Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Atmosphere

by Gerard Houarner

Or mood.

Not quite setting.

More than mere description….more like what a description means to the reader beyond an orientation to time and place.

Something to do with voice, yes, and tone, and vision, certainly. Centered on language, squarely.

Atmosphere.

I suck at this. I really do. (Yeah, okay, you don’t have to agree so enthusiastically!) So I’m going to gnaw at this particular bone for a bit.

I labor at meaningful descriptions and poetic turns of phrase that will induce lingering images in the minds of readers. I fight to bring up catchy juxtapositions, unexpected metaphors, startling imagery, out of the deep and dense bedrock of my imagination.

I fumble to translate the picture in my head into something more than “bright and shiny” or “dark and icky.”

I keep looking for a vein of gold somewhere down there, where words come from, hoping to find a cluster of diamonds waiting for me to catch a glimpse of them in the dim flicker of my neurons firing off in spastic frustration….

Anything, everything, to make a story complete and real in the reader’s mind.

Why? Well, because that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it? Creating worlds, or capturing the “real” world around us in fresh, entertaining, even hip and groundbreaking ways. Setting the scene. Stirring emotions. Taking minds on long, bizarre (well, okay, that may just be me) and yet sensuous trips a la Mievielle or ironically-observed post-modern tours of the absurd like, well, I don’t really remember their names but I do read them sometimes in the New Yorker.

Because storytelling is supposed to be about using language artfully to draw a reader into another world. Even if that world is very nearly the same as the reader’s, the writer is supposed to be smart and perceptive enough to get the reader to see and understand things they never noticed about that world. And if the world is bizarre and different, the writer is supposed to make the reader believe that world does exist. With words. And, more to the point, strings of words that are more than the sum of their parts, equal to or perhaps even greater than the sum of the story being told.

Atmosphere to me is the emotional space in which the story takes place. It’s what is created when a writer deploys descriptive tools to set the scene, to grease the wheels of story and fill out the flesh and shadows of character.

It’s those keenly observed and elegantly expressed details critics rave about in the Times Review of Books. It’s the worlds we read about when we were kids, before digital effects and the Matrix of video games. More to the point, atmosphere is about what we felt when we gave ourselves to the adventure of stories – wonder, excitement, fear.

What I’m not talking about is building fantasy or sfnal worlds, or researching cities or farms or fishing villages or 19th century sailing vessels to get the settings straight.

I’m thinking of atmosphere in terms of what details are chosen, how they relate to the characters and plot, the language used to convey them. Atmosphere hits you like a curtain drawing back to reveal a stunning set that changes with lighting and stage mechanics, but still contains and carries the drama.

I live with a poet and marvel at the play of language flowing from her mind. I read some of my betters and shake my head at a particularly compact collection of perfect words conveying action and character while describing a place that in that moment is more vivid than the place in which I’m reading those words.

Yeah, there’s Lovecraft, all eldritchy and stuff. Bradbury. Ligotti. Shepard. Mievielle. Piccirilli. I mean, seriously, how do I even get to stand in the same room with that stuff?

Whatever I do, it’s never enough. My prose line just doesn’t match up to the masters I admire. New Yorker? Hahahahaha.

Pile those words on. Get those details down. Weave the poetry. Build a fantastical edifice.
Where’s the literary version of Tool Guy? Is there someplace I can go for an operation so I can write sentences like Gene Wolfe? Surely, there’s a retro-virus….

Seems to me some folks have it, and others don’t. And for those who don’t, the harder we try, the more ridiculous we sound. I take comfort in Somerset Maughn confessing his fancy stuff was just too purple, which led him to focus on a more direct story-telling approach.

Of course, nobody read or respected ole Somerset thirty-five years ago when I was digging him, so I can’t say his approach did him much good in the long run. On the other hand, they still make movies from his stuff, so whoever is running his estate isn’t crying.

Heavy-duty atmosphere is obviously not everybody’s style. Doesn’t seem like it’s in everyone’s voice.

But atmosphere is required. Otherwise the story just lays there like dead fish. There’s only so much you can do on an empty stage. At least give me a lighting director….

And atmosphere seems crucial to genre work, which displaces readers in time and space, and draws readers eager to experience other worlds and settings. Suspense and dread are as much “atmosphere” as an alien planet, a spaceship, a sorcerous fortress, and enchanted forest.

These are the territories begging for elevated passages because, you know, the reader needs and wants to be taken to a higher emotional plane. Wonder and terror are of course created by the circumstances of a well-told story, but Clark Ashton Smith or Arthur Machen sure could take you places through the moods they established. Let’s not even talk about Ramsey Campbell.

Atmosphere just plain intimidates me. Nothing good ever comes of me trying to “lay it on.” Just when I’m ready to give up, I remember biting pieces of editorial feedback from rejection slips and workshop critiques – cut all the bullshit, keep the narrative drive going, all you need is a few precise details that reflect character and situation. There are a million details in a motel room, but which ones matter to the guy hiding out in it, and the detective who just busted in looking for answers?

And that’s when I get a clue, and maybe some comfort (though I still admire and envy the sheer, raw power of a descriptive passage that sweeps me away):

Atmosphere doesn’t have to be thick. It can be spare and lean. Or established, I think, in ways that play to the strengths a writer may possess outside of a poetic voice.

Some readers may feel cheated, but there’s atmosphere in the rhythm of dialogue - Jim Thompson or Elmore Leonard. You get a sense of the moment, an intensity of “now” even if you can’t smell the grease frying in the pan or feel the silk caressing skin. The story’s world is narrowed down to the conflict and emotion of the characters carried by their voices.
First person is pretty atmospheric, if only in the sense of living in someone else’s head instead of another world. But channeling a character’s humor, or cynicism, or whatever other dominant character traits necessary for the story does fill a lot of blanks for some readers, I think. Plus you get to describe and editorialize at will, all in your narrator’s flawed voice (because you’d never pick a point of view character who can think in perfect Elizabethan verse).

Plus dialogue and first person narratives will serve you well in public readings, particularly if there’s humor involved, because people’s attention tends to drift even under the spell of the most enlightened descriptive passages.

Another trick that helps me cope with my limited tool set is to ask some questions so I can make wiser choices before getting into trouble in a story.

Of course, where are the characters and what’s their world like are starters. I’ll do the necessary research for exotic or unfamiliar settings, but then, you can’t just dump the stuff into the story. You certainly can’t use all that hard-earned research, or even most of it. But you can narrow down the setting to what characters actually interact with in that environment, what can they use, what forces decisions and becomes part of the story’s action? How does a character feel in this environment? How does that world influence their judgement, perception, memory?

Basically, what are the setting details that have an impact on the point of view character?
For me, anyway, the characters’ problems keeps the story moving, but the character’s use of and reaction to the setting creates an atmosphere for the reader (at least, I think it does). And again, as long as I stay away from Elizabethan verse-thinking characters, elevated prose isn’t necessary.

No, it’s not Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, or even E.R. Edison, damn you. But the setting becomes established and, by making its appearance part of the character’s action, I think you get a feeling for the world. I guess it’s creating second-hand atmosphere – rather than starting with the setting and then having the character travel through it (the thick fog, cloying in its dampness and blah blah blah), it becomes about the character coping with the setting (Harry peered into the thick fog but couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, tripping over exposed roots; the sound of his footsteps were swallowed and blah blah blah).

What else can I do as a writer to help the reader feel the place where characters are doing their dance?

Well, reading other writers, obviously. Not to steal lines, but for technique. How do you guys manage to use how a character moves, the smell of something cooking while characters speak, the sounds cropping up as someone moves through an abandoned building, to build a mood?

You need time for that, though, and over the last half-dozen years life has conspired to take the time I used to have to sit on Sunday mornings and read the paper, or come home afer work and read for an hour. I know, it’s a character flaw - the time’s there, it’s just how I choose to use it. But the bottom line is my reading has suffered greatly, and when I do settle down with a book, my patience isn’t what it used to be. I’m not willing to finish a book that doesn’t really turn me on. I want to read what will feed my imagination, what will help me write by teaching me plot, words and sentences, structure, and not just entertain me. So that’s something I’m going to have to keep working on….

I don’t do writing magazines or books like I used to years ago, but I still love to check out writer interviews and, of course, storytellersunplugged.

I do read non-fiction online, and get magazines like Science News and Wired. I check out travel and nature channels, cruising the natural and the man-made worlds for new ways of looking at reality. It helps me to get the “big picture” and you never know when an awareness of how things work can inspire a neat little metaphor.

I look through windows (thank you for leaving your blinds up/curtains open). Go to museums and galleries, to catch the real thing, in real life/light.

I try to pay attention to the light, especially in the morning and evening. And sounds. And when really desperate, I’ll free associate, left-brain style with balloon trails wandering off in all directions, trying to get a line on the kind of imagery I should be using, or what other kinds of things will make a noise or raise a smell besides a closing door or a pile of crap.

Damn those cliches. They’re just so convenient….

But they really kill the atmosphere, like a bad pick-up line.

Not all the time. Not often enough. Not even well enough. Obviously. Or else I’d be Stephen King. (Well, maybe there are a few other reasons why I’m not Stephen King.)

Weeks, months go by, and it seems I’ve been nothing but a drone. And then there’s a couple of days in a row when the pressure’s off, and oh yeah, I discover I’m human, again. Cool. I notice the sound of metal hitting concrete as the guy up the block works on his car; the subway pulling into the station down the hill, behind the trees; the roar of a jet clawing for altitude. I remember the joy in listening to the birds, and watching the trees fill out in shades of green during Spring. It all warms up the engine for the writing.

Part of what happens is that I think I’m able to conjure mood a bit better because I’m looking at the world with naive senses, the same way a writer might pick an “outsider” character as their protagonist, so s/he can discover the story’s world along with the reader. It’s like experiencing a new dish, or meeting a stranger and getting to know them. That’s what’s so great about breaking out of the rut of one’s life and getting out a bit – even if you have a bad time, the body and all its senses wakes up for a minute to deal with non-routine matters. A mild shake-up of the “system” can inspire a repertory of “new” (that is, unfamiliar) experiences that can freshen
up those tired descriptions.

Of course, a great book can do the same thing, which is why I have to get back to reading.

And since I have a stack unread Gene Wolfe nearby, now might be a great time to stop and give us all some time to go off for some atmospheric inspiration…..

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