Cole: I am really attracted to moments that are impactful yet brief. Like how could I give the reader all the necessary context of a novel but really just have them read something the length of the climax?

Lake: I think (unsurprisingly) that there is much to be learned from short stories, especially by really powerful authors, in as far as the information they choose to make explicit and that which they let/force the reader assume.

Cole: The letting/forcing the reader to assume is important. With my poetry, some of the editors want me to come out and say the point. They don’t want me to just describe the physical moment. They want me to explicitly state the metaphysical message. It’s a balance, getting the reader close enough, but then letting them make the leap themselves.

Lake: Yeah, and constraining the conclusions the reader can jump to.

Cole: It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.

The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.

Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?

Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”

Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?

As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?

If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.

Lake: I agree with some of the things you said. When I was talking about negative space with writing I was not thinking about physically, but more so negative or empty space in the environment you build for the reader, i.e., when you have a 20-line poem that leads to 3 conclusions or a 5-line poem that could lead to the same conclusions, the 5-line poem has more negative space and also more power because it focuses the reader to the same point with less filler. And I think that is what skilled short story writers excel at. Because then you can think of it the other way: what is the most cohesive and specific, even if not well-defined, environment that you can create in the space of a short story? Whether that is like geographic depth, visual detail, character development, plot texture. Imagine a surrealist essay. They paint a very cohesive and specific picture, but not necessarily one you could describe neatly in a few sentences. Like Kafka can make you feel a very specific way, even if you can’t really put your finger on how you feel.

Cole: Yes, but that seems separate. Can Kafka make you feel that specific way using less words?

Lake: Maybe, maybe not. The point I was making was that you can know something without needing words to represent it, which means you can make someone else feel something without making it explicit. And I think that by properly choosing words you can be very precise with the atmosphere you create and what feelings you grow in the reader. And a large part of that is what you allow the reader to assume based on the information you provide and the info you don’t provide.

Cole: Ah, I see more clearly now. Let me regurgitate back to you a bit. Premise: I can feeling something without words to represent it. Conclusion: You can make me feel something without using explicit words. Whence, then, does the feeling come? What DO you use to make me feel it? Maybe just other words. Not the explicit ones that say what I should feel exactly, but other words that make me feel it by some other means. Maybe these means are something like the subconscious, logical conclusion, or imagination. It seems the minimalism / negative space conversation is unessential to this one.

Lake: I don’t think so! The negative space is where the mind is able to make connections between the words you do use that then lets it feel something greater/different than what was explicit.

Cole: Hm, so negative space does not exist only in the art itself. It exists also in the viewer’s mind?

Lake: What is in the viewer’s mind is a function of the art, like if you only give someone 5 words on a blank page, they twist and turn mentally until they figure out how those 5 words all connect to make sense.

Cole: But the reader already has words in their head. Words that didn’t come from the page. The viewer’s mind is a function. But the art isn’t even a variable in that function. It’s just an input.

Lake: A function takes an input and creates an output. Mind is the function. Art is the input. Feeling is the output.

Cole: I still don’t think the negative space exists in the mind. The negative space exists in the art.

Lake: Okay, but I think that’s wrong, or rather is missing the point. Let’s say negative space exists in the art. What impact does that have on viewer?

Cole: It has an impact on the viewer’s functional mind via the input of the art.

Lake: Yes, but like what does it mean. Why is negative space helpful?

Cole: Now we’re back to square one.

Lake: Humor me.

Cole: Negative space is helpful because … (A) It allows the viewer liberty to draw their own conclusions, which are not explicitly concluded by the positive space in the air itself. (B) It preserves the energy and attention of the viewer so that they can focus with more power on the positive space. (C) It allows the positive space to exist. Without negative space, there is only positive space; there is only space, general space, without an opposite, without contrast.

Lake: Yes, so really what we are saying is don’t give the viewer all the pieces to the puzzle and let them find some on their own. If the input is sparse the function has to make more assumptions, yielding a more interesting output.

Cole: I disagree with the word “interesting.” Maybe the output is more personal to them. Or maybe the viewer feels a keener sense of accomplishment.

Lake: I would say “interesting” is correct because it’s actually just a conclusion that isn’t handed to you therefore you have to think a bit therefore you focus more of your active interest in it. But whatever, not gonna die on that one.