CREATIVE DRIVE

The newsletter that motivates and inspires

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NUMBER 40

The horizon is closer than you think it is.

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Youth is the province of dreamers. It's a realm ruled by idealists and innocents, not simply those who were born during this millennium. If it's a place, each of us can go there. We can live in it, bathe in its waters and feel our energy as it radiates toward the heavens of possibility.

It's innocent idealism, you might say. We could characterize youth as folly, a prolonged state of ignorance and frustrated efforts or even the time in which we were simply unsure of ourselves. No such description, however, will erase the fullest description of youth: the beautiful onset of life, in which experience gradually rubs away the thin shell of self-protection and we age. Youth is the introduction to a destiny that each of us will meet.

I'm not here to talk about death. It's often too sudden to discuss. Youth, however, is a long path. It may be fleeting in retrospect, but as a moment-to-moment experience it offers infinite treasures. The opportunities to learn from ourselves and those moments, however small, are immeasurably rich.

How Productive Can You Be?

You might not have sensed it, but I can sit down and immediately devise a title, theme or sentence that will provide everything I need to begin and complete a two-thousand-word piece. I can do that because I remember the experience but live in the present. What did I hear that day? What did I see, say or discover? What feelings did I have, and most importantly, what lesson can I draw from what I experienced?

The willingness to laugh away the pain–to love one's enemy–is important in this process. You should have that willingness, or at least an acceptance of its eventuality, before you sit down to write.

Imagine that you want to write a short story. Well, in the context of such a tale, things can happen quickly. Whether it's the portrait of a life or a vignette that depicts a chapter of that life, you'll need the courage to describe events accurately. If there's tense dialogue, don't shy away from it. If there's a gray-eyed stare of judgment, lead your reader right up to that character's face.

Know Where You're Going

Such a character occupies the foreground, beyond which we have her counterpart or adversary. At the edge of the space we have a window, and through that scene we can glimpse the horizon.

How do we complete the journey from our place in that room, in the present, to the horizon? How can we make the horizon stay in one place so that it isn't always out of reach?

Perspective is the tool we use to do that. Perspective lends balance to every person, event and element in a story.

Consider the pre-Renaissance paintings you studied in that "Introduction to Art and Architecture" class during your freshman year. (If you didn't have a freshman year, trust that such a class would've been part of it.) Artists in those days were more focused on the elements of their paintings than they were on context. They struggled to render their subjects with detail, beauty and religious fervor but didn't necessarily consider balance. Instead of balance, they used emphasis. So, the infant Jesus was often the largest or most prominent figure in a painting. The Virgin Mary could be taller than others in a scene, or she could have a larger head. Even if depicted from a relatively low angle, her face would be prominent.

Those works of art, important as they are, don't employ the balance of linear perspective, which was developed by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi. You can see it demonstrated to stunning effect in the works of Raphael. The horizon line or vanishing point–a simple demarcation between the close and the distant–made all the difference. With a preliminary drawing thus structured, things could be placed in such a way that they were properly dimensional. In the process it was found that a baby's head was roughly a quarter of its total length but that an adult's head was a seventh of the total length. People, buildings, trees, mountains and rivers could be depicted in realistic ways so as to contribute to public appreciation, discourse and memory.

Never Far Away

We generally think of the horizon as unreachably distant, but it really isn't. Actually, the horizon from a clifftop two hundred feet over the seashore at sea level is just seventeen miles away. If the horizon were to stay put, you could get there in a good boat. So, the story you create can have a reliable horizon too. It can be exactly where you want to put it, and then everything else can fall into place.

Linear perspective is like a street: Place its terminus on the horizon line and walk confidently toward your destination. Along the way you'll pick up characters and position various elements, and in this dimensional array everything will have the appropriate significance.

Think of a childhood event as an object such as a watering can. It's cumbersome even while empty, but you'll pick it up anyway. Be careful as you step into the street with your watering can in hand. When you reach the point at which the vine you planted long ago has withered or flourished, place the watering can on a balcony wall or a low branch. Now, return to the bottom of the street. From there you can see how small the object appears to be. In the context of your scene, the watering can occupies little space.

A Wiser View of the Scene

Imagine the scene again but in the context of an adult conversation or situation. The watering can is that event or circumstance, and it's as small as it was in our previous context. The difference is that your reader will wonder why it's there. The reader's eye–the reader's curiosity–will be triggered not because of any inordinate size but due to its placement along the street.

Why would we find a watering can atop the street-facing patio wall of some antiquated hotel? Who would stop there, set down the watering can and go inside? Who is there to meet, and what would be discussed? The possibilities are intriguing, aren't they? The story is yours to reveal, but it's the reader's to anticipate.

The horizon line is the upper edge of a grid, which is of course an outline. If you know where it ends, you can see where it ends. If you know where it starts, you can begin. Find the midpoint and then find the quarter point, etcetera. For a writer, though, it isn't a mathematical graduation. You aren't recreating a work by Raphael but are simply making spaces for each character and event to tell part of the story. A stolen wallet may be found atop a bed in the foreground, but in time the entire room will recede. It's the reader's impression of the room that will remain fresh, returning again and again as a reminder that something is amiss.

The Balance of Innocence

Your imagination is a child, as is that of the reader. Imagination is endless, but it's innocent too. We often have little control over what our minds conjure.

The ability to devise and complete a tale may be cultivated and developed, but it still involves a series of steps. Does that mean you'll have everything in place as you begin to write? It doesn't. You might have just the end of your story, the beginning or maybe both. The trick is to prevent the story from growing so rapidly that the overgrowth will effectively lock you out of certain rooms. Think of the story as an apartment building or a big, old mansion. For you, the storyteller, every hallway and room must be accessible so that you can find and reveal the relevant aspects. The reader, not you, will be the one who will struggle to unlock certain doors. You'll write the story–you'll build that structure–and watch from outside as your readers step quietly around its occupants. The watering can out on the porch, the pocket-worn wallet on an upstairs bed, the steel-gray, insinuating glare of an antagonist: these are the elements you'll place throughout the building. They'll be memorable to the reader, but the reader, like a child, will be intrigued by everything. You, however, have the benefit of perspective. After all, you created the street. You designed the building.

Balance and perspective are achieved through the use of a vanishing-point grid or an outline, either of which is easy to complete after you establish the horizon. So, the next time you begin a project, start at the end of it. You'll find that it feels natural to work that way because it immediately says, "I'll get there."

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A QUICK EXERCISE

Okay, this could be tricky. Let's arrange the following sentences in start-to-finish order, and for each one we'll supply a noun to give the story some balance. Here we go:

She asked herself if it really was possible to discern the curvature of the earth; to see the horizon not as a _______________ but as part of a continuum.

If it was, everything–even the _______________________ and the ocean floor–might also be revealed.

At that moment she had the distinct sensation that all of her __________________ were transitory; that the present was even less permanent than an instant.

The sun appeared from just above her gaze, and with it came a _____________ of questioning, as with a puzzle inside a dream.

"Will you ever know yourself as others do?" he asked, gently placing the ______________ beside her right hand.

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? Copyright 2024 by Lawrence Payne. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated or distributed without permission from the author.