Say a Little Less, Mean a Little More
By Kathryn Craft | September 14, 2017 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Understatement. Sometimes, it’s just the thing.
At certain points in your novel, in an effort to be explicit, you might be creating barriers of words that keep the reader from fully entering the story. They shouldn’t have to sift through the rubble of your exploded verbiage to find what it’s really about. Understatement invites your reader’s active participation by leaving small gaps into which the she can insert understanding from the vast warehouse of images in her own mind.
The authors we’ll look at today do an amazing job of guiding the reader toward a specific experience and then standing out of his way while he digests it.
Understated emotional peaks
Ron McLarty uses this mad skill to wonderful effect in his novel, The Memory of Running, right from the get-go. In the opening scenes, Smithy Ide is saying a poignant good-bye to his parents, who were in a horrific car crash on the way home from the family’s annual vacation and then whisked to different hospitals.
Smithy is a 43-year-old supervisor at a toy factory who makes sure the arms on SEAL action figures are assembled palms in. He describes himself as “fat and drunk and cigarette-stained.” This does nothing to endear me to him. I have a rough history with alcoholics, hate cigarettes, and was born to a fat-obsessed mother.
But then McLarty lays in an important line of subtext: “I would have given my car to anyone, right there, if I could have been sober.”
Bloody hell. Got me.
We’re only on page 19 when Smithy stands beside his dying mother. He listens to her little breaths. Puffs, really. He pushes her thin hair onto the pillow with his fingers, and says:
There.
That’s it.
McLarty doesn’t make the mistake of telling the reader his character feels helpless. He doesn’t have to—that one generic word oozes with helplessness that the reader can’t help but feel.
Note that while McLarty uses a generic word, he has not relied upon a generic feeling. Many openings at deathbeds and funerals fail to move readers because the writer assumes that all readers will feel sad at such occasions. Not so. Death is often a tragedy but it can also be a relief, a payback, a disappointment, a reward, or a simple closing of a door. McLarty succeeds here because he uses every blessed one of those first 19 pages to create within Smithy a mountain of character, so when he balances that one word “there’ on the summit, we’ll know that Smithy’s powerlessness extends to every aspect of his life.
If McLarty can pull this off in the first 19 pages, you can certainly use the entirety of accumulating subtext in your novel to say volumes in its one final image.
Understated endings
“Rosebud,” anyone?
The mystery posed by a dying newspaper magnate’s last spoken word became the driving force behind Orson Welles’ entire classic film, Citizen Kane. An understated ending can both satisfactorily address a story question yet continue to resonate in the reader’s mind as she tries to resolve all that went unsaid.
It’s scary, I know. To allow the reader to hold the heft of your entire novel in her hands with one, final image is the epitome of authorial trust. (Whether or not you have pulled that off, in my opinion, is a great use for advance readers.) But when done well, it just might make your reader start re-reading the moment she hits that last line.
In the novel The Thirteenth Tale, here’s how author Diane Setterfield concludes the story of the reclusive author, Vida Winter, and her hand-picked biographer, our narrator, Margaret. Trust did not come easily between these characters, but what Miss Winter ultimately reveals about her life story has softened Margaret toward the eccentric woman and helped her learn things about herself. Her time invested in Miss Winter’s home has, in many ways, become her world.
This line opens the final chapter before the denouement:
Miss Winter died and the snow kept falling.
So much is hidden within the spaces of this simple, elegant sentence.
The chapter continues. Unable to leave the author’s home due to the storm, Margaret takes a couple of days to finish writing up her notes but eventually, with nothing else to distract her, she gives in to grief that has accumulated over a lifetime. The last paragraph of this two-page chapter features allows secondary characters—the household servants—to take the lead, and in so doing, says much about how our hearts eventually heal:
Judith tucked a shawl around me, then started peeling potatoes for dinner. She and Maurice and the doctor made the occasional comment—what we could have for supper, whether the snow was lighter now, how long it would be before the telephone line was restored—and in making them, took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again after death had stopped us all in its tracks.
Little by little the comments melded together and became a conversation.
I listened to their voices and, after a time, joined in.
Go ahead, try it at home
Give understatement a shot, with this caveat: To underwrite in the first draft is often to under-know. Give yourself the chance to mix up the great big batch of words from which the story will be carved. Get to know the characters and how they feel. Holding yourself back to worry about making room for the reader could harm your progress. Effective understatement is often a process of “taking things out,” a self-editing technique best reserved for later drafts.
Is there a novel whose emotional peak or final image resonated with you due to its understatement? Please share in the comments!
[coffee]
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
“McLarty succeeds here because he uses every blessed one of those first 19 pages to create within Smithy a mountain of character, so when he balances that one word “there’ on the summit, we’ll know that Smithy’s powerlessness extends to every aspect of his life.”
That is guaranteed to be the smartest thing I’ll read all day. Thank you for this post Kayhryn.
Something to aspire to! Thanks, James, for making MY day.
Love the post today! Thank you.
Thanks Kat!
Kathryn, great post! I adore understatements filled with meaning. And adored The Thirteenth Tale (thanks to your recommendation). The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick is another book that beautifully used understatement through the character Ralph Truitt. His short, sparse POV language is filled with meaning. By the time he builds to this one sentence, you know how much weight is behind it. “The train was late.”
Also, I savored the understated language by the POV of Ivan the gorilla in The One and Only Ivan. Katherine Applegate’s poetic choice of words for his voice were gentle understatements bursting with meaning that enriched the story throughout!
Thanks for reading, Donna, and for your great examples! This isn’t easy to do, so if WU readers want to try it, they can use all the examples they can get!
Kathryn, I love, love this post. It sounds so simple when you read the perfect examples you provided. When putting the proverbial pen to paper, not so much. Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’re just leaving the reader scratching their heads and when it’s take-your-breath-away insight into a character. Keep ’em coming!
Yes Denise, deceptively simple. And there are times when the exact opposite would work better. I think this is one of those instances where feedback from a keen advance reader can be valuable.
It’s also a good reason to follow advice that we’ve all heard but none of us ever really wants to do—step away from your manuscript for several weeks. Overwriting is much easier to spot if you’re coming to the material fresh.
AUTOCORRECT FAIL. You know darn well I know your name is Densie. Sorry I didn’t see the switch this time.
I know you know. :-) Happens ALL the time. Autocorrect be damned.
Understatement–going small–works when the emotional moment is big.
Small epiphanies work better when they are blown out of proportion.
Thus, when someone dies at the end of the novel, it can be effective to remark “and the snow kept falling”. The cutaway leaves room for the reader’s emotional processing.
Not so when there is little to process. I’m all for leaving things unspoken, when there is a lot that could be said.
Yes, great point. That mountain of meaning is usually present by the end of a book, which is why this can work well there—let’s hope we don’t have to explain the ending, right? That’s one reason I found the McLarty example interesting. He had accomplished so much by page 19 that one word did the trick.
There are two examples I have of this. One is from The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. In one scene a character is following another in a train station there is a brief mention that the other character is on the other side of the tracks. The Chapter ends with “She never saw the train.” It was quite spine-chilling.
The other example is from A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. So much of that book is unstated. Its the story of a 13-year old losing his mother to cancer, its never actually stated. The only mention is that the mother has no hair.
I love these examples, David. You are describing those spaces we can leave in our prose so that the reader can insert his own life experiences to co-create the story. Those are a lot of fun to plant, and they make the reader feel smart. Always a good thing!
I always get a bit of a thrill when I see “Mad Skills” as the subject of the emails because I know I am in for another great lesson from you, Kathryn. And this one didn’t disappoint. I often find in revision that I can cut back a lot of my initial verbiage and hone in on a particular word or phrase and actually make the entire passage much more resonant. You’re right when you say say a little less, mean a little more. And I also like the fact you always give us actual examples from writers to illustrate your points. So thank you (and the others who also provided relevant examples).
I’m with you, Maggie, I overwrite like crazy in my first draft so I understand the psychological through-line—then later, upon read-through, realize I’ve not only said that five times, but shown it as well! I love concision editing. I know there are people who get the bare bones down first and then add such emotional context later, but I can’t imagine working that way. At least not for the type of stories I want to tell.
And thank you for your kind words about my column! I love seeking out Mad Skills and am thrilled to hear when others connect with it.
Brilliant post, Kathryn! High bar to meet, but oh, it feels SO good when you do!
Thanks for the reminder.
You’re right—it sure does feel good! Thanks for reading, Laura!
I do so love subtext and the author trusting me to feel what I do. I loved the ending of The English Patient. This is ultimately a story about profound losses. The war is over and everybody returns home. Kirpal is married with children and he remembers his time in Italy with Hana.
“She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbor for the rest of my life.
“And so Hana moves and her face turns and in a regret she lowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cupboard and a glass dislodges. Kirpal’s left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.”
Thanks for a great essay and lesson.
Gorgeous! I may have to break down and read this—finally saw the movie just this last year (yes, I’m really backed up on both films and novels!). But I agree, beautiful example, Vijaya.
Vijaya, one reason I love the ending of The English Patient (the novel itself) so much is that when Kirpal catches the glass so easily and casually, almost as an afterthought, we are inevitably reminded of his earlier career in defusing dangerous explosives. This strikes me as a good example of what Kathryn is talking about here.
That last scene does not appear in the film, where Kirpal’s skills are overwritten and made to be too obvious. The film has plenty to recommend it otherwise, though.
Yes, awesome post. And well-timed for me. I’m in the midst of a late revision and still finding repetition and over-writing. Now I’ll be looking to see whether I have set things up well enough to employ this mad skill (or maybe be surprised to find that I’ve already done it. We’ll see.). When this is done well by a writer, it creates a sense of intimacy for me, a feeling that I’m on the inside of things enough for those three words or one sentence have multiple levels of meaning. I also love what you said about Beta readers being a bell-weather for this skill. Many thanks. I always learn from you!
Hi Susan, I love what you say here about creating a sense of intimacy. That’s what trust is, right? Sharing in a way that makes it reasonable for someone else to get you. Good luck with your revision!
I’m an “advance” reader for a manuscript that has been in the works for a decade by a published author (poet, memoir and previous novel). It has been run through writing group, spouse and god knows who else. And yet from what I’ve read so far, no one has offered him an essential critique of his over-elaboration.
I expect I’ll share this post when I give him my notes.
You’ll be doing him a favor, Charlie. There are so many reasons why people don’t comment on “over-elaboration,” from other problems that needed to be addressed (one of which may have been under-elaboration, now over-addressed) to a group who is so close that they can’t bear to heap more criticism on someone they care about who is having trouble meeting his goals in a timely fashion. Yet in an author’s attempt to be perfectly, absolutely, 100% crystal clear, he risks insulting the reader’s intelligence. A book his readers (whether agents, editors, or end users) put down will not help his career one bit.
Less is more. Unless it’s not enough.
Hahaha thanks for clearing that up, David! Writing is nothing if not subjective on every possible level.
Riffing on David’s: Einstein said things should be reduced to their simplest, but no further. The difficulty for the writer with understatement is discerning whether something implied will be appropriately inferred, or perhaps, buried so deeply that it is lost to the reader altogether. I think the context of the small act or unsaid words should govern, i.e., the squeeze of a hand on a sickbed, the slight quiver of a chin in the face of a loss, eyes directed downward as a deflection of anger, etc. will be pregnant with meaning when placed in just the right context.
I agree, Lanny, that a slow, purposeful built is key.
Really enjoyed this today. Your columns always offer great tips and insight. Thank you!
Thanks Sheri! Just don’t try them all at once. 😆
Thanks, Kathryn, I do love your posts and will be taking a hard look at my ending. Also I would mention Elizabeth Strout, especially her book MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON. I just purchased the next one, that continues the story of these characters, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, but have not read it yet. I imagine she will use a similar technique. She has grown in her work and BARTON exemplifies the CRAFT of pulling the reader in to quietly supply much of the emotion. Powerful.
Glad to hear how much you loved Lucy—I’ve only read Olive so far, but Strout sure does know how to develop a memorable character. I believe her ability to lay subtext, provide clues, and then understate to be the reason she draws you into their lives so fully. You’re right, it is powerful. Thanks for reading, and for another great example, Beth!
Kathryn, when I was young, understated endings were dissatisfying to me. Now I love them. A great example is Colson Whitehead’s “Underground Railroad,” a searing story of one young woman, Cora, and her escape from slavery. At the end of the book, she has survived so many bizarre, life-threatening situations, as a reader you want her to finally feel safe. Whitehead gives us that when, on the last page, she meets an old man, Ollie, who offers her a ride in his wagon, heading to California. The last line is
“The blanket was stiff and raspy under her chin but she didn’t mind. She wondered where he escaped from, how bad it was, and how far he traveled before he put it behind him.”
There is so much hidden subtext to this paragraph, yet it is deeply satisfying.
Oh Ann thank you so much for this–another in my TBR pile that I will now be sure to get to. Without reading the book I can sense the power floating this sentence. Great example.
Thanks for this helpful post.
You’re welcome, Susan.
Thank you so much for this post. As ever the posts on this website have proved more than helpful in improving my writing.
I’ve just started to discover that saying less can actually say more but I occasionally hit a wall through doing so. This post has made me realise that I need to write more and take out [editing and deleting] rather than not put it in in the first place. I wasn’t giving myself enough to really get to know my characters so that sparse writing had the desired effect.
I’m off to revisit my WIP to see how I can improve it. Thanks again.