Recently, I bumped my head on the corner of the kitchen cupboard. I put it down to my own clumsiness and stupidity; my wife said it was my lack of spatial awareness and that I should pay more attention to my surroundings. That got me thinking about a conversation I had years ago with another editor.
Writers, we noted, often make easy assumptions about space. In the example we were discussing, a child was hiding under the table in one scene, yet a page later found herself in a different room. Nowhere had readers been shown how she had moved from one space to another. How big was the kitchen and where was the furniture? How would the placement of the furniture affect the child’s movement?
Part of an editor’s job, we agreed, was to lead the author to an awareness of how space functioned in that story and to help iron out contradictions.
I’ve thought about that conversation often, but as I was making my way to a meeting about Indigenization the morning after my altercation with the kitchen cupboard, I began to think about my wife’s remark more broadly. Yes, the physical layout of the kitchen was important, as was my awareness of my surroundings. The crux in the story my editor friend and I had discussed, I realized, was not just the physical space: the author had used the child as a prop that could be moved about that space at the author’s convenience.
Pointing out the physical inconsistencies would strengthen the narrative, but it would not address the issue of making the child visible. The problem was spatial awareness, yes, but it had little to do with plot. It was much larger than that, and it was white. White people tend to move through space unaware of their surroundings. They know that there are Indigenous people, but often consider them props that can be pulled to centre stage as required. Immigrants (those of colour, in particular) are useful when they want to display the story of multiculturalism: put “them” on display during Heritage Days to show inclusion and diversity. During Black History Month, program only Black artists. It shows awareness. But what about integrating people into a white world beyond these easy boundaries? For the remainder of the year we live in a plothole like the one in the story my editor friend and I discussed, content with taking up the space and moving the furniture aside.
I acknowledge that, as writers, editors, and publishers, we are paying more attention than we once did. Sensitivity readings have become more commonplace. But increasingly, as with editors pointing out spatial plotholes to authors, this can be problematic. We rely on editors and sensitivity readers to monitor our spatial awareness, when we ourselves should be more aware of the space we occupy, or allow our characters to occupy.
Spatial awareness cannot be outsourced.