Hitchcock, Steinbeck and an Explosive Ooze

Alfred Hitchcock did not have to show explicit gore to scare his audiences for he knew how to create an impression and then allow the minds of the audience to fill in the rest with thoughts more horrible then he could create. The best example of this idea is in shower scene in Psycho. The audience never sees the knife go into the woman’s body but merely flashes of metal up against the skin. The viewers filled in the rest and screamed at the images in their own mind.

Writers can also have the same effect in describing scenes by so expertly constructing a phrase that the reader automatically fills in the image by uniting their own experiences with the written word. A great example comes from John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie” in which he describes a heavily overweight woman getting out of a car. He could have presented the idea of a dark interior of the car and then the description of the woman working her weight out of the doorway. Instead, he constructed a perfect phrase which describes the woman’s exit as an “explosive ooze.” This simple phrase resonates with our common experiences so that we can now see the woman getting out of the car even though he did not describe the details. In just a couple of words we have the full image and thus it qualifies as a perfect phrase.

I find these perfect phrases fascinating and will be delighted to hear what your perfect phrases are and from where they were originally printed.

May your ink well always be half-full,

HWM