Chiaroscuro of Writing: Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun

 

Ginevra de' Benci   Leonardo da Vinci

Our imagination is like chiaroscuro with its dazzling drama. Chiaroscuro was a painting technique developed in the Renaissance that used highlights and shadows—bold contrasts of light and dark—to create depth, drama, and dimensionality. Think Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Leonardo da Vinci.

 Our writing imagination is a wizard at conjuring from the shadowy whirlwinds in our minds. All the images, ideas, experiences, emptions spin in the darkness, and somehow imagination pulls them out, recombined, into the light. That wondrous ah-ha! moment is a highlight of the creative process. This is one of the things I love best about writing. It’s why I follow the writing maxim: “no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” (I don’t recall who first said that.)

If I learn nothing new when writing a poem, take no departure from my original inspiration, the poem lacks depth. No highlights, no shadows—no richness. When writing novels, I never plot anything out to the nth degree. I don’t want to work in a zone where every turn is planned, but in a living zone. Yes, ah-ha’s emerge in planning and plotting, but my own work is most alive when I leave room for my imagination to leap from shadow to bright ah-ha at every step in the process.