Picture books

Writers make pictures for readers, the better the writer, the more vivid the pictures.

Peter Gay, Remarkable Reads

Peter Gay

I have no argument with Peter Gay's statement. Writers do create pictures with their words, and better writers do make better pictures. Yet I think we can also make a true statement by changing just three key words:

Readers make pictures for writers, the better the reader, the more vivid the pictures.

After all, readers play a key role in the writing process. It is in their minds, not on the printed page, that those pictures take final form. Readers either see those pictures or they don't. They either see them clearly or they don't. And some readers may see different pictures than others.

As an example, let's take a paragraph from Ethan Canin's novel A Doubter's Almanac:

As soon as they were done, Dad sat down on the new couch. He'd made no objection to any of it. Out had gone the chipped linoleum table and the ramshackle chairs. The cracked wooden bench beneath the window. When the old, thready couch was tilted through the door, he followed it with his eyes; but he said nothing. As the truck pulled away, Cle unpacked a box of candles in pewter cups and set them them along the window ledges.

Ethan Canin

The paragraph is mostly descriptive, and some readers skip over descriptions. Others skim them. Still others read every word without necessarily getting the whole picture. I must be in that category because when I read that paragraph the first time I think I pictured Dad on the new couch watching others take the old furniture out of the room. But read the paragraph closely and you see that Dad didn't sit down on the new couch until the others had finished moving furniture. We know Dad was in the room the whole time because he was watching, but whether he was standing or sitting we do not know.

The paragraph gives us not just one big picture but lots of little pictures. A chipped linoleum table. Ramshackle chairs. A cracked wooden bench. The old, thready couch that was tilted through the door. (That verb creates its own picture.) Dad following the old couch out the door with his eyes, then sitting down on the new one. The truck full of old furniture pulling away. The candles in pewter cups along the window ledges.

Ethan Canin created those vivid pictures, yet his readers either did or didn't see them all.