{"id":2372,"date":"2014-08-17T08:24:14","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T12:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2014-08-17T08:24:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T12:24:14","slug":"whats-your-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2372","title":{"rendered":"What’s Your Green?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rorschach\"<\/a>

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

Having a political discussion with my friend Don is almost impossible. In conversation, I avoid the hot-button issues I know will set him off. Unfortunately more of those topics crowd the landscape of his mind than I anticipate, and stumbling on one is like setting off a land-mine. Why is it we can\u2019t just have a conversation? It\u2019s because our points of view are so different, there\u2019s little room for mutual understanding, and we might as well be speaking different languages. Point-of-view determines not only which facts each of us takes in, but also what we see when we look at something as quotidian as three people standing on the street corner.<\/p>\n

In a recent Glimmer Train essay<\/a><\/em> on point-of-view, Bret Anthony Johnston<\/a>, director of creative writing at Harvard, wrote that his students get this concept when he trots out the old saying, \u201cTo a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.\u201d He says writers need to understand their characters\u2019 obsessions\u2014their hammerness\u2014and those ten-penny features that loom so large in their minds. Sometimes their preoccupations are so consuming they don\u2019t see the pile of screws right nearby or, more likely, interpret it as another pile of nails. \u201cTo the brokenhearted, every couple looks happy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read Johnston\u2019s award-winning book of short stories Corpus Christi: Stories<\/a><\/em>, and this year he published the novel, Remember Me Like This<\/a><\/em> (NPR review and interview<\/a>). The novel deals with a family whose son disappeared, then is returned to them four years later. While he understood going in that this lost, this hiatus in relationships, would color every aspect of his characters\u2019 lives, \u201cwhat I didn\u2019t know was how different and revelatory their perspectives would be.\u201d Each family member reacted in a unique and shaping way, and required of Johnston\u2014and the reader\u2014different levels of empathy. \u201cIn fiction,\u201d he says, \u201cevery detail is a Rorschach test\u201d to be interpreted through the lens of the character. We ask about a character\u2019s experience not \u201cwhat does it mean?\u201d but \u201cwhat does it mean to her<\/em>?\u201d If we didn\u2019t, we could never read with understanding the story of anyone not exactly like ourselves, should there be such a person.<\/p>\n

Despite the popularity of multitasking and our self-deception about our skill at it, in truth our brains are pretty much wired to handle one thing at a time. This inattentional blindness<\/a>, Johnston says, is \u201cpoint-of-view in its purest form.\u201d What captures our characters\u2019 attention demonstrates what they are most interested in and care about the most. This is perhaps why the unimportant details that new writers include in their scenes\u2014in a misguided effort to make them concrete\u2014are so distracting. \u201cFind out what your characters notice, find out where their gazes linger and why, and you\u2019ll find out who your characters are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnston has published a nifty set of writing exercises, too, and he included one with this essay. You might try it. He suggests grabbing pen and paper and moving through your surroundings making a list of everything you see that\u2019s green. (This will be a long list in my case, as I always say, \u201cI don\u2019t care what color it is, as long as it\u2019s green.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"see,<\/a>

(photo: c2.staticflickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Done? Did you notice particulars you\u2019d forgotten about? Will you see items in your surroundings in a new way for a while? Were memories stimulated? Briefly, \u201cgreen\u201d was your mind\u2019s obsession. I\u2019ll bet dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists would create a somewhat different list than would a graphic designer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow do the same thing for your characters,\u201d Johnston says. \u201cFind out what their \u2018green\u2019 is.\u201d What readers need to know isn’t just what your characters look at, but, more important, what they see.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having a political discussion with my friend Don is almost impossible. In conversation, I avoid the hot-button issues I know will set him off. Unfortunately more of those topics crowd the landscape of his mind than I anticipate, and stumbling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,61,40,174],"tags":[31,251,414],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-character","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","tag-author","tag-point-of-view","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Cg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}