Vignettes

If you've ever been to a Natural History Muse From one gallery to the next, you might happen upon a herd of zebras milling around a watering hole in the African bush, or a pack of wolves frozen mid-hunt in the snowy Siberian woods. These dioramas, these Another place you're Wes Anderson movies. There's a great example in the Life Aquatic with Steve Zizou, where we're shown a cross-section of the research vessel Belafonte, where much of the movie takes place. The camera pans across different levels of the boat and we see various characters going about their business in real time. The chef icing a cake in the kitchen, the female lead taking notes in the library, the male lead fis The sequence doesn't move the plot forward, it's not active in that way, but it's beautiful to watch and enhances the sensory experience of the film. These two examples, the Natural History Muse In literary terms, a vignette is a short descriptive passage that captures a moment in time. It can enhance a mood, develop a character, or describe a setting. But one t It's no accident that the term vignette comes from a French word, meaning little vine, referencing the vine- Vignettes can differ from, say, a flashback, w Vignettes also differ from anecdotes in that anecdotes, w You'll notice that vignettes are everywhere once One of my favorite examples is Sandrosis Narrows' book, The House on Mango Street. It's a novel length work composed of a series of non-linear vignettes that consider common themes, familiar characters, and recognizable settings. Here's a vignette I love from early on in the book, page six, it's called, Hares. Everybody in our family has different hair. My papa's hair is It never obeys barrettes or bands. Carlos's hair is t He doesn't need to comb it. Nanny's hair is slippery, slides out of your hand. And Kiki, who is youngest, has hair But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, Sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed, still warm with her skin. And you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and papa snoring, the rain and mama's hair that smells The speaker's hair has a mind of its own, a little lazy perhaps, a little disobedient. The speaker doesn't seem sure. That makes sense because the overarc And then there's that beautiful lush, almost stream of consciousness passage about her mother, where the short sentences in the first paragraph break open into somet Her mother's hair is The center of the family with a paragraph all to herself. Remember a little earlier It's clear in the vignette I just discussed that it develops characters, but does it reveal aspects of mood or setting too? What do you t Let me know in the comments.