Another in a series of posts on the interconnections between the craft of trial lawyering — which I practiced for 35 years as a prosecutor — and the craft of writing, and for that matter, every other art form.
Let's talk about the visual arts, and presenting a criminal case, and how it all might matter to the process of writing.
When I first started trying criminal cases in D.C., in the late 80's, there was no such thing as video tech in courtrooms. Then: pretty much all spoken word. Today: screens, PowerPoints, enhanced videos.
I adapted to the tech, to the point where over the last 10 years or so my trial presentations, especially in opening and closing arguments, interweaved audio and video, sometimes through PowerPoints. In a world where attention spans are short and screens matter, this is what you do when you're trying to involve jurors in the ongoing trial story that you're telling.
But at the end of the day, the spoken word — uttered by way of an honest, authentic voice — surpasses every other medium.
In a murder case, no graphic can surpass the power of a witness saying, I watched my friend get killled.
As for writing: We all fall in love with our evocative, visual descriptions. But sometimes we just need to let our characters talk, and the descriptions can follow, and maybe mean more in the process.