Lighthouse Travel Research--The Inadequacies of Written Description

 

I fell in love during my research trip. Not with Roland, which was already a given. No, I fell in love with the Fresnel lenses still in use in some lighthouses today.¹

Fresnel lenses are not lights themselves but are made up of hundreds of pieces of specially cut glass surrounding a lamp. Their role is to reflect and magnify the light shining inside, making it visible for miles. And they are beautiful.

The closest I can come to showing you their beauty is to provide some photographs, but even those are woefully inadequate. The photo at the top of this page is a 4^th Order lens in the museum at Beavertail Light in Rhode Island.

Fresnel lenses are graded by size, with 1^st Order lenses beging the largest and 6^th Order lenses the smallest, as you can see in the second photo. I have never seen a 1^st Order lens, which is big enough for a man to walk inside, but we did see a 2^nd Order lens at the Maine Lighthouse Museum in Rockland. That’s the third photo.

The remaining two lenses are shown in their natural habitats. The fourth photo is the Sixth Order lens at Rose Island Light in Rhode Island, where we got to climb to the lantern room. The final is another 4^th Order lens, this time seen from below at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Maine.

But the question I’m posing in this post, and the one I’m struggling with right now, is how to describe the indescribable. Even the photos don’t do Fresnel lenses justice, so words never will. Still, there are times when a writer has to try. Here is my poor attempt to show my protagonist’s reaction the first time she climbs the tower and sees the lens.

Jessie couldn’t stop staring at the shimmering glass object in the center of the room. Beehive-shaped and almost as tall as Dad, it was prettier than any jewel she had ever seen.

“Is that the light?” she asked.

“No. The light comes from a lamp inside. This is a third order Fresnel lens that reflects and magnifies the light.”

Jessie could have looked at it forever.

This is just the first draft, so maybe I’ll be able to come up with a better description before I finish the book.

But it still won’t come close to describing the indescribable.

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¹ So where did Fresnel lenses come from? In the early 1800s, a French committee was formed to study improvements in lighthouse illumination. One of the committee members was Augustin Fresnel, whose design was adopted all over the world. For more information on the history and operation of Fresnel lenses, see the National Park Service article at www.nps.gov/articles/fresnel-lens.htm.

How Much Description is Enough?

I’m following up on last week’s post by reprinting one I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium. It appeared on the IWC blog on May 4, 2016.

How Much Description is Enough?

I don’t use a lot of description in my stories. As a reader, I prefer letting my imagination fill in the details, so I write that way, as well. Still, there are times when some description is necessary.

Genre may also dictate the amount of detail. Romances often include in-depth descriptions of each character, the clothes they wear, and their decorating choices. Thrillers generally don’t.

So how do you find the right level for your work? This rule comes from Description and Setting by Ron Rozelle:

The problem for the writer of popular fiction is to give sufficient description without giving too much. The best solution is to keep your type of reader in mind all the time, and follow what I call the clutter rule: If something isn’t serving the advancement of the story, it needs to go.

His admonition to “keep your type of reader in mind” recognizes the differences between genre, but the basic rule applies to them all. If it doesn’t advance the story you are writing, get rid of it.

In On Writing, Stephen King says, “”For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.” 

So how do we find those well-chosen details? By ignoring the ones that are common to every similar scene and adding those that the reader will translate into the message you want to send. 

Maybe your characters meet in a coffee house. Most readers know what a coffee house looks like, so you don’t have to describe the counter or the room crowded with tables and chairs. But if this particular coffee house is on the verge of bankruptcy, you could mention the empty tables or the cracks in the linoleum flooring. 

Or do you want the reader to know that your protagonist’s best friend is poor? Put her in a faded shirt that is too big for her. You don’t have to describe her outfit again until she suddenly appears in a new dress that fits perfectly. That will peak the readers’ interest more than a constant fashion (or off-fashion) show will. If your protagonist is obsessed with what people wear, however, that’s another matter.

You can evoke a country setting by describing a white clapboard church with a cemetery and surrounded by farmlands. Or you can place your story in an urban setting with a stone church sitting on the corner of two streets lined with brick houses. These few details are enough to paint the picture.

Every reader is different. But if you want to keep my attention, tell me what I need to know and let my imagination fill in the rest.

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I took both of the photographs in 2010. The first is the Lund Mission Covenant Church near Pepin, Wisconsin, with a graveyard barely visible on the left. The second picture shows the Old Pullman Church in Chicago.

Changing Tastes

My family lived in Amman, Jordon, when I was young. I was a very picky eater at the time, and Mama was determined to get me to try new foods. One of those foods was halwa (also spelled halva), which is a very sweet paste made with nuts and either sugar or honey. The first time I tasted it, I hated it. The next time, it was just okay. But before long, I was taking halwa sandwiches to school every day by my choice. Unfortunately, when I tried halwa many years later as an adult, my tastes had changed again. I don’t hate it, but I do find it way too sweet to take in large doses.

Reading tastes can change, too.

When I was in high school, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss was one of my favorite books. I loved it for a number of reasons, including the detailed description that helped me see the setting and the characters.

Now jump to 2019. I am currently listening to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins as I walk for exercise. Although I’m enjoying the story, there are times when the description drags on and on and I just want to tell the narrator to fast forward. Unfortunately, if I tried to fast-forward on my own, I might miss something important. So I’m putting up with it.

I haven’t read The Mill on the Floss for a number of years, and it is on my short list of books to read—or in this case reread—in the near future. Hopefully I will enjoy the description as much as I did when I was a teenager. It may depend on how much is really necessary to the story, but that’s the subject of next week’s post.

The point here is that reading tastes change. Just because you loved something when you were younger doesn’t mean you will love it now. But the opposite can also be true.

So this may be the time to try something different.

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The mill in the picture isn’t on the River Floss in England. I took the photo in 2010 while visiting the Bollinger Mill State Historic Site in Missouri.