I read something once about a teacup spilling across a table. It was a non-fiction, science-based piece, and the point the writer was making overall was that from our typical day-to-day perspectives, spilling tea is a somewhat quick and small (if frustrating) event—but if we were to bring our attention to a molecular level, the simple spillage of tea on a table is a violent act of chaos. In a way, the smash and clatter of ceramic against wood, the scattering of tea through the air and splattering onto the table is thunder and rain that we are just too big to take any notice of.
For the life of me, I cannot remember where I read this. I thought it was something Stephen Hawking wrote (and he did reference a teacup at some point, but I think he was talking about time, not chaos). But either way, I was suddenly reminded of that imagery the other night when a drive through the rain prompted a somewhat detailed explanation of hydroplaning. And out of nowhere I thought to myself, what kind of chaos is happening between the road and a car’s tires? I imagined the oceanic roar as the car hit a puddle; the tiny bubbles popping into life and gurgling along each groove in the tire’s treads. And in my mind that event became a sudden and furious, but quickly passing, storm.
I’m bringing this up because I think writing has a lot to do with identifying and paying attention to the little chaos all around us. Writing tends to be quite detail-oriented anyway, but sometimes the trick of creating a lasting image within our work is to make our audiences take notice of the details they wouldn’t normally think about. Poets, I believe, are probably the true masters of this. But even more general fiction writers must have a knack for making the tiny things in life seem big (and, sometimes, the big things in life seem tiny). Not just teacups spilling across a table: emotions churning within characters; the things someone said on page twenty-four that prompt a revolution on page two hundred and ninety; the one little twitch in a stranger’s eye that tells our hero this person is not what they seem.
One of my writing professors once said to “write plainly about the weird things, and weirdly about the plain things.” In a way, this is very much the same concept. When we take the small things and make them big, and take the big things and make them small, we are drawing attention to either the insignificance or the utter chaos of life as we thought we knew it. And this distortion of perspectives is, really, the true magic of writing. In many ways, our mere existence is simultaneously so much bigger and so much smaller than we actually think it is. And it is a creator’s job to bring this truth to the surface, even if only a little bit, in all that they do.
Night Owls, what are some examples of little chaos happening around you every day?
