Issues: White Space

You may have noticed that along with sidebar issues, I am now having paragraph issues.  I used to have lovely paragraphs on this blog surrounded by white space that gave you room to breath, and not get overwhelmed with dense thickets of text.  But some peculiar technical thing has happened and no matter how many spaces I make, the whole post gets lumped together into more or less one indigestible paragraph. (If anyone has advice please send it on.)

The idea of white space is fairly new as writing goes.  If you look at the opening pages of Henry James or some of the Russians you’re greeted with paragraphs big as boats. But modern readers like short bites of paragraphs. I think it began with MTV. We want entertainment, news, life in short doses, bite sized.  Whether this is good or bad, I have no idea, but I realize I like white space a lot and I’ve heard editors ask for more white space.  Right now I’m reading a gorgeous book, winner of the Booker prize, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Among many things in the book, I love the way she breaks up her chapters. Even the scenes themselves get broken with double spacing, and you can breathe, take a break and contemplate what you've read.

So check out you own white space in what you’re writing.  Give the reader breathing room.  And forgive this coming at you in one big lump.

A quick writing exercise: write what you see out the window at this very moment. If there’s no window, write what’s on the wall opposite you. (No more than a paragraph. Surrounded by white space!)

Comments

[sarah]

Barbara- This goes back to a post I made about my old calligraphy teacher, Lloyd Reynolds. He used to rant about the "negative space" of a letter. "Watch the negative space in your writing," he growled at us. "See the way it sits on the page with its neighbors!"

There is a lot of commonality in the art of calligraphy and the art of writing it would seem. After all it was the way books were copied before the printing press was invented.

I often find myself looking at the way my paragraphs lay on the page, The interstices of the writing.

I have just finished reading Dave Eggers' fabulous book, A Remarkable Work of Staggering Genius. The way he writes is so interesting to me, prose-poetry really, as he strings out sentences by using commas, and a technique I recently learned the name of, whereby the author repeats the last word of a sentence for the beginning of the next-anadiplosis- to draw the reader forward in a rhythm. All very interesting.

Technically speaking- are you pasting your blog entries from a word program onto the blog? That might cause formatting problems. You might have to paste it and then go through and add an extra space to get your paragraph formatting to your liking. Maybe?

[helen glenn]

Barbara ... A glance at the source file for this page confirms Sarah's suggestion, that at least today's entry was copied and pasted in from Microsoft Word. This overrides the formatting the blog imposes on its own.

For example, the words "you may have noticed" are preceded by the following code, each enclosed in angle brackets:

+++++

p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none"

span style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"

+++++

Moral of the story: never never never copy and past from Word into HTML. Never save an HTML file from Word. And so forth.

White space is a lovely thing indeed.

[Lynn]

I have come to appreciate white space. When I was younger, I hated seeing a lot of white space on a paper. I would write larger just to fill it in. How silly of me. I suppose some psychoanalyst could have a field day analyzing what that says or said about my personality. Now, though, I love white space. It does give a reader time to take a breath, it makes things look less cluttered and more "feng shui", and it's aesthetically pleasing.

[Liz]

I became fascinated by "white space" through reading Joan Didion's work. In her personal essay, "Why I Write" Didion refers to "Play It As It Lays" as novel she began with "no notion of character or plot." She had no technical intention, but to write a novel so elliptical and fast that it would be over before you noticed it. It would be a book in which anything that happened would happen off the page.."a "white" book where the reader would have to bring his or her own bad dreams.." Therefore, white space is where the reader inserts him or herself into the narrative.

If you have a chance, read "Why I Write." It would be interesting to hear reactions to Didion's perception of white space in her work.

[Barbara]

Sarah - The weird thing is that I've been pasting the blog from Word ever since I started writing it. And I've tried revising it to spaces when I get it set up in Typepad but it goes right back to no spaces when it's posted.
I love that word: anadiplosis! (and I think that's what Stephen King did in his last novel.)

Glenn: Good to hear from you and yes, mea culpa (see above) - I'll write it directing into Typepad and see if I can get more spaces.

Lynn: Yes, Feng Shui on the page!

Liz: I found "Why I Write" and reread it as soon as I read your post. (A great essay.) Yes, she is the master of white space. She uses it like a poet.

[Barbara]

Sarah - The weird thing is that I've been pasting the blog from Word ever since I started writing it. And I've tried revising it to spaces when I get it set up in Typepad but it goes right back to no spaces when it's posted.
I love that word: anadiplosis! (and I think that's what Stephen King did in his last novel.)

Glenn: Good to hear from you and yes, mea culpa (see above) - I'll write it directing into Typepad and see if I can get more spaces.

Lynn: Yes, Feng Shui on the page!

Liz: I found "Why I Write" and reread it as soon as I read your post. (A great essay.) Yes, she is the master of white space. She uses it like a poet.

[sarah]

You can se that i'm working my way to that essay you mentioned. I found this poem of Llyod Reynolds recently. Thought it appropriate.

You can read the poem
But that is not the poem.
Watch the white paper
Between the lines.
Look through that white
As through white snow
To see what buttercups and lilies
Are pushing up from below.

from “How to Read a Poem”
by Lloyd Reynolds

[Linda Hunt]

Dear B. how much I love this blog and the whole business of white space. Thrilled that B. is really on the mend. xx L.H.

[Barbara]

Sarah - Wow. What a great poem. A million thanks. And yes, on the way to the essay!!
Linda - Thank you and yes, he really is on the mend - He went to the opera yesterday!!

[frederick Taylor]

Ah yes, white space must be like rests in music. Silence is a part of music, a place to breathe.