C.S. Lewis & the Art of the Believable Detail
by Philip Martin
Director, Great Lakes Literary, LLC

It all began with an image of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy woods.

That’s what C.S. Lewis said, recalling an image that popped into his head one day when he was a teen. It was such a curious image that it stuck with him long into his adult years. One day, it became the seminal image of Narnia, the first creature young Lucy meets in that enchanted land, in Lewis’s book published in 1950, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Of course, the story of the creation of that book and the subsequent six novels that form the Chronicles of Narnia is a bit more complicated than that. Many of us have ideas and images; few write masterworks as beloved by readers of all ages for half a century.

What can we learn from the Narnia books about C.S. Lewis’s genius as a writer? How did he take images of talking fauns and horses and mice, a powerful lion, a dastardly witch, a cozy family of beavers, and an odd assortment of other fantastic creatures and shape them into stories that captivate us? Let’s look at a few techniques used by Lewis, the story craftsman.

The Small Detail
One technique is to draw us into the story with small but exceedingly familiar details. Note his mastery of the seemingly minor detail, lightly tossed into the story, which speaks to us directly from our own experience. For instance, here’s how he introduces, in the beginning of Prince Caspian (1951), the re-entry into Narnia by the four children (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy), as they walk across the sand on a beach, exactly like any beach that kids anywhere would have experienced.

They all now waded back and went first across the smooth, wet sand and then up to the dry, crumbly sand that sticks to one’s toes, and began putting on their shoes and socks. . . .

We recognize that small detail, so important to a person on any beach: the line between wet sand and dry sand, and how crossing it feels on the feet. Such details convince us that that beach is real. We know that demarcation line, and it helps us enter the story. Through it, we place ourselves inside, linking the story with our own memories, pulled inside the tale as we enter the land of Narnia.

Similarly, in the original book in the series, the children climb through a wooden wardrobe to enter the magical place called Narnia. As they step into that land, in a light snowfall, there is a lamp-post standing oddly in the deep woods. The image is surprising but exquisitely concrete. We sense we are in a “real” place. As Italian scholar and fantasist Italo Calvino noted in his work Six Memos for the New Millennium, in an piece “On Exactitude,” good writing needs “clear, incisive, memorable images.”

Narnia’s lamp-post is exactly that.

Calvino also wrote: “Fantasy is a place where it rains.” Indeed, the faun, Mr. Tumnus, the first creature met in Narnia, carries an umbrella, as it does precipitate in Narnia (although it is eccentric to use one in winter). In other words, good imagination has definite details, from typical weather events to odd but tangible objects like lamp-posts in a woods.

My wife, reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time, loved the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Mrs. Beaver prized her sewing machine, at which she is happily humming when the children first enter the beaver house. And she is reluctant to leave it behind when they all must flee. Why? Because Mrs. Beaver is a believable character, if briefly drawn with few strokes, and she prizes that machine. It really has no great relevance to the story – except to make children’s visit to the beavers like walking into an ordinary working-family house. So when Mrs. Beaver must leave her machine behind, choosing wisely to take only foods and clothes they will need on their sudden journey, we feel a twinge of sympathy for her sacrifice. That machine means something to her, and so, therefore, it does to us, too. Lewis is taking us back and forth from Narnia to our own world, linking us to the characters in his story.

As we understand the ordinary – the sand, the lamp-post, the sewing machine – we accept the strange faun with the umbrella and talking beavers.

As humans, we instinctively try to associate things we experience, striving to make some sense of them. In museum studies, I’ve heard this phenomenon referred to as “Aunt Tilly’s Hat.” Visitors who view an exhibit with a strange (to them) Maori headdress, for instance, might say, “Why, that reminds me of Aunt Tilly’s hat!” They naturally delve into their memories to dredge out something as a reference, something familiar.

Mrs. Beaver makes sense to us, although a talking beaver is odd. We know people like her, fond of treasured possessions, yet sensible when it’s time to take action. We consider her dilemma, sympathize with her brief moment of indecision, agree with her decision to abandon that sewing machine. Again and again, Lewis takes us through those comparisons, helping us to wonder what we would have done in such a situation.

The Aside
Another technique Lewis uses often is the aside, delivered by the narrator. This is an old-fashioned trick used by storytellers from Shakespeare to Hans Christian Andersen. It creates a closeness between author and reader. The line about the wet sand and the dry sand, for instance, is framed as an observation of how such dry sand sticks to “one’s” toes, not the characters’ toes. He is drawing the reader in, just as in telling a story to a child, you might insert your own question to ask the child if they remember a particular similar feeling, to make sure he or she is listening and connecting.

But the gorge of the Rush [river] was not at all a nice place for traveling either. I mean, it was not a nice place for people in a hurry. For an afternoon’s ramble ending in a picnic tea it would have been delightful. It had everything you could want on an occasion of that sort – rumbling waterfalls, silver cascades, deep, amber-colored pools, mossy rocks, and deep moss on the banks in which you could sink over your ankles, every kind of fern, jewel-like dragon flies, sometimes a hawk overhead. . . .

The “you” in “everything you could want” is of course you, the reader. He is talking (again, in a passage from Prince Caspian) directly to you, to help you imagine the scene. It is like, he suggests, a place you already know someplace in your memory – except a bit different, as this is Narnia.

While this technique, when directly applied,  is more commonly a trick of a children’s book, the broader principle holds true. People want to see glimpses of themselves – and people, places, things they know – in a story. They want to associate with the story personally. They want to care about what the protagonist cares about. They want to see Aunt Tilly’s Hat. Once they are hooked, you can push the story that starts with familiarity into new images and surprising outcomes, while developing the story’s question: if all that were at stake, what would you do?

The Cadence
A final technique to mention in Lewis’s writing: the longish, often run-on sentences. While long, they are made up of short phrases. The phrasing is that of an aural storyteller. Indeed, Lewis said that he wrote by whispering the words, using a nib pen that needed to be dipped again in ink after every phrase.

While they were talking / they had crossed the courtyard / and gone through the other doorway / into what had once been the hall. / This was now very like the courtyard, / for the roof had long since disappeared / and it was merely another space / of grass and daisies, / and except that it was shorter and narrower / and the walls were higher.

He uses a simple pacing (as in the above passage from Prince Caspian; phrasing marks added). It has a measured, relaxed flow, the lilt of a fairy tale that leads on and on into a magical world. It reminds me of the quip that all of Emily Dickinson’s poetry can be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” It sounds silly, but underneath lies a technique of choosing a simple cadence, with much repetition, to draw the reader in with the sound of the words. The soothing cadence helps establish the story. Both Dickinson and Lewis are writers beloved for their ability to make readers identify personally with their words, to recognize those same special moments, spent a snug or fair place, enjoying a wise thought or welcome moment.

Just as the frying pan was nicely hissing / Peter and Mr. Beaver came in with the fish / which Mr. Beaver had already opened / with his knife / and cleaned out in the open air. You can think how good / the new-caught fish smelled / while they were frying / and how the hungry children / longed for them to be done / and how very much hungrier still / they had become / before Mrs. Beaver said,  / “Now we’re nearly ready.” . . . / There was a jug of creamy milk / for the children / (Mr. Beaver stuck to beer) / and a great big lump of butter / in the middle of the table / from which everyone took / as much as he wanted / to go with his potatoes / and all the children thought / – and I agree with them – / that there’s nothing to beat / good freshwater fish / if you eat it / when it has been alive / half an hour ago / and has come out of the pan / half a minute ago. And when they had finished the fish / Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly / out of the oven / a great and gloriously sticky / marmalade roll, steaming hot. . . .

This passage above uses all of the techniques mentioned: the small specific details, the asides to you the reader, the easy-flowing cadence, to establish a magical moment — a moment improbable (after all, they are talking beavers!), but yet a scene we somehow experience as if we are there, eager to spread butter on our own potatoes.

C.S. Lewis delivers his tales with the voice of a storyteller, with few but distinct details, chosen carefully, spoken with confidence. He delivers details with a lyrical language that delights. No coincidence that Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien developed their literary style by reading their work out loud. They read their chapters in progress to others, to vocalize the passages, to hear what worked and what didn’t.

That concreteness of image, intimacy between author and reader, and the aural flow of the words marks the best literature of any era and any genre. Stories must be a delight to the ear, their images a delight to the senses.

C.S. Lewis understand the rich structure of fantasy and myth. He also understood that it is entered – via a wooden wardrobe or a sandy beach – by the craft of storytelling. The techniques are simple, but in the hands of an accomplished author, such stories resonate long, long into the Narnian night, lit by that first glimpse of a tall lamp-post standing mysteriously in a snow-kissed woods.