details in order to tighten the story�s tension. She says: ��the opposite of
what you see is what you get. With the striptease method, what we get is
precisely what we don�t see, what we must wait patiently, or impatiently, to
learn.� [Sidebar: But does she mean employing it the way Dan Brown does in THE
DAVINCI CODE, withholding details for several chapters?]
McClanahan uses an example from William Sansom�s THE LOVING EYE:
One moment the window was empty, a dark square�and the next this
strange new woman was standing against the sill.
Her appearance was as sudden as if a blind had been snapped up.
There she stood exactly in the centre of her little theatre of
sashes and sill and darkness beyond. One expected her to bow.
He backed away from his own window like a thief.
I love the details, �Her appearance was as sudden as if�� and �He backed away
from his own window like a thief.� Sansom withholds details of the woman�s
appearance. He employs short paragraphs to increase tension, our curiosity, the
�stop-and-start feeling of the moment.� But our point of view character has
backed away, so we can�t see more details about the woman.
Next, McClanahan describes the physical barrier the author has created between
the man and the woman with this passage, the next paragraph:
In between them a wild spring wind drove through the trough of
back-gardens, raising sudden birds of white paper, waving the trees, whipping a
storm of movement between all the rows of quiet shut windows. But that was
outside. In, it was still.
McClanahan writes: �Again tension is tightened by the author�s halt and delay.
Although we feel the internal storm rising within the man, Sansom doesn�t
satisfy our curiosity. Not yet. Instead he shifts to an external storm, a �wild
spring wind� that waves and whips through the landscape.� The author continues
to withhold physical details about the woman as he uses external description.
The reader hears noises outside the man�s window�a lumber cart, a blackbird, the
man�s loud heartbeat. The man crouches around the furniture and will not allow
himself to look out the window again until �Not until that cart has called three
times more, I won�t move till then . . .�
The author holds the reader still along with the point of view character through
the minute descriptions of the gardens, the blackbird singing. He uses concrete
and sensory details to prolong the moment when he will look out and the woman
will be revealed.
The Exercise:
Note: This exercise was taken from Rebecca McClanahan�s book, WORD PAINTING.
Try the striptease method of description. Begin with an incomplete description
of an object, person or scene, no more than a vague hint of what will later be
revealed. (Using pronouns rather than specific nouns is one way to begin.)
Depart from the description for a few sentences. When you return, give one or
two more hints, but do not reveal your subject completely. Delay your revelation
by creating visual or other interferences, by switching briefly to another
scene, or by the use of short, elliptical phrases that slow a reader�s pace.
As always, have fun with it!
