The Writer's Secret Weapon For Infinite Ideas: Incongruity

Perhaps the question writers are most often asked--and perhaps the one we have the hardest time answering--is where do we get our ideas.

Not only is it unclear where ideas come from, there seems to be no reliable way to make them come when we need them. If only there were a magic box under every writers bed that popped out the right idea whenever we needed it. If only there were elves that came out at night and finished that scene we've been stuck on. If only there were a tree that dropped idea apples every day at 5:47. Then we'd have an easy answer.

But, unfortunately, none of these things are actually available. The reality is much more of a slog. Whether we're trying to brainstorm an idea for a new novel, or we're stuck in the middle of our WIP and need an idea to get it moving forward, writers spend lots of time glaring at computer screens.

Now, there may not be a magic idea tree in every writer's backyard, but there may actually be a strategy or trick that's so helpful it may as well be magic. At least it has been incredibly helpful for me. This strategy can help at any stage of the brainstorming process--whether we're developing a character, designing our setting, or trying to figure out how to add more tension to a scene. This strategy--this secret weapon--is incongruity.

In other words, put something there that doesn't belong.

At least, something that doesn't seem to belong on the surface. Say you're working on a novel about two college roommates. One is a biology major, the other is going into physical therapy. Say you're in the middle of this novel, and you're stuck on a scene that seems to be falling completely flat. Then imagine the physical therapist finds a dozen Duke Ellington records under the biologists bed. That's something that doesn't appear to belong. That adds interest and intrigue.

Now, say you're developing your characters and setting. Add something to your character or setting that doesn't seem to belong. Here are some examples:

What is a piano doing in the middle of a possibly burnt forest? Aren't you intrigued by the back story of a man with a Mohawk and a Santa suit? These kinds of seeming incongruities are what catch and keep the readers attention. They are little mysteries your reader will keep reading to figure out. 

There are entire stories based on and extrapolated from a single incongruity. A human in Santa's workshop? That's the movie Elf. What about a blond high-school beauty queen going to Harvard Law School? Legally Blonde. That one is particularly fun because you get to see a bunch of stereotypes get busted. And perhaps one of my favorites--a meter-high gardener helping to take down a Dark Lord and his entire kingdom? Hello Samwise Gamgee :)

So next time you're trying to brainstorm ideas for your next project, or you're trying to flesh out your next main character, or you're trying to figure your way out of a mucky middle bit, try this simple technique. Try simply adding something that doesn't seem to belong, and see where that takes you. You may discover something delightful. Like Will Ferrell in yellow tights.

Write on!

Sarah Allen

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SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES:

• The First Line Magazine: All stories must be written with the first line provided. Due Nov. 1
• Writers Digest: Your Story 61: Write the opening sentence (just one, of 25 words or fewer) to a story based on a photo given. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story. Due Oct. 13.
• BathHouse Magazine: The international hypermedia journal BathHouse is currently accepting submissions for its 12.1 issue with the underlying theme of "International". Due Nov. 17.
• Cactus Heart Magazine: Speculative themed issue. We want beautifully written fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, & reimagined fairy tales. Send your character-driven stories & poems full of magic, spaceships, & clockwork gadgets; send stories & poems that play on tropes, & make us reflect on our humanity along with gods, banshees, & cyborgs. Due Jan. 10.
• Drunken Odyssey Podcast: The Drunken Odyssey, an amazing writing podcast, needs personal essays for its “Book that Changed my Life” segments. Send pitches for essay ideas to thedrunkenodyssey@gmail.com. For approved pitches, essays should be between 500 and 800 words. Ongoing. 

SPOTLIGHTS:

• How To Get it Right on Social Media (Author Culture)
• 10 Money-Making Tasks Successful Freelancer Writers Do Every Day (The Write Life)
• 10 Book Marketing Mistakes Self-Published Authors Make (BiblioCrunch)
• Squeezing Out the Stupid (Writer Unboxed)

Creative Writing Prompts and Where to Find Ideas

Finding ideas is one of the most frequent questions writers ask and are asked. So that's the question I wanted to start with in my new video tutorial series for writers.

I have a good time with video editing, and love talking about writing, so I thought I'd start a tutorial series for writers and see how it goes. I plan to talk about all sorts of things, from query letters to social media, from character studies to dialog. Check it out, let me know what you think.

Write on!

Sarah Allen

F is for Film Poetry

There are so many ways to publish your work creatively. One of those ways is film poetry, often called video poetry.

There are so many different ways to do it, I thought I'd just show you a few of my favorites (plus one of my own) and see if they inspire you.

Enjoy!!

Sarah Allen

Writing Challenge: The Pink People at The Bellagio

One of the absolute best things about living in Vegas is that the Bellagio is only 15 minutes away. Often on a Saturday afternoon I will go and check out whatever the new amazing exhibit is up in the gardens, and I'll stay for an hour or so and watch the fountains. I bring a notebook and jot down thoughts and ideas. 

I'm not the only one who sits in front of Bellagio fountains for an obnoxiously long period of time. There is always a varied assemblage of Batmen and Despicable Me Minions and showgirls and street magicians, and I have to admit, if I was going to be a busker, that's where I'd be too. But there is one that stands out. For the past couple months, every time I've gone, right in front of the center nook where I always stand is a man all in pink, his clothes frozen as if blowing in the wind, and he himself seems to be blown back, leaning impossibly on his heels. I haven't the faintest idea how he does it, but it is quite hilarious to watch people passing by, looking back, walking around him, some even going so far as to wave a hand under his rear to see if there's some invisible thing holding him up.

This last Saturday I took a Bellagio trip. I walked through the gardens and then went out to watch the fountains. I saw the familiar pink figure, but this time, it was a woman. She had star-shaped glasses and a pink pig-tail wig. She was in the exact same outfit otherwise (I'm pretty sure their ability to sit blown back like that has something to do with the pants, although I've seen them stand). Anyway, I had fun watching her and watching people watching her, like usual, and also had fun speculating about these two people. 

And now I pass that speculating off to you. Given these two characters, what would you specifically do with them? If you were writing their story, what would it be? I love seeing how other people develop their story ideas, and I'm intrigued to see what you come up with. So why not, right? Give it a shot.

Make awesome!

Sarah Allen

Some Inspiration for Supernatural Female Characters

I thought I'd just keep it nice and pretty today and give you all some hot supernatural women to inspire you as you write your fantasy or sci-fi or magical realism or whatever it may be that might have an element that's a bit, shall we say, out of this world.

So, which of these is your favorite? Any story ideas springing from these lovely ladies? Check out my Pinterest board for more ideas.

Sarah Allen

Inspiration for Child Characters

I've had several conversations with my roommate about how difficult it is to write child characters. And it is. However, I think its something many of us come up against in the course of our writing careers. I think when we get down to it, we all know what it feels like to be a kid. It's just that we have several years worth of experience fogging up the accuracy of our memory. Maybe all it takes to get ourselves in the right mindset is the right picture. If a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe one of them will say exactly what we need to hear.

If you're writing a child, now or in the future, maybe one of these pictures can help you strip away all the jaded years and get down to the truly childlike. Maybe one of these pictures will inspire its own story. If nothing else, you'll get a smile.

Anybody writing a child character? Which picture do you think carries the best story? If nothing else, I hope these shots brightened up your Monday as much as they did mine :)

Sarah Allen

A Really Great Place for Getting Ideas

Okay. So. Life. It's a crazy, crazy thing, and I miss blogging more frequently. But things are going up and up, and should be calming down in the next few weeks.

For now I want to show you guys this amazing thing I found. Its like, seriously amazing. I think some people naturally have ideas floating around all the time while others (me) take a while of struggling to develop the inklings and flashes. So there's this website that basically just plays random movie trailers non-stop. Obviously I found it when trying to pick a movie to watch, which I am also terrible at, but after a while of clicking through trailers I thought, this is actually really creatively inspiring, and could be a fantastic way to do some idea gathering/brainstorming.

So here it is. WhatMovieShouldIWatchTonight.com.

And also, here is a song that is just awesome.

Have a good one everybody!

Sarah Allen

Idea Brainstorming with the Pyramid of Abstraction

Some days we have ideas buzzing around in our mind--too many to even remotely keep track of. Other days our brain feels like a dry sponge and we can't get anything out of it no matter how hard we try. Here's a little something that might help.

Okay. So here we have the Pyramid of Abstraction. This represents the structure our writing should take. On the bottom, at the base, we have a solid foundation of the most concrete, specific details we can possibly get. That is where the rubber meets the road. That is where our readers relate to what we are saying, and how they understand. We can talk about abstract ideas and themes but we need to build on this concrete foundation first if we want to be understood, before we can get to--wait for it--the point. (Anyone? Anyone?)

Anyway. So this is not really new, right? We all know a solid foundation of full and rich detail is what makes a good piece of writing. Our readers need to be pulled in to our world in order to really relate to and understand our larger, more abstract ideas. But we can take this principle and flip it on its head and use it as a fantastic brainstorming device.

Let's do an example. Let's pick some abstract concept or word. How about 'Beauty.' Pretty abstract right? Okay, let's get a little more specific. How about 'Angelic.' That's better. So what's angelic? How about we take it literally and talk about a statue of an angel. In a garden in a manor house in Spain. It's being transferred over from the workshop of the sculptor, a middle aged man whose wife just left him. His son is a sculptor too is in school in the States and is about to come home for Christmas break.

See what we did there? We took an abstract concept and flipped it into a story. What if we'd picked a different word for beauty. How about 'Graceful.' So then we've got a ballerina. She's from Kentucky but has worked for a lead ballerina role her whole life. Her mom was a prima ballerina and she has always felt like she's in that shadow. Now she's about to have the audition of her life, but one of the other girls auditioning is the daughter of the director.

Totally different story from the same word, 'Beauty.' It can work with any abstract idea: anger, happiness, sadness, shame. Try it out next time you're stuck. See what you can come up with.

Sarah Allen

5 Great Quote Posters About Writing

These are good enough for an office wall, and good enough to share:

We got this! Keep writing!

Sarah Allen

5 Characters With Their Pets

Sometimes it's our relationships with our animals that say the most about us. That includes our characters. Here are five characters with a unique variety of pets. See if you can get any ideas from them.

Could you use any of these in a story? Which is your favorite?

Story Gathering at the Smithsonian

We've got some relatives in town, which means we're doing all the fun touristy DC things we wouldn't normally do. Like the National Air and Space Museum. I'm not talking about the normal one in DC, I'm talking about the extension, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the Dulles airport in Chantilly, Virginia.

A few things about this center. First, I thought it was way cooler than the main museum, and if you're in this area, this is the one you should go to. Not only that, but I thought this was one of the most well-designed museum's I've ever been to. The railings had built-in seats and there were genius old guys like everywhere just standing there waiting to answer all your questions and listening to them talk, describe how the shuttle lands like a helicopter crashing, was the best part.

Anway, there's my plug. On to my point.

So I did something while we were at this museum that I've never done before, but that I plan on doing at every museum I ever visit from here on out. I feel like museums can be super intimidating, and even if you have good intentions and want to learn there's just too much and you can come out barely remembering anything at all. This time I approached it as a story hunter.

One of my favorite things at this museum (although it was all freaking awesome) was the collection of WWII planes from Germany. So many of the plaques said that they were the last plane of it's type in the world, and talked about how it had been captured and restored and the process of it ending up with the Smithsonian Institute. Can you say fascinating story?

(sorry for the small font and crappy phone pictures)

What about the guy in charge of getting the plane back from Germany? What about the guy who gave it back to Germany? What about the guys who restored it? There are some characters and stories for you. Even just for background history.

So yeah, I was the dufus taking pictures of the plaques with my phone. And it was so much fun! Like I said, this story hunting approach is the one I'm going to take at museums from now on.

 The space plane shuttle thing, that the pilots apparently say lands like a cinderblock. All the outside is made entirely of pure glass. Except for the nose-tip and wing-fronts, which get hotter than the glass melting point. Those spots are coated with an extra layer of a special substance that includes the bodies of dead carpenter ants. Yeah. 

You can't quite tell, but there is a swastika on the tail fin back there.

Anybody else a museum nerd?

Sarah Allen

Top 5 Strangest Animals to See Before You Die

So there are a ton of weird animals out there, but these are just some of the ones I want to see, at some point, in real life.

1. Bald Uakari: A monkey with a red face? How cool is that! Native to Brazil and Peru, these monkeys are listed as "vulnerable" on the endangered species list.

2. Barreleye Fish: So, um, this fish has a transparent head. Nuff said.

3. Pink Fairy Armadillo: These are just adorable. Less than five inches long, nocturnal, and found mostly in Argentina.

4. Helmeted Hornbill: This bird averages, get this, about 3 1/2 feet in length, not including tail feathers. It eats mostly figs and is found in Sumatra and Borneo.

5. Tube-nosed Fruit Bat: Okay, I just think these are cute too. Endangered, and native to the Philippines.

What other animals would you add to this list? 

Sarah Allen

5 Awesome Places to Find Story Ideas

We all need to fill our creative tanks every once in a while, right? Sometimes we get dry or blocked, and the ideas just don't flow. Here are five places to look when searching for those elusive ideas.

1. National Geographic: Besides just being one of the coolest organizations around, they are a surprisingly awesome place for story ideas. Stories come from people and cultures and histories and that's what National Geographic is all about. Take the studies and explorations from their web and magazine articles and spin off them and flesh them out and you've got a story.

2. Mythology, fairy tales and folklore: These are the Original stories. Every culture has their own folk tales, take the ones from your history and family and use them. Think of how many stories are based directly on Norse or Roman or Greek mythology (Percy Jackson anyone?) but it doesn't have to be direct. Just take them as a bouncing off point. My favorite is D'aulaires book of Greek Myths

3. People watching game: Go to a park or a store or a track or a movie theater or a football stadium (or Disneyland, my favorite people watching place ever) and pick someone and stare at them awkwardly I mean come up with a back story and history and relationships and see what sort of story you can develop around them.

4. Pinterest: Sort of similar to number three, but one of my favorite things in terms of brainstorming is filling up a character Pinterest board and then using the characters I've pulled from all over the web as a starting point. Here's my character board to start you off with a couple ideas.

5. Ask your parents or grandparents to tell you a story from their childhood. Or it's kind of fun to use a site like New Family Search to see where your ancestors were born, where they ended up, and imagine what brought them from one place to the other.

So there's some ideas. What else would you add to this list?

Sarah Allen

10 Weird and Creepy Places to Set a Novel (Part 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of 10 Weird and Creepy Places to Set a Novel. In Part 1 we focused a lot on the creepy, and today we're going to focus on the weird. That being said, these places definitely still have a good amount of creep factor, and in many cases you don't have to travel very far.

6. Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard

Just off Staten Island, the bay has become a graveyard for old unused and dismantled tugboats. Over the years many ships that are no longer in operation have accumulated here and been left to rot. It makes me feel sad, a bit, and also curious. I imagine characters climbing barriers and exploring, and who knows what they might find.

7. Dead Horse Bay

An ideal place for collectors, Dead Horse Bay is hopefully not as creepy as it sounds. Once an area of horse processing plants (hence the name, I think) it eventually became a landfill until the cap burst, spewing trash onto the bay and into the ocean. Although you never know what you may find among the rubbish.

8. Republic of Molossia

So apparently some people can get away with being like, "Hey, I'm making my own country," and then it happens. Such is the case with the The Republic of Molossia in the heart of Nevada, founded by Kevin Baugh. It originated as a childhood game and then developed into an actual territory of about 1.3 acres. Allegedly, Kevin Baugh accepts cookie dough as legal tender, and his little micro-nation is still in a state of war with East Germany. And he doesn't pay taxes.

9. UFO Watchtower

In Hooper, Colorado, Judy Messoline has capitalized on the enthusiasm of Southwestern UFO enthusiasts. You can come here to camp and watch for UFOs, or at least the beautiful desert sky. The campground is complete with rock gardens, a gift shop, and Judy can even legally officiate a wedding. Now what type of characters would go for that?


10. Trinity Church, King George Island

A church in Antarctica? Sure, why not. In the 90's a charity called "Temple for Antarctica" began collecting funds all across Russia and the church was finished and consecrated in 2004. It is manned year round by two volunteer Orthodox priests (now they would be fascinating characters) who pray for the souls of Russians who have died on polar expeditions and service the spiritual needs of the people at the Bellinghausen Station. They've even performed a wedding.

There you have it! Ten weird and creepy places to fire your writerly imagination. Any others you would recommend?

Sarah Allen

10 Weird and Creepy Places to Set a Novel (Part I)

1. Isla de la Munecas

Perhaps the creepiest place I've ever heard of. Apparently this little island in a canal in Mexico was home to one man, Don Julian Santana. He discovered the body of a drowned girl (whether in reality or in his mind, its up for debate) and decided to honor her memory by...hanging up dolls? The result, all these years later, is a island draped with armless, eyeless, decomposing dolls that you can only get to by paying tour guides to take a detour. I'll never feel the same way riding Small World again.

2. Winchester Mansion

So, I've actually been to this place. It is truly bizarre. Apparently a recently widowed Sarah Winchester was told by a fortune teller woman that she must travel west and build. And build. That she would live as long as she kept building, but that if she stopped she would die. See those stairs? Yeah, they go nowhere. Obviously this house is prime territory for ghosts. When we lived in California our house was almost 100 years old and had hidden rooms and a window downstairs with surgical tools embedded in it. So when we visited the Winchester Mansion it was a little too...close to home.

3. Sedlec Ossuary

The Sedlec Ossuary is your average Czech Catholic chapel. Just, ya know, with unique interior design. Yes that is an actual chandelier. Yes, it is made with actual human bones. Apparently in the 13th century holy land was sprinkled on the grounds of this chapel and then during the period of Black death so many people wanted to be buried here that it became sort of a mass grave that was exhumed centuries later to make room for expansion, and then the bones unearthed were used for decoration? The coat of arms is also made of bone. This place has been used in several movies and documentaries. It's easy to see why.

4. Hellingly Hospital

Is there anything creepier than an abandoned hospital? How about an abandoned lunatic asylum? This place opened in 1903 and was used off and on until it was abandoned in 1994. Which is incredibly recent, in my opinion, and, looking at pictures, looks like suspiciously fast deterioration. Sure vandalism hasn't helped, but I don't think spirits of the insane dead have helped either. And hello, it's called HELLingly.

5. Takakonuma Greenland Park

There are quite a few abandoned amusement parks, but not too many shrouded in as much mystery and cover-up as Takakonuma Greenland Park in Japan. It is not on any maps of Japan and there are very few current photos. It was built in the 70's, only opporated for a couple years before being shut down, and is associated with several mysterious deaths. And nowadays its too close to the nuclear meltdown at Fukishima to be readily accessible. Bumper cars, anyone?

Come back tomorrow for part 2!

Sarah Allen

Some Awesome TED Talks

I learn so much from TED. I think its one of the greatest things the internet has given us. So here's some of my recent favorites:

I hope these help and inspire you as much as they did me!

Sarah Allen

Play to your freak side

There are seven billion people in this world who do not share your experience. Nobody else has your perspective and specific knowledge.

C. S. Lewis said "We read to know we're not alone." This is why we write. Maybe it seems incongruous to say that our writing becomes better and more relatable when we write from our own specific and unique experiences, but its true. Readers relate to us and our characters as individuals, not as general abstracts. 

There are 14 million Mormons in this world. That maybe seems like a lot, until you realize that that is only .002 percent of the population.

One in 2500 girls is born with Turners Syndrome, which makes one in every 5000 people. That is a .0002 percent chance. That means the chance of being born both with Turners Syndrome and being a Mormon is .0000004%. Correct me if my math is wrong (I was in English major, remember) but I'm pretty sure that adds up to about 2800 people in the entire world.

Maybe you have a mentally handicapped brother. Maybe you went to juvy for shoplifting when you were fifteen. Maybe your father was a National Geographic photographer. Think of what makes you absolutely unique, and there is something. Everyone has something.

Ok. So that's one thing I mean when I say play yo your freak side. I would love to write stories about Mormons and girls with Turner Syndrome. But I am of course not going to restrict myself to that either.There are other things about our experience that are still interesting if not as unique as other things. Maybe you're the youngest child. Maybe you're grandpa ran a farm. Maybe you moved as a child. These things still play into our experience, and a lot of people relate to these kinds of things because they've experienced it themselves. 

This is my point: maybe these types of experiences aren't especially unique in and of themselves, but the way we experienced these things absolutely is. Maybe there are a lot of oldest children, but nobody was an oldest child like you were an oldest child. Or maybe lots of people visited their grandparents farms in the summers, but not a lot of people visited your grandparents farm. This is why specific and concrete details are so important. Show us the height of the cornfield and give us the smell of the slaughterhouse. We want to feel this place and experience it with you. 

I'm not saying everything you write has to be directly autobiographical, because obviously you are going to write things happening to characters that never happened to you, and characters themselves that may be as opposite to you as it is possible to be. However, I think in a lot of ways the details that really bring our stories to life and the subtle themes that we discover as our stories grow are almost entirely autobiographical.  At least that's how it is for me. My main characters end up being my main characters because they have something important to say. When I describe a room it is often based on a room from a house I lived in as a child, even if I'm not consciously trying to base it off of that house. 

Basically, we are trying to draw our readers in and we do that through making our details as concrete and as specific as possible, and the easiest way to do that is to use details we know first-hand. Not big things, just little things like smells and textures. 

And the way we make a name for ourselves is not by writing the same kinds of stories everyone else is writing, but by writing the stories that nobody else is writing. There is no one in the world like you. Use that to your advantage.

What puts you in the .002 percent? Do you find yourself drawing on your own experience for details and themes?

Sarah Allen

Barnes and Noble is my Prozac

Often for hours at a time, I sit against the wall by the magazine rack reading The New Yorker, Granta, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Sometimes I don't even like what I read, though I respect it, but it all reminds me that this is my goal, my work, and whatever else is going on in my life, that is enough.

I find gold and silver badges on the cover of books with the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Printz, Newberry Award, and a plethora of others. Whether I ever get to where these writers are, they have always felt like my people, and just reading and studying and learning what I can from them is enough to make me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile, to make me happy.

Then there are the successful, New York Times bestselling books that I pick up, flip through and think, I write better than this and this got published. Not only that, but it's hugely successful. I won't give any names (*cough* E.L. James *cough*), but you...inspire me.

Barnes and Nobles feels like an exclusive club, but rather than nobody wanting you there, every author-member is showing you how many different ways there are to get in. You can pick the writers you admire, follow them, don't follow the ones you don't want to, and blend it all in to your own unique way of getting into the club. It's like they're all saying "Look how amazing this is, and if you work hard enough you can get here too. You can."

We can.

That's a happy thought to live with.

Sarah Allen

First time for everything and experiments with format

So today is a bit of a prompts post, but also just something cool and fun and interesting to think about. There are two things we talked about in the creative writing class last week that I wanted to mention as kind of ways to build and experiment and inspire stories.

1. Firsts: First time for everything, right? And that's often where the most interesting stories can come from. Take advantage of that. Put a character in a place or situation for the first time, and their true colors can't help but shine through and interesting things happen. Here are some "firsts" that we brainstormed:

-First date. Something totally awkward and creepy and random like visiting a cemetery or your dates dying father in the hospital.
-Boy catches his first fish.
-Father taking daughter to the store for her first tampons and midol.
-First time meeting foreign relatives.
-First time on an airplane.

Some fun ones, right? Could turn into some really interesting stories. What other firsts can you think of?

2. Unique format: In class we started throwing around unique ways to tell a story, probably something more towards flash fiction. But the idea was basically to tell a story not using typical prose. So here's the list of our ideas:

-Checks (The experimental story "Ordeal by Cheque" by Wuther Crue was the start of this conversation)
-Shopping list
-Tweets or Facebook statuses
-Blog posts
-Email subject lines
-Billboards
-Graffitti
-Notes in class
-Receipts
-Headstones

Anyway, those are just some fun ideas or things to think about. I definitely plan on trying out some of these. Do you agree these could turn into some cool stuff? What other ideas can you think of that fit in with these?

Sarah Allen

U is for Unspoken

I like to think of really great writing as words that successfully say what words can't say. I mean, when you think of poetry, it's saying things with words, but it's really saying so much more.

Here are some quotes whose words add up to so much more than the sum of their parts:

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." -George Elliot, Middlemarch

"Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through it." Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

"Serve God, love me, and mend." William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.

I think when language works as well as it does in these examples its meaning is too much for words, and so the words have to mean something more then themselves. I know its kind of abstract and convoluted, but does that make sense? It accesses something close to a Universal Truth that hits chord deep inside us, even when we can't comprehend the full meaning of the words in our heads.

How do you put something like this in words?

And here is one of the greatest scenes ever shown on television, all about the "unspoken." I mean, the words 'I love you' already carry such a complicated web of meaning, there is absolutely SO much that Niles is saying in just three words.

What do you think? Do you think writers can try to use words to say what words can't say, and how do we do it?

Sarah Allen