The Theatre of the Mind: An Underused Tool

This article contains spoilers for Oedipus Rex, Frenzy, Psycho, The Haunting, The Blair Witch Project, Life is Beautiful and Rendezvous in Black.

We live in a visual era. Most of our entertainment comes through sight. Even music nowadays needs to be accompanied with an eye-catching package (attractive singer, choreography, video with impressive effects, etc.) But there was a time when humans relied on hearing and imagination for entertainment. Think about the origins of storytelling; tales and legends were orally transmitted. Eventually, these stories were performed as plays (but notice how violent scenes happened offstage and the audience was left to see what happened in their mind’s eye.)

In the original Oedipus Rex, the audience never witnesses the moment when Oedipus gouges his eyes out after  finding out he is, in fact, his father's killer. The scene is played offstage and narrated by the chorus.

When radio was the latest technology, families gathered in their living rooms to listen to their favorite shows. Their minds had to “fill in the blank” and imagine what the actors and settings looked like. Thus, the audience became an active participant of the story. In Latin America, radionovelas were the rage, and some aficionados still assert that the actors had superior diction and performances than their successors in telenovelas.

If we look at the history of film, there has been a noticeable evolution from innuendo to goriness. The fathers of Film Noir understood the power of overtone and audience participation and used these tools to maximize the effectiveness of their stories. Iconic director Alfred Hitchcock was well known for favoring “suspense” over  “surprise.” He’s been cited with the following quote:

"There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..." 

One of the techniques Hitchock used in his films was to let the viewer “fill in” the details of a violent scene. He called this "transferring the menace from the screen into the mind of the audience.” Two examples of this technique are seen in the films Frenzy (1972) and Psycho (1960). Halfway through Frenzy, as the audience is already aware of the identity of the “Necktie Murderer,” Hitchcock presents us with a scene where the serial killer—in his most charming self—escorts a woman to his apartment. Before shutting the door, he tells her “you are my type of woman,” the exact words he told his previous victim. The camera lingers for a bit in the hall after they go inside, then retracts down the stairs, through the front door and out to the street, where city noises and activity fill in. The crime only occurs in the viewer’s mind. [Click here to watch the scene.]

In Psycho, Hitchcock takes us into one of the most famous horror scenes in film history: the murder of Janet Leigh’s character in the shower. But notice how we never see the knife actually penetrating the woman’s skin or any gruesome wounds. Instead, Hitchcock presents us with a series of close ups of the victim’s face, the knife, portions of her skin, the curtain rod and blood going down the drain. [Click here to watch the scene.]

Alfred Hitchcock was considered the "master of suspense" for a reason. He was an innovator  when it came to storytelling and many of his implemented camera techniques are emplyed by filmmakers nowadays.

Compare these scenes to the goriness of Saw or American Psycho. Another interesting comparison is the 1963 version of The Haunting versus the 1999 remake. In both instances, a group of people go to Hill House, an old mansion where supernatural activity is believed to take place. In the 60’s version, strange events center around one character (Nell) and the viewer is left to wonder if paranormal activity is really happening or Nell needs an urgent visit to the nearest psychiatric ward. The nineties’ version, however, is an expensive display of special effects and disturbing images, where nothing is left to the viewer’s interpretation.

Nowadays filmmakers rely more and more on “morbid fascination” to entice their audience instead of appealing to their intellect. Do we really need to see characters at their most intimate moments? (naked, having sex, going to the bathroom or throwing up?)

However, there are exceptions. A recent attempt to employ the viewer’s imagination as a tool is The Blair Witch Project, where three film students set out for the woods to find out if the legend of a local witch is true. Through eerie noises, witchcraft symbols and the disappearance of one of the characters, the audience must connect the dots and figure out what is happening. In the final scene, the camera pans in rapid motions as the main character frantically looks for her friends in an old shack. (Incidentally, this camera technique of mimicking a person’s gaze was pioneered by Hitchcock.) Bloody handprints, screams, footsteps and finally, the camera being dropped and laying still leads the viewer to conclude the movie ending.

Another example is the Italian film Life is Beautiful. Roberto Benigni spares us the grief of seeing the main character executed by German soldiers and we only witness his death by listening to the gunshots being fired after they have taken him offstage.

Undoubtedly in novels “the theatre of the mind” is more active than in any other medium, but very often writers “spell out” things for the reader, leaving little to the imagination. In writing classes and manuals, we are taught to use all five senses in our descriptions (visual descriptions being the most commonly employed). But we are rarely taught how important it is to trust the reader’s intelligence by leaving things out, or the effectiveness of not letting a character see, but only hear, what is happening and letting the reader roam the dark corners of his mind.

Film Noir writer Cornell Woolrich was an expert at this. (Hitchcock based Rear Window on Woolrich’s short story “It Had to Be Murder.”) In his novel Rendezvous in Black, a man seeks revenge over the five men he blames for the death of his fiancée. Every year on the date of his girlfriend’s death, he kills an important woman in the life of said men. Before the last “rendezvous,” the potential victim is taken away to safety on a ship (as the detective who’s figured out the connection between the women warns her of the situation.) The woman-in-question, Martine, is blind. When May 31st has passed and it appears as though she will be saved, she perceives a presence in her cabin. For seven pages, Woolrich extends the tension of Martine going through the motions of merrily getting ready for dinner to realizing the killer is in the room with her and there is no escape. Woolrich expertly describes her thoughts and movements in her dark world as she tries to figure out if an intruder is really there. When he grasps her hands, the reader is left to imagine what happens next. On the next scene, we learn that since the ship was traveling to Hawaii, the doomed date hadn’t passed yet and Martine has died.

I confess that in my own writing, I have a tendency to over explain. But fortunately, my beta readers point out these instances to me. As storytellers, we should understand the choices we make in our writing. Violence is, at times, an important component in fiction, but is it always necessary to use gory details? Why do you think filmmakers are resorting to the lowest common denominator? (the “morbid fascination” appeal). It’s true that we now have the most impressive technology of human history, but is it necessary to display it in every movie?

The "Look What I Know" Syndrome

I'm going to make a confession. I'm an avid reader of Entertainment Weekly, especially when it comes to the book and movie review sections. Most of the time I think the reviewers are pretty spot on when it comes to the latest film out in theaters or the newest hardcovers lining the shelves. So, it came as no surprise that I came across an interesting review by Keith Staskiewicz and his thoughts on the newest novel by Paul McEuen entitled *Spiral.

Spiral by Paul McEuen

This is what Staskiewicz says concerning McEuen's novel:

❝There is a certain tendency among authors, particularly of thrillers, to exhibit something I call Look What I Know syndrome. Symptoms include unnecessary technical specificity (a rifle is never simply a rifle, it's an M4A1 carbine with adjustable scope), acronym overload, and awkwardly shoehorned dialogue on topics like Masonic history and airplane manufacture that reads like Wikipedia articles in quotation marks.❞

When I read this, quite frankly, I laughed. How completely true is Staskiewicz's assessment of what some authors choose to use when it comes to drawing a picture for the reader. Although I have yet to read McEuen's thriller, this, my friends, sounds like a classic case of telling and not showing. How many of us out there suffer from this syndrome?

Let's start by taking a look at some of the more obviously placed clues in the above quote. Dan Brown, it seems, has become the whipping boy for bad writing. You will find wonderfully written (sarcasm intended) and oddly in-depth descriptions, with rather clumsy phrasing, in Dan Brown's novels The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. According to The Telegraph, Edinburgh professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum says, "Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad." This article, entitled "The Lost Symbol and The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown's 20 Worst Sentences," is quite humorous with wonderfully bad quotes from numerous Brown novels. If you need a laugh, check it out. I wanted to point out a couple of quotes column author Tom Chivers uses; ones that clearly show Brown firmly entrenched in the "Look What I Know" syndrome.

The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol, Chapter 1:  He was sitting all alone in the enormous cabin of a Falcon 2000EX corporate jet as it bounced its way through turbulence. In the background, the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly.

The Da Vinci Code, Chapter 17:  Yanking his Manurhin MR-93 revolver from his shoulder holster, the captain dashed out of the office.

Just a little too much information is going through the character's head. What do you think?

Brown is also found guilty of the overuse of acronyms in his novel Deception Point, which, surprise, surprise, is about a four-letter agency called NASA. But enough picking on poor Dan Brown. There are other writers out there who suffer from the "Look What I Know" syndrome. Perhaps you're one of them?

But how do we avoid this pitfall? As writers, we want to show our knowledge and that, yes, we did the research and we know what we're talking about. Let's see how you can fix these problems in your current WIP:

• Look at your current manuscript and take a scene containing dialogue. In that scene, are you trying to explain something to the reader that the characters already know? If so, then you're suffering from the "Look What I Know" syndrome. In order to correct informative dialogue, move it into the thoughts of your viewpoint character.
• Information Dumps -- I think each and every writer suffers from information dumps. I've read many books where it seems the author felt the need to dump large blocks of info into the text at inconvenient, pace-slowing places. Don't stop the action of a scene to describe every little bit of what's going on in the scene. Keep that action moving and bring out parts of necessary information as the scene is moving forward. In all, keep a steady pace with the action.
• If you're considering using an explanation of something technical or historical that pertains to the scene at hand, then make sure this information is understandable through your character's POV. Don't have a construction worker notice every element going into a medical scene. If that character doesn't know the first thing about medicine, then let the reader see that. Bring it down (or up) to that character's educational level.
• Make sure your character has time to notice what he/she is doing, or else your description will sound ridiculous. Let's take the The Da Vinci Code example above -- Is this character actually going to notice he's holding a Manurhin MR-93? No! The scene is moving to quickly for him to even care about what he's holding in his hand. Sometimes simply deleting the details makes a story more believable.

Now that you know what the "Look What I Know" syndrome consists of, go back to your current manuscript and see if you suffer from the same symptoms as does Dan Brown and many other published authors out there on the market. Cut back some on the overwriting and you'll see that this simple task can create a much cleaner, coherent manuscript. Don't worry, we all make the mistake of adding more than we need to when it comes to our writing. In short, as always, show don't tell!

Do you tend to suffer from the "Look What I know" syndrome? What symptoms do you display that lead you to believe you over explain too much in your writing? Who's an author who really grates on your nerves because he/she does way too much overwriting?

*This review can be found in the April 1, 2011 publication, edition #1148.


*Stop by The Random Book Review and check out the thriller I reviewed this week!

You Can Open Your Eyes, Now: Writing Those Difficult Scenes Outside Your Comfort Zone

Too scared to write that scene?

When I joined my first critique group, I was definitely nervous about having my work read For. The. First. Time. Ever. by anyone outside my family. I had written scenes that were not only uncomfortable for me to write, but ones that made me squirm in my seat thinking that other writers were reading them. What if those scenes made them laugh, when in all actuality they were supposed to be serious? What if I sat down to a table full of weird looks? Or even worse, what if they flat out told me I didn't know what I was doing?

Well, to my utter relief, one of the very first comments I received concerning my writing was that I really knew what I was doing when it came to writing violence. What? Me? How did that happen? Surprisingly enough, quite easily.


I've written a mixture of interesting scenes over the course of my writing. Some of it is quite obvious that it took some courage to soldier on through the tough parts, but others not as much. I'll give you a short list of the harder ones I've written (perhaps you're struggling with a similar one):

• Violations against women -- This includes anything from rape to spousal abuse and everything else in between. This one is tough, considering I've never been through anything quite this difficult myself, so how could I possibly know what to put on the page? As a woman, I believe, in the very core of who we are, these are some of our deepest fears. Just the thought alone of being abused or raped sends a chill down my spine. If you're looking for a visual, then the film The Accused, starring Jodi Foster, contains a very vivid and heartbreaking scene about a woman being raped. (Caution: This is not for the faint of heart!) Or perhaps more recently with Private Practice's portrayal of the rape of Dr. Charlotte King. I think a good visual helps the writer break down what needs to happen in the scene (and often times see how the victim deals with it), even if it might be hard to watch. If you're going to write it, then you need to make it believable.
• Race-related violence -- A theme that tends to thread through my novels is violence related, in some part, to race. Since my first novel takes place during slavery, I did intense research concerning slaves and plantation life, particularly whippings/beatings and with what sorts of devices (a very dark road of research to travel, my friends). My second novel deals with the 1920s KKK, so again, I did intense research concerning how the Klan tormented/tortured their victims. Depending on what part of the country they were located, the KKK targeted all different types of races, foreigners, religions, etc. Many people don't realize how active the Klan was throughout the lower forty-eight, but interestingly enough, one of the strongest divisions was the Indiana Klan. A good film for this category would be Rosewood. Very tragic and horrific what went on there. (Caution: Again, not for the faint of heart!)
• Murder -- Again, something with which I have no experience. These scenes get tough to write and I always do a step-by-step visualization (kind of a murder Paint-by-Numbers). When finished writing one, always ask yourself -- "Does it seem believable?", "Does it make sense to the reader?", "Is everyone where they need to be in the scene?" and "Does it flow well?" If if feels herky-jerky, like you glossed parts of it over or just mish-mashed it together, then take a step back and go through the scene in your mind. For a visual, I would suggest just about any movie or tv show that allows the viewer to see how the crime was played out. The Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, reveals the children's murders through how the young accomplice viewed them.
• Sex/Love Scenes -- The bane of any non-Romance writer's existence! These, for me anyway, tend to be the toughest of all. I always want some amount of romance, but making it feel real can often times make it feel cheesy to the reader. Unless you're writing a Romance novel, try to avoid as much flowery vocabulary as possible. One thing I try to avoid until it absolutely has to be written into the story is, "I love you". It's so clichéd sounding when it gets used repeatedly in a novel. Every scene is different because every two sets of characters are different. Two teenagers are not going to experience their love the same way as a hardened cop and her murder suspect would. Search out visual representations of your characters together and watch how the actors' scene plays out. Then go from there.

One thing I don't touch upon here (except in making reference to The Changeling) is horrific crimes involving children. I've never had a reason to write one, and quite honestly, I believe that's where I'd draw the line. Although I haven't read it, I've heard that Alice Sebold's, The Lovely Bones, involves rather descriptive scenes of her main protagonist. I haven't been able to bring myself to read it but, well, there you go.

I'm a lot like many of you when it comes to writing my characters into incredibly difficult scenes. I want to do it with one eye closed. In truth, I know I have to face it head-on if this is what I need to put my characters through. Just keep in mind that you can do it and when you've accomplished it, it will be that much easier to write the next one.

Hang in there and you'll
make it through!

How about you? How do you deal with writing those difficult scenes? Is there a process you go through to make it believable and work really well on the page? Or do you avoid them, perhaps gloss them over? Or maybe you just don't write that kind of fiction to begin with?


♥ Mary Mary

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♥ An extra helping of love was bestowed upon the Divine Sisterhood this week. Check out our awesome blog rating at http://www.uninvoked.com/writingblogs/wordpress/. Thanks a bunch for the fantastic 10/10 rating! ♥

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving! Treat yourself to some holiday cheer and laughter and go watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the best Thanksgiving movie ever!