The 700 year-old novel writing secret. ‘Thisness.’

‘Gateway to Narnia’ my free novel-writing e-course can be found here:

In the 13th Century they called it Haecceity. That’s Latin for ‘Thisness’ and if you really want to make your fiction sparkle and fizz you need to add a tubful. Watch the video to find out what it is and how to add it.

Thanks to:

[martlettoo]

My writing group insisted that a falling bridge couldn't sigh. It was then that I knew, while they were all good people, they wouldn't help me grow as a writer

[koorudokoohii]

"The rats are so bold they wear silk trousers." I love this line lmao

[deedee]

"When we create fiction, we create a guided dream in the reader's mind."

[georgelogreco]

New to thisness. I love thisness. I've been doing thisness without knowing thisness was thatness.

[WhiteDragonTile]

Douglas Adams was great at this. Two quotes from his books live in my mind; "The spaceship hung in the air in the same way a brick doesn't" and "My mind is like the Queen Alexandria Butterfly, colorful, flutters out and about and is alas almost completely gone".

[WRLO]

"All the conspirators made off, and he lay there lifeless for some time, until finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down." Suetonius's description of the death of Caesar. Since Suetonius lived 100 years after Caesar, he could not possibly have witnessed the event personally, but that final detail - "with one arm hanging down" - brings the scene into sharp focus. I read this as a writing tip decades ago, and I have never forgotten this example. I didn't know there was a name for this writing technique until just now.

[anthonywritesfantasy]

"When we write, we create a guided dream in the reader's mind."

Wow! Love that. You make some excellent videos, sir.

[davetaylor]

Terry Pratchett was a master of this. Sometimes you read past that detail, that awesome little uppercut of a punchline, before realising it, and then it hits you and everyone on the bus wonders who the crazy bastard is and what he's reading.

[douglashill]

I still remember reading Riki Tiki Tavi as a kid and the description of the cobra as it slid into the house with no more noise than a wasp walking on a windowpane still chills me.

[sapodilla]

Descriptive writing is nice in moderation. I find that as a reader I don't like my imagination to be reconfigured much, so it has to be done smoothly.

[araomh]

I like to think of it as the essence of something. What makes a chair this chair, a dog this dog, a tree this tree, a person this person. Put that quality into words and it becomes beautifully descriptive.

[phildiamond]

Thisness lightly and sparsely sprinkled can be very effective - although, it can, however, be overdone.

[z-beeblebrox]

The importance of specificity cannot be understated, and I do love the idea of calling it "thisness", it feels like a thing that describes itself in that way. Thisness will always help you as you're developing your story. However, in my experience a lack of Thisness only truly plagues writers who have big BIG ideas, who are slamming them down onto paper without care for how to root them into the reality of their storyworld. But for many writers I do also encounter the opposite problem, where ALL they have is Thisness and their story is in fact very confused about what it even is. I tend to find these are also the hardest stories to critique, because it's a hard pill to swallow that one's story is directionless, vs the bones are good but everything's too vague. The hard fact is, you can make a good story specific, but you can't specify your way into a good story.

[amywhelan]

The best similes are those which have layered meanings. “The streets teem and wriggle with life like a cheese filled with maggots” is fantastic because the maggots don’t just evoke wriggling motion; they evoke rot & disgust. This tells me a lot about the KIND of life teeming on the streets, and the writer’s opinion of them. Absolutely fabulous line.

[Oldhogleg]

It's a common technique in American private detective novels in the early twentieth century; it was so common it was emphasized in parodies of those stories decades later.

[colinsmith]

That was excellent. Not only do telling details introduce 'thisness' but they can describe the world as the character sees it, drawing attention to what he or she finds particular rather than merely providing an overview for the reader. For me, it's an important part of putting the reader amidst the action, rather than stuck in the stalls and seeing events unfold like a play.

[Seedaron]

I can now see why the author of "My Immortal" used such detailed descriptions when it came to the clothing

[FailsafeZero]

I recall hearing a disparaging book review on NPR when I was a teenager. It cited the frequent use of distracting metaphors. It gave as an example a situation where a person came out of a courthouse swarmed by reporters, to the point where there were multiple news helicopters filming the event.

The author described this as a "Vietnam of helicopters".

That phrase stuck in my mind.

[AlbertBalbastreMorte]

I'm doing a documentary about domestic violence and I'm now in the editing phase. From the very beginning, I intuited that I needed specifics. 'She used to hit me with household items' is somehow vague. However, 'once she took an ashtray, hit me in the nose and I started bleeding. I went upstairs to run away from her and accidentally saw myself in the mirror, my blood soaking my old Nike shirt I kept for indoor use on hot days, and that's when I realise I needed to get out. Sometimes I smell a cigarette and I recall the incident and my bloody Nike shirt'. These are the kind of testimonies that grounded things. As it turns out, these are the kind of specifics some professionals use to tell a real claim from a fake one, and specifica are the thing that make victims realise they're in deep trouble and simply must get out. If it wasn't for the reflection of a Nike shirt, 'she often hit me' wasn't enough to raise an alarm. I guess humans are wired for thisness.

[GreylanderTV]

Thy cup of _thisness_ runneth over with _toomuchness._