On Abstractions
This piece primarily focuses on poetry simply because I have more experience in this genre. The concepts discussed are by no means exclusive. I believe they can be applied to any form of creative writing, including prose (fictional or factual) and script. So please, even if you aren’t interested in poetry, read on.
I have been offering critiques of amateur poetry for about six years now. I couldn’t tell you how many people I have tried to help, but my best guess is that it is well and truly into four figures. So, while I may not be talking from as much experience as the editors of the Norton Anthology, I like to think that I have something to offer poets who are beginning their careers.
After all of those poems, though, I have an axe to grind. A lot of the time, I find myself repeating the same things: ‘Overly sentimental’, ‘Cliché’, ‘Forced Rhyme/Meter’, ‘Too many abstractions’. Most people, even when they are very early in their writing careers, have a grip on the first two. Usually, they just need a gentle prod. The third is easy enough to explain. The final one, however, often confuses people. It is for this reason that I have chosen to unpack the problem of abstractions.
The Symptoms
I think it’s important to mention that if I say that there are too many abstractions in your work, I do not mean that your work was too weird for me. I am not comparing you to Marinetti, Magritte, or Escher.
An abstraction is an image which, in contrast to a concrete image, is based on an idea that cannot be sensed. That is, it cannot be seen, touched, tasted, smelt or heard. The classic example is when someone mentions a specific emotion in their work (ie. ‘I am afraid of you’). This is an image which, not only breaks the only cardinal rule of writing ('Show. Don't tell.'), but it is also rooted purely in abstraction. Nothing there is perceptible.
A further example, borrowed from my own early work, follows:
I can't be bothered facing your realities
When all they grant me is your pain
I've enough of my own and
I'll never ask you again.
But can I control you for a little while?
Can I own your creation
And be the sole benefactor of your deceit?
I’m already half-way there.
Okay. It isn’t great, but there are no real clichés, it doesn’t try to force an unnatural rhyme or meter, it’s not really overly sentimental (just overwrought, and that’s definitely not a crime. Some over-wrought poets are worshipped!). The main problem is that it doesn’t actually make us feel anything. We understand the words, but have no way to convert them into feelings.
The first and only problem that jumps out at me is that it is constantly stuck in abstract images. The image used each time is immeasurable by the human senses. Save vague, entirely personal, associations that we may make about the words used, there isn’t much for the audience to work with.
The Prognosis
The main problem with abstractions is that, when an audience reads one, they tend to scan straight past. It may seem a little silly that the most economical way to draw on a concept (that is, to name it) is summarily ignored in many cases. But it does make sense.
The easiest form of abstraction to focus on is emotion. So let us look, in this instance, at ‘love’:
‘I love my cat.’
‘I love my mother.’
‘I love my bed.’
‘I love this book.’
‘We made love.’
The thing about abstractions is that they alone don’t mean much. Imagine if ‘love’ had only one very distinct definition. We could potentially get in an awful lot of trouble for loving our cats, mothers, and books, in the same way that we make love. The statement, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you’, would seem even more absurd than it already does.
Abstractions are very flexible, that is why they seem useful. But, in order to really understand what anyone is saying when they use the word love, they have to give us context. That way, we see more information and get a clearer picture of how they love. Without this context, the abstraction means nothing.
Is it any wonder, then, that we are naturally predisposed to gloss over an abstraction, and read the words around it instead?
But why use the abstraction at all, when to understand it, we have to see the story behind and around it? Surely, if we see need to see the story, then these things go would and should go without saying. Doesn’t that make the abstraction itself tautological?
To approach things from a different perspective, I would like to look at the purpose of written art. I feel that when an audience comes to a piece, they are looking for a way to temporarily escape into someone else’s life. The funny thing is they don’t really want to know what the author experiences. They want to feel it.
In our own heads, everything that passes us is sensory information that we gather, process, and analyse. This sensory information is the foundation of all that is human life. When someone pushes us, the first thing we notice is the sensation. We feel a force moving us. We fall and feel pain. We look up and see a person standing at the origin of the force.
Abstractions come afterwards. They facilitate learning, but do not directly effect us feeling our way through life. With that in mind, we move on.
The Cure
If I were to describe the pushing scenario to someone, normally, I would say any variation of, ‘Tony pushed me, and I am angry with him.’ This gives the audience a little bit of detail and to some extent reflects the way the human body is programmed.
But keeping in mind both the redundancy of abstractions and your job as a writer to make an audience feel, it is better to drop the abstraction itself and, instead, describe an exchange using mainly sensation. For example:
This morning, when I was walking back from the shops, someone pushed me over. With my arms weighed down by bags of groceries, I moved too slowly to break my fall. As I landed, I heard a loud crack, as my front teeth had hit the concrete with the full force of my body behind them.
Anyway, I turned around and who do I see? Tony, the six-foot-nine, jock arsehole I was happiest to see the back of when I graduated. He was laughing.
‘What’s the matter, Weed?’ We graduated ten years ago. It was great to see that he’d grown as a person.
‘What’s the matter, Weed? Did you hurt your tooth you little faggot shit? Maybe your boyfriend can kiss it better. Aww … Are you gonna cry?’
He kicked me …
Now, the audience has concrete detail. Based on that exchange, they could easily, and justifiably, start to hate him as well. You need to trust your audience to make the same leaps that the narrator has. In most cases, if you give enough specifics, they will.
In poetry, it can be much easier. A lot of the time, you don’t even need much detail:
In her dreams,
I’d swear she was running marathons,
or an action hero in hot pursuit.
I’d watch every kick until morning
then I’d hear what caused them.
This paints a very definite picture, but you can cull even more words in some instances:
We were tigress and prey.
Again, a very definite picture is painted. We see the nature of a relationship in five words. And it is much more evocative than its abstract alternative.
T.S. Eliot called this technique an ‘objective correlative’, but it could also be a short and simple allegory. It all depends on what you want to discuss.
For an objective correlative, you need to select a concrete situation, object, or event and use it to represent and generate a specific emotion. In 1920, Eliot proposed that his objective correlative was the only effective way to do this is in art.
Allegory has been used all the way back to Ancient Greece. A modern example of an allegory is George Orwell’s, Animal Farm. On the surface, this story discusses the life of some very clever farm animals, but Orwell uses this concrete situation to discuss the abstract notion of Communism. Allegory’s purpose is much less likely to be discussing or evoking specific emotions and more likely to be discussing notions that are based in the theoretical.
In conclusion, I hope I at least provided you with something to think about. In return, I ask that you email me (tim@hypercritical.net) with any questions or problems you’ve had. I really would like to know what you thought, because, this way, I hope to refine the article and make it more effective.