, any conversation between P&B will be one-sided).
Emerald-crowned hummingbirds do not exist in our world. Ten minutes research led me to the ruby-throated hummingbird, and everything clicked.
And, of course, I am quick to remind the reader that everything is important to and loved by God: He watches and presides from the heavens.

So there we see the trouble that sometimes accompanies clinical writing, and we can compare this to the multiple troubles that always accompany inconsidered or poorly understood writing.

Jackson Pollock remedied the ailment of clinical precision by magnifying the element of chance. This seems a terrific solution: as you can see, even when I recognize a sterility, I am still prone to analyzing its solution.

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles Number 11

I've been looking for a new technique to experiment with for a while now. The word palettes idea does conjur some words within a theme that one might not have ordinarily considered, and goes some way to adding that random factor (still controlled of course: certainly Pollock chose to splatter paint on canvas).

I shall consider new techniques and would welcome any suggestions:

How might we take ourselves away from all that we have learned and retrieve that naivety that might warm a mood and make it more friendly and less oppressive?
(Indeed, might a randomness or a naivety do this? Am I pointing at recreational drugs here? Crikey, that's an interesting parallel [and one that I will not be exploring]).

The Passive Volcano

volcano

Here's a snippet from Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano:

'Joffrey' became 'The Old Bean'. Laruelle mere, to whom, however, he was 'that beautiful English young poet', liked him too. Taskerson mere had taken a fancy to the French boy: the upshot was Jacques was asked to spend September in England with the Taskersons, where Geoffrey would be staying till the commencement of his school term. Jacque's father, who planned sending him to an English school till he was eighteen, consented. Particularly he admired the erect manly carriage of the Taskersons... And that was how M. Laruelle came to Leasowe.

Michael Schmidt's introduction to the book begins thus:

'The novel gets off to a slow start,' Malcolm Lowry concedes. Is this indeed 'inevitable' and 'necessary'? Many readers find it hard to break into Under the Volcano ...
... After three false starts I first read the book when I was twenty-two ...

It really is an impossible book to read. Indeed, one gets the impression that the proof-readers felt that way too as there are spelling mistakes on every third or fourth page.
It's not too difficult to demonstrate why the book is such a slog: Lowry shuns the basic building blocks of good writing.

We've looked at a cool technique for creating confusion in the reader: by rapidly switching subject and object within a long and breathless sentence, we create an effect rather like a spinning pov. This is brilliant for developing that sense of giddyness that we might require in a fight scene or a chase scene.
But Lowry scarcely lets up. I've found myself reading the same passage several times, each time wondering who this 'he' is or that 'we'.

Right-branching sentences form an active voice and that is how we logically think. First to last.
Who are we looking at?
What are they doing?
Who or what are they doing it to (if applicable)?

Alan shot the deer.
(Btw, a verb that does something to something else, like shoot, is called a transitive verb, which is indicated in a dictionary by v.t.)

Reversing this order forms a passive voice which requires the reader to think backwards:

The deer was shot by Alan.

You don't need to stretch your imagination to see how this might damage one's immersion in the narrative.

In a similar way, we can consider Sunset Bickham's advice on moving the story forwards.
Point the reader in the right direction from the off, he says.
So, elegant prose leads the reader by the hand; it does not stumble or falter or require of the reader an athletic brain that might deal with all manner of direction changes or focus changes. It has a clear heading and imperceptible transitions.

There's a lot of good, sound, building block advice here.

Gegs

Scrambled Eggs

Came upon this interesting phenomenon:

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

It strikes me that much of this is not about reading words but about anticipating the next word, or even the conclusion of a sentence. The unscrambling process would likely be far more difficult if words were removed from context.

(Btw, note that not all the words above retain their first and last letters in position. Btwbtw, Gegs is a classic cryptic crossword clue.)

The Poppet

Good Voodoo Dolls - Magnetic Twins

Apparently, that's what those voodoo dolls are called: poppets.
Y'see, nobody cares about those poppets when the pins go in: instead, we focus on the 'real-life' person whom the poppet represents:
When that child Maharaja impales the Indiana Jones-shaped poppet, we worry about Indy and not the poppet.
Or do we?

Does the reader truly care about our protagonist, or does he care for himself - how he felt when he was scared, not how the protag feels when she is scared?
If I do terrible things to my protag, what have I really done? Have I not simply used the protag as a vessel to translate that emotion across to the reader? Have I not simply used the protag as a vehicle for triggering a particular memory or expectation based on experience within the reader?

How am I supposed to feel about this line from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God?:
'Dat school teacher had done hid her in de woods all night long, and he had done raped mah baby and run off just before day.'

Who do I empathize with, and how? Who should I extend my sympathies to?:
The poor mother of the rape victim?
The daughter (some minor character about whom I know next to nothing)?
The narrator who is recalling this conversation?
And then, how could I know what it would be like to be the mother, or even parent, of a rape victim? Or how could I know what that victim must feel like, or how the narrator might feel in relating these memories?

Then, my powers of empathy are everything?
The author imparts information and I apply that information to something I know from my own experience. I would imagine something horrible happening to someone I love - someone to whom I have a duty of care - and conjur that emotion and translate it across to the poppet - the receptacle of my emotions.
I imagine a response based on my own experiences of the world and of my perception of the responses of others, and I find the closest emotional match within myself.

So the author has invited me to experience a best-fit emotion. And when I can find close matches within myself, I feel a resonance. Indeed, Zadie Smith says of Their Eyes Were Watching God: 'There is no novel I love more.'
How does the author ensure that I experience this emotion deeply?
Or, what might prevent me from experiencing this emotion deeply (or at all)?
I would hardly empathize with a poppet: I would no more empathize with a poppet than I would with a sheet of paper.
But I would empathize with another person.
In the cocoon of a novel, I might allow myself to believe that the poppet is/was real (it's suspension of disbelief y'know) - provided that the author encourages this belief and/or does nothing to damage it.
Perhaps it is true to say that the more 'real' the character seems, the more likely I am to seek that resonance - that match. And the more I resonate with this character, the greater my emotional response.
Therein we might see the true power of familiarity: we cry not for the protagonist but for ourselves.

Thoughts ongoing.