Jane watched the kids running back and forth on the lawn. She wondered if they were scared of the looming black cloud in the distance.
Beginning writers often lean heavily on what I call mediation: He saw/ She noticed/ I watched/ I thought . . . the rest of the sentence then constitutes the action of the scene, but instead of being immersed in it, as the reader, we are watching the narrator or point of view character watching the action and considering it. The action is robbed of the verb, because the verb is in the mediation: saw/ heard/ watched/ wondered/ thought.
There are times when you need or want mediation, and many times when you can make your sentences stronger if you cut it. In either instance, you want to check the verbs of whatever is being described and make sure the mediation isn’t short-changing them.
The sentence at the start of this post, with mediation cut, becomes:
Jane stood at the edge of the yard. The kids ran back and forth on the lawn. Were they scared of the looming black cloud in the distance?
Note that I inserted a sentence about the POV character to establish her POV, instead of saying “Jane watched/ She wondered.” She is still the one observing and thinking, but we readers know that without being told, and we are closer to the action and to the character without the mediation. Instead of helping verbs (running, were scared) we get the stronger form (ran, scared).
Examples of Pruned Mediation/ No Mediation
Any description in a novel that lacks mediation is an example of what you’ll get if you cut yours:
“In the cab, I tried to crack my window to get some air: no luck. It smelled like someone had been changing dirty diapers back there or maybe even taken an actual shit, and then tried to cover it up with a bunch of coconut air freshner that smelled like suntan lotion.
“Along Park Avenue, ranks of red tulips stood at attention as we sped by. Bollywood pop—turned down to a low, almost subliminal whine—spiraled and sparkled hypnotically, just at the threshold of my hearing. The leaves were just coming out on the trees.” Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p.13.
Okay, so what might a shitty first draft of this look like, with mediation? If you’ll forgive my sacrilege, something like this:
In the cab, I noticed that I couldn’t get the window down to get some air. I smelled shit covered up with coconut air freshener. Along Park Avenue, I saw ranks of red tulips. I could barely hear the sound of Bollywood pop. I noticed the leaves just coming out on the trees.
Now go back and read the published version and see how much stronger and more alive on the page it is.
Mediation in Strong, Published Work
Next, I looked for mediation in strong published work:
Scanning the first chapter of Oscar Wao, I find at the bottom of the third page (p. 13 in the book), something that might nearly be a mediation:
“Mrs. Peabody or not, Oscar liked how quiet she was, how she let him throw her to the ground and wrestle her, the interest she showed in his Star Trek dolls.”
But of course, this is an expression of opinion (“Oscar liked”) so not quite mediation as such.
Next, here is an example where a lesser writer (or an earlier draft) might have used lots of mediation (he thought, he knew). But we are firmly entrenched in Oscar’s POV in this moment—it’s set up that way and we do not need to be reminded of it:
“So he thought it over. Didn’t take him long to decide. After all, Maritza was beautiful and Olga was not; Olga sometimes smelled like pee and Maritza did not. Maritz was allowed over their house and Olga was not.” Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, p. 15.
Whose analysis of Olga and Maritza is this? That of the child “Oscar.” Clearly and without mediation tag.
(The overly mediated version would look like this:
So he thought it over. It didn’t take him long to decide. He thought Maritza was beautiful and he did not find Olga beautiful. He noticed that Olga sometimes smelled like pee and he never thought Maritza did. He remembered that Maritza was allowed over their house and knew that Olga was not.
Boring! Distancing!
A little further down, there’s a single mediation followed by lots of sentences that are his thoughts but given unmediated. So it goes. It’s not that you never have mediation, but you must always consider if it’s your best choice, if it gives the sentence the strongest verb, if we already know “she thought” this or “he knew” this or whatever.
When Mediation Works
Sometimes you keep mediation because the action of the scene really is about the character looking or wondering rather than about what they are watching or thinking. I call this “embedded mediation.” Embedded mediation is also required when the action (observing, thinking) of the character is not necessarily obvious already or its meaning benefits from the attention.
Embedded Mediation
When the looking really matters, it is built into the language, not tagged on. Instead of “I looked at the paintings hanging over the bureau,” we get:
“I spent an unreasonable amount of time scrutinizing a tiny pair of gilt-framed oils hanging over the bureau, one of peasants skating on an ice-pond by a church, the other a sailboat flouncing on a choppy winter sea: decorative copies, nothing special, though I studied them as if they held, encrypted, some key to the secret heart of the old Flemish masters.” Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p.6 (emphasis of mediation mine)
When the character’s actions of observing or thinking are themselves what matter, we see them built into the sentences and description in fuller, more interesting ways than simply, “I saw,” or “I noticed”:
“I went upstairs and got back into bed (fully clad, because the room was so cold) and spread the papers out on the coverlet: photographs of police cars, crime scene tape, even the captions were impossible to decipher . . . “Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p.6.
The action of the scene is the character looking: spreading out the papers and trying to decipher the words in a foreign language. Embedded mediation.
Imaginative Mediation or Mediation with a Twist
Studying Possession, I find this wonderful mediation on the second page of the first chapter, describing the London Library:
“Here Carlyle had come, here George Eliot had progressed through the bookshelves. Roland saw her black silk skirts, her velvet trains, sweeping compressed between the Fathers of the Church, and heard her firm foot ring on metal among the German poets.” Possession, A.S. Byatt, p.4.
What is wonderful about this is that Roland, the POV character, is in the library in the late 20th century; he does not see or hear George Eliot on a literal level, and that is what makes the mediation relevant and delightful. Hence, we might call this faux-mediation or imaginative mediation.
Deliberate Mediation
The opening couple of paragraphs of Gone Girl are about how the narrator thinks about his (missing) wife, so there is a lot of deliberate mediation there:
“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it.” Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, p. 3.
The mediation comes and goes and it is about thinking, about memory. After a line break, the next section begins: “My eyes flipped open at exactly six a.m.,” and there is no mediation after that for pages . . .
Guidelines for Editing Mediation
Ask yourself:
1) Does the mediation pull us into the story or hold us at arm’s length?
2) Do we already know who is doing the looking, thinking, wondering or noticing, without the mediation? (Cut it!)
3) Is the passage about mediation (thinking, memory, the act of looking), and therefore calls for mediation? If so, can you make it action-packed, descriptive and relevant? (Keep it but make it stronger.)
I am happy to edit examples from your writing. Do a search in your doc for he/I/she/they/we . . . watched/ thought/ wondered/ looked/ noticed/ considered/ heard/ saw (in whatever verb tense you are using). Post an example or two that come up and let’s discuss.
What are your thoughts and struggles and triumphs with using and abusing mediation?
Your article really resonated with me because I suspect I drop into mediation quite often – I’ve been thinking about it today. I can see how removing it will sharpen the writing, but I’m not sure I’ve got the hang of it completely. Here is an example sentence where it feels like mediation to me:
In an effort to look more presentable, Miles pushed the thick, blond hair off his forehead and was surprised that he suddenly felt underdressed in his faded tee shirt and baggy jeans.
I rewrote it this way:
He pushed the thick, blond hair off his forehead and looked down at his faded tee shirt and baggy jeans before attempting to press out a wrinkle in his shirt with his hand.
Have I got the wrong end of the stick on this?
David, I think you are getting close. Even the first one has a lot of charm. One of the things you want to think about is how to use the language of the description to reveal what the mediation revealed in the first draft. So how would Miles describe his “unpresentable” hair? Thick and blond sounds lovely–and not that you don’t want to sneak in that he’s handsome, but what bothers him about the hair? But that into the description–just a word or two: unbrushed, wild, unruly? Then I’d end that sentence and cut “looked down.” That’s the mediateion. (The “effort to look more presentable” is his interiority.) When you show us what he sees, we’ll know he’s looking down, especially if you give us that angle: “His faded tee shirt clung to his belly and his jeans bagged down to his ankles.” Next sentence will be the action: “He pressed a wrinkle out of his shirt with his hand.” And before this sentence, you might go back to whatever has caused this sudden self-assessment, and then give us the action as he’s moving into the next part of the scene. I hope this helps. Feel free to post a revision!
Hi Elizabeth,
This must be in the “advanced writing class” as it is hard to grasp but so very important. Don’t know that I get it but do know that I have a more than enough “observations” in my writing.
The thing that surprises me is that without mediation the pieces seem to be longer and more descriptive. It offers an extra dimension for creativity.
Here is a snippet I’ve been working on:
Sitting there I suddenly feel a warm breath on my back, but all the patients are asleep and as I turn I feel a strong arm come across my chest followed by a voice in my ear saying,”Don’t make a sound.” and the hand comes across my face with a short fillet knife held by an unsteady hand.
My one change would be to have the strong arm come across my chest, as opposed to feeling it.
Thanks,
Bree
Bree, This is a great example. Here are my edits with some notes in [editorial parentheses]:
A warm breath tickles [or some other VERB] my back. All the patients are asleep. I turn. A strong arm comes across my chest. A voice [describe the voice a tad: a low voice? a rough voice? a squeaky voice?] in my ear says,”Don’t make a sound.” and the hand comes across [what does “comes across” mean here? that she can see the hand? or is cut by the knife?] my face with a short fillet knife held by an unsteady hand.
There is so much action here once it is un-obscured by mediation. I also cut some of the links between sentences. We understand that events follow one another in subsequent sentences. It’s often stronger just to lay them down like bricks.
Great work here, Bree. An exciting scene you can ramp up just with a few edits. Thanks!