Dr. Wesley Britton Shares How Blindness Can Become a Writing Tool

Today one of the subscribers to my #SharingwithWriters mentioned that his blindness had become a writing tool.  I was immediately intrigued because blind charities have always been one of my favorites. I had a grandmother and a favorite aunt who were blind (both now deceased) and loved seeing how they adapted.  But this was a new one on me!  I hope you--I figure all of my blog subscribers and visitors are writers-- are as intrigued by his story as I am and take a minute to read the "More About the Guest Blogger" section to see how prolific he is, both in print and online!

 When Blindness Becomes a Writing Tool

 By Dr. Wesley Britton

For this blog post, I had planned to write about how my own disability, my blindness due to the genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, had helped shape my main protagonist of the Beta-Earth Chronicles, Malcolm Renbourn. After all, the launching point for the entire series was my wondering what would happen to a human who is blinded when he’s drug through a barrier separating the multi-verse and taken to an alternate earth. How could a blind man turned into a blind alien cope with a planet where he doesn’t understand the language, see anything at all around him, and adapt to a culture completely different from anything he has ever known?

Rather than delve into those matters today,   I thought I’d share with you a writing lesson I learned a few weekends ago.  For my ghost-loving grandson, we went to see the movie Winchester for his birthday. Unless you’re blind yourself or have gone to the movies with someone who is blind,  you probably don’t know about the headsets that provide audio descriptions of whatever movie you’re seeing.

I’ve been relying on audio descriptions for years, but at Winchester I was really struck with the depth of details I was hearing.    Perhaps that’s because the mansion where the story is set is so strange that the audio track had to be very vivid. The narrator had to describe long hallways with boarded up rooms and staircases that went nowhere. He had to describe strange faces and appearances by spirits that weren’t human. Well, at least not alive.

But in addition to the weird, the narrator also had to describe normal curtains blowing in windows, what items were on tables or cabinets, what things were hung on the walls or dangled from the chandeliers.   He had to describe what the characters looked like, what they were wearing, and what their expressions and movements conveyed to viewers. If they looked pensive, that’s the adjective he used.  Or aggressive, resolute, all manner of terms on the emotional spectrum. 

In the theatre, blind viewers got every scene and setting painted for us in colors, lighting, cleanliness, atmosphere, sizes, you name it. In short, the audio track had to do just what we authors need to do for readers on the printed page.

So I’m proposing that a useful exercise for authors is to pretend we’re creating a narration for an audio description    when we’re creating our settings, characters, meals, movements, anything visual a reader would want to see in their minds.  For a blind writer, this was a good lesson as I’m naturally not visually oriented.  For all the things I needed to describe in my books, I had to rely on very old memories or emulate imagery from my reading.

Since my stories are set on a different planet, I didn’t have to try to capture any recognizable places. Instead, I had the challenge of world-building,      that is, crafting settings largely from scratch. To make them believable, recognizable or not, the descriptions had to be vivid and multi-sensory.  Whether I was successful or not, that’s your judgement to make. Whether you’re successful or not in your own writing, well, why not consider how a blind movie-goer would experience the time and place where your characters are doing their things?  

     

This essay first appeared on Britton's blog, http://wesleybritton.booklikes.com

 MORE ABOUT TODAY'S SHARINGWITHWRITERS GUEST BLOGGER

 Dr. Wesley Britton is the author of The Beta Earth Chronicles and reviews books for

BookPleasures.com.Here are other ways for you to learn more about him: 

Explore the Beta Earth Chronicles website:

Follow Wes Britton’s Goodreads blog:

Check out Wes Britton’s Beta Earth Chronicles Facebook page:

Enjoy the videos at Wes Britton’s YouTube Channel:

   

MORE ABOUT THE SHARINGWITHWRITERS BLOGGER



Howard-Johnson is the author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the award-winning second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter (where she talks more about choosing and the advantages of winning contests and how to use those honors)  and The Frugal Editor. Her latest is in the series is  How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page, http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile. Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and, another booklet, The Great First Impression Book Proposal helps writers who want to be traditionally published. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. In addition to this blog, she helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com )

Writing Technique: Up the Impact of Your Chase Scenes

This is from some editing I did for a writer of experimental fiction when I was on a panel for Greater Los Angeles Writers Society headed by Tony Todaro. You can apply these suggestions to the chase or getaway scene in your script or manuscript before you send it to an agent or publisher--even without an editor! Ha

Sometimes even the most fascinating detail can slow down movement. So as much as writers are told that detail is important, purge as much as you can from your action scenes and put it somewhere else or dribble it into narrative in other places in your manuscript. In the process, ask yourself if your reader really needs to know the color of the protagonist’s eyes. As important as details is, some is better left to the imagination of the reader. I can imagine where eye color might be very important, but—on average—it probably isn’t necessary.  Here are some quick suggestions:

1.    Remove some of the detail entirely. Double check. Make it meet the test!

2.    Try to use stronger verbs—especially verbs of movement.

3.    Use shorter sentences. By doing so, the rhythm could emulate a fast-beating heart and the pulse of danger. Note that clauses slow copy as surely as passive voice (or tense).

4.    In the interest of a faster pace, try dropping into present tense and moving out of it when the run or danger is past. If you write the scene that way and wait a day or two before rereading it, you’ll be able to honestly compare the effects of the two.

5.    Check your commas. They also slow the pace. Sometimes you must follow grammar rules for commas for clarity. Sometimes that comma slows their reading, indicates a pause. Other times it is a style choice you get to make. You are looking for the times readers will never notice a comma is absent. You may choose to discard some of them!

6.    Consider saving the description of your protagonist for a time when life doesn’t depend on his or her speed. His “bright face of youth” doesn’t meet that test. Is there a way to work the major description into this narrative using smaller bites or to arrange to have it come before or after the chase?

7.    Though I love that you include the sensory, be careful not to overdo that, especially in an action-moment. You have the protagonist leaning against a strut for a moment’s rest. The strut’s sensory role in this passage should probably be the reassurance it offered, not how it felt to the touch. Further, this kind of thing might best be left to your reader who will draw that conclusion anyway.

8.    At the risk of being repetitious, the sense of danger shouldn’t be interrupted unless it is necessary for understanding. Sometimes that isn’t speed (like a chase). Sometimes it is. Regardless, you—the author—want to keep the momentum going for the reader.

CHJ

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER


Howard-Johnson is the author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the award-winning second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter (where she talks more about choosing and the advantages of winning contests and how to use those honors)  and The Frugal Editor. Her latest is in the series is  How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page, http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile. Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and, another booklet, The Great First Impression Book Proposal helps writers who want to be traditionally published. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. In addition to this blog, she helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com )

Revealing Superheroes' Secrets for Better Storytelling

My husband—sweetie that he is—brought me a copy of The Smithsonian from his dermatologist's office. So thanks to Lance and Dr. Mantel, I am now a diehard fan of the magazine.

One of the articles was inspired by the new movie, Man of Steel. They take up how "superhero origin stories inspire us to cope with adversity."

The elements that make superheroes so popular can work with characters in any kind of fiction you may write (or read). Here are the ones that Smithsonian writer Robin Rosenberg found in several of the most popular superhero tales. Check your stories and novels to see how these themes (or "life-altering experiences") might be capitalized on to further pique the interest of your readers.

~Destiny—is your character "chosen" in some way?
~Trauma—has your character suffered trauma that increased his strengths or weaknesses?
~Sheer chance—Sheer chance is usually not as compelling as an action that has been caused or motivated, but sometimes a writer just has to resort to it. If an author makes that choice, he or she should put more emphasis on how the character deals with it.
~Choosing "altruism over the pursuit of wealth and power."

My own takeaway from Rosenberg’s piece is that literary criticism of the last decade has relegated backstory in novels as pretty undesirable, something that should be minimized at all costs. In my gut, I've always disagreed. Of course, we can't let backstory get in the way of momentum, but backstory is often part of your hero’s path to character building so they very well may deserve more attention.  I’m also reading Wally Lamb’s new novel and I’m pretty sure from the evidence that he agrees with me—at least in regard to literary fiction.

Backstory helps your readers relate and find meaning in loss, and it provides models for coping. If you are a write of nonfiction, you may find ways to use superheroes' themes anecdotally in your work.

In either case, understanding the psychological underpinnings of why we are so affected may benefit us all by "tapping into our capacity for empathy, one of the greatest [super?] powers of all."

There’s one more that Rosenberg missed. I think we're all searching for connection—human to human. If that happens to be human-to-alien or human-to-superhero, so be it. It's part of what we all need as readers.

Note: Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist, has written several books about the psychology of superheroes. Search for her on Google.

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .