People’s tastes in homes are as widely varied as their tastes in hairstyles. Both change with trends, seasons, and waves of creativity.
I’ve been watching home improvement and renovation shows from England, Scotland, Ireland, and France recently. Research? What doesn’t count as research for a writer or someone who cares about her author clients? But primarily, I’ve been watching for entertainment and as an educational experience. And traveling virtually, which doesn’t involve a passport.
My latest binge watching has been Irish homes-of-the-year. What a wide variety of possibilities. Grand Georgian-inspired mansions are pitted against dry-stack stone cottages with hair-brushing low ceilings and character oozing out of the floorboards. Or was that moss? Ultra-modern sculptural homes seem to blend into the hillside as if chiseled from it, offering expansive views of a sea that looks alternately calming on sunny days and menacing in high winds and rain. 
Some homes that score high with designer judges are far too cluttered for my tastes. Maybe that’s a recent development after having worked on a novel about hoarders. Or I personally find the homes too stark to feel homey (the Brits would call that homely, but I’m not sure I could ever get used to that synonym). On the other hand, resisting “too stark” may be related to what it takes to keep an all-white house spotless.
I can feel myself breathing more easily when the camera angle shows wide open spaces. An uncluttered room or an open floor plan or a room with large windows and a view of lush countryside beyond. A home that offers breathing room.
Do you offer breathing room in your writing?
Tastes in text-breathing room have changed over the centuries. At one time, paper and printing costs meant the text of a book filled edge to edge on the page. Narrow, if any, margins. No division of paragraphs. Reader eyesight suffered or readers got lost in the text. But publishers crammed as much as they could into the fewest pages possible without dropping a word. That style no longer works for today’s readers.
The pace of life, the volume of words in front of us every day, attention spans, and tired brains mean we find a sense of “home” when we open a book that allows us to breathe.
What does breathing room in a book (or a proposal) look like?
Shorter paragraphs. Another side benefit of shorter paragraphs is that important information or storytelling doesn’t get buried in the elbow-to-elbow collection of words. The reader subconsciously sees the paragraph as an easy literary hill to conquer, even if it contains a complex concept.
Occasional single-sentence or single word paragraphs. That technique can grow tiresome. But used sparingly, a single-sentence paragraph can make as strong a point as if it were printed in bold on the page.
Breathing room is visible on the page?
Dialogue (for fiction). From an overhead drone view, it’s easy to see how dialogue offers the reader breathing room. Fast paced as it might be, dialogue moves the story along and offers actual visual space on the page. White space. Good storytellers sense where well-placed dialogue can not only communicate better than a page of narrative can, but when it’s needed for reader-brain elbow-room.
Laser-focus (for nonfiction). Rabbit trails and rambling in nonfiction have the same effect as a crammed-full curio cabinet or a closet that threatens avalanche. When a writer’s points are clearly focused (both in the proposal stage and in the book itself), everyone breathes more easily.
Shorter chapters. Where once a reader might have stayed engaged for twenty or thirty pages per chapter, these days, that can feel like too massive a commitment. A reader with limited time to invest in reading–or so they think–may shy back from tackling a chapter that takes too long to make and support its point.
What’s missing in an overcrowded book or book proposal?
Pondering space. You may have noticed on talk radio stations that back-to-back half-hour or hour long programs allow for little time to process what you’ve heard. Soon a new host comes on, switching gears to another topic entirely. You as a listener may have been brought to an action point or a thought that needed further consideration. But unless you turn off the radio, thinking time is swallowed up by another subject. In a book, that can sometimes be remedied by actual page space for reflection, a concluding chapter thought that encourages the reader to process before moving on, or (in a novel) a break in the intensity that keeps the story’s conflict simmering but not boiling dry.
What other methods have you noticed that offer you as a reader or as a writer breathing room, an open-concept feel, room with a view? Or does the fact that you haven’t noticed page clutter prove the point?
Three Words to Overuse This Week
My take on breathing room’s become a bit different these days.
Cynthia, I ask your indulgence.
Be nice to have some breathing room,
in fact, it would be fun;
but every breath, I feel my doom.
Now there’s tumours in my lungs.
They done went and metastisized,
and on them now I choke;
but I won’t be the one who cries,
and I came up with a joke
about this hellish beat the clock
(I know it’s not unique),
surviving to inter my doc;
well, he died last week.
an thus I learned from puerile vaunt:
don’t jest ’bout what you do not want.
RIP Dr. Roland K. Sanchez. My friend.
So sorry about your doctor friend, Andrew.
Thanks, Cynthia. I know I didn’t ‘wish’ death on him, but I feel awful about the stupid joke.
Andrew, Once again, you have written words that touch my heart. May God be your breath today, my brother. Until we meet face-to-face at our Savior’s feet … keep sharing your unique views with all of us. Blessings to you.
Susan, your words mean so much…thank you.
Oh, Andrew. Words are in adequate. Love and prayers headed your way.
I love this subject. In my home, I prefer uncluttered spaces. In books, I love white space. I love dialog and prose that clips along. I think a good way to give the reader is breather is through humor. It’s what we do in real life, right? When the world gets too dramatic, we can count on the family jokester to cut the tension with a quip. (In my family, there are three of us who play that role.) I love to see that in stories. We’ve been watching Stranger Things with our kids (who are 19 and 21, by the way). The writers do an excellent job of balancing the fear and horror with humor and friendship. Those moments of levity make the rest bearable. (For me, barely–I watch the scary parts through my fingers. The things I do to spend time with my kids…)
Love these comments, Robin. I agree completely with well-timed, well-placed, tasteful humor so often being not just a comedic break but a relief valve in life and in books.
What a great message! Breathing room in our writing allows more creativity to flow.
Love the idea, Melissa, of it affecting the flow.
Fascinating! It’s interesting to me how clutter and open space tastes change with genre and the age of the reader. I think that the sequel (or the moments of character reaction and emotion following a scene) allow for a pause and some time to recover from the action of the story. But readers want different lengths of rest. In a literary novel, the sequel can be incredibly long as characters contemplate not only the recent action but the state of the world and their soul and how they fit into it. Many romances have lengthy spaces of character contemplation as well. In some action-heavy fiction marketed to men (Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy come to mind) the sequel to a chapter-long scene might be a mere paragraph in length. I was studying some chapter books (short books for 1st to 3rd grade readers) and saw that many scenes were not followed by a sequel at all and the sequels that were included tended to be a mere sentence or two long. Readers do need space to absorb and enjoy the story (I was pretty frustrated reading Tom Clancy and fell asleep while watching The A Team, two times, as the action was non-stop and grew boring for me) but different readers need different amounts of space. It is up to us to know who our story is for and what will bring them a delightful breath of fresh air!
Yes! So important to know our unique reading audience and what they need!
I’ve been in some of those Irish homes (the news ones, the old ones). Definitely different from what I’m used to. 🙂 I’ve also found things get more cluttered when you add a person to the home. 🙂 Hahahaha
Good point, Jamie! And that brings up another issue. Sometimes we clog up the breathing space in our books with an excess of characters. We’re asking the reader to do mental gymnastics to keep them and their crises straight! Thanks for chiming in. Someday…someday, I will walk among the Irish ruins and step into the curious homes. Someday…
This is really good! I appreciate the wisdom in it a lot. I just finished reading your book, “Afraid of the Light,” and I can see where you practiced this whether you intended to or not. It is good to have white space. I feel the same way with emails, blogs, texts, social media posts. Yes, this is a really good thing to keep in mind. Thank you, Cynthia.
Thank you, Susan!
White space is important. Our eyes need it; our minds need it, and our souls need it. Thank you, Cynthia, for bringing this important concept to our attention.
Thank you for a well-written article, a very interesting idea, we have a desire to make such interesting and very Open Ceilings. They make the room seem brighter.
This room lacks OpenCeilings creates a calm and warm atmosphere during stressful moments