This past weekend, Bobby and I visited the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk to see a glass exhibit, and while there we discovered Giovanni Battista Langetti\u2019s \u201cPrometheus,\u201d which had been in the museum\u2019s storage vault for some time awaiting restoration. Now that it\u2019s back to full splendor, the painting hangs alone in the upstairs foyer, a grim sentinel who greets visitors on their way to the second-floor galleries.<\/p>\n
You couldn\u2019t walk past without seeing it. The piece is enormous, its rich shadows and vivid colors combined in a beautiful depiction of an appalling scene. Prometheus\u2014who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans\u2014lies chained to a mountain ledge. Skin and muscles of his brow wrinkle and writhe even in the stillness of the artist\u2019s oils. Whites of his eyes stand out around blown pupils as he stares, panicked. His mouth stretches so wide you can almost hear his scream. Knotted muscles cover every inch of his naked body and all four limbs, including their associated phalanges, contort in futile attempt to escape. Beside him sits the eagle, dispenser of justice sent by the gods to eat Prometheus\u2019s liver. Every day he endures this torment. Every day it begins again. Every day. For eternity.<\/p>\n
Standing before that painting, I felt the thief\u2019s dread, his terror. I easily imagined the madness that surely crept in, the suffering he must have experienced on a daily basis even before the eagle touched him. Just knowing what lay ahead would be torturous. I\u2019m familiar with the myth of Prometheus and his theft of fire. Nonetheless, seeing that painting drove home with morbid finality the revulsion I didn\u2019t feel from reading the tale.<\/p>\n
That<\/em> is the power of the visual. That<\/em> is why our writing teachers tell us to \u201cshow,\u201d not \u201ctell.\u201d<\/p>\n In this past week\u2019s fiction class, my short story \u201cLast Call\u201d was up for critique. While everyone suggested improvements or noted flaws, everyone loved the story. I can\u2019t tell you how good that made me feel! (Sorry for the exclamation point, Lydia!) Several people mentioned in their written comments how my description of a nebula popped a visual into their heads, or how Max\u2019s reaction to news from home provoked in them a visceral reaction. I breathed a sigh of relief, I must admit, because I\u2019ve been tweaking that story since February of this year. Of course, it was<\/em> my first ever short story attempt, but I loved the concept so much I could never bring myself to set it aside and forget it. Now I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n It ain\u2019t easy to paint pictures with words, especially when word-count is so important. I\u2019ve sometimes found it difficult to know when to just come out and say, \u201cSam told Jane the bad news. Jane fainted,\u201d and when it\u2019s better to say, \u201cSam\u2019s voice echoed in Jane\u2019s ears, tinny and surreal beneath the hissing roar that threatened to drown him out. All the color drained from her face. A grey film painted everything in sight as if someone had drawn a fine veil over her head. She watched, mesmerized and nauseated, while a darkening tunnel sucked the room away, and the floor rushed up to catch her.\u201d Okay, maybe that\u2019s not my best effort (hey, it\u2019s Monday with a vengeance), but you can see what I mean. Readers need to see<\/em> what\u2019s happening. And if I can\u2019t show them in imagery, then I must bind their emotions to those of my characters, and pluck them as needed to drive home a plot point.<\/p>\n Granted, sometimes it\u2019s easy to go overboard. A fellow student in class wrote at one particular paragraph on my manuscript, \u201cWords on words on words. Wordy McWordy Word.\u201d After I stopped laughing, I tried to figure out how I could make it better. I certainly notice when a writer has gone on far too long about a particular point; unless it\u2019s necessary to the story, Professor McWordy can deflate all the power from the narrative, not to mention send you spiraling into an unwieldy word count that no agent or publisher will take on.<\/p>\n The key, I think, is as in most other things in life\u2014to strike a good balance between the words and the images they paint. I\u2019ve heard teachers say over and over that words in written works are valuable real estate; every single one must be absolutely necessary to the whole.<\/p>\n So I dance between too much and not enough. Don\u2019t all writers do that same jig? I promise, if I ever figure out the exact formula that works every single time, I\u2019ll write my own \u201chow to\u201d book and share the secret with the rest of you.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past weekend, Bobby and I visited the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk to see a glass exhibit, and while there we discovered Giovanni Battista Langetti\u2019s \u201cPrometheus,\u201d which had been in the museum\u2019s storage vault for some time awaiting restoration. Now that it\u2019s back to full splendor, the painting hangs alone in the upstairs foyer, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8n0kX-7Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dremadeoraich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}