Zoom In, Zoom Out

 Writers have multiple ways of looking at the same thing. As Puck so aptly puts it, we can pretend we're looking through a video camera. Video cameras have a lovely zoom feature. Writers can describe one flower or the entire garden, a roaring crowd or a single person in it. Zooming in, we see the wrinkles in the poppy's petals, watch it flutter in the wind. We hear the triumphant, high-pitched shout of the little girl in the denim dress. Zooming out, we see that the red poppy is alone in a field of dandelions. The little girl is one of fifteen kids bunching up against the fence to see the fireworks. We can zoom in farther and notice that most of the pollen has blown from the poppy. We can zoom out farther and see the fireworks over the river, and all the boats watching.

Writing assignment: Go over one of your short stories, or a chapter of one of your books. Mark in the margins where you zoom in and zoom out, and note the effect.