Behind the Shadows: Using Pictures to Achieve Specificity in "He Stares into Her Grave"
- jmcdonnal
- Nov 23, 2024
- 5 min read
Behind the Shadows: Pictures, Specificity and "He Stares into Her Grave"
In this blog post, I will discuss using pictures to achieve specificity for story elements such as setting, characters, plot, tone, and style.
First, let me back off from "my process..." as if I'm a published author with a process I’ve used for years. I'm an amateur writer who has submitted my first short story for publication. However, collecting and using pictures as references has become an important part of my story prep.
Now, with that out of the way. No doubt, writers using pictures as a visual reference is a common practice. But, when I googled the topic, the closest results were 'Using Pictures as Writing Prompts'.
This made me ask, do I use pictures as prompts? For ideas? For details? The definition of a writing prompt is: A prompt in writing is a starting point designed to ignite creativity. While I do use pictures as prompts, they also are finalizers. They supply the details to bring something into focus. They allow me to complete an idea. I use pictures for detail-specific story elements such as setting, characters, plot, tone, and style.
Let's establish the terminology used in discussions about specificity:
Vague words: words with no set or clear definition
Abstract words: words with a known definition but no physical form or sensory value.
Concrete words: something with a physical manifestation or the ability to be sensed.
Concrete language is objective, abstract language is subjective.
I created this list from ShaelinWrite's video 'Specificity and Concrete Language | How to write vividly' The link to this video, along with all the articles and videos I used to research, is posted at the end of this article.
"He Stares into Her Grave" is a horror story I wanted to be descriptively vivid with gothic elements. I needed specificity to achieve this.
Shaelin says, “There's a strong relationship between Show, Don't Tell, and Specificity as specificity is a means of showing and not telling.”
Since "HSiHG" is a visually descriptive story, specificity is used in the visual descriptions. It's also used to establish the setting.
The story could have begun with a narrative:
Jimmy Wayne was a young rocker living in a small town in South Alabama during the late summer of 1983.
I decided to work these details into the action beats and dialogue of the story. That's where the pictures play a huge part. They provide me with the details, the specificity, for descriptions to communicate that information to the reader. Character? Young Rocker is vague, but the picture of Randy Rose below brought Jimmy Wayne into focus (spoiler: the white T-shirt stayed).
Picture of Randy Rose
Jimmy’s red pickup truck is featured in the first act. The description is important to build up the pickup truck as a story character and to establish the period.
Picture of the pickup
"Straight jeans lead up to a white tank top drooping from thin shoulders under swaying long hair. He's a line leaning against the truck's molded hood overhang, and its stacked bar grille."
I wanted to paint a picture of a skinny long-haired rocker. I guided the reader's mind's eye from the jeans to the loose t-shirt and the long hair. I kept the details simple using a simple adjective and noun combo: tank top drooping for example. "He's a line..." is a simile, but line is a concrete word that describes how pencil-thin Jimmy is. I wanted to spark a mental image but let the reader's imagination complete the picture. The previous sentence used concrete noun/adjective combinations, "Head bobbing, shoulders see-sawing, the boy sings... palms slapping the grille..." to establish the musical character aspect.
The story opens with the protagonist next to an abandoned gas station. The gas station was important in setting one of the gothic elements: a desolate location. The gas station and its location are an amalgam of several pictures.
Here's one of those pictures:
And the line it inspired,"...and the empty windows glitter with shattered teeth..."
Glitter, as a verb, is defined as shining with a bright, shimmering reflected light. I wanted to describe the gas station's broken windowpanes but keep the word flow smooth. Glitter and teeth are concrete enough to spark a mental image of broken windowpanes. Also, they help build the gothic element of a desolate location.
Here's what Tiffany Yates-Martin, in her article 'How Specifics Make Your Stories Universal, says about specifics:
Just as we as writers can’t address the possible weaknesses in our stories until we understand exactly what they are, readers can’t fully engage with those stories without a clear, concrete, granular sense of detail.
"He Stares into Her Grave" begins with Jimmy Wayne beside a gas station. He then follows his dead girlfriend through a forest and the story climaxes in a kudzu-shrouded cemetery. While I had this vague idea of the settings in my head, pictures enabled me to realize it on paper. They gave me the visual fuel to imagine what a flashlight-lit forest and a kudzu-shrouded cemetery could look like.
The second act is about Jimmy’s journey through the woods. Again, a collection of pictures helped me to visualize this journey. Like the gas station, the trees are a composite of pictures. Here’s one:
"The flashlight takes a white bite out of the trunk."
White bite is a basic noun-adjective combination. It supplies the reader with an easy mental picture without slowing the word flow.
Finally, the last act occurs in a forgotten cemetery overrun by kudzu. I’m from the American South where kudzu has a big ecological presence. I had the idea of the climax taking place in a kudzu-shrouded graveyard. Photos supplied details like kudzu-skirted trees and gravestone mounds.
"He bulls his way to where a curtain of kudzu hangs. The flashlight beam travels up. It's as if someone dropped an ivy blanket over the trees." Hanging curtains, beams moving up, and ivy blankets are simple descriptions that give the reader a quick, concrete mental picture.
So, that's it for this blog post, just kidding. Thank you for reading Behind the Shadows: Pictures, Specificity and "He Stares into Her Grave". A collection of pictures used for "HSiHG" will be posted on Pinterest. I invite you to read "He Stares into Her Grave" and guess the story elements those pictures inspired.
Kick it!
J McDonnal
Resources:
ShaelinWrite's video 'Specificity and Concrete Language | How to write vividly'
How Specifics Make Your Stories Universal
By Tiffany Yates- Martin
Top 14 Main Elements of Gothic Literature
by Elif Harris
The 8 Elements of a Story – Explained for Students!Written by Chris Drew
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