Month: May 2011

Put Away the Phone and People Watch

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

I’m headed for the airport in a couple of hours and am looking forward to the wait for my plane. Well, okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. Let’s just say that I will put that time to good use, by people watching.

As a writer, you must make time to people watch, to observe the pantheon of characters within your orbit, wherever you are. Keep a notebook handy and jot down little notes about the folks who drift past you on the tide of humanity. (If you don’t write these down, at least store them in your long-term memory until you have the chance to record them.)

Note clothing, postures, relationships, unspoken communication, facial expressions, accents, attitudes — all of which are elements to put into your characterization tool box. How do young lovers stand, walk, or sit by each other? How do middle-aged couples do the same? And the elderly? What do you see in the elderly that is also in the young couple in love? Why might those elements have lasted into old age? What do they tell you about the people, the relationships, the quality of love?

How do you get a sense of personality or mood from a person’s posture or gait? What assessment do you make of a woman who wears a lot of makeup? of a woman who wears little or none? Of a man who plucks his eyebrows? Now, think. WHY do you make those assessments? Write down your answer.

Listen for accents or turns of phrase, but be aware that writing in an accent is a challenge, both to the writer and to the reader. What you want is a “taste” of the accent, a saying or phrase that gives you the sense of “Other,” of foreignness or dialect.

My favorite are the eyes. I like to watch how people use their eyes, and what their eyes say about them. Wide open, half-cocked, drowsy, side-darting — all of these can say something about the person, beyond just physiognomy.

So, put away your phone, your iPad, and your other electronic devices and people watch. It’s what will make your fiction come alive!

Hold At All Costs

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

In discussion about a possible editing gig,  Glenn Palmedo-Smith told me about a film of his that was shown on PBS on or around Memorial Day 2011. The film is called Hold At All Costs and is about the battle for Outpost Harry during the Korean War. Palmedo-Smith sent me a link to the film’s trailer, which has certainly intrigued me. Having seen the entire film now, I can recommend it wholeheartedly. It is informative, gripping, and touching in the most unexpected ways.

A brief history of the battle for Outpost Harry. During the eight-day battle, five United Nations Command companies, four U.S. and one Greek, defended the hill in the Iron Triangle near Seoul from the attack of some 13,000 Chinese soldiers, under orders to “hold at all costs,” not knowing that the Chinese soldiers had been told to take the hill “at all costs.” And thus, eight days of hell ensued, with most of the fighting taking place at night. In the film, survivors from both sides of the conflict talk about the horrors of the week and reflect upon its meaning. The film ends with images of South Korean today, a land the UN had estimated it would take 100 years to rebuild. The closing credits include the names of those killed in the battle for Outpost Harry. The American list is long, the Greek list short, the South Korean list longer, and the list of Chinese names grows as the credits advance, until ten columns of names in tiny Chinese script fill the screen. Horrifying.

This is an excellent film about a war that was forgotten or ignored for too long by a country whose leaders called its young men to give their lives on that foreign soil. I highly recommend it if you can find it on television (PBS showed it over the Memorial Day weekend).

The interesting thing about all of this is that I doubt that I would ever have encountered this film had it not been for my initial contact with Palmedo-Smith concerning editing on a different project, completely separate from the film. Again, I am delighted and amazed by the connections I make through my job, by the new horizons that open to me.

Providence? I’m thinking, yes.

One thing leads to another when you are a writer with curiosity about and interest in the world around you. To all writers out there, I say keep your eyes and ears open. You never know from where your next gem of inspiration might arise.

“Snaders” and Times Past

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

Today, while editing a book on the dance and music of the 1950s, I came across a term I’d never heard before, “Snaders.” Snaders were 3-minute films made in the 1950s to be shown on television, documenting live musical performances by classical and popular artists.

As I usually do when I encounter something new, I immediately looked up “Snaders” on the internet and found several of the films (also known as “Soundies”) on YouTube, such as the one here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5DzXKXNauM&feature=related. And yes, I did have work to do, but I found myself browsing through the different films and looking up some of the performers. Finally, I knew I had to get back to editing, but I’d learned a great deal in the meantime.

That is one of the tremendous benefits of this job of book editing. I encounter so many people, events, ideas, and creations that I have never heard of before. When I take the time, I learn so much! even more than just what I’m reading and editing.

Do you know what The Madison is? It’s a dance from the 1950s, made popular again by the play “Hairspray.” But it was created in 1957 in Detroit and swept the nation. A completely new dance, providing a change from the Lindy-inspired Jitterbug. Or what about the Hand Jive. Do you know how to do it? It was revivified by the film “Grease,” but I could never learn it by watching alone. Found a website featuring instructions on how to do it today. Now I know how.

In the same book, I read a reference to Rosa Parks. While I know her story in broad strokes, I took the time today to do more in-depth reading about her. I think she was a lovely lady, well educated, soft spoken, and innately dignified. No wonder she was the poster child for Civil Rights. She hadn’t planned to make trouble, but at age 42, she’d had enough. So she held her legal ground. And opened up American society by that quiet, dignified action.

No matter what you are writing about, no matter what your job, I can’t encourage you enough to take the time and browse the internet. Any time you run across a term, event, person, or phrase you don’t recognize, look it up. You’ll be amazed by how vast and varied our world is. Here, I’ll start you off. Look up the word “quire” and read about how it came to be and what it means. Enjoy!