The Opportunity
We read stories for more than just the plot. In fact, some of our favourite reading experiences come from moments where the story is, for a short while, left behind.
We all know them: moments in a story of profound thought, reflection, or beauty. For some writers, such passages are the primary thing we remember about their books (Virginia Woolf comes to mind.) For other writers, these moments appear sparingly, and our entire reading experience is guided through the plot.
I would suggest that a lyrical moment might contain some or all of these traits:
- lasts a paragraph or two.
- time seems to stop or become irrelevant.
- the character's sense of self fades.
- something in the world seems luminous or meaningful all on its own.
This Lesson Contains
- Technique: beautiful moments
- Handout: lyric as your message
- Practice: build a bridge to your moment
Now, the more moments you include, the more "literary" your work will seem. But any genre or style can benefit from lyrical interruptions of the narrative.
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Kevin followed Abdul into the back yard of his house. Abdul’s mother Sara smiled at him.
“Kevin,” Sara said with a gentle energy in her eyes.
“I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Are you hungry?” She gestured at an old, rusty barbecue, smoking faintly.
“I’m making kebabs. They’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
Kevin took in the smell of the meat. It was a rich, heavy smell, greasy and smoky and warm, a scent of cozy closeness and childhood feasts. Kevin felt an urge to accept the food. Part of him wished he’d never learned the story of meat. He’d loved meat, when he was a child. He’d resisted hearing of the cruelty required for the pleasure in his mouth.
But the evidence had become undeniable. He’d read of the baby pigs ripped from their mother’s breasts and pressed into cages the size of their bodies. He’d read of pigs gnawing cage bars in psychotic despair, as their lives lengthened hour by hour, day by day, torment by torment. Pigs were smart animals, smarter than dogs. They suffered as much as a human would, if a human baby was taken from its mother and put in a cage the size of it’s body for the rest of it’s life. Kevin had decided he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t cause animals to be tortured their entire lives, not for the sake of his own happiness.
But socially…that was harder. It felt rude, saying he wouldn’t eat food someone offered him. It felt… ungrateful, not to accept what a kind person like Sara offered. Kevin held her gaze for a moment. Sara must not know, or at least, hadn’t really thought of it. Sara was a kind person—and a kind person who knew, who really knew, wouldn’t have bought the meat in the first place. Kevin strengthened his resolve.
“I’m a vegetarian,” he said with a gentle smile.
“But thank you for the offer.”
Her hearing closed around a single frequency, bright and strident, sloughing off all other sensation into white-light foam, and she was suddenly alone on the morning-busy traincar. Recorded audio batted at the tattered fray of her memory. What had she said? What had she heard? What did it mean? Love didn’t wait. Love rushed in, full of sensation, as blind and brutal as the surf. It crashed across hearts over and again until they broke open or submit to their cold and rolling polish, forever forgotten as worried by the hands of men. She couldn’t. Puja couldn’t love, and she couldn’t surrender. She couldn’t let in the pain, or the joy, or even the memory. She let the white foam in, sloughing off all sensation, all experience, all meaning. And she was alone.
She found herself at the front window, looking out at the world the way Jett might have, wondering whether he stood there and really saw the world or looked right through it. What did she really understand about his perceptions, how his mind really worked, not since they’d taken different paths. Under the open sky, the world outside invited a sense of order, a powerful force keeping people moving through their day in expected routines, obedient to the process, to what was expected. Looking out, wondering what Jett might have thought, what impressions he absorbed from the beauty outside, or perhaps he didn’t see beauty at all, but the longer she studied the oblivious world beyond his door, the more she understood how she could not let a tragic moment steal anyone’s impressions of the world people lived in, beautiful or not.
Dominik passes out of her line of sight as the tram propels her forwards. Magda aches to look back at him, but instead concentrates on the solid seat at her back. The world swirls around her in a blur, and she trains her gaze on individual details that come into hyper focus: the gargoyle at the top of a doorway, peonies in a bucket outside the flower shop, the baby smiling in its stroller.
It seems as if she is separate from the world, traveling through it suspended in time, still tethered to the night with Dominik, the colors of the sky as it sailed from dusk to dawn, to the stars so bright above them. She can still feel the magic of the moment, but is steadily moving away from it in this tram, which will pour her out into her normal world and deliver her to the mundane. Perhaps she could simply *not get off*.
The morning light falls on her hands and she is caught. She can still feel the weight of Dominik’s two warm palms, holding hers between his. Can still feel his chest against her back as they watched the sun rise. His lips against hers. The chemicals in her blood are fading, and she holds on to the sensations as the tram moves forward, forward. If only she could remain in this shaft of light and memory forever.
But now it is her stop. She descends the steps and lands on the concrete – heavy, tired, mundane once again.