Scribblings and Dribblings

We’ve all seen it before: an amateur performance of Shakespeare or Neil Simon at a community or high school auditorium. The actor stands center stage, delivering Hamlet’s existential “To be or not to be…” speech, and his arms flail, he paces the stage like a caged animal, and the meaning and intensity of what should be a pivotal scene of the play is lost.

The same thing can happen to your writing. The hero is at the pivotal moment of the story, about to seize the damsel in distress from the clutches of the evil Doctor Devious when he spots his long lost knuffle-bunny on Devious’ trophy shelf. A million thoughts run through the hero’s mind, but only one runs through the reader’s — why is the writer derailing the story with all this unnecessary detail?

What am I talking about? Unnecessary descriptors. These are those marvelous turns of phrase that sprout up in the first draft and have to be weeded with a blow torch. Even though they may appear to grow into a flower of indescribable beauty, they’re really poisonous vines that trip the reader up and choke the life out of the story. Here’s an example:

There, on Doctor Devious’ shelf, caked with a fine layer of silver residue and nestled among the ample dust bunnies, sat another bunny — Jake, Dirk’s long-lost childhood knuffle-bunny, his ears ravaged by mammoth moths, droopily shielding his eyes from the imminent death of his former owner.

So, how is this problem solved? In theater, one way we solve all the wasted energy is to use a game called the “Box of Death.” In our version, a box about a foot square is chalked onto the floor, and the actor stands in the center. He or she then performs the same scene they have just flailed about, but are not allowed to leave the box or raise their arms upon penalty of death (or a good fifteen minute timeout.) The result is a more concentrated performance. Without all of the emotional energy draining away from the scene in unfocused movements, the actor’s voice becomes stronger, more intense, and the lines become more believable. Then, movement can be added back in, but only planned, intentional movement that visually echoes or amplifies the scene.

This method can be applied to writing. The Box of Death, instead of being chalked onto the floor, is inked onto the page, around the subject, noun, and object in the sentence. Only as many words as necessary are added inside the box to get the sentence across, and descriptors are eliminated except where they are needed to make the sentence work in context of the paragraph, the page, and the story. The resulting sentence has gigawatts more energy, drawing the reader through to the next sentence:

Dirk gasped. His long-lost knuffle-bunny peered at him beneath a layer of dust from Doctor Devious’s book shelf.

Cleaner? Yes. More tension? Yes. More movement? Yes.

Next time you find your story bogged down, think about what’s really necessary to tell the story, and use the Box of Death to resurrect your story’s momentum.