Topics as Photographs :: Writing

Writers are deal lensmans, Donald Murray reminds us. The photographer doesnt snatch up a picture while scanning an entire scene. Instead he selects a single focus (239-240).This analogy was exceptionally powerful to me. The root word of looking through a camera lens out at an event or a topic just has wonderful possibilities. You could do a panoramic photo, including the wide picture, seeing how many military personnels fit together. On the other hand, you could use the high-powered zoom lens to get up close and magnify a single element of the photo. Even the photographers decision to use black and white or garble film to make a particular statement can fork up into a writers decision to use sparse exhibition or flowery prose to create a desired effect. A move that occurs to me that I might ask my students is this If your topic was a photograph, what would it look like? Would it have lots of characters in it, or just one? Is the corporeal setting the most important element, or rather the expression on the subjects face? And on and on.Maybe this speaks to me because I am the yearbook editor, and one of the biggest jobs of the publications staff is to find the right picture to communicate the story. From an entire role of film, we might get just one or two usable photos or none. Or we might have so many to choose from that we have to select the best angle and/or composition. Those words, angle and composition are writing words as salubrious as visual arts terms. Out of a notebook adept of drafts, I might find the same dilemmas -- not enough or too much usable raw material for a piece of writing.