THE CITY IS OUR WRITING TEACHER: Playing with Scale Enriches Our Work

By Mary Rakow

I was walking down Post Street in San Francisco when I caught sight of this tiny  scene, in the front window of the beautiful Leica Camera Store. I wasn’t sure how or why, but knew it had something super important to teach me about writing. So I took the shot. The contrast of the color of the grass and the wooden figures. The way they were positioned so that activities was going on. In this small space, less than a cubic foot, an amazing universe. 

As we’ve seen in this blog there are tensions that we need to embrace and execute in our writing if we want to make art. The tension between minimalism and extravagance, between plot and story. And  here, between huge and small. We need both. Our work needs both. That paradox. 

Huge meaning that in our work we’re wrestling with life‘s biggest questions, whether literary or genre, fiction or non-fiction, there’s always something bigger underneath the surface. Always.  My job as an editor, more often than not, is listening carefully so that I hear the presence of the huge question in the client’s work.  Often we just don’t see it in our own work. But a good listener can. So that’s the huge piece.

But to not write lectures, summaries, rants, and to write something powerful and moving, we need to examine the big question tiny piece by tine piece.  To show not to proclaim.  To show by crafting one small moment, then the next, in a sequence that gains a powerful, compelling momentum.  

We don’t solve the huge question; that’s not our job. Philosophers don’t solve them either. And religions don’t solve them. But all these great human efforts try to very carefully lay out the questions. As writers our job is to give to the reader the experience of what it’s like to live with the question. And we do that by stringing together in an artful way very small, beautiful moments. Beautiful because they’re accurate.  Because they’re real.

In this very small window display someone had taken a very long time to position these characters, their limbs and heads, etc. Just as we carefully write one scene at a time. If done well, the reader reads a few lines, stops, decides to go further in to the world we’ve made on the page.

This month as we walk our neighborhoods, whether urban or rural, where do we see the small gesture that makes us think that even the enormity of the question we’re trying to get on the page can actually be addressed?

Writing The Memory Room I’m walking around the grocery store and see something that inspires me for Barbara, my main character. She’s falling apart, falling deeper into an abyss, in great distress almost all the time, processing acts of incredible cruelty.  Acts that were kept secret for decades.  Her push is that she wants to see her entire history. Even all the bad stuff.  She wants to see herself, her entire history, and she wants to be seen and to be known. 

There’s a sale on sea bass so walks to the back and notices something very small, very ordinary.  But it’s this combination of huge violent acts and then a very small action that makes the scene both simple and strong. The tiny moment takes only 150 or so words and goes like this:

At the back of the store, on the table behind glass, the butcher lays down a very large fish, an opened palm resting on the fish’s side. He makes the first long cut, cleanly, from the head down to the tail, swift and elegant. He rolls the silver body a bit more to the side and slides his hand under its head, lifting the full length of silver blue. He treats the fish with a practical reverence.  Seeing him do this my shoulders relax and I breathe easily.

Gingerly he lifts flesh off bone, directly touching its unnamed wounds. Fine creature, up from the dark, its whole life under the surface, unseen. It’s stately body, the only evidence of a complete and hidden life.

It is beautiful to see how he knows her. I watch and I do not cry.

These are the final words of the chapter titled, “Latere” meaning “to lie hidden.” 

In our work as writers we can arrange big next to small. We can take two different things and place them side by side. Scale works. It makes the story stronger. Scale matters, because it’s also part of life.  And playing with scale is fun! 

Scale is one tool for us as we try to wrestle with life’s big questions. And wrestling is our job. It’s the job of every artist.  And because we are the only life form that can do this, it is also our privilege.  So we should. For the simple reason that we can

Writing Exercises 

Richard Serra, Sequence (2006)

#1.

Walk through sculpture that is larger than you are like this by Serra. 

Walk through buildings that are taller than you are.  A church, synagogue, symphony hall. mosque, office building. Or walk in mountains, along lakes or by the sea. This also teaches us about scale. This teaches us humility. Good work comes from humility. From not-knowing. 

#2

Write a five word sentence followed by a sentence that takes a full page.  

#3

 Put a very small gesture next to a massive event.  E.g. a man films his son  skateboarding when gunshot is heard.

#4 

Practice scale along one trait, such as age. E.g. an intimate, cheerful dialogue  between a 94-year-old woman and a 16 year old boy, or between one character of sound mind and one who is not.

Play with scale.  It’s endless!

And if you need an editor or writing coach I’d love to hear from you. I give a 15% discount on full or partial manuscripts from SFWC writers and anyone who comes through this blog. maryrakow.com 

Have a good writing month. See you next time!

Mary 

A freelance editor living in the Bay Area, Mary Rakow, Ph.D. works with clients who are both local and global. She is both rigorous and encouraging, insightful and kind.

A theologian with graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Boston College, Rakow’s debut novel, THE MEMORY ROOM was shortlisted for the Stanford University International Saroyan Prize in Literature, a PEN USA/West Finalist in Fiction and was listed among the Best Books of the West by The Los Angeles Times.

Mary writes with deep feeling and a questioning faith. Her second novel, THIS IS WHY I CAME earned excellent reviews in The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Commonweal, Christian Century, O Magazine, Ploughshares. It appeared on reading lists for courses at both Princeton and Yale.

Interested in the visual arts, Rakow received two Lannan residencies and two residencies at Whale & Star, in the studio of visual artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, where she was commissioned to write the first book-length treatment of the artist’s work, MARTINEZ CELAYA, WORKING METHODS.

Mary is a beloved editor and writing coach.  She enjoys working with writers who are just starting out and those with publications and writing accolades.

For inquiries: maryrakow.com

See also:

thisiswhybook.com

https://www.instagram.com/prayers_for_our_time/

https://www.facebook.com/Psalter

© Mary Rakow, 2022

Not a patron yet? Take a second to support San Francisco Writers Conference on Patreon!