Describing peoples
Zeborah
that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
And I'm no good at physical description to start with.
I've been pushing myself, adding as much as I can, incluing as much as I
can: describing the distinguishing features of *this* Saaliaanoch,
mentioning how annoying *that* aspect of Earthocha is. I thought I'd
got it right, but I've still got first-readers saying that a major
problem is that they can't visualise my characters.(1)
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
Another thing that would help would be if someone who knows about how
description works had time to take a look at, say, a chapter, and help
me figure out where I'm going wrong and how I can go right again. (I'd
post something for general crit, but 500 words isn't enough for me to
feel confident that I'm showing the whole problem.)
Zeborah
(1) There are other major problems which don't help matters:
a) for one of the species I use the pronoun tir/tiren/tira;
b) in the military setting I use, people are referred to always and
exclusively by rank/position, never by name.
I'd love to be able to figure out a way to make these acceptable to a
ready, but I think the description thing is probably more important. At
the very least, these things will only be a problem in the present
setting, while the description thing is going to haunt me for the rest
of my life.
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
> solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
Would one solution be to have a character introduced who wasn't used to
the multiple species? It would be sort of neat if we first got used to
thinking of species X as "somewhat different people" and then got the
perspective of someone who started out thinking of them as monsters.
...
> Another thing that would help would be if someone who knows about how
> description works had time to take a look at, say, a chapter, and help
> me figure out where I'm going wrong and how I can go right again. (I'd
> post something for general crit, but 500 words isn't enough for me to
> feel confident that I'm showing the whole problem.)
I don't know if I know how description works, but I'll be happy to look
at a chapter.
Dorothy J Heydt
Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
>the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
>know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
>mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
You might try [re]reading David Brin's earlier Uplift stories,
viz., Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising. For any sake's
sake don't read the later ones.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Bill Swears
or so. Those weren't kids books?
Bill
--
Bill Swears
Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?
Irina Rempt
> (1) There are other major problems which don't help matters:
> a) for one of the species I use the pronoun tir/tiren/tira;
Which doesn't bother me; it took some getting used to (I've been
alpha-reading this thing from the beginning), but it jars me, otherwise
very picky when it comes to pronouns, much less than pointedly
gender-neutral made-up pronouns used to refer to humans. These are
*different* people, after all. And if you used Earth pronouns for them,
there would be two people of the same gender (their gender), one of which
would be clearly "she" and the other just as clearly "he". Don't change
that unless an editor tells you to.
> b) in the military setting I use, people are referred to always and
> exclusively by rank/position, never by name.
That would seem to be normal for a military setting (disclaimer: I have no
personal experience of any military setting except the military sports
hall where my daughter had a fencing event). The only thing mildly
strange about it is that people who are friends as well as colleagues
don't call each other by name off-duty. In the earlier book in the same
setting, there's a group of people (Earthocha) who *do* use names; is it
really different in this one?
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 06-Jan-2005
Jonathan L Cunningham
> Here's the thing: I tend to write books where aliens are so commonplace
> that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
> approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
> characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
> looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
> several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
>
> And I'm no good at physical description to start with.
I've not been reading rasfc much these last few days, but this one
pushes one of my buttons, because it's currently my second[1] biggest
writing problem (I think).
So I don't have (m)any good suggestions, but would like to make a
couple of comments.
> I've been pushing myself, adding as much as I can, incluing as much as I
> can: describing the distinguishing features of *this* Saaliaanoch,
> mentioning how annoying *that* aspect of Earthocha is. I thought I'd
> got it right, but I've still got first-readers saying that a major
> problem is that they can't visualise my characters.(1)
IME, modulo the proviso above-o, that's a consequence of the wrong
kind of description. Does that help? Thought not. :-) If I knew the
answer, I'd tell you :-).
> I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
> solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
Oh, you'd already reached that conclusion yourself.
What people tell me is that it has to be the telling detail.
What I've *actually* found, is that you can substitute something else
for detail. Reading aloud (to a writing group), I sometimes can get
away with *no* description at all, by distracting them: either action,
or posing a puzzle, or a bit of (disguised) infodump about something
else.
Frex, if Jack says he's meet a Fay, and Roland says that Fay are
terribly dangerous, people don't ask what Fay look like: they want to
know what's dangerous about them. (All written out, as a dinner
conversation.) They also *don't* ask what food they're eating, or
what the room looks like ... it doesn't occur to them. I don't know
what "visual" readers are "seeing" with a passage like that - but
even they don't complain (when it works).
(snip)
> I'd love to be able to figure out a way to make these acceptable to a
> ready, but I think the description thing is probably more important. At
> the very least, these things will only be a problem in the present
> setting, while the description thing is going to haunt me for the rest
> of my life.
I think the description thing is a real problem (for some of us) but it
may not be as bad as you/we think. Because, I'm also a non-descriptive
reader. And I don't think I'm alone. And I think even a little
description can go a long way: there are certainly writers who stay
off my "must buy" list because they put in too much description, and
it's the beautiful and evocative descriptions which *their* readers
love so much.
So maybe non-descriptive writers should aim primarily at readers who
are interested in action/dialogue/clever word play/ideas/settings[2]
rather than having a scene painted for them. With just enough clues
and description to satisfy the middle ground of readers. "Just enough"
is a less daunting prospect than learning to write prose paintings.
In other words, you cannot please everybody. Whom do you wish to please?
Jonathan
[1] My biggest current worry, having decided I was worrying too much
about description, is differentiating my characters' speech.
[2] By settings, as should be clear from context, I mean more than
just what the scenery looks like: all those social and magico/technical
world-building details etc.
Bill Swears
> Another thing that would help would be if someone who knows about how
> description works had time to take a look at, say, a chapter, and help
> me figure out where I'm going wrong and how I can go right again. (I'd
> post something for general crit, but 500 words isn't enough for me to
> feel confident that I'm showing the whole problem.)
>
I'm fairly confident with my descriptions, though I have one reader who
has developed of fixation on getting a description of one of my
characters. If you're willing, I'd give a chapter a go.
Nicola Browne
news:1harcu6.3g3ljdtivc8gN%zeb...@gmail.com
> Here's the thing: I tend to write books where aliens are so commonplace
> that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
> approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
> characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
> looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
> several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
>
But actually there are all kinds of moments when you would notice that
someone has two breasts and in which it would make sense to talk about
it.
'Anyway, I'm sure they've changed the sizing here...' Else's voice was
muffled by the struggle to exricate herself from the dress. Whatever
size it was she should have gone for one larger.
'Do you want a hand?' Amy asked tentatively. She was not quite sure
where to start. The zip of the dress was stuck and caught awkwardly
round Else's fleshy middle. The dress was trapping Else's substantial
left breast like a pig in a poke while at that moment there was a
horrible ripping sound, and her right one made a sudden bid for
freedom and flopped out free from all encumbrances.
'I don't think it was your colour...' Amy began, as Else's bubbling,
shoulder-shaking, belly laughter erupted and threatened to destroy
what was left of the garment, the changing room and possibly the world.
> And I'm no good at physical description to start with.
I tend to distinguish between active and passive description, the latter
tending to slow things down more than the former.
I suppose I would use the description below at the beginning of a
section
or between sections ( I hesitate to talk of scenes)
I am not setting myself up as any kind of expert here, but I find this
approach useful.I usually try to give an impression
of size, colour, shape, smell and texture where possible though
probably not altogether. I tend to drift off when descriptions
are too precise but I like impressionistic descriptions giving
a general idea of what things are like - to a certain extent
people tend to work with that and imagine a more detailed
picture for themselves. I would suggest you only need one powerful
visual hook for each character - I don't think most readers need more.
'In the dim late-phase light it took a moment for Sal's, only
marginally enhanced, human eyesight to make sense of the tangle
of limbs and probosces that filled the workspace, so that for
a moment it felt as though she was entering a jungle
of grey-blue fur, vermillion reptilian scale and the prism-pure
colours of semi transparent membraness. She was dwarfed by the size
of it, then her brain started to do its job, the moment of
disorientation was over and it was merely a room full of friends;
bearlike Krll conversing with Lin's anterior head while Havor
tried to rearrange spindly spiderlike limbs into a superior
configuration for communication. Krll was in female phase
and her midly hallucogneic musk accounted for both the haze in the
room, Lin's agitation and Sal's temporary confusion. Havor
blinked tellingly at Sal and chittered bitchily just above Krll's
unaugmented hearing range.
He was pissed off again, but Sal elected not to notice.'
I think the more active kind kind be slipped in anywhere.
'Sal slipped as the platform lurched and was steadied by one of
Lin's hawser-taut clawed limbs. There was no one stronger, but Lin
barely bruised Sal's ribs. Sal thumped the tough red hide hard in
gratitude - Lin would not notice anything less.'
If you use similar language for each time that character crops up
you will fix a picture in the reader's head, without too much effort.
I don't mind having a look at a passage as long as it's not too long.
I ought to be working. I am way behind : (
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<news:c3f496e7bad71d4cab...@mygate.mailgate.org>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> 'Anyway, I'm sure they've changed the sizing here...' Else's voice was
> muffled by the struggle to exricate herself from the dress. Whatever
> size it was she should have gone for one larger.
> 'Do you want a hand?' Amy asked tentatively. She was not quite sure
> where to start. The zip of the dress was stuck and caught awkwardly
> round Else's fleshy middle. The dress was trapping Else's substantial
> left breast like a pig in a poke while at that moment there was a
> horrible ripping sound, and her right one made a sudden bid for
> freedom and flopped out free from all encumbrances.
> 'I don't think it was your colour...' Amy began, as Else's bubbling,
> shoulder-shaking, belly laughter erupted and threatened to destroy
> what was left of the garment, the changing room and possibly the world.
<splork!>
[...]
Brian
Bill Swears
>
> 'Anyway, I'm sure they've changed the sizing here...' Else's voice was
> muffled by the struggle to exricate herself from the dress. Whatever
> size it was she should have gone for one larger.
> 'Do you want a hand?' Amy asked tentatively. She was not quite sure
> where to start. The zip of the dress was stuck and caught awkwardly
> round Else's fleshy middle. The dress was trapping Else's substantial
> left breast like a pig in a poke while at that moment there was a
> horrible ripping sound, and her right one made a sudden bid for
> freedom and flopped out free from all encumbrances.
> 'I don't think it was your colour...' Amy began, as Else's bubbling,
> shoulder-shaking, belly laughter erupted and threatened to destroy
> what was left of the garment, the changing room and possibly the world.
>
>
This was just to good. I just read it to my wife. She's looking at me
funny.
Dan Goodman
> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
> > > multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together,
> > > c) in the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does
> > > anything know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails
> > > on b, and the mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
> >
> >
> > You might try [re]reading David Brin's earlier Uplift stories,
> > viz., Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising. For any sake's
> > sake don't read the later ones.
> >
> I'm planning to read the later ones to my 7YOA daughter in the next
> year or so. Those weren't kids books?
I believe Dorothy refers to quality, rather than what age they're
appropriate for.
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
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Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Dorothy J Heydt
Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>Bill Swears wrote:
>
>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> >Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>> > > multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together,
>> > > c) in the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does
>> > > anything know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails
>> > > on b, and the mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
>> >
>> >
>> > You might try [re]reading David Brin's earlier Uplift stories,
>> > viz., Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising. For any sake's
>> > sake don't read the later ones.
>> >
>> I'm planning to read the later ones to my 7YOA daughter in the next
>> year or so. Those weren't kids books?
The viewpoint characters in the initial segment are kids (of
assorted species). That soon changes No, they're not kids' books.
They're crummy books.
>I believe Dorothy refers to quality, rather than what age they're
>appropriate for.
Yup. They're crummy. Has the seven-year-old already read (or
audited) the three I mentioned? Those three are good, though I
wouldn't say they were kids' books and you might wait a year or
two. Depending on the seven-year-old. I started reading SF at
seven, but that was in 1949 and the SF did not (to my prejudiced
recollection) get as grim in those days as it does now.
And in fact there's some grimth in the early Uplift books, though
some of it might pass straight over the kid's head. E.g., the
little human girl who, with all the adult humans incapacitated,
takes charge of the colony of frightened chimps and uncomprehending
gorillas and says, "I was the only *man* here, so I had to take
care of everybody." (Emphasis the author's.) Or the two
surviving members of the Gubru triad, trying to console one
another when their third has been killed.
The first three are great, the second three are crummy. Go
figure.
Bill Swears
> Bill Swears wrote:
>
>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>>>Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>>>>multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together,
>>>>c) in the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does
>>>>anything know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails
>>>>on b, and the mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
>>>
>>>
>>>You might try [re]reading David Brin's earlier Uplift stories,
>>>viz., Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising. For any sake's
>>>sake don't read the later ones.
>>>
>>
>>I'm planning to read the later ones to my 7YOA daughter in the next
>>year or so. Those weren't kids books?
>
>
> I believe Dorothy refers to quality, rather than what age they're
> appropriate for.
>
Bill Swears
> In article <43f21c3d$0$16915$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>>Bill Swears wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>>>Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>>>>>multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together,
>>>>>c) in the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does
>>>>>anything know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails
>>>>>on b, and the mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>You might try [re]reading David Brin's earlier Uplift stories,
>>>>viz., Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising. For any sake's
>>>>sake don't read the later ones.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I'm planning to read the later ones to my 7YOA daughter in the next
>>>year or so. Those weren't kids books?
>
>
> The viewpoint characters in the initial segment are kids (of
> assorted species). That soon changes No, they're not kids' books.
> They're crummy books.
I'm sorry, I was joking. Alexa and I are in the middle of Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Treasure Island.
I don't know quite what David was going for with that trilogy, but I
don't think he quite got it. Still, it reminds me much more of some of
the children's SF I've read than any of his earlier stories.
Bill
Mary K. Kuhner
>One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
>the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
>know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
>mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
Gate_ are fantasy but otherwise fit your description--the non-humans
are not recognizable standard types, and there are a lot of them
introduced quickly and deftly.
When I read the book, the difficulty of visualizing the characters
did get seriously in the way for me--combined with the rank-names,
it led to me feeling lost and unsure who was who much of the
time, and I eventually succumbed to mental fatigue despite a strong
interest in the story.
I don't think I need to know what they look like, so much as I
need a tag to hang their identity on. Some catchphrase or bit of
description that *repeats*, so that I can say to myself "Ah, yes,
*that* person" next time I see him/her/tir. It could be a
habit or mannerism, or an epithet, or a physical trait, or a role--
if someone was always referred to as "the doctor" I would know who
they were without needing a physical description.
Coaxing a definition of the roles of pennants, shields and
lances out somewhere early in the story would really help, too. I
can guess that pennants are command positions and so forth, but
*hearing* it would be better. I start to feel as though I'm holding
together a tissue of conjecture and supposition, and eventually it
tears of its own weight. I found the experience something like
reading a story in an inadequately-known foreign language--I would
go along thinking I understood, though feeling rather stressed, and
then suddenly I wouldn't be understanding it anymore due to too
many accumulated small confusions.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Zeborah
> Zeborah wrote:
>
> > (1) There are other major problems which don't help matters:
> > a) for one of the species I use the pronoun tir/tiren/tira;
>
> Which doesn't bother me; it took some getting used to (I've been
> alpha-reading this thing from the beginning), but it jars me, otherwise
> very picky when it comes to pronouns, much less than pointedly
> gender-neutral made-up pronouns used to refer to humans. These are
> *different* people, after all. And if you used Earth pronouns for them,
> there would be two people of the same gender (their gender), one of which
> would be clearly "she" and the other just as clearly "he". Don't change
> that unless an editor tells you to.
I'll do everything possible to avoid it.
> > b) in the military setting I use, people are referred to always and
> > exclusively by rank/position, never by name.
>
> That would seem to be normal for a military setting (disclaimer: I have no
> personal experience of any military setting except the military sports
> hall where my daughter had a fencing event).
Well, but in most Earth militaries you've got multiple people with the
same rank, so they have to be referred to with rank plus name.
>The only thing mildly
> strange about it is that people who are friends as well as colleagues
> don't call each other by name off-duty. In the earlier book in the same
> setting, there's a group of people (Earthocha) who *do* use names; is it
> really different in this one?
Oh, the Earthocha do; what's different in this setting is that they
don't trust Paul so haven't let him find out their names.
Zeborah
Zeborah
Thanks! Alas, we don't have those at home and it looks like the library
*used* to have them. I'll try and find a decent used book store.(1)
Zeborah
(1) There are many used book stores in Christchurch, but none of them
really specialise in sf. I have daydreams of opening a used sf
bookstore in my garage when I buy a house. Very elaborate daydreams
which always end up circling back to the fact that this would be a hell
of a lot more work than I really want to spend on something. In the
meantime, I do most of my used book shopping when I happen to be in
Wellington. --Which will next be May, for graduation. Did I mention I
finished writing my mini-thesis? <bounce bounce>
Zeborah
> In article <1harcu6.3g3ljdtivc8gN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
>
> > I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
> > solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> > qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
>
> Would one solution be to have a character introduced who wasn't used to
> the multiple species? It would be sort of neat if we first got used to
> thinking of species X as "somewhat different people" and then got the
> perspective of someone who started out thinking of them as monsters.
In the specific setting I have, it's impossible for someone unfamiliar
with the other species to be in a position to be worthy of having their
own point of view.
The *specific* way I'm writing this, I have two pov characters. One has
been among the multiple species for... oh, at least 30 years. The other
is young and naive but has still been among them several years, and
worse, he's known all the other characters about for two years.
> > Another thing that would help would be if someone who knows about how
> > description works had time to take a look at, say, a chapter, and help
> > me figure out where I'm going wrong and how I can go right again. (I'd
> > post something for general crit, but 500 words isn't enough for me to
> > feel confident that I'm showing the whole problem.)
>
> I don't know if I know how description works, but I'll be happy to look
> at a chapter.
Thanks; I'll email it shortly.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> What people tell me is that it has to be the telling detail.
Right....
> What I've *actually* found, is that you can substitute something else
> for detail.
<snip>
> Frex, if Jack says he's meet a Fay, and Roland says that Fay are
> terribly dangerous, people don't ask what Fay look like: they want to
> know what's dangerous about them.
Hmm.
<snip>
> So maybe non-descriptive writers should aim primarily at readers who
> are interested in action/dialogue/clever word play/ideas/settings[2]
> rather than having a scene painted for them. With just enough clues
> and description to satisfy the middle ground of readers. "Just enough"
> is a less daunting prospect than learning to write prose paintings.
More daunting for me. Prose paintings is something I don't want to do;
"just enough" is something I don't know *how* to do. Hence this thread.
> In other words, you cannot please everybody. Whom do you wish to please?
Anyone who might actually be interested in the book. It's all very well
saying, "Oh well, it's not group X's kind of book", but if I say that
about groups Y, Z, A, B, C, D and E then there'll be about three people
left in the world who don't belong to any of the groups I've excluded.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> I'm fairly confident with my descriptions, though I have one reader who
> has developed of fixation on getting a description of one of my
> characters. If you're willing, I'd give a chapter a go.
Thanks, that'd be good; I'll email shortly.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> In article <1harcu6.3g3ljdtivc8gN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
> >multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
> >the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
> >know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
> >mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
>
> Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
> Gate_
(Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
>are fantasy but otherwise fit your description--the non-humans
> are not recognizable standard types, and there are a lot of them
> introduced quickly and deftly.
That sounds good.
<snip>
> I don't think I need to know what they look like, so much as I
> need a tag to hang their identity on. Some catchphrase or bit of
> description that *repeats*, so that I can say to myself "Ah, yes,
> *that* person" next time I see him/her/tir. It could be a
> habit or mannerism, or an epithet, or a physical trait, or a role--
> if someone was always referred to as "the doctor" I would know who
> they were without needing a physical description.
<nod> I tried to do this a bit but need more practice.
> Coaxing a definition of the roles of pennants, shields and
> lances out somewhere early in the story would really help, too. I
> can guess that pennants are command positions and so forth, but
> *hearing* it would be better.
Ah, okay. I did that with colours, but didn't occur to me to do it for
the positions as well.
>I start to feel as though I'm holding
> together a tissue of conjecture and supposition, and eventually it
> tears of its own weight. I found the experience something like
> reading a story in an inadequately-known foreign language--I would
> go along thinking I understood, though feeling rather stressed, and
> then suddenly I wouldn't be understanding it anymore due to too
> many accumulated small confusions.
Ah! Yes: incluing not always sufficient for the reader's confidence
levels. Got it.
(Again. I've likely been told this before. Several times. Hammer,
head...)
Zeborah
Alma Hromic Deckert
>Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>> In article <1harcu6.3g3ljdtivc8gN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
>> Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
>> >multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
>> >the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
>> >know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
>> >mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
>>
>> Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
>> Gate_
>
>(Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
While you're at it, pick up "Deepness in the sky" (Vinge) which has
some nice "different" characters in it...
>Ah! Yes: incluing not always sufficient for the reader's confidence
>levels. Got it.
>(Again. I've likely been told this before. Several times. Hammer,
>head...)
Are we playing word association games? <G>
(Hammer Head..... Shark...?)
A.
Dan Goodman
> > Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
> > Gate_
>
> (Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
You won't find those. Megan Lindholm's book didn't sell well enough
for her to survive as a writer under that name. She now writes as
Robin Hobb, except for some short stories.
Nicola Browne
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <1harcu6.3g3ljdtivc8gN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> > zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> >
> > > I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
> > > solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> > > qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
> >
> > Would one solution be to have a character introduced who wasn't used to
> > the multiple species? It would be sort of neat if we first got used to
> > thinking of species X as "somewhat different people" and then got the
> > perspective of someone who started out thinking of them as monsters.
>
> In the specific setting I have, it's impossible for someone unfamiliar
> with the other species to be in a position to be worthy of having their
> own point of view.
>
> The *specific* way I'm writing this, I have two pov characters. One has
> been among the multiple species for... oh, at least 30 years. The other
> is young and naive but has still been among them several years, and
> worse, he's known all the other characters about for two years.
I don't think that matters. I think it helps to distinguish
between the way the world you're writing about works in your head and
the way it has to be told to make sense. Sometimes you have to
find a middle path between the purist's 'x doesn't think like that'
and the pragmatist's 'well if no one explains this soon the book's
going to hit the wall.'At the end of the day ( how I hate that phrase)
you're writing a story, it's not real, it just has to seem that way.
Making it intellectually less complex can sometimes make it more
credible and that's not to recommend dumbing down. Sometimes if you
can't make something work in a story however clever it is, it has to go.
The story is all.
(OK I'm a children's writer, but I think it's the same for any
audience. If readers are confused by the naming conventions -
or a justifiable lack of observation you might have to change
those elements - it might be less cool but if it makes the story work
better it's probably worth it.)
IMHO of course - sounding very dogmatic today.
Personally, I don't have the slightest problem with someone observing
the appearance or characteristics of someone they know well: I do it
all the time - I notice when someone does their hair a diffeent way,
when they have new clothes or jewellery, if someone looks ill or
has lost or gained weight/facial hair/glasses. To have two POV
characters
neither of whom did that would seem quite odd to me.
The other thing that might be useful is not to think of description
as 'description' and therefore scary - it is totally of a piece
with the business of writing. You have a scene ( however you define it)
Who is present? what are they doing? Where are they? What props are
they working/noticing in that place? If people are communicating how
are they doing it? How are they reading each other?
If at any moment any of those things aren't clear- making them clear
results in some kind of description: if you're doing body language
mostly you're doing bodies, if you're doing facial expressions you're
doing faces and in describing speech you're describing voices/sounds
or whatever. You can smuggle a lot of useful information in that way.
Nicola Browne
news:43f25c62$0$97757$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net
> Zeborah wrote:
>
> > > Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
> > > Gate_
> >
> > (Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
>
> You won't find those. Megan Lindholm's book didn't sell well enough
> for her to survive as a writer under that name. She now writes as
> Robin Hobb, except for some short stories.
I bought a copy of 'Harpy's flight' relatively recently.That's the
great thing about making it - publishers release old stuff.
Nicky ( reassuring herself with the reminder that it can take years)
Dorothy J Heydt
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>I bought a copy of 'Harpy's flight' relatively recently.That's the
>great thing about making it - publishers release old stuff.
If they think it's worth their while. My agent has been trying
to find somebody to reprint _TIL_ for years, without success.
Nobody wants to; why should they, when it didn't sell the first
time around?
Nicola Browne
news:IupAy...@kithrup.com
> In article <f6820c07f03368dfa7...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> >I bought a copy of 'Harpy's flight' relatively recently.That's the
> >great thing about making it - publishers release old stuff.
>
> If they think it's worth their while. My agent has been trying
> to find somebody to reprint _TIL_ for years, without success.
> Nobody wants to; why should they, when it didn't sell the first
> time around?
>
Well, if you can argue that it wasn't marketed properly or distributed
well and it had a good response from readers there may be a chance -
there is after all so much luck involved.
I just keep hoping that each book will be the break through book.
Are you still managing to write regularly? Could you do a new one
after your recent experiment on line?
Nicky
Suzanne A Blom
Inspector had green tentacles & 3 arms, while Inspector Sargent had blue
tentacles & was missing half an arm; but it was all still bleeding ranks; &
damn-all if he could keep them straight."
Patricia C. Wrede
> Zeborah wrote:
>
>> > Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
>> > Gate_
>>
>> (Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
>
> You won't find those. Megan Lindholm's book didn't sell well enough
> for her to survive as a writer under that name. She now writes as
> Robin Hobb, except for some short stories.
Last time I heard from Megan, she was still using both names; her style
changes, depending on which one she's writing under, so a consideration is
"Is this a Robin Hobb story or a Megan Lindholm story?" And it's certainly
not any more impossible to pick those titles up used than it is to pick up
some of my early work that was published as paperback originals at about the
same time. The problem isn't that she's mostly writing Robin Hobb stuff
*now*; the problem is that those titles are a good fifteen years *out of
print*. (Unless they've been recently reissued, which may well be the case;
I haven't been paying close attention.)
Patricia C. Wrede
Dorothy J Heydt
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
>news:IupAy...@kithrup.com
>
>> In article <f6820c07f03368dfa7...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
>> Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >I bought a copy of 'Harpy's flight' relatively recently.That's the
>> >great thing about making it - publishers release old stuff.
>>
>> If they think it's worth their while. My agent has been trying
>> to find somebody to reprint _TIL_ for years, without success.
>> Nobody wants to; why should they, when it didn't sell the first
>> time around?
>>
>Well, if you can argue that it wasn't marketed properly or distributed
>well and it had a good response from readers there may be a chance -
>there is after all so much luck involved.
I can argue all I want, and so can my agent, but nobody's
listening.
>I just keep hoping that each book will be the break through book.
>Are you still managing to write regularly? Could you do a new one
>after your recent experiment on line?
I seem to have dried up at present. I've looked at the hopeful
Chapter One several times, and I could probably get a little
further with it if I tried (next up: a hand-to-hand combat on
Vesta [surface gravity 0.2 m/s^2]), but I would still land myself
in Chapter Two where insufficient worldbuilding has happened to
get me any further through the bureaucratic gantlet the guy has
next to run. Maybe when DunDraCon is over...
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> > In other words, you cannot please everybody. Whom do you wish to please?
>
> Anyone who might actually be interested in the book. It's all very well
> saying, "Oh well, it's not group X's kind of book", but if I say that
> about groups Y, Z, A, B, C, D and E then there'll be about three people
> left in the world who don't belong to any of the groups I've excluded.
>
On the other hand, if a mere tenth of a percent of the world's
population buys your book, you will be a very successful author.
Jacey Bedford
<zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>Here's the thing: I tend to write books where aliens are so commonplace
>that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
>approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
>characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
>looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
>several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
>(1) There are other major problems which don't help matters:
> a) for one of the species I use the pronoun tir/tiren/tira;
> b) in the military setting I use, people are referred to always and
>exclusively by rank/position, never by name.
>
>I'd love to be able to figure out a way to make these acceptable to a
>ready, but I think the description thing is probably more important. At
>the very least, these things will only be a problem in the present
>setting, while the description thing is going to haunt me for the rest
>of my life.
Having read quite a bit of your stuff I'm one of the people who always
says I can't visualise your characters.
One way of solving the description problem is to have a viewpoint
character who is new to this culture and therefore reacts to the way
people/species look. And if you can't find it in your heart to bring in
a new character then maybe have some minor character or lowly minion who
is not viewpoint but who asks questions or just stares rudely at the
oopmalop's fifth leg. You don't need to retain this character once the
device has served its purpose and introduced the various species. Let
the oopmalop eat him if you like as a way of reminding us that they are
omnivores and deal with rudeness by condemning the perpetrator to
capital punishment in the form of a public barbecuing. (OK, this in not
remotely what your species are like - in case anyone gets the wrong
idea.)
In fact, though, ultimately I think the physical description of your
characters is easier to solve than the 'tir/tiren/tira' pronoun usage. I
find parallels with that and the recommendations else-thread on the use
of dialect in dialogue. The general recommendation is that if you must
use it - use it _very_ sparingly_.
And 'tir/tiren/tira' is not only used for dialogue but in internal
monologue too - so it crops up much more frequently than if one
character spoke an odd dialogue
In fact, even sparingly would be too much for me. I find that each usage
pulls me from the flow of the story and reminds me that the author is
messing with my head. I'd be very inclined to drop that usage altogether
and find some other way of describing the fact that this species doesn't
have gender in the way that we think of it.
--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
David Friedman
Jacey Bedford <look...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> In fact, though, ultimately I think the physical description of your
> characters is easier to solve than the 'tir/tiren/tira' pronoun usage. I
> find parallels with that and the recommendations else-thread on the use
> of dialect in dialogue. The general recommendation is that if you must
> use it - use it _very_ sparingly_.
I've now read the first chapter, and I don't think the fundamental
problem is either the physical description or the pronouns. I think it's
trying to introduce too much new stuff at once. The reader has to adjust
simultaneously to a bunch of aliens with not only differing physical
appearance but very different cultures/styles, a complicated naming and
role assignment system involving color/rank and function/department,
complicated and messy internal political and personality conflicts, and
more.
The obvious problem is that charcters come complete with species, role,
and interpersonal interactions, making it hard to bring in one thing at
a time. But you could bring in one character, making clear all of those
things about him, then add another character, then ... . I don't know
if that works for your story, but it would, I think, help deal with the
particular problem.
Kate Schaefer
> Here's the thing: I tend to write books where aliens are so commonplace
> that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
> approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
> characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
> looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
> several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
>
[...]
> I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except that I *think* it won't be
> solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
>
> One thing that would help would be to read something that a) has
> multiple non-humanoid species, b) all working casually together, c) in
> the kind of mode that prefers incluing to exposition. Does anything
> know if such a thing exists? (I tried Chanur; it fails on b, and the
> mode's a bit iffy too, though close enough.)
[...]
Not a precise analog, but Eleanor Arnason had a story a few years ago
featuring one individual with several independent bodies working together,
Knapsack Stories. Astonishingly, she made it work. It's available online at:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0401/knapsack.shtml
djinn
Characters in particular roles tended to be in those roles because of
cutlural or physical traits that made them particularly suited for the
roles. Then there would be some mention of the background that made
them suited for the role. Sometimes the description would come some
time after the introduction of the character. Thus we might know a
character's personal traits pretty well before finding out whether they
were human or alien or whatever.
The generic term for sentient races was 'being'.
Zeborah
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:29:15 +1300, zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
>
> >(Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
>
> While you're at it, pick up "Deepness in the sky" (Vinge) which has
> some nice "different" characters in it...
I read that but didn't get everything out of it at the time; must
definitely read it again.
> >Ah! Yes: incluing not always sufficient for the reader's confidence
> >levels. Got it.
> >(Again. I've likely been told this before. Several times. Hammer,
> >head...)
>
> Are we playing word association games? <G>
>
> (Hammer Head..... Shark...?)
There's a phrase, the traditional phrasing of which escapes me, hence I
tried for keywords. Basically, my head in this sense is about as thick
as a two-by-four made of some particularly dense wood, and the only way
to get the moral of the story into it is, as if that were a nail, by
repeated hammering.
Zeborah
> "Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1harrp2.1shpj121n52w69N%zeb...@gmail.com
>
> > The *specific* way I'm writing this, I have two pov characters. One has
> > been among the multiple species for... oh, at least 30 years. The other
> > is young and naive but has still been among them several years, and
> > worse, he's known all the other characters about for two years.
>
> I don't think that matters.
Well, I think it makes a difference in exactly how I go about getting
the description in. Not about "whether" though, I agree.
>I think it helps to distinguish
> between the way the world you're writing about works in your head and
> the way it has to be told to make sense. Sometimes you have to
> find a middle path between the purist's 'x doesn't think like that'
> and the pragmatist's 'well if no one explains this soon the book's
> going to hit the wall.'
I'm already about halfway between my original purist position and the
pragmatist's position. This is not to say that I don't need to go
halfway between my current position and the pragmatist's position as
well...
> Personally, I don't have the slightest problem with someone observing
> the appearance or characteristics of someone they know well: I do it
> all the time - I notice when someone does their hair a diffeent way,
> when they have new clothes or jewellery, if someone looks ill or
> has lost or gained weight/facial hair/glasses. To have two POV
> characters
> neither of whom did that would seem quite odd to me.
The problem is that I don't notice this at all, which makes it hard to
remember to do it in my writing, let alone to know how to do it smoothly
when I do remember.
> The other thing that might be useful is not to think of description
> as 'description' and therefore scary - it is totally of a piece
> with the business of writing. You have a scene ( however you define it)
> Who is present? what are they doing? Where are they? What props are
> they working/noticing in that place? If people are communicating how
> are they doing it? How are they reading each other?
<snip>
<nod> I do this much more than I used to. Still need practice.
Zeborah
> Zeborah wrote:
>
> > > Megan Lindholm's _Harpy's Flight_, _The Windsingers_, _The Limbreth
> > > Gate_
> >
> > (Grr, bad library! I may resort to new book stores too.)
>
> You won't find those.
Borders had them. I skimmed the first chapter of _Harpy's Flight_ this
afternoon (ditto of _Sundiver_ and... whichever book was to the left of
that) but I didn't have time to try the other books recommended, or to
convince myself to buy anything. My first impression was that those
weren't the same type of situation as I've got: they both move into the
alienness, whereas my chapter plonks the reader straight down in the
centre of it, Jlipocha to the left of you, Saaliaanocha to the right.
But they did both spark some ideas on the bus on the way home, which I'm
working on.
Zeborah
> For me it would help if Paul (or somebody) groused about it. "Sure, Major
> Inspector had green tentacles & 3 arms, while Inspector Sargent had blue
> tentacles & was missing half an arm; but it was all still bleeding ranks; &
> damn-all if he could keep them straight."
Thanks. Mostly Paul can keep them straight; if he in particular were
unable to cope with something, he'd have been forced to go home a long
time ago. But I know how to fit something very like that into the
present novel (the sequel), at least.
<thinks> Daldelsesa did grouse about the system a bit in the first
novel too; I may be able to expand on that.
Zeborah
> Having read quite a bit of your stuff I'm one of the people who always
> says I can't visualise your characters.
>
> One way of solving the description problem is to have a viewpoint
> character who is new to this culture and therefore reacts to the way
> people/species look. And if you can't find it in your heart to bring in
> a new character then maybe have some minor character or lowly minion who
> is not viewpoint but who asks questions or just stares rudely at the
> oopmalop's fifth leg.
I was in the middle of saying that no such character could exist when I
realised a few could, it's just that relatively few do. If I write a
book #3, that'll be a pov character.
> In fact, though, ultimately I think the physical description of your
> characters is easier to solve than the 'tir/tiren/tira' pronoun usage.
<snip>
> In fact, even sparingly would be too much for me. I find that each usage
> pulls me from the flow of the story and reminds me that the author is
> messing with my head. I'd be very inclined to drop that usage altogether
> and find some other way of describing the fact that this species doesn't
> have gender in the way that we think of it.
That's not the only purpose, though; in fact, it's just a side-effect.
The *major* purpose for it is so that each species has its own pronouns
-- in particular, so that when someone says "he" or "she", characters
*know* right away that it refers to an Earthoch. I've had bits of plot
come out of this; minor bits, but nonetheless. Another nice side effect
would be so that when I say "it" the reader knows that I'm referring to
a Klentoch; but I'm very aware that I haven't made it sufficiently clear
yet for that to work for anyone except my alpha-reader.
In any case, it's something quite fundamental to setting and theme, and
it is really very important to me, and not just as a darling. So if
there's any way possible to keep it, I want to keep it.
If there isn't a way possible, that's another thing. I do recognise how
jarring it is to many readers. I just want to be *sure* first. And
since other authors have successfully used different pronouns in the
past, I don't feel ready to give it up as impossible, not just yet.
Zeborah
> I've now read the first chapter, and I don't think the fundamental
> problem is either the physical description or the pronouns. I think it's
> trying to introduce too much new stuff at once. The reader has to adjust
> simultaneously to a bunch of aliens with not only differing physical
> appearance but very different cultures/styles, a complicated naming and
> role assignment system involving color/rank and function/department,
> complicated and messy internal political and personality conflicts, and
> more.
Bill's said much the same, by email. And it makes sense, and feels
slightly more like something I can do something about.
> The obvious problem is that charcters come complete with species, role,
> and interpersonal interactions, making it hard to bring in one thing at
> a time. But you could bring in one character, making clear all of those
> things about him, then add another character, then ... . I don't know
> if that works for your story, but it would, I think, help deal with the
> particular problem.
It will be difficult, but I can try.
What I'm thinking at the moment is to actually cut out the description
of Crane Green at the start -- focus entirely on Yusyaa vs the
Earthocha, with Crane a faceless blob on the sidelines. Once the reader
groks who/what Yusyaa is (and I can inclue some more of the situation
about the Earthocha too), then Pennon Gold sends for tiren and I can
focus on it for the rest of the scene. With a side of Yusyaa pondering
the ramifications of the pronoun "him" for a paragraph.
Scene 2 will be harder. But some of the things that are in there and
confusing, are things I put in because I thought it better to inclue
before introducing them properly; that's clearly not working (aka
counterproductive) so it'll be easy enough to take them out again. So:
Paul, then Horn briefly; then everyone at dinner a faceless blob except
for Pennon Gold. Then Tome.
Does that sound manageable, as a reader?
An alternative would be to add (a) scene(s) to the start, but the most
obvious scene that comes to mind would just be two Earthoch lost in
their own little romantic world, and that wouldn't be much help. (Plus
I'd rather leave them their privacy.) I can brainstorm alternatives if
necessary, of course, it just doesn't seem parsimonious.
Zeborah
> Not a precise analog, but Eleanor Arnason had a story a few years ago
> featuring one individual with several independent bodies working together,
> Knapsack Stories. Astonishingly, she made it work. It's available online at:
> http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0401/knapsack.shtml
Oh yes, that's nice. Those are similar to my Jlipocha, though Vinge's
pack animals in _A Fire Upon the Deep_ were a bit closer.
Zeborah
> I thought Cole and Bunch did it pretty well in the 'Sten' series.
<snip stuff that sounds cool>
Thanks!
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
I think--but I would have to see it.
The general feel of incompetence and internal conflict struck me as an
asset--it's too easy to make everyone on a spaceship work smoothly and
altruistically together. At some point I will want to know if it's a
characteristic of this ship or the whole Empire.
One question occurred to me that you may want to deal with at some
point, if you haven't--why do they have lots of species on one ship,
instead of one or two species on one ship, one or two on another, ... .
The obvious answer, to some extent hinted at by your functional labels,
is specialization--some species are better at or more willing to do some
things than others. On the other hand, surely logistics and ship design
and much else are made more complicated by the need to accomodate lots
of different species on a single ship.
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> That's not the only purpose, though; in fact, it's just a side-effect.
> The *major* purpose for it is so that each species has its own pronouns
> -- in particular, so that when someone says "he" or "she", characters
> *know* right away that it refers to an Earthoch. I've had bits of plot
> come out of this; minor bits, but nonetheless. Another nice side effect
> would be so that when I say "it" the reader knows that I'm referring to
> a Klentoch; but I'm very aware that I haven't made it sufficiently clear
> yet for that to work for anyone except my alpha-reader.
If there aren't too many--say he/she for one species, it for another,
and your odd pronouns for a third--it's functional, since it makes it
easier to keep track of who you are talking about when.
Along the same lines, if I am giving an example in economics that
involves two people, I usually make one male and one female, so that
it's more obvious who which pronoun refers to.
Bill Swears
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I've now read the first chapter, and I don't think the fundamental
>>problem is either the physical description or the pronouns. I think it's
>>trying to introduce too much new stuff at once. The reader has to adjust
>>simultaneously to a bunch of aliens with not only differing physical
>>appearance but very different cultures/styles, a complicated naming and
>>role assignment system involving color/rank and function/department,
>>complicated and messy internal political and personality conflicts, and
>>more.
>
>
> Bill's said much the same, by email. And it makes sense, and feels
> slightly more like something I can do something about.
>
I almost posted a "what he said" post just now. I've sent the second
e-mail I said I'd get to in a day or so, because, well, I enjoyed the
read. You can post any portion of either of those e-mails you think
might be useful in forum, by the way. Even if the useful portion is
deconstructing the bunk I'm trying to sell you.
>
>>The obvious problem is that charcters come complete with species, role,
>>and interpersonal interactions, making it hard to bring in one thing at
>>a time. But you could bring in one character, making clear all of those
>>things about him, then add another character, then ... . I don't know
>>if that works for your story, but it would, I think, help deal with the
>>particular problem.
>
>
> It will be difficult, but I can try.
>
> What I'm thinking at the moment is to actually cut out the description
> of Crane Green at the start -- focus entirely on Yusyaa vs the
> Earthocha, with Crane a faceless blob on the sidelines. Once the reader
> groks who/what Yusyaa is (and I can inclue some more of the situation
> about the Earthocha too), then Pennon Gold sends for tiren and I can
> focus on it for the rest of the scene. With a side of Yusyaa pondering
> the ramifications of the pronoun "him" for a paragraph.
I would concentrate on the same descriptive efforts you would with human
characters. When you introduce a character, define him well enough, in
that paragraph, for your reader to recall him, her, it, shem or tiren.
Then, alternately use the descriptive handles you attached to refer to
that character, so the audience doesn't forget. You didn't introduce
too many characters, or too much new sociology, you just went a little
too far trying to spread out the details, so the reader has to go back
and forth trying to determine which characteristic belongs to who, or what.
>
> Scene 2 will be harder. But some of the things that are in there and
> confusing, are things I put in because I thought it better to inclue
> before introducing them properly; that's clearly not working (aka
> counterproductive) so it'll be easy enough to take them out again. So:
> Paul, then Horn briefly; then everyone at dinner a faceless blob except
> for Pennon Gold. Then Tome.
From my perspective, stop at the entrance. Note that Paul is dressed
improperly, and at that moment, do a descriptive photograph for
everyone, that includes some social content as well. "there were, a
rough count, thirty two sentient bodies in the facility, shared between
perhaps a dozen minds. Paul swept aside a temptation to feel
intimidated by the numbers. He'd long since discovered that, in the
case of the Jlipoch, six heads weren't remotely better than one."
>
> Does that sound manageable, as a reader?
In the end, your method will always be best, because it will ring true
to the prose. But there are several ways to skin the cat. I prefer to
keep the skin whole, it makes for better static electricity experiments.
But I digress.
>
> An alternative would be to add (a) scene(s) to the start, but the most
> obvious scene that comes to mind would just be two Earthoch lost in
> their own little romantic world, and that wouldn't be much help. (Plus
> I'd rather leave them their privacy.) I can brainstorm alternatives if
> necessary, of course, it just doesn't seem parsimonious.
You and I may use parsimonious differently.
--
Bill Swears
Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?
Helen Hall
<zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>
>I'd love to be able to figure out a way to make these acceptable to a
>ready, but I think the description thing is probably more important. At
>the very least, these things will only be a problem in the present
>setting, while the description thing is going to haunt me for the rest
>of my life.
If you want a quick response, then I can't really help, but if you'd
like a crit for longer term purposes, then if you email me the first
three chapters (or say 50 pages if your chapters are unusually
short/long), then I'll see what I can do over the next couple of weeks.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Helen Hall
<zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>I do most of my used book shopping when I happen to be in
>Wellington. --Which will next be May, for graduation. Did I mention I
>finished writing my mini-thesis? <bounce bounce>
You slipped that in most cunningly. :-) Congratulations!
Elizabeth
> mentioning how annoying *that* aspect of Earthocha is. I thought I'd
> got it right, but I've still got first-readers saying that a major
> problem is that they can't visualise my characters.(1)
In the book I read, I just visualized them as human, unless there was an
actual "chiton" or something in the sentence.
> (1) There are other major problems which don't help matters:
> a) for one of the species I use the pronoun tir/tiren/tira;
> b) in the military setting I use, people are referred to always and
> exclusively by rank/position, never by name.
Which were both a little confusing, but not so much that I got thrown out
of the story.
If you'll still want comments on the chapter this weekend, please send it
to me.
--
Elizabeth. elizabeth ta smallinfinity tod ten
http://scriniary.smallinfinity.net
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pollyc/
J. F. Cornwall
What about Larry Nivens' "Known Space" stories with the Jotok
(5-"limbed" collective beings)?
Jim
jam...@echeque.com
Zeborah wrote:
> Oh yes, that's nice. Those are similar to my Jlipocha, though
> Vinge's pack animals in _A Fire Upon the Deep_ were a bit closer.
Vinge's creatures had both individual and collective minds - the
individuals were not sentient, but were nonetheless moral beings, as
was apparent when fragments of the individual resembling Lenin (I
forget his name) were forcibly merged with fragments of very decent
schoolteacher. The individuals were moral agents, capable of
individual good and evil, even if they could not think very clearly.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
BDHuCXd7O2qFYKwJ1VtWwYWsEA5NWFZIzDJDutHk
43eyoPivdoO1D2P8XnP2Qcyl32CAogJydxd6R0dxN
Khiem Tran
> Here's the thing: I tend to write books where aliens are so commonplace
> that the word "alien" feels wrong: several species working together in
> approximately the same way as men and women work together. My pov
> characters know what a Klentoch looks like just like I know what a man
> looks like, and are as little likely to explain that Jlipocha have
> several-plus bodies as I am to explain that women have two breasts.
>
> And I'm no good at physical description to start with.
>
> can: describing the distinguishing features of *this* Saaliaanoch,
> mentioning how annoying *that* aspect of Earthocha is. I thought I'd
> got it right, but I've still got first-readers saying that a major
> problem is that they can't visualise my characters.(1)
>
> solved by just doing *more* description; I think I have to do something
> qualitatively different. I just don't know what.
Hmm. I'd suggest giving more information about the aliens indirectly, by
reflecting it in their environment. Things like three-legged spacesuits,
and what the plumbing for a Jlipoch cabin looks like. If their
environment and the things around them aren't reflecting too much about
them, then you're probably doing something wrong.
Having read Faith et al in beta, I think this was one of the things that
worked well when you did it - little details like the gift pack of
pinchcakes with three compartments. There'd probably be a lot more
things like that you could throw in. Little bits of reinforcement to
help readers confirm their deductions.
Using objects and artifacts might also give you more opportunity for
description without breaking tight third. A character at home in his
environment isn't going to spend much time noticing the number of legs
his boss has, but his new ceremonial uniform, the foot pedals of his car
and the warning sound of his footsteps are all going to be worth a mention.
Hope this helps,
Khiem
(Posting while scatterbrained today, sorry for any lapses...)
Alex Clark
. . .
> The *specific* way I'm writing this, I have two pov characters. One has
> been among the multiple species for... oh, at least 30 years. The other
> is young and naive but has still been among them several years, and
> worse, he's known all the other characters about for two years.
Perhaps basing the descriptions on what you expect the PoV characters
to notice is a way to paint yourself into a tight corner. I don't see
any reason why tight-third must require that the narrator not notice
what the PoV character would not notice at the moment. There are other
ways to work it.
First, strict adherence to chronology is not necessary, especially
where supporting information is concerned, so it would be reasonable to
mention things that a PoV character used to notice, or would notice at
some other time. Second, the story is not merely between the narrator
and the PoV character; the reader is also involved in a written story
(assuming that it gets read). Therefore, the reader's PoV (to the
extent that it may be reasonably guessed at) should be taken into
account. The narrator's job is not only to communicate about the PoV
character's PoV, but also to communicate it intelligibly to the reader.
If the PoV character would agree that the description matters to the
reader, then you may take it that you have that character's blessing
when you describe something that he/she/it/tir/whatever takes for
granted.
But if you go looking for descriptions that might be very specific to
the PoV character's consciousness at the moment, the results could
wander pretty far afield, for example: "Mary thought that Uglob had
looked better when his hair was dyed green, but his mandibles had grown
so much since his promotion that green might not work for him any
more." All without even mentioning that the hair grows around the
mandibles, because anyone (except the reader) knows that.
OTOH, you can set up the PoV character in a situation where she will
notice what you want to describe, for example (assuming that you want
to describe hair around the mandibles while also mentioning tentacles):
"Uglob was tastefully dressed, as always, but the fluorescent light
made the mauve hair around his mandibles clash violently with the
violet tattoos on his tentacles."
OTOOH (Uglob has at least three hands), you could consider knowledge
that is currently being processed by the PoV character's unconscious
mind to be a relevant part of the PoV, so that the description of
familiar characters is not a departure from the immediate PoV at all.
--
Alex Clark
Soft, baggy birds squatted on the rocks, snickering, "Saidso, saidso."
- _The Last Unicorn_, by Peter S. Beagle
Nicola Browne
> Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
>
> > I almost posted a "what he said" post just now. I've sent the second
> > e-mail I said I'd get to in a day or so, because, well, I enjoyed the
> > read. You can post any portion of either of those e-mails you think
> > might be useful in forum, by the way. Even if the useful portion is
> > deconstructing the bunk I'm trying to sell you.
>
> It's all useful, even in those few places I don't perfectly agree with
> you. Thank you!
>
> > I would concentrate on the same descriptive efforts you would with human
> > characters. When you introduce a character, define him well enough, in
> > that paragraph, for your reader to recall him, her, it, shem or tiren.
> > Then, alternately use the descriptive handles you attached to refer to
> > that character, so the audience doesn't forget. You didn't introduce
> > too many characters, or too much new sociology, you just went a little
> > too far trying to spread out the details, so the reader has to go back
> > and forth trying to determine which characteristic belongs to who, or what.
>
> <nod> Yes, that makes sense, and sounds just like something I'd do.
>
> > From my perspective, stop at the entrance. Note that Paul is dressed
> > improperly, and at that moment, do a descriptive photograph for
> > everyone, that includes some social content as well. "there were, a
> > rough count, thirty two sentient bodies in the facility, shared between
> > perhaps a dozen minds. Paul swept aside a temptation to feel
> > intimidated by the numbers. He'd long since discovered that, in the
> > case of the Jlipoch, six heads weren't remotely better than one."
>
> <nod> I'd thought that was what I was doing, but I think it was the
> wrong kind of photograph.
>
> > > An alternative would be to add (a) scene(s) to the start, but the most
> > > obvious scene that comes to mind would just be two Earthoch lost in
> > > their own little romantic world, and that wouldn't be much help. (Plus
> > > I'd rather leave them their privacy.) I can brainstorm alternatives if
> > > necessary, of course, it just doesn't seem parsimonious.
> >
> > You and I may use parsimonious differently.
>
> Well, just that I don't like to add a scene whose only purpose is to
> make things clear, without actually developing the plot. Of course, if
> it's the only thing that'd make things clear, that's another matter. :-)
>
In practise I find that rarely happens. Even in the silly example about
breasts I posted what tends to emerge is character. Inevitably
descriptive
details reveal info about the person described and the person doing
the describing so that it may be possible to cut some other stuff
to do with character alone( if any exists.)
As I said before description is only really a discrete thing when
plonked into the narrative like the purple passages in 'Cold comfort
farm.'In most contemporary writing it's just there quietly doing its
job while advancing the story.
I'm battling my rewrite at them moment and I've been trying a new
approach
I'm writing the new story in the same file as the old one so I can paste
any
useful stuff into the new version( which diverges significantly
from the previous with new POV characters and a major plot/character
strand axed)
I thought I'd spent some time describing a village and I didn't want
to rewrite that as it was the same village in the new story. In fact
most of the original description was so tied up with
the particular circumstances in which it was viewed by the POV
character (who is different in the rewrite) I could use very little
of it as it was and still had to spend ages rejigging it.
I also think that while it is a worthy ideal for every part of
story to fulfil more than one function, when writing you don't always
know what that function will be until later. The bits that don't do much
tend not to be clear until revision. It quite often happens that a bit
of scene or character setting - description if you want to call it
that - turns out to contain something essential to the plot later on.
I think of it as 'colouring in'. The basic stuff happening is a
line drawing maybe even a cartoon and all the enriching stuff is the
colour. Oddly, thinking about the colour actually gives rise to ideas
about the line drawing and has an impact on all the things that
change a narrative into a novel. It expands the potential of the story
by giving you a richer palate to play with. Does that make sense?
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Nicola Browne
news:1140081915.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
> Zeborah wrote:
> . . .
> > The *specific* way I'm writing this, I have two pov characters. One has
> > been among the multiple species for... oh, at least 30 years. The other
> > is young and naive but has still been among them several years, and
> > worse, he's known all the other characters about for two years.
>
> Perhaps basing the descriptions on what you expect the PoV characters
> to notice is a way to paint yourself into a tight corner. I don't see
> any reason why tight-third must require that the narrator not notice
> what the PoV character would not notice at the moment. There are other
> ways to work it.
There are, but not if you are doing a tightly filtered third.That is
often the constraint the writer has set herself - tight third = first
person with different pronouns : )
> First, strict adherence to chronology is not necessary, especially
> where supporting information is concerned, so it would be reasonable to
> mention things that a PoV character used to notice, or would notice at
> some other time.
That is true but I think it has to be handled carefully.Few novels
can handle pages of 'flash back' without disrupting the tension
in the here and now of the story. It can be done but it is quite a
tough trick.
Second, the story is not merely between the narrator
> and the PoV character; the reader is also involved in a written story
> (assuming that it gets read). Therefore, the reader's PoV (to the
> extent that it may be reasonably guessed at) should be taken into
> account. The narrator's job is not only to communicate about the PoV
> character's PoV, but also to communicate it intelligibly to the reader.
> If the PoV character would agree that the description matters to the
> reader, then you may take it that you have that character's blessing
> when you describe something that he/she/it/tir/whatever takes for
> granted.
I think this is what I would call the purist/pragmatist tension in
a story and again I think it has to be handled carefully so that
information doesn't clunk and so that it feels to the reader
that the POV character is not stepping out of the story to impart
necessary information.
> But if you go looking for descriptions that might be very specific to
> the PoV character's consciousness at the moment, the results could
> wander pretty far afield, for example: "Mary thought that Uglob had
> looked better when his hair was dyed green, but his mandibles had grown
> so much since his promotion that green might not work for him any
> more." All without even mentioning that the hair grows around the
> mandibles, because anyone (except the reader) knows that.
I think you can smuggle in that information without it appearing odd
to the reader. eg
' Mary thought that Uglob had looked better with the wiry hair
surrounding his madibles dyed earth-natural green -at least when he
first did it.
Now, what with the rapid growth in his mandibles since his promotion
the dye job didn't work. She didn't know why, except it seemed too
flauntingly attention seeking for his new position. Still, what did
she know about Hrnigling aesthetics...'
That could in a certain set of circumstances tell you something about
Mary, Uglob, his physical traits and the social mileu they are
operating in.
> OTOH, you can set up the PoV character in a situation where she will
> notice what you want to describe, for example (assuming that you want
> to describe hair around the mandibles while also mentioning tentacles):
> "Uglob was tastefully dressed, as always, but the fluorescent light
> made the mauve hair around his mandibles clash violently with the
> violet tattoos on his tentacles."
That too, I think there are many ways of doing it.
> OTOOH (Uglob has at least three hands), you could consider knowledge
> that is currently being processed by the PoV character's unconscious
> mind to be a relevant part of the PoV, so that the description of
> familiar characters is not a departure from the immediate PoV at all.
>
Yep - that's another way, but I think part of the difficulty for
Zeborah, if I'm understanding her right, is that she doesn't
particularly
notice the visual details she processes in real life so its
less that its not natural for the POV character to notice
stuff, than that it's not natural for Zeborah to be aware of what
kind of stuff is generally being noticed.
I hope that doesn't misrepresent the problem.
Nicola Browne
>> > The other thing that might be useful is not to think of description
> > as 'description' and therefore scary - it is totally of a piece
> > with the business of writing. You have a scene ( however you define it)
> > Who is present? what are they doing? Where are they? What props are
> > they working/noticing in that place? If people are communicating how
> > are they doing it? How are they reading each other?
> <snip>
>
> <nod> I do this much more than I used to. Still need practice.
>
I can show you how I do it if you like, though it might make tedious
reading.
Jonathan L Cunningham
> Jonathan L Cunningham <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>
> > What people tell me is that it has to be the telling detail.
>
> Right....
>
> > What I've *actually* found, is that you can substitute something else
> > for detail.
> <snip>
> Hmm.
>
> <snip>
> > So maybe non-descriptive writers should aim primarily at readers who
> > are interested in action/dialogue/clever word play/ideas/settings[2]
> > rather than having a scene painted for them. With just enough clues
> > and description to satisfy the middle ground of readers. "Just enough"
> > is a less daunting prospect than learning to write prose paintings.
>
> More daunting for me. Prose paintings is something I don't want to do;
> "just enough" is something I don't know *how* to do. Hence this thread.
Exactly! The one sentence summary of what I was saying is "Just enough
is enough - you don't have to do more than that."
> > In other words, you cannot please everybody. Whom do you wish to please?
>
> Anyone who might actually be interested in the book. It's all very well
So you want to please everyone, then? Wow! You're more ambitious than
me! I'd be content if only a billion people wanted to read mine :-)
> saying, "Oh well, it's not group X's kind of book", but if I say that
> about groups Y, Z, A, B, C, D and E then there'll be about three people
> left in the world who don't belong to any of the groups I've excluded.
Seriously, although this is not the question you were asking, I think
there is a real issue here, which *might* impinge on the queston: *are*
you trying to please groups Y, Z, A, B, C, D and E? Because, as I said,
that might not be possible.
If group Z wants chocolate, and group C hates chocolate, you *cannot*
please both of them, and if you try, you'll please neither, editors
will laugh at you, and your book won't be published.
A lot of the "don't worry about who is the target audience" advice boils
down to "please yourself, then at least one person will like it" because
that usually translates into "lots of other people will likt it too".
So, how much description would *you* want? And what's wrong with it?
If your beta readers think there's a problem, are they right? Or are
they the wrong beta readers? Or are you trying to please them??
Nothing wrong with pleasing your beta readers, but nothing you've said
has convinced me there's anything wrong with your (lack of) description;
while at the same time I can easily believe that many people feel that
there is something wrong: a lack of description. (Anyone reading that
last sentence at 700 wpm should go back and read it again more slowly.)
I'm not being argumentative: I'm trying to be helpful. It's just that
I'm not convinced (yet?) that the problem is the one you think it is.
I wonder if it's possible to post an example. (Posting an example of
what isn't there can be tricky.)
Jonathan
P.S. I haven't read all the rest of the thread yet, but I, too, am
tempted by the idea of running a specialist second-hand SF bookshop - so
much so, that I even started acquiring stock for it. You can guess the
problem: I've read less than half the books in my "stock" ...
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> A lot of the "don't worry about who is the target audience" advice boils
> down to "please yourself, then at least one person will like it" because
> that usually translates into "lots of other people will likt it too".
>
The other half of the argument being "you know how to please yourself
and whether you please yourself. What other people will like is a lot
less certain, and even if you knew what they liked you might not be able
to produce it."
R. L.
Cunningham) wrote:
>Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
/snip/
>> And I'm no good at physical description to start with.
/snip/
>What I've *actually* found, is that you can substitute something else
>for detail. Reading aloud (to a writing group), I sometimes can get
>away with *no* description at all, by distracting them: either action,
>or posing a puzzle, or a bit of (disguised) infodump about something
>else.
That's interesting. Maybe if there's a pause where readers expect
physical/visual description, some readers will fill in the visuals for
themselves. Maybe figuring that if the author isn't specifying, it doesn't
matter, so their own imagination is free to supply something.
There was a thread on this a while back, I quoted some passages from a
popular thriller writer who hardly used any description throughout the
book; one of the titles was DIRTY WORK.
>Frex, if Jack says he's meet a Fay, and Roland says that Fay are
>terribly dangerous, people don't ask what Fay look like: they want to
>know what's dangerous about them. (All written out, as a dinner
>conversation.) They also *don't* ask what food they're eating, or
>what the room looks like ... it doesn't occur to them. I don't know
>what "visual" readers are "seeing" with a passage like that - but
>even they don't complain (when it works).
>
>(snip)
>> I'd love to be able to figure out a way to make these acceptable to a
>> ready, but I think the description thing is probably more important. At
>> the very least, these things will only be a problem in the present
>> setting, while the description thing is going to haunt me for the rest
>> of my life.
>
>I think the description thing is a real problem (for some of us) but it
>may not be as bad as you/we think. Because, I'm also a non-descriptive
>reader. And I don't think I'm alone. And I think even a little
>description can go a long way: there are certainly writers who stay
>off my "must buy" list because they put in too much description, and
>it's the beautiful and evocative descriptions which *their* readers
>love so much.
Description I don't like bothers me more than lack of description. Tho I do
love the beautiful and evocative kind when it's good enough
>So maybe non-descriptive writers should aim primarily at readers who
>are interested in action/dialogue/clever word play/ideas/settings[2]
>rather than having a scene painted for them. With just enough clues
>and description to satisfy the middle ground of readers. "Just enough"
>is a less daunting prospect than learning to write prose paintings.
>
>In other words, you cannot please everybody. Whom do you wish to please?
Makes sense to me. If an editor really wants more description, it can
always be put in.
[....]
--
RL at houseboatonstyx com (insert one 'the')
Nicola Browne
news:ddfr-B63430.1...@news.isp.giganews.com
Well,clearly that worked for you. Though there was a lot less
description of details in your posted excerpts of 'Harold' than I,
personally,would find ideal, that lack did not impact on the plot.
However, if lack of visualisation clues make a story difficult
to follow, I think there is a problem.
I don't agree with RL (so what's new?) that an editor would ask
for more description if it were lacking. If an editor
could not follow the plot because it was not anchored in some
imaginable reality then the story is not going to get commissioned.
I don't see 'description' as an add on flourish but part of the bread
and butter of the story. Some people do more than is strictly essential
to the plot because they like the richness of it, but at the barest
minimum the reader has to have enough description
to keep track of what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
R. L.
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
/snip/
>However, if lack of visualisation clues make a story difficult
>to follow, I think there is a problem.
Was anyone talking about that severe a lack? We were talking about "just
enough" visual description.
/snip/
>I don't see 'description' as an add on flourish but part of the bread
>and butter of the story. Some people do more than is strictly essential
>to the plot because they like the richness of it, but at the barest
>minimum the reader has to have enough description
>to keep track of what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
Yes, "just enough" description, as we were saying.
Of course if a writer used more description than an editor wanted, the
editor could ask him to cut it (tho I'd think it would be harder to cut
excess than to add more). But I'd think the best strategy for each writer
would be to put in at least "just enough" plus whatever amount is
comfortable for him short of "much too much." :-) Then listen to an editor
-- or to a WIDE selection of test readers like some published books of the
sort he is aiming at.
Nicola Browne
news:9nr9v1p7vnsoflv8o...@4ax.com
>
> Was anyone talking about that severe a lack?
>
Jonathan L Cunningham
> "R. L." <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in message
> news:9nr9v1p7vnsoflv8o...@4ax.com
> >
> > Was anyone talking about that severe a lack?
> >
> Yes. I thought so.
> >
I wasn't talking about that severe a lack.
I usually try to write literally, and say what I mean.
The trouble is, when I state the obvious, it's because I'm
asking people to re-think something, but (unfortunately) people
will insist on assuming that I can't mean what I said, because
it is obvious, so I must be implying something different.
So, when I say "you only need enough description" there is a
tendency to interpret that as "you don't need much description".
But that's not what I said or meant. I said what I meant, and
I meant what I said. (I'm beginning to feel a bit like
Humpty-Dumpty here.)
So, yes, we all agree we need *some* description. Zeborah's
question is about how to do what is needful.
My question was, are you sure you haven't already done what is needful?
Plus the (intended to be encouraging) thought that, maybe even if
Zeborah does need more description for the readers to differentiate
her aliens, she might not be as far off from it as she fears.
Or, to put the same point a third way: what is enough?
N.B. Words again chosen with care: the question "what is
enough?" is *not* the same question as "how much is enough?"
Which is *again* making the same point, already beaten to death.
Jonathan
R. L.
> If an editor
>could not follow the plot because it was not anchored in some
>imaginable reality then the story is not going to get commissioned.
That's a good distinction -- between what a visual-liking reader might
want, and what an editor (say, the editor of DIRTY WORK or some of the
Parker/Spenser books or some Asimov books) might need to follow the plot.
But....
>I don't see 'description' as an add on flourish but part of the bread
>and butter of the story. Some people do more than is strictly essential
>to the plot because they like the richness of it, but at the barest
>minimum the reader has to have enough description
>to keep track of what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
Maybe different things are being meant by 'description.' Personally I like
at least some sensory description; because the books I mentioned above
lack it, I seldom read them; but when I do read them, I don't have any
problem following the plot.
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-B63430.1...@news.isp.giganews.com
>
> > In article <1hauyh2.2398lo1rnum30N%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> > sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> >
> > > A lot of the "don't worry about who is the target audience" advice boils
> > > down to "please yourself, then at least one person will like it" because
> > > that usually translates into "lots of other people will likt it too".
> > >
> >
> > The other half of the argument being "you know how to please yourself
> > and whether you please yourself. What other people will like is a lot
> > less certain, and even if you knew what they liked you might not be able
> > to produce it."
>
>
> Well,clearly that worked for you. Though there was a lot less
> description of details in your posted excerpts of 'Harold' than I,
> personally,would find ideal, that lack did not impact on the plot.
> However, if lack of visualisation clues make a story difficult
> to follow, I think there is a problem.
I agree. But the solution is to rewrite into a novel that still pleases
you--ideally pleases you better.
There are two features of the author that are relevant here. One
involves the author's taste in fiction--that's the one I'm arguing you
should write for. The other involves the fact that he is the author, and
therefor knows lots of stuff that the reader won't know unless the
author someone conveys it to the reader. That's the "make a story
difficult to follow" issue. I agree that if the only reason you like it
is that you know stuff the reader won't know, there is indeed a problem.
Zeborah
> "Alex Clark" <alexb...@pennswoods.net> wrote in message
> news:1140081915.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
>
> > Perhaps basing the descriptions on what you expect the PoV characters
> > to notice is a way to paint yourself into a tight corner. I don't see
> > any reason why tight-third must require that the narrator not notice
> > what the PoV character would not notice at the moment. There are other
> > ways to work it.
>
> There are, but not if you are doing a tightly filtered third.That is
> often the constraint the writer has set herself - tight third = first
> person with different pronouns : )
Which is exactly how I write.
<snip>
> Yep - that's another way, but I think part of the difficulty for
> Zeborah, if I'm understanding her right, is that she doesn't
> particularly
> notice the visual details she processes in real life so its
> less that its not natural for the POV character to notice
> stuff, than that it's not natural for Zeborah to be aware of what
> kind of stuff is generally being noticed.
> I hope that doesn't misrepresent the problem.
That's an excellent summary.
In addition, or perhaps just in expansion, because I'm writing in a
made-up world: it's not natural for me to *create* the kind of stuff
that's generally being noticed. I finished an entire book without
knowing what one of the species really looked like, and when you don't
know what they look like it's awfully hard to inclue it....
Zeborah
> On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:27:27 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
> <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> /snip/
>
> >However, if lack of visualisation clues make a story difficult
> >to follow, I think there is a problem.
>
> Was anyone talking about that severe a lack? We were talking about "just
> enough" visual description.
I've been talking about that severe a lack being possibly my problem.
Jonathan has been suggesting that I might not have that severe a lack
and that it might not be a problem, but based on the various feedback
I've received from a variety of people -- both those whose thing it
isn't and those whose thing it is -- and based on other feedback I've
had for other stories, and the knowledge about my writing I have as a
result, I know for a fact that I have *some* problem.
R. L.
/snip/
>In addition, or perhaps just in expansion, because I'm writing in a
>made-up world: it's not natural for me to *create* the kind of stuff
>that's generally being noticed. I finished an entire book without
>knowing what one of the species really looked like, and when you don't
>know what they look like it's awfully hard to inclue it....
I've got a pretty clear picture of Niven's Kzinti and Puppeteers (dunno if
it's accurate). I have no idea what the aliens looked like in Asimov's THE
GODS THEMSELVES, and it didn't bother me at all. I wanted to know more
about their lifestyle and how they thought and felt, but more physical
description would have just cluttered it up for me. Same with Lewis's
Pffltriggi(sp?) in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, and Forward's aliens. As a
reader, if biology doesn't affect character, I don't care much about it.
Catja Pafort
> "Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >> > The other thing that might be useful is not to think of description
> > > as 'description' and therefore scary - it is totally of a piece
> > > with the business of writing. You have a scene ( however you define it)
> > > Who is present? what are they doing? Where are they? What props are
> > > they working/noticing in that place? If people are communicating how
> > > are they doing it? How are they reading each other?
> > <snip>
> >
> > <nod> I do this much more than I used to. Still need practice.
> >
> I can show you how I do it if you like, though it might make tedious
> reading.
You always say that, and then you come out with the most interesting
things.
Catja
Zeborah
> "Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1hat9h0.1uunsx81x6ubelN%zeb...@gmail.com
>
> >> > The other thing that might be useful is not to think of description
> > > as 'description' and therefore scary - it is totally of a piece
> > > with the business of writing.
<snip more>
> > <nod> I do this much more than I used to. Still need practice.
> >
> I can show you how I do it if you like, though it might make tedious
> reading.
That would be great!
Nicola Browne
news:1havlb2.7dbf6gyq7mvoN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid
> >
> I wasn't talking about that severe a lack.
Maybe not but Zeborah was, I think.
> I usually try to write literally, and say what I mean.
I know.
Nicky
Jonathan L Cunningham
Fair enough.
I'm way over at the "doesn't need that kind of description" end of the
spectrum -- that's why I joined the discussion, the problem is one of my
difficulties too -- so it's entirely possible I wouldn't notice the
problem in your writing. But if we are both over at the "low levels of
description" tail of the bell curve, then I agree, it *is* a problem for
anything intended to have general appeal.
I've now read the rest of the thread, including the directly relevant
comments and those from people who read your first chapter. It sounded
to me like there might be too much description! <g> The problem
being that the setting is very rich.
I'd probably need to read your first chapter (since the issue is about
how to in-clue the description when jumping into a milieu of mixed
monsters) to be able to make concrete suggestions, but I'm probably too
far over into the "likes complicated settings/doesn't need visuals"
range to be a right person for that.
My one sentence summary of (what look to me like) the most useful
suggestions so far, is that: you need to introduce immediate mnemonic
tags to identify the characters, so you can drip-feed description
without readers getting lost, then keep 'em interested with other
stuff while you drip-feed the details. Is that a fair summary?
Jonathan
Jonathan L Cunningham
> "Jonathan L Cunningham" <sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:1havlb2.7dbf6gyq7mvoN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid
>
> > >
> > I wasn't talking about that severe a lack.
> Maybe not but Zeborah was, I think.
> > I usually try to write literally, and say what I mean.
> I know.
Sorry - I was feeling a bit tired and defensive. (That's like
when Hollywood actors are "tired and emotional" except I was
grumpy for a different reason. ;-) )
Jonathan
Brian M. Scott
<use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid> wrote in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> Nicky wrote:
What you said. Instructive, too; Nicky's a good teacher.
Brian
Patricia C. Wrede
> Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>> Yep - that's another way, but I think part of the difficulty for
>> Zeborah, if I'm understanding her right, is that she doesn't
>> particularly
>> notice the visual details she processes in real life so its
>> less that its not natural for the POV character to notice
>> stuff, than that it's not natural for Zeborah to be aware of what
>> kind of stuff is generally being noticed.
>> I hope that doesn't misrepresent the problem.
>
> That's an excellent summary.
You're an author. It's your job to figure out how to present characters who
*aren't like you.* Unless, of course, you're going to have all your
characters, including the non-human ones, be psychologically exactly like
you.
Sometimes, doing this involves making a conscious decision, up front, that
this particular viewpoint character is going to be unlike you in some very
specific way -- absent-minded, visually oriented, hair-trigger temper,
sound-sensitive, whatever -- and then going over every scene where he/she/it
is the viewpoint and making sure that the character *is* missing important
stuff, or noticing shapes and colors, or blowing up over stupid little
things, or flinching every time someone coughs, or whatever.
You don't have to know "what kind of stuff is generally noticed." You only
have to decide what *this particular* character would notice, or not, and
let him/her/it notice those things, according to his/her/its particular
cultural background and degree of familiarity with the other people.
And being familiar with a bunch of non-human characters does *not* mean that
somebody would not notice things about their appearance; it just means
they'll notice things in a slightly different way. When I go out to dinner
with my friends and their shoulders are tense and they have frown lines in
their foreheads, I know they've had a bad day; when I come home and Merlin's
whiskers are back and his ears are twitching and he's moving around in a
cautious slink, I'm pretty sure that he's in a bad mood because Nimmie
ambushed him (if he's slinking, but his ears and whiskers are forward and
not back, there's probably a mouse somewhere).
> In addition, or perhaps just in expansion, because I'm writing in a
> made-up world: it's not natural for me to *create* the kind of stuff
> that's generally being noticed. I finished an entire book without
> knowing what one of the species really looked like, and when you don't
> know what they look like it's awfully hard to inclue it....
This brought me up quite short. Because if you don't know that a particular
species is eight feet tall with four arms, you don't know that the
particular character who belongs to that species has to duck when he goes
through standard doorways, or that he's the logical person to *always* get
stuck carrying the supplies. You'll also be missing important cultural
markers; an amphibious, frog-like species is highly unlikely to come up with
an idiom such as "she has more hair than wit," for instance.
If all your species have the same physical capabilities, you're going to run
smack up against the "call a rabbit a smeerp" problem, only in this case,
it'll be "call a human a Rigellian." You won't have a scene in which a
human character walks into the control room to talk to his partner, kicks a
couple of the partner's ropey coils off of one half of the couch, and then
demands that the partner pay attention (he can tell the partner isn't,
because the partner is only looking at the customs document with two of his
six eyes). All of that functions as incluing about what the partner looks
like, yes, but that's not the primary purpose of those particular
descriptive bits in the scenelet-description I just gave. Their *primary*
function is to show the way these two partners relate to each other; if they
were both human beings, the first guy might walk in, kick the stool out from
under his partner's feet, and demand that the partner put down that book and
*look* at him when he's trying to discuss something important. And without
knowing what the alien character is like, I wouldn't be able to make up the
right physical interactions to show that these two people are really, really
comfortable with each other and really know each other's quirks.
Not knowing that one of your species resembles a twenty-meter python with
six eyes and three manipulating-tentacles that serve as hands, while another
looks like a large, long-haired teddy bear with four arms, means that those
characters aren't going to interact in the ways that they *would* naturally
interact because of their physical differences. The pythonesque character
isn't going to tease the teddy-bear about the way she sheds, any more than
the teddy-bear is going to say stuff like "Pay attention with at least four
of your eyes, will you?" because you *don't know* that the teddy bear has
long fur that sheds or that the python has six eyes. It's exactly the same
as not deciding that your French character is a six-foot-five beanpole of a
former basketball player, your American character is a four-foot-eleven
gymnastic star, and your Japanese character is a current Sumo wrestler -- if
you don't know what your characters are like physically, they're not likely
to interact with each other and with their environment in any way that says
anything other than "average person of average height."
If this doesn't come naturally, and you know it, then you may just have to
*decide* -- that is, instead of waiting and hoping that you'll figure out
who/what these people are as the story goes along, you may have to recognize
up-front that this just isn't likely to happen, and sit down and decide what
your Jovians, Betelgeusians, Rigellians, Centaurii, etc. are like
physically. It's just a matter of consciously compensating for a weakness
that you know you have. You may find that for you it works better to do a
draft of the story and *then* make up everybody's physical characteristics,
and go back and put them in scene by scene; or you may find that it works
best for you to make everybody up before you start and keep reminding
yourself of it in every scene you do. It really doesn't matter what the
order is, as long as it all ends up in there by the fiinal draft.
Patricia C. Wrede
Bill Swears
Bill
--
Bill Swears
Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?
David Friedman
Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
> Yes, but who is the "Nicoky" Catja was responding to?
The chemically supplemented version?
Bill Swears
> In article <11vc1td...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, but who is the "Nicoky" Catja was responding to?
>
>
> The chemically supplemented version?
>
vice the sweet one. Do women call each other cocky? Is there a sweet
one? How much trouble can I get in just asking questions?
Nicola Browne
news:1havlb2.7dbf6gyq7mvoN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid
> >
> I wasn't talking about that severe a lack.
Maybe not but Zeborah was, I think.
> I usually try to write literally, and say what I mean.
I know.
Nicky
Nicola Browne
news:11vc7gu...@corp.supernews.com
> > I thought it might refer to level of self assurance. The cocky Nicky
> vice the sweet one. Do women call each other cocky? Is there a sweet
> one? How much trouble can I get in just asking questions?
>
>
If you need to ask you haven't really understood.
Bill Swears
> "Bill Swears" <wsw...@gci.net> wrote in message
> news:11vc7gu...@corp.supernews.com
>
>
>>>I thought it might refer to level of self assurance. The cocky Nicky
>>
>>vice the sweet one. Do women call each other cocky? Is there a sweet
>>one? How much trouble can I get in just asking questions?
>>
>>
>
> If you need to ask you haven't really understood.
>
> Nicky
>
>
>
>
think the "he didn't get it" stool has my name emblazoned on a little
brass plaque across the edge of the seat.
Nicola Browne
news:1havqvh.isz484trkywmN%use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid
> Nicoky wrote:
>
>> > I can show you how I do it if you like, though it might make tedious
> > reading.
>
> You always say that, and then you come out with the most interesting
> things.
>
Oh no. Now I'm going to come down with a case of performance anxiety.
OK let's say I'm stuck, I've got to the point in a story where I have
two new characters let's call them Alice and George because at this
point I
don't know their names.
They are on a quest and they are about to take the first step on the
road. In my head I have amental picture of all the roads I can
remember - is it a deserted motorway? a bridle path? What is it made
What does it feel like?
I begin:
The limestone road fell steeply away and was lost in the unwelcoming
darkness of a wood.
'Is that the only way?' Alice said. She could feel the every sharp stone
through the thin soles of her silk slippers; neither they nor her feet
were going to last long on this road.
(What is the weather - grim, obviously in one one of my stories so I
carry
on.)
'Do you see another way?'George answered. His hands were thrust deep
within the pockets of his barbour, hers were turning blue, as the cold
rain drenched her fake pashmina and rain made a cat on nine tails of
her hair. She would have liked to flay him with it.
( For me description leads inevitably to character and now I see George
as a big private school type, dressed for bad weather while Alice is
thin and dressed for a ball.I never said my process made sense.But
I know want to know why the hell they're out in the rain so I carry on)
There was no other way - just boggy fields turned grey green by the
rain. George turned up the collar of his waterproof. Water flattened
his hair and sullied its startling blondeness,the face she had thought
was handsome suddenly looked raw boned and bovine. He could have
offered to share his coat.
OK this is all wrong. I can't make this work within my quest.
Alice is not going to cooperate and she belongs in a different book.
I'm back at the top of the hill as before this time with Jana and Ben.
Everything else is the same, but this time they belong.
The familiar pale line of the Farberry road dropped down into Carshaws
wood.
'I don't want to go there in this weather' Jana said, clutching her
good winter cloak round her and wishing she had made a better job of
waxing
it. She tasted the peaty smokiness of her hair as the wind
plastered it against her face and into her mouth.
Cold rain trickled down her back like the fingers of the winter
god- may he sleep quitly till spring. She should have stayed indoors
and finished her dreammaking ( don't know what this - could be good)
'There's no other way. Don't tell me you're afraid of hobgoblins?'
'We could go cross-country.' It wsn't true and she knew it, they were
in the heart of bog coutry and the grey green grasses of the untilled
fields around them disguised mires that would swallow a man alive.
I would say those are both fairly heavy on description - if I
was feeling less fulsome I could go again, this time with Ann and
Mike.
The rough limestone road dipped towards the treeline and
disappeared. Ann, wrapped her coat round her to keep out the worst
of the weather. 'Do we have to go there?'she shouted against the
wind and driving rain. She could barely hear Mike's reply, but they
were in the middle of nowhere and roads were safer than wilds.
All I'm trying to say is that description is part of the
meat (or tofu)of story telling - not the cream on the top.
If you don't know what things look like brain storm, pick on
anything and then extrapolate. That's what I do anyway.
( I haven't forgotten about nine asn sixty ways, honest)
Nicola Browne
> There are two features of the author that are relevant here. One
> involves the author's taste in fiction--that's the one I'm arguing you
> should write for. The other involves the fact that he is the author, and
> therefor knows lots of stuff that the reader won't know unless the
> author someone conveys it to the reader. That's the "make a story
> difficult to follow" issue. I agree that if the only reason you like it
> is that you know stuff the reader won't know, there is indeed a problem.
I don't know how you can write for anyone else but yourself.
I write the story that works for me. Other people's opinions matter,
if I respect their judgement and they help me to see how I could make
a better job of what I'm trying to do, but in the end the only taste
I can rely on is my own and I try to write a book that I can be
satisfied with. ( which is why I'm in mid rewrite with my current
PIA)
Patricia C. Wrede
news:22c9f18a0868f656a2...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> All I'm trying to say is that description is part of the
> meat (or tofu)of story telling - not the cream on the top.
What you said.
If Ann is a tall blonde tomboy and Ben is a short muscular redheaded dock
worker, and they're standing at the top of a cliff in the rain trying to
avoid being seen, their actions and interactions are going to be different
from those of Kitty (a petite blackhaird socialite) and Jim (a middle-sized
wrestler, also black-haired) standing in the mouth of a cave trying to avoid
being seen.
> If you don't know what things look like brain storm, pick on
> anything and then extrapolate. That's what I do anyway.
> ( I haven't forgotten about nine asn sixty ways, honest)
For some people, the descriptions fall out of the story, the way they did in
your selections (and sometimes, you end up with people that just don't work,
as in your first try with Alice and George). For others, the brainstorming
has to happen beforehand (hence the "physical description" parts of all
those character-development sheets that used to be so popular with the
how-to-write folks -- I haven't seen any in a while, but I bet they're still
around), and sometimes, it doesn't come until after the first draft. I tend
to either develop people in advance or have them turn up and develop
themselves in the course of the story the way you did...though if it were
me, I'd probably have continued with Alice and George and chucked whatever
plot outline I'd intended for them, as such a mis-matched pair on some kind
of quest is way more interesting than whatever I'd had planned.
Patricia C. Wrede
Nicola Browne
news:11vckcs...@corp.supernews.com
>
> > >
>though if it were
> me, I'd probably have continued with Alice and George and chucked whatever
> plot outline I'd intended for them, as such a mis-matched pair on some kind
> of quest is way more interesting than whatever I'd had planned.
>
they don't fit, because that's what makes life interesting, but then my
method, like yours, is pretty fluid within the broad confines
of my overall story idea.
However, I have just had the strange experience of
writing out a major character and his sizeable section of plot from
my WIR because he really didn't ever fit. It's a salutory tale
actually of an intuitive writing trying to fix up
a story to make it fit a plan and it didn't work.( Hardly surprising
really but the alternative was harder work)
I would find it hard to retrofit description because when I imagine
something differently the whole story changes. Maybe if Zeborah
intends to add description into her story later she might need to be
flexible as to where the story might then go. It might lurch of the
rails and into an unknown and not necessarily welcome direction.
I would advise against forcing the story into a predetermined
mould because of my own experience.
Nicky ( How I hate learning experiences : ( )
Patricia C. Wrede
> However, I have just had the strange experience of
> writing out a major character and his sizeable section of plot from
> my WIR because he really didn't ever fit. It's a salutory tale
> actually of an intuitive writing trying to fix up
> a story to make it fit a plan and it didn't work.( Hardly surprising
> really but the alternative was harder work)
Was he the fix-up to try to make it fit a plan, or was the fix-up trying to
make him fit the book?
The only time I've ever had stuff like that work was with the Star Wars
books, where neither the story nor the characters were really mine to begin
with. Fascinating experience, and well worth doing (and I don't mean just
financially), but not something I'd expect to apply to my usual way of
writing. That piece of it, anyway.
>
> I would find it hard to retrofit description because when I imagine
> something differently the whole story changes. Maybe if Zeborah
> intends to add description into her story later she might need to be
> flexible as to where the story might then go. It might lurch of the
> rails and into an unknown and not necessarily welcome direction.
> I would advise against forcing the story into a predetermined
> mould because of my own experience.
It depends -- I can retrofit, sometimes, as long as I start with the
constraints imposed by the story-as-it-is-already-written and sort of deduce
what the character *must* be like from that. "Let's see -- he was standing
here in the rain, and I didn't mention wet hair in his eyes, so he must wear
it short, or maybe be bald..." I don't much like doing it that way, but if
I've been careless, sometimes there's no help for it.
Patricia C. Wrede
Zeborah
> Hmm. I'd suggest giving more information about the aliens indirectly, by
> reflecting it in their environment. Things like three-legged spacesuits,
> and what the plumbing for a Jlipoch cabin looks like. If their
> environment and the things around them aren't reflecting too much about
> them, then you're probably doing something wrong.
<nod> I'm bad at thinking about the environment; that's a good
reminder.
> Having read Faith et al in beta, I think this was one of the things that
> worked well when you did it - little details like the gift pack of
> pinchcakes with three compartments.
That was environment? I thought that was socio-political! (Plus it was
fun.) --But of course I see what you mean.
<snip elucidation>
Thanks!
Zeborah
> I also think that while it is a worthy ideal for every part of
> story to fulfil more than one function, when writing you don't always
> know what that function will be until later. The bits that don't do much
> tend not to be clear until revision. It quite often happens that a bit
> of scene or character setting - description if you want to call it
> that - turns out to contain something essential to the plot later on.
I have to be pretty careful to try and have every scene at least somehow
related to the plot. This is not to say that an external reader would
say that every scene is related to plot; but if I go in saying, "Oh
well, this scene can be just about character" or whatever, then my
stories fly off in a million and one directions, all tangential to what
I actually want to write about.
> I think of it as 'colouring in'. The basic stuff happening is a
> line drawing maybe even a cartoon and all the enriching stuff is the
> colour. Oddly, thinking about the colour actually gives rise to ideas
> about the line drawing and has an impact on all the things that
> change a narrative into a novel. It expands the potential of the story
> by giving you a richer palate to play with. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. It's something I was thinking about in relation to someone
else's post, but this is in a clearer metaphor.
Zeborah
<snip an excellent lecture>
> And being familiar with a bunch of non-human characters does *not* mean that
> somebody would not notice things about their appearance; it just means
> they'll notice things in a slightly different way.
*I* wouldn't notice things -- I don't notice haircuts or even dyed hair
unless it's suddenly blue -- but you're right, I'm not everyone and
certainly I'm not my characters.
>When I go out to dinner
> with my friends and their shoulders are tense and they have frown lines in
> their foreheads, I know they've had a bad day; when I come home and Merlin's
> whiskers are back and his ears are twitching and he's moving around in a
> cautious slink, I'm pretty sure that he's in a bad mood because Nimmie
> ambushed him (if he's slinking, but his ears and whiskers are forward and
> not back, there's probably a mouse somewhere).
Gah, I have to make up three sets of alien body language now? :-)
> > In addition, or perhaps just in expansion, because I'm writing in a
> > made-up world: it's not natural for me to *create* the kind of stuff
> > that's generally being noticed. I finished an entire book without
> > knowing what one of the species really looked like, and when you don't
> > know what they look like it's awfully hard to inclue it....
>
> This brought me up quite short. Because if you don't know that a
> particular species is eight feet tall with four arms, you don't know that
> the particular character who belongs to that species has to duck when he
> goes through standard doorways, or that he's the logical person to
> *always* get stuck carrying the supplies. You'll also be missing
> important cultural markers; an amphibious, frog-like species is highly
> unlikely to come up with an idiom such as "she has more hair than wit,"
> for instance.
Well, quite. My books tend to be very dialogue-based; I know my
characters' language patterns, and the things that they say drive what
happens. I don't know what they look like, or how they move, or what
they sound like, so these things rarely drive the plot.
Some of my early writing was practically dialogue plus stage directions;
I'm getting better, but it's still not natural so it's often still
dialogue plus more stage directions...
> If all your species have the same physical capabilities, you're going to run
> smack up against the "call a rabbit a smeerp" problem, only in this case,
> it'll be "call a human a Rigellian."
Well, when I started writing in this setting I defined certain
characteristics of the aliens: so even the one that I didn't know what
it looked like, I knew that it had two joints per limb, and spat acid,
and blinked its ears. I just had a mental block on everything else -- I
think because I simultaneously wanted it to be lizard-like and rejected
that as too cliche, until I finally (for the second book where one is a
viewpoint character) sat down to brainstorm and my beta-reader found me
a really cool picture.
(Well, it was a really cliche picture. But the *skin* was cool, and
suddenly that made all the difference.)
> If this doesn't come naturally, and you know it, then you may just have to
> *decide* -- that is, instead of waiting and hoping that you'll figure out
> who/what these people are as the story goes along, you may have to
> recognize up-front that this just isn't likely to happen, and sit down and
> decide what your Jovians, Betelgeusians, Rigellians, Centaurii, etc. are
> like physically. It's just a matter of consciously compensating for a
> weakness that you know you have. You may find that for you it works
> better to do a draft of the story and *then* make up everybody's physical
> characteristics, and go back and put them in scene by scene; or you may
> find that it works best for you to make everybody up before you start and
> keep reminding yourself of it in every scene you do. It really doesn't
> matter what the order is, as long as it all ends up in there by the fiinal
> draft.
I think that drafting and then adding stuff in is more natural, but
making it up and writing with that in mind is going to come out better,
because I know when I do make up stuff in advance, it often makes its
way in to drive the plot. And it would be nice to have plot driven not
purely by dialogue.
Zeborah
> 'Do you see another way?'George answered. His hands were thrust deep
> within the pockets of his barbour, hers were turning blue, as the cold
> rain drenched her fake pashmina and rain made a cat on nine tails of
> her hair. She would have liked to flay him with it.
All the stuff I've snipped was interesting, but then this:
> ( For me description leads inevitably to character and now I see George
> as a big private school type,
This just went <CLICK>.
<tries to describe click> Um, I think what I got from this is that
character (should) lead(s) inevitably to description -- I know the
characters of my people, so I should be able to use that as a starting
point when I need to figure out what they look like.
Zeborah
> My one sentence summary of (what look to me like) the most useful
> suggestions so far, is that: you need to introduce immediate mnemonic
> tags to identify the characters, so you can drip-feed description
> without readers getting lost, then keep 'em interested with other
> stuff while you drip-feed the details. Is that a fair summary?
Yes, that's the thing that's been easiest for me to latch onto.
Moral #2 that I've drawn: explain everything. (This may only be good
advice for me, because even with that motto in mind I'll
forget/neglect/decide not to explain plenty of things.)
Moral #3: work out what the characters and environment look like before
I start writing. I must do more of Patricia's descriptive exercises
that she posted a couple of months ago; I tried a couple and they were
very useful. (Hey, Patricia, got any more?)
Zeborah
> I would find it hard to retrofit description because when I imagine
> something differently the whole story changes. Maybe if Zeborah
> intends to add description into her story later she might need to be
> flexible as to where the story might then go.
Yes; I think even though it feels more natural to just write and fit the
description in later, I'll get a better story if I work out what these
people look like to start with; things will come out of that more
naturally.
Helen Hall
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>
>I would find it hard to retrofit description because when I imagine
>something differently the whole story changes.
Me too. I will probably sharpen and refine description, but to me a
character's physical appearance is intrinsic to the story.
To take a very trivial example, if Wil had been a strapping 6'2" (rather
than a scrawny 5'6") he would never have considered trying to ride a
nuggle[*] and therefore wouldn't have been dunked in the river. The fact
that the Dead Warrior King Edmund (tall and at least 6') *does* have to
ride a nuggle at the end is therefore a source of comedy. What someone
can and can't do and how other characters react to them is so much tied
up with physical appearance that I really couldn't write very far
without knowing it.
>Maybe if Zeborah
>intends to add description into her story later she might need to be
>flexible as to where the story might then go. It might lurch of the
>rails and into an unknown and not necessarily welcome direction.
>I would advise against forcing the story into a predetermined
>mould because of my own experience.
>
There are two possible problems here. It could be that the writer
doesn't really know what the character looks like. If that's the case,
then it's likely to result in some rather vague writing with the
characters seeming almost interchangeable. I don't feel that just trying
to "add description" isn't going to help much. On the other hand, the
characters may be clear as day in the writer's mind, but that clarity is
not making it out into the story-as-written. I think Zeborah's problem
is the second one. In this case, it is possible to successfully add
description in later.
>
>Nicky ( How I hate learning experiences : ( )
>
Seconded!
Helen
[*] The Shetland version of the dreaded Water Horse, which is much
smaller and less dangerous than the mainland version.
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Helen Hall
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>
>Alice is not going to cooperate and she belongs in a different book.
>I'm back at the top of the hill as before this time with Jana and Ben.
>Everything else is the same, but this time they belong.
>
direction.
>Water flattened
>his hair and sullied its startling blondeness,the face she had thought
> was handsome suddenly looked raw boned and bovine. He could have
>offered to share his coat.
Alice huddled the soaking pashmina more tightly around her thin
shoulders. She had started to shiver. "If you think I'm going down there
--" A deep moan sounded from somewhere back up the road, just beyond
Alice's abandoned car. She spun round with a gasp and took an
involuntary step closer to George. "What? What was that?"
Several more unearthly voices were now raised in a wild ululation.
George's ruddy face had turned an ash grey. "The hounds of Blandok!" he
cried. "Run!" Grabbing Alice's arm, he began to drag her down the stony
road towards the woods...
Though I do take your point in another post that one needs to recognise
the difference between a character that needs a bit of pushing to get
them moving in the right direction and one that shouldn't be in the
story at all.
This scene felt like the beginning of the story and I think once Alice
was propelled firmly into the action, she would reveal hidden depths and
probably end up rescuing George, who initially seems competent but might
crumble under pressure. Alternatively they might both be deeply flawed
people who somehow mesh and complement one another so by learning to
work together they achieve far more than either could have achieved
alone.
On the other hand, I don't start writing things down so early in the
process as you do. By the time I put finger to keyboard, I'll have done
lots of mental scenarios and got my main cast list sorted out and worked
out roughly what they're supposed to be doing before I start to actually
write.
There are things that I find out as I write, but it's not usually the
main characters' main characteristics. Though they might of course
reveal unexpected hidden depths or talents as the detail of the story
emerges.
Helen
Helen Hall
<zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> ( For me description leads inevitably to character and now I see George
>> as a big private school type,
>
>This just went <CLICK>.
>
><tries to describe click> Um, I think what I got from this is that
>character (should) lead(s) inevitably to description -- I know the
>characters of my people, so I should be able to use that as a starting
>point when I need to figure out what they look like.
>
that it wasn't coming out in the writing. But yes, character and
behaviour and physical characteristics are all (for me anyway)
hopelessly intertwined.
Catja Pafort
> What I've *actually* found, is that you can substitute something else
> for detail. Reading aloud (to a writing group), I sometimes can get
> away with *no* description at all, by distracting them: either action,
> or posing a puzzle, or a bit of (disguised) infodump about something
> else.
>
> Frex, if Jack says he's meet a Fay, and Roland says that Fay are
> terribly dangerous, people don't ask what Fay look like: they want to
> know what's dangerous about them. (All written out, as a dinner
> conversation.) They also *don't* ask what food they're eating, or
> what the room looks like ... it doesn't occur to them. I don't know
> what "visual" readers are "seeing" with a passage like that - but
> even they don't complain (when it works).
Even that is slightly different when people read rather than being read
to - I don't think it's exactly the same process, mentally.
For me, having a scene rewritten by the esteemed Pat Wrede <bows> was an
eye-opener, because she did one thing I had not done at all: she _set
the action in scene_. Suddenly there was a building and a time of day
and a mood in the room, and the result - even though the details were
quite wrong - was *much* more vivid than my own efforts had been.
(It was an eye-opener in other respects, too, but this is the main
lesson I took away from it, or let's say this was the most unexpected
lesson.)
I think all of that telling detail adds another layer to the story. No,
you don't _need_ it and you won't miss it, but if it's there, it
enriches the story.
> I think the description thing is a real problem (for some of us) but it
> may not be as bad as you/we think. Because, I'm also a non-descriptive
> reader. And I don't think I'm alone.
I'm a non-visual reader who enjoys having detail in her books. Go
figure. I think part of my problem was equalling 'description' with
'visual description' of which I don't need an awful lot.
> And I think even a little
> description can go a long way: there are certainly writers who stay
> off my "must buy" list because they put in too much description, and
> it's the beautiful and evocative descriptions which *their* readers
> love so much.
Nobody said any different. (I briefly opened 'Gone with the Wind' again
the other day and rolled my eyes, because three pages of describing
Scarlett's face render the thing absolutely unreadable. It's one of the
stories I want to have distilled before I can follow it properly. Oh,
wait, someone already did that. On film.)
'the right details' don't _have_ to be a lot, but I found that in
rewriting Conflicting Loyalties I am now adding more settings and
details, and the story has lost much of its mushyness. (I've also
scrunched it up and taken out six months of settling into a new life and
scenes playing out _eventually_ - they're now happening bang, bang,
bang, one after the other, *much* better.
> So maybe non-descriptive writers should aim primarily at readers who
> are interested in action/dialogue/clever word play/ideas/settings[2]
> rather than having a scene painted for them. With just enough clues
> and description to satisfy the middle ground of readers. "Just enough"
> is a less daunting prospect than learning to write prose paintings.
I'd stick to the 'just enough' philosophy and cast my net a bit wider -
I'll never satisfy the 'must have every detail' audience, but with not
too much adjustment I can keep a lot more people happy than my 'natural'
style would, so I'm aiming to make description second nature.
Apropos learning styles. They were talking about memory on Radio 2
today, and had this thing where they had a list of words you were
supposed to remember, and the tip was that one should try to visualise
the terms in question and link them into a story. Which I did the first
time round (having already heard the trick) but wasn't overly
successful. The second time, I thought 'wait a minute-' and associated a
_movement/sensation_ to each of those items. Kinesthetic learning -
worked much better. Interesting experiment.
Catja
Helen Hall
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>"Alex Clark" <alexb...@pennswoods.net> wrote in message
>news:1140081915.1...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
>
>> First, strict adherence to chronology is not necessary, especially
>> where supporting information is concerned, so it would be reasonable to
>> mention things that a PoV character used to notice, or would notice at
>> some other time.
>That is true but I think it has to be handled carefully.Few novels
>can handle pages of 'flash back' without disrupting the tension
>in the here and now of the story. It can be done but it is quite a
>tough trick.
>
I occasionally get moments of dislocation in the most mundane of
circumstance. Or don't other people get that? I can, for instance, be
sitting watching TV next to my husband of 30+ years and suddenly think,
"How did I end up here?" I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean a
genuine moment of puzzlement -- of wonder even -- that out of all the
possible life paths I ended up *here* in this situation at this moment.
The other time I get something similar is when I'm teaching. Suddenly,
in mid-flow, there's a brain-flip and I see all these faces drinking in
what I'm saying and I get a brief, "Eeek!" moment. How did I end up as a
teacher telling them all this stuff and they're believing me?" It is
only a moment and then I'm firmly back in my role, but it means that I'm
perfectly happy to accept a character pausing to reflect on their
routine or a scene that is totally mundane to them.
>>
>Yep - that's another way, but I think part of the difficulty for
>Zeborah, if I'm understanding her right, is that she doesn't
>particularly
>notice the visual details she processes in real life so its
>less that its not natural for the POV character to notice
>stuff, than that it's not natural for Zeborah to be aware of what
>kind of stuff is generally being noticed.
It doesn't have to be visual, of course. One of my fiction writing
students produced an excellent short story from the POV of an almost
blind person and it was full of sensory detail, both the limited visual
stuff that they could still perceive and sound, touch and smell.
If the problem is that Zeborah is living too much in her head, unaware
of her surroundings, then there are various techniques for learning how
to notice stuff. That's one of the circumstances where I would actually
suggest doing some writing exercises. (Mostly I think they're a waste of
time and you can just learn by writing stories, but that's just my
view.)
Nicola Browne
> Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> > I would find it hard to retrofit description because when I imagine
> > something differently the whole story changes. Maybe if Zeborah
> > intends to add description into her story later she might need to be
> > flexible as to where the story might then go.
>
> Yes; I think even though it feels more natural to just write and fit the
> description in later, I'll get a better story if I work out what these
> people look like to start with; things will come out of that more
> naturally.
>
Probably, though I think it would be a mistake to dump chunks
of description in even at the beginning. You have a whole book to work
with and to my mind description works best when it arises naturally
out of what is going on - so action or diaglogue shows a physical
constraint
and you can sneak in some information about that, then a bit later on
something else a mood change or a scene/costume change might allow
you to sneak in a little more.
eg. George's long stride took him easily over the stepping stones.
Alice shivered at the water's edge. She was five foot two on a tall day
and the stones were a long jump apart.
'George!' she yelled against the roaring of the river...
then later..
Alice knew she must look ridiculous in her borrowed kit and was grateful
there was no mirror to confirm it. George's smile seemed to suggest
otherwise, but then he was drunk and a fool so his judgement
was unreliable. She tucked a few stray strands of newly dyed
dark hair back up into her bonnet and grabbed the serving tray...
I have been thinking about the retrofit business and I realised I do
it with description from time to time when the story sags. I then go
over those sections and re imagine them. I deliberately try to bring
out the background details of the environment to make the story real
again.
This often results in quite radical reworkings of the saddo sections,
but rarely screws up the main plot. I nearly always do it with fight
and battle scenes which take a couple of goes to get right.
In those instances I often don't have enough information in my
head to envisage the scene properly and I have to break off and research
5th century weaponry and shield design or something.
Likewise when a landscape gets too generic I find out what plants would
actuallly grow in my imagined environment find some pictures
and describe them.
It sounds as though that might be part of the answer for you.
Nicky
Helen Hall
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>I don't see 'description' as an add on flourish but part of the bread
>and butter of the story. Some people do more than is strictly essential
>to the plot because they like the richness of it, but at the barest
>minimum the reader has to have enough description
>to keep track of what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
>
I'm with you all the way on this. Even when I did the short play writing
course recently, we had to know what our characters looked and behaved
like. Even though that description wasn't going into the play script
(other than in the list of characters at the beginning), we had to think
about what people could and would do as well as what they were saying or
the scenes wouldn't come alive.
Nicola Browne
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:6e6838f3cf797a7f80...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> > However, I have just had the strange experience of
> > writing out a major character and his sizeable section of plot from
> > my WIR because he really didn't ever fit. It's a salutory tale
> > actually of an intuitive writing trying to fix up
> > a story to make it fit a plan and it didn't work.( Hardly surprising
> > really but the alternative was harder work)
>
> Was he the fix-up to try to make it fit a plan, or was the fix-up trying to
> make him fit the book?
Oh, I raised the issue here a while back. I took quite a long break
from writing the book because it wasn't working. It was a
doppelganger story, but my original plan of producing a magical clone
was going in directions I thought would be unpalatable to the US
market so I followed a good suggestion here to ship in my doppelganger
from somewhere else, and I chose to ship him in from 21st century
London.
I added lots of stuff at the beginning to make this work but
somehow when I read it again 5 or so months after submission
I discovered that it stank. Now no doppleganger, which I hope will
not be a problem.
Nicky