Poe & Composition

I had a great conversation with my wife last night that helped clarify some things I’ve been mulling over rather unproductively of late. Looking at teachings on writing, and at how those I respect craft their tales – there is a chasm there.

When the Braveheart speech of writing tutors invariably ends with “Show, Don’t Tell” and the classic tales of Lovecraft (to name only one) are nearly all telling and tone there is a gap. Focus on the specific, and concrete creates a structure that does not always lend itself to the ineffable. It surely can be done. The best writers find that sweet spot were illustration and intuition harmonize, but the weight placed on specificity does claim its share of artistic casualties.

I had traded some of the surrealism and emotional impressions in my writing across this table in favor a more quantifiable mode of story telling. I am taking it back. It’s difficult to maintain and keep cohesive, but I realized last night that I need that to fulfill my intentions accurately. It is a simple, and perhaps obvious revelation but one I needed to have validated.

She recommended I read Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition. We got home from dinner and I was presented her heavily underlined copy of The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. I read the essay, and of the valuable things within it, the following was my biggest takeaway….

“I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect… I say to myself, in the first place ‘of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one should I, on the present occasion, select?’… I consider whether it can best be wrought by incident or by tone – whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse or by peculiarity, both of incident and tone… for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effort.”  – E.A. Poe