How to Write Crisp, Evocative Descriptions: The Eye of Memory (5)
When the eye of the imagination is engaged, it illuminates the artful possibilities hidden within actual events. From the hard rock of fact, stone by stone the writer builds a castle – Rebecca McClanahan Rebecca McClanahan describes the Eye of Memory as a “kind” of Imaginative Eye. When she talks about the use of memory in writing, she goes beyond the mere recollection of past events. McClanahan emphasizes that as writers, we should use the facts and details of our experiences as raw materials that we should transform into a new shape. If you are a fiction writer, you can transform your experiences by taking an event or experience and “loaning” it to a character who is very different from you. “Hand over the event, no strings attached, and see what your character does with it,” writes McClanahan. Or, you can take two events which happened years apart and place them in the same story or poem and see how they interact with each other. McClanahan explains, “The interaction between the two events will force you …