What's for lunch?"

  

I'm trying to decide what to make for lunch." Rick and I were still in bed reading, the dog snuggled between us.

It was his day to cook. His days are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and a big breakfast Sunday morning. Mine are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and a light supper supper.

Our meals can be anything from elaborate, including new and experimental recipes, to "how do I use up the leftovers in the frigo?"

On any day, the chef can decide to "cook" at La Bronzette, Flowers, La Lola, Gamette, Sushi, Kabob Place, Les Trois Frères, Marro, Le Cottage, Café du Soleil, or any other restaurant in either South of France or Geneva within a reasonable distance. Where we were regulars we are teased about it with the staff saying, "I see it's your day to cook." Usually it's directed at Rick, but I could be as responsible.

This choice of home cooked or restaurant was a far cry from my first marriage where my ex-husband never wanted to eat at a restaurant. The few times we did, the restaurant burned down shortly after. I don't think he was responsible.

I did appreciate that my mother sometimes took me to a restaurant, Fieldstone's in Andover being my favorite for its buffet where I learned to strategically stack my plate.

When I shared a house in Geneva, I'd be writing on the first floor (2nd American) and she'd be in her office in the basement. One or the other would send an e-mail saying Marro? Marc's? and we would meet in the foyer ready to eat.

When I lived with another couple in Boston we all took turns cooking. We also ate out a lot, especially on Friday nights where we ate, listened to the street musicians and bought the books for the week.

Since we are about to move at the end of the month, we are trying to rid ourselves of any extras. I don't know what Rick is planning but this was on the kitchen top.

 I wonder what he'll put with it.

Writing Description

 

THEORY

When we think of description we usually think of scenery, weather, the way a place looked. However describing actions is another way of moving the plot forward. In movies the camera pans for the viewer or moves into a close up of the action they want the audience to see, but writers must put the words in print so the reader can focus on the action and then glean the meaning.

Action in this sense does not necessarily mean shoot-‘em-up cop stories or violence in any form. Some can be quite subtle, as having a character reach over and take another character’s hand to show acquiescence after a small argument or sympathy after bad news.

Like anything we write it is the choice of details that give our readers an insight into what is happening. The importance of the action is weighted about how the characters (point of view) react to it or don’t react to it.

We can choose distance or close ups just like a movie camera. A car can pass in the street as someone looks out a window and thinks that it the third time the car has gone by. Or we can be in the car with the driver. The type of car, age, speed, all can give a reader a sense of what is important. If the character draws the curtain, rushes to the phone or ignores the car tells the reader what is happening.

A door slam shows anger. If it is so hard that paint flakes off, the mood, is intensified have the handle fall off and still another fact is conveyed either about the condition of the door or the degree of anger of the slammer

Very different is a subtle change of a facial expression: a lip that quivers, an eyebrow that is raised. Often this type of description shows an underlying emotion without the writer having to tell what is being felt.

Sometimes the character assigns words to the action so the reader gets the message loud and clear. Other times the actions tell the reader something that the character hasn’t caught on to. A man who hangs up the phone suddenly when his wife enters the room, but the wife doesn’t see it, lets the reader know he is up to something sneaky. The tension builds waiting for the wife to find out what that is.

Writers don’t necessarily separate descriptions of scenes, actions and dialogue, but weave them in and out to help the reader live the writing.

SAMPLES

Both are from MY SISTER’S KEEPER by Jodi Picoult. The speaker is the younger daughter, born to provide body parts for her older sister who is suffering from cancer. Mostly the girls get along, but sometimes they fall out as normal sisters will.

1. “A minute later she (the mother) left, and returned with potholders, dishtowels and throw pillows. She placed these at odd distances, all along Kate’s side of the room. ‘Come on,’ she urged, but I did not move. So she came and sat down beside me on my bed. ‘It may be Kate’s pond,’ she said, ‘but these are my lily pads.’ Standing, she jumped on a dishtowel, and from there, onto a pillow. She glanced over her shoulder, until I climbed onto the dishtowel. From the dishtowel to a pillow to a pot holder Jesse had made in first grade, all the way across Kate’s side of the room. Following my mother’s footsteps was the surest way out.”

Note: Kate and her sister had divided their room with a line down the middle and neither sister could enter the other’s territory. The narrator had chosen the side with the toys and had played happily while her sister had no access to her playthings. However, lunchtime came, and the narrator could not cross the line to leave the room. The door was on Kate’s side. The mother comes to the rescue. Notice the props the mother carries: pot holders, dishtowels and pillows and the extra two details that the pot holder was made by her brother in first grade. The mother renames the props lily pads. Not only does the mother put down an acceptable escape room she demonstrates by walking on the newly named lily pads. We get the emotional story in the last sentence. The actions of the mother tells a lot about her attitude toward her daughter. She takes her problem seriously and finds a solution. Because of other things in the book, it is unusual for the mother to do this, so it builds in another aspect to the mother that we haven’t seen before.

2. “In our living room we have a whole shelf devoted to the visual history of our family. Everyone’s baby pictures are there, and some school head shots, and then various photos form vacations and birthdays and holiday. They make me think of notches on a belt or scratches on a prison wall – proof that time has passed that we haven’t all just been swimming in limbo.

“There are double frames, singles 8x10s, 4x6s. They are made of blond wood and inlaid wood and one very fancy glass mosaic. I pick up one of Jesse – he’s about two, in a cowboy costume. Looking at it, you never know what’s coming down the pike.

“There’s Kate with hair and Kate all bald; one of Kate as a baby sitting on Jesse’s lap; one of my mother holding each of them on the edge of a pool. There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop.”

Note: At first this looks like the description of an ordinary family shelf of photos. However the author adds a few details that make the section emotionally charged. Kate is bald after she has hair. We know from earlier in the book Kate has cancer, the baldness drives it home. The narrator’s reaction is negative. Notches on a belt or prison scratches are not happy comparisons. Swimming in limbo also adds to the negative feelings of the scene. That there are photos of the older sister and brother through out childhood, by nine years are missing from the narrator’s life also shows volumes about the narrator’s place in the family. The narrator also chooses action words in phrases like coming down the pike and one fell swoop in a stationary scene. In a way the setting up of the shelf of pictures is action that went before and gives an insight into the family’s dynamic. The first two children are important, the second is not.

A 24 or 12 hour clock and bubbles

 

 At 19 I was living at university but an overprotective mother was still controlling my coming and goings. I needed to check in every day when I got back to the dorm. I did get grounded when she called back once later after we'd talked to see I had left again.

My then boyfriend wanted to take me to Attleboro to meet his parents, about an hour and half drive.

"Absolutely not," my mother said. I didn't go.

Why am I telling you this.

Because one year to the day I didn't go to Attleboro, my father and stepmom kissed me goodbye on the deck of the ship USS America. I was off to two years in Germany to join my army husband stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Perhaps if I'd gone to Attleboro, I wouldn't have married the man who would have opened the door from the protected atmosphere where I was raised.

To someone who couldn't even go into Boston, 12 miles from my hometown, never mind the drive from Lowell where I was in School to Attleboro, crossing the Atlantic was incredible.

During that first trip when I'd never been in Boston on my own, I found myself in Paris train station after a train trip from Le Havre. I managed to buy a ticket for the night train to Stuttgart. It was leaving at 23:00H it said. I did understand the word "depart" on the ticket.

What the hell was 23H?

After telling a Frenchman, I spoke French but he didn't, he patiently explained in a sexy accent about the 24 hour clock. One after noon was 13H, two was 14H, etc.

That was my first realization that things I thought were the same the world over weren't. Alphabet letters have different names, a typewriter keyboard is arranged differently for different languages, Playing cards are not the same, 8 and a half by 11 paper is rare in most of the world which uses A4 as the standard. I wasn't 5 foot 1 but over here I'm 153 centimeters and on and on.

Many decades later I live in Europe and have hopped across the ocean more times than I can count. Where my first trips were exciting later ones are something to be gotten through. 

I forgot the first European trip is still a big deal for others until I was on a Boston-London flight with  a group of American teenagers who were making fun of the way things were spelled. I pointed out that this was a British airplane and that the words were correct British spelling. "You mean they don't spell the way we do," one gasped. This is why everyone should get out of the bubble they live in and see things taken for granted aren't global. 

I'm glad my bubble burst.