We’ve all heard the saying about a picture being worth a thousand words, but I wonder how true that is. I’ve been thinking about the opposite just lately – that’s to say, not pictures being worth the words, but pictures that are created by the words.
And I’ve also been asking myself, who paints the word pictures? Is it the writer, or the reader? And should the writer try to influence the pictures that their words create in the imaginations of the readers?
The Concept of Beauty
We all have different ideas about what is beautiful and what’s ugly. Sure, there are conventionally acceptable standards, particularly in assessing whether or not people are beautiful, but when it comes right down to the particular there is always a certain something that’s hard to define that determines whether or not we find someone or something attractive.
When writing, it’s best to leave the definition of beauty either up to the reader or to the other characters. For instance, if I describe a young woman with long blonde hair, big blue eyes and a full mouth, and then tell readers she’s beautiful, they may not agree that what I’ve described is beautiful. But they would readily accept that another of my characters finds her beautiful even if they don’t personally. If I want my readers to accept that a character is beautiful because her/his beauty is central to the story, I’d try to avoid giving actual descriptions beyond the most vague. That way the reader paints their own picture and so can’t argue with the suggestion that the character is beautiful.
It’s a subtle difference, but letting readers paint their own pictures as much as possible makes for much deeper reader interaction with the story.
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