Not All Cigars Are Cuban

I suppose the less I write the better my point will be. Imagine a glass cage. It has four equal sides, a mesh wire top, and sand on the bottom. Inside there is a mouse wheel with a rat running along the tracks. It is running quite fast for a rat, but there is something particular: it has a red “X” burned into its back. I have just created a scene in four sentences.

The magic in writing isn't all about what you say, but also what you don't say. I never said what color the rat's hair is, the color of the sand, if the room the rat was in is dark or bright, or if a room even existed. However, I bet you instantly created all of those images. For me the room was dark (probably because I am writing in a dark room), the rat had gray fur, and there was an annoying sound of spinning metal – or maybe that's my computer fan. Whatever it is, I didn't write it, I left those images for your mind to create, and it happened.

So often we think what we want to write and then feebly attempt to transpose the exact image into our reader's mind. That's no fun. Stories are best written in open spaces so the mind may wander. If you spend all your time describing only minute details you are defeating yourself and, much more importantly, you are strangling the reader's magic. The ashen colour of the rat's fur, the unnerving darkness of the cellar's laboratory, or how thick, shinny, or sharp the cage's glass is irrelevant to point being made: there is a rat and it has a red x on it's back. Over describing only strangles the mind, and when you strangle the mind the reader falls asleep.

At about this time you are probably wondering about the title. I suppose an explanation is appropriate. “Sit down.” a man said tapping on the desk. A Carnegie Steel foreman was just closing the door, “I heard there was a break in at the shipyard?” “They knew the shipment came.” he turned to grab a cigar out of a wooden box on his desk, “would you like one?”... Remember every cigar is NOT a Cuban cigar, the point isn't the quality of what they are smoking, the point is that something important was stolen by a competitor from Carnegie's shipyard.