Writing Help – Concrete and Abstract Language
Building a Solid Foundation When Writing Fiction
While both abstract and concrete language both have their place in fiction, a focus on the concrete will create much more powerful images and scenes. In turn, all artistic connections will be strengthened: the writer to the work, the work to the reader, and — through the work — the writer to the reader.
What's the Difference?
If something can be taken in through the senses, it is concrete (tangible). If not, it is abstract (intangible).
Abstract: love, beauty, hate, justice, truth, sadness, depression, anxiety.
Concrete: Buick LeSabre, notebook, ribs, lipgloss, cherry pie, hand, fishbowl in the shape of Rod Stewart's head.
But how can the concrete item be turned it into an abstract idea? If, in a story, a man is described as loving a woman, the writer is being abstract. If that same man comes home and immediately hugs the woman, gliding a hand around her back and then up and down her ribs as he embraces her, the writer is being concrete. If the writer wanted to get really fancy, I'm sure she could incorporate the more bizarre items on the list as well. Contextually, both versions symbolize love or a related emotion, but to just tell the reader "they love each other" doesn't have the same impact.
Prove it!
A version of "justice" is a situation where someone in a car sees the person who cut him off in traffic being attacked by bears a few miles up the road. No serious harm or anything, just a little scare (and maybe they get one of his shoes or something). When a writer says that "justice was served" in a story, that scene is what could be thought of unless the writer states something different. "Justice" is just like any other abstraction: it has as many different definitions as there are people to to define it.
A character must feel the way the writer says he feels. "Fear" is a universal idea. Caring about someone who is afraid is not. To achieve a universal effect/caring with a piece of writing, a writer must lock into situations and characters that belong solely to him. This gives the reader something that only one person (the writer) can give a reader: proof that the people in the story exist.
And don't forget . . .
Here are two different versions of the same scene:
"She was a crazy kleptomaniac. She was also very messy, just like my car."
And:
"She stole mostly everything. I’d watch her do it in the store, humming along to a French horn version of “She’s A Lady” or “Space Oddity.” We’d be back in the car and I’d see that sometimes she grabbed those useful things—condoms, a handgun, some cigarettes—but more often it was fifty-cent plastic figurines from Goodwill, like Strawberry Shortcake with no face or a feminine soldier squatting down and smiling. She didn’t own anything that couldn’t be stolen or bought with change. Oatmeal crème pie wrappers and cardboard cotton-candy sticks piled up in the backseat. All the ICEE cups were full of ants fighting for the stale sugarwater and getting covered in it until they were a ball of sticky, blue raspberry death."
Which one is more memorable? In the grand scheme of a story, a person is more likely to forget the generalizations made by the first example, and remember the details of the second: stealing condoms, Strawberry Shortcake with no face, dead ants in an ICEE cup. If readers are able to remember the little things, they'll be more able to piece them together and form the larger picture.
Related Article: A Writing Exercise Using Just a Newspaper
Related Article: The First Sentence Exercise for Young Adults
Related Article: The Character Elimination Exercise
Concrete and Abstract Language
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Writing & Publishing
Latest Articles