Friday After Hours Forum

Verisimilitude

September 26, 2008

Mary Rosenblum Hello all. Welcome to our Friday After Hours Forum.   I wanted to talk about verisimilitude today.  I was a student at the Clarion Writers Workshop, we had Elizabeth Lynn as an instructor. She was tough! And she was very unimpressed with our worlds.  went out and bought us a big stuffed toad...Verisimilitoad.   think we mostly needed him to cuddle as she shredded our stories, but he was a reminder to make our world realistic, if not real.  I was delighted to find Mr. Toad still in residence at the workshop, when I returned there to teach it this year. We had a nice reunion.

 Verisimilitude is all about making the readers think that the scene is real without having to, say, visit Paris yourself, or actually kill someone before you write that murder scene.  : It's up to you to mimic reality. And that does require some work on your part. But whoever said writing was easy?  You and your readers have a contract....I will suspend my disbelief and you will create a world I can believe in.  If you violate that contract, your reader ceases to believe in the story any more. I'm sure you've all had the experience of reading something where the author gets something wrong. You KNOW that's not right. And from then on, usually, you can't quite believe in that story any more.   it's important to get those details right as far as you can. And yes, that does take some research.
mcnellism: The research can be fun though.
Mary Rosenblum: It can indeed, Mcnell. I'm currently learning to fly a small plane. That's LOTS of fun!   If you're writing mystery, for example, you can find books that go through the steps an officer follows when investigating a case.  it's still a good idea to find yourself a member of the local police force who will answer questions in return for lunch or might even want to read your manuscript for flaws.   Same thing if your main character is a doctor or an attorney.  Any profession has its own inside rules, language, and routines.  If you use only a few of these, you'll give your character a reality that will really impress readers...both those who know nothing beyond Hollywood’s (usually flimsy) portrayal, and people who work in the field.   And while we're on the subject of Hollywood, don't use TV or movies as research!  Hollywood only uses reality if it suits them.  

Since I first started writing, I have kept an 'expert file'. When I meet someone whose knowledge might be useful to me at some time, I ask: 'Gee, I'm a writer. Can I pick your brain one day if I'm working on a novel that includes...whatever they're expert at'. The universal answer is an enthusiastic 'sure'.  Then I ask for a card, write down the expertise I might want to mine, and file it.   Later on, I might email or call that person. 'We talked whenever and you said you might be willing to help me out with [your expertise]. I'm working on a novel about such and such and I'd love to talk to you about whatever. Can I buy you lunch? A beer? If your expert was enthusiastic when you first talked, usually they're happy to comply. I always offer an acknowledgement and a copy of the book when the book is published, or a copy of the short story if that's what I'm working on.   Those brief interviews will give you details, insights, and that vernacular that every profession has, that will make your character seem utterly real.  In terms of setting, either real or made up, it's all about specific detail.  

Maybe you never visited San Francisco. Maybe you have only looked at pictures online or in the travel books.  But if you take your character along Fisherman's Wharf and mention a few of the big, recognizable details (the ones you got from the travel book or online) and then add specifics, like the smell of sea and fish mixed with exhaust, the skirl of gulls, the white faced mime on the corner juggling balls on a wooden box, the smell of frying fish... people will write you letters and tell you how real your scene was and surely you must have lived there.  You didn't, of course.  But you blended the big, recognizable details with details you experienced elsewhere. You've been to the seashore, you know what it smells like. With all the restaurants, you know someone will be frying fish. You're going to hear gulls and you've seen a mime like this. In a tourist location like this, you'll probably find at least one mime.  

 The same thing with professions. When you talk to your expert ask about the minutiae of life. Everyone expects the big details. Your detective is going to investigate the scene and so forth. But how does your informant start his day? What's it like before he or she hits the street? What do people do at the end of their shifts? Go home? What is gossip like? What do they talk about?  People love to think their job is interesting to someone. Get someone started and you'll get all the minutiae you want, most of the time. Then use it.  They key is small, specific details, not the big landmarks.   And use all five senses.  When you stick only to visuals, you create the effect of a photograph...perhaps what you used to get a sense of this place.  But think about what the other senses record.  An excellent exercise is to take a nice postcard view of something...a city, seashore, resort, you name it. Now put a character into that scene and make sure that you involve the senses. Is it hot? Scorching? Chilly? Do leaves crunch underfoot? Sand grates annoyingly in her sandals?   Is it really windy and the sand scours his bare legs, making him wish he'd put on long pants? Can she taste salt on her lips?  What do those characters smell?  do they hear? Bad calypso music from the little dive just off the beach?  

None of those details are in the postcard of course, but if you don't include them in your scene, then you have a postcard. I see a lot of postcard scenes from novice writers.  If you're creating a fantasy or SF world, what is the universe like? Many novice writers just give us the big stuff: Mountains, desert, wind-scoured rock.   They don't look at details.  Scabby patches of some kind of moss or lichen patching the rocks.  Mats of purplish weed floating on the slow, oily swells.  Armies of small, reddish beetle-like things scurrying up one side of the huge tree-like trunks and down the other.  The more you stick to big details the more you get a postcard.  The more you include small details, sensory details, the more real the scene is, the less like a postcard.

Verisimilitude.

Now of course, you'll weave all this into action! Don't stop the story to describe the scene for three paragraphs staight. That's not what I'm suggesting!  Part of the problem is the novice-writer eye. When we start writing, we see the scene clearly in our own heads and we put just enough details on the page so that the scene comes to life for us.  But alas, our readers can't see into our minds. No telepathic hyperlink. So there isn't enough on the page for someone who is not us. Which includes all our readers.  Do that exercise I mentioned...write a scene based on a postcared or picture from a book. Now give the scene to someone to read. After they've read it, ask them to recall things from the scene. See how much has stuck with them.   That will tell you how successful you are at creating a strong sense of place.   The more reality you can create...the more verisimilitude...the more real your story or personal narrative will seem.  

This DOES apply to personal narrative.  In fact, it's a critical part of writing strong personal narratives.   There, you have to engage the readers with your life experience and you can't manipulate the plot.   You're dealing with reality.  So the more real you can make that narrative the more you engage your readers.   Another good exercise  is to go back and pick something you wrote in the past.   Now sit down and look at that story or personal narrative. How much of the world where it takes place do you actually see? Just what's on the page, please, not what's in your head.

Now make it richer. But don't make it ponderous.  That means you weave in a detail here, a detail there.

kard: I was just thinking that when you express something through one of your senses, you really draw attention to that sense. Does this sometimes distract from the story?

Mary Rosenblum: It can...but that's where you have to balance story and detail.

Goonie:  One of my greatest challenges is to balance dialogue/action with description. Any rules or standards to help balance?

Mary Rosenblum: If the scene is tense and full of drama, you can't weave in many details.  If the scene is relaxed, goonie, you can let your POV look around a lot more and you can weave in more details.  Again, work on using specific details rather than generalities that have no verisimilitude value.  

Say your character has just had a screaming fight with her best friend and is walking home, thinking the friendship is lost forever.   She might trudge along the empty county road, noticing dozens of ant mounds among the broken chunks of asphalt along the crumbling edge of the road. Still angry, she might start kicking at the ant mounds, but the hot sun has made the asphalt sticky and she gets black tarry stuff on her white sneakers. Now Mom is really going to get on her. So she runs home and forgets about the yellow jacket nest under grouchy Mr. Mellon's back porch and gets stung.  She's really having a bad day, but we're also transported into a hot, sunny, summer countryside with ants, crumbling county roads, and yellow jacket nests.  You could just have her run home after the fight and maybe mention that she got stung on the way, but the small details in this scene will give us a real place, one that many readers will recognize from childhood summers.

Red 1:  Mary, I missed the beginning, but it sounds like these details make the difference between what we always hear about "showing" vs. "Telling" in order to create the verisimilitude. Can you give us a one or two sentence "telling" and then expand it into "showing?"

Mary Rosenblum: Verisimilitude...the act of making the unreal seem real...really depends on showing, Red.  It's about giving the readers details that make the scene seem real rather than a generic backdrop.  It can be the way a surgeon talks, using the vernacular that docs use with each other.  It's like a battle scene where the soldiers talk to each other the way soldiers really do talk in real life, as opposed to a scene where they talk like any two people on the street.  In the scene like the one I described, I could ascribe that scene to say, some real small town in Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or North Carolina. The details...small and specific...are details you could encounter outside any small town in any of those three states. They'll give the readers a sense of 'real' that they wouldn't get if with 'Katy walked home along the country road, feeling sorry for herself'.  Those details make it THIS country road in THIS town.

Lady:  Obviously the term verisimilitude is for descriptions involving the five (or six?) senses. I wrote a short story where a the main character had a flashback into a previous life. In that scene she overheard the other characters discussing the results from that day's meeting at the meetinghouse regarding anti slavery laws. I researched that day's meeting in history to get the "feel" of what was going on. Is this verisimilitude also?

Mary Rosenblum: Yes, it is, lady. There, in an historical piece, you're going to use the same sort of small details, but making sure they reflect the time.  You might mention the rain barrel with mosquitoes dancing above it. Or the empty hay wagon with the bony team of grays drowsing hipshot in front of the feed store, or whatever else is appropriate to a street at that time.  Again, you want to add the 'small' details, not just the main ones.  Is the street muddy, is it dusty? Do we see someone empty a chamber pot out a back window?  When you do your research, Lady, think about the small, inconsequential details that you can layer into your scenes unobtrusively and without bogging down the action.  I've actually been working on an historical project lately, and I've been making lists of everyday items and tasks that I can use for that very reason.  What will someone notice as they go about their plot-day? Who else will be on the streets? What will they be doing? What shops will we see? Vendors? Who sweeps the streets? What kind of food sellers exist? I'll use small glimpses of all these things to bring the time and place to life.

Charie: There is also to much mundane detail. You did great research but you don't have to put in every detail of serving Turkish Coffee, for example.

Mary Rosenblum: No kidding, charie. It's that iceberg thing again.  You amass the iceberg's worth of detail, but only the tip shows up in the story.

Laina: How much of this goes into a mystery?

Mary Rosenblum: Laina it depends on where and when your mystery is set.   If it's set right now, today, in a US city, you're going to need verisimilitude when you create your street scenes and of course, with the investigation of the crime. Get your cops right.   If it's set in 1985 London, then you have different details to amass and work in.   yeah...get your guns right.  Mystery readers do know their guns.

So, to sum up, use small details to give your scene a sense of reality...of verisimilitude. As far as characters are concerned, try for those 'insider' details if your main character has a particular career.  Every career has its own insider language and turns of phrase.  That will have your fans asking if you were a doctor, or firefighter, or cop or whatever your MC is, before you became a writer. When you get that kind of question (when did you live in....) you know you've done your verisimilitude right!

Lady: I like the idea of collecting cards from willing contributors. Thanks Mary.

Mary Rosenblum: It can really help you, Lady!  Have a good weekend all!