Re: 'mode' for a scene?
- From: R. L. <see-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2005 22:15:51 GMT
On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 21:16:29 +0100, Helen Hall
<mhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>In article <2a7tj1h1g9oempitj85662vbv2bi0uddg4@xxxxxxx>, R. L. <see-
>sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
/snip/
>>I might divide text into 'words that move the story' vs 'substance',
>>ie experience/sensory stuff for its own sake. Motion vs matter, maybe.
>>
>That's an interesting way of looking at things. I really can't think of
>a story at such a micro level myself. At the risk of sounding precious,
>there really shouldn't be any words in there that aren't adding to the
>story in some way.
I didn't mean to get into micro level, or into definition of 'story'. What
I'm seeing (and I think it's an important distinction for me at the moment)
is a difference between 'motion, progress' (presumably of plot etc) and
'experience, substance'.
For example, in the MOSSFLOWER series, there is a lot of sensory and
emotional experience that doesn't move anything: details of food, by-play
with babies.... (Stuff like that _could_ 'move' something, but Jacques
doesn't bother. He just puts in big rich redundant chunks of it, which his
readers presumably enjoy. Or you could say, "They had dinner and set off
well-fed" would 'move' the plot or action or something, but he puts in lots
and lots of heavy detail that slows the plot rather than moving.)
For me right now, I'm putting many 'action' bits into the 'substance'
category. All the blow by blow of a long fight or such, might have a lot of
internal movement, but is really just 'experience' and the plot would move
faster if Jones just shoots the guy. :-)
Of course some of both are needed, or you could just say "Jones went and
got the Ark, end of story." It's like making soup. Needs some food in it
and some water in it, the right proportions for whatever kind of soup it
is.
What else I'm seeing, is a big action scene (eg if the sword vs whip fight
had happened) with a lot of localized movement in it, blow by blow, making
local color details more interesting. Kind of like a souffle as a side
dish. :-) Lots of sound and fury -- but I'd still put it with 'experience'
rather than 'motion.'
/snip/
>>>>What I do find useful are terms like 'topic sentence', 'POV', 'tense',
>>>>'zoom in/out', 'summary vs realtime', etc.
>
>As Patricia has also said, to me "topic sentence" belongs purely in the
>realm of non-fiction, either essays, reports or articles. It just
>doesn't work in fiction -- which is why Word's summarise feature works
>so badly on stories, yet sort of works on essays and reports.
>
>Otherwise it seems that the words that are working for you are the ones
>about choosing *how* to write things not the words that describe the
>various functions of the bits of actual stories.
Those words, yes. I'm also agreeing (iirc) with Zeborah and Nicky that a
finished story, a product, that shows very sharp-edged scenes with very
thin transitions between, or skip-line transitions -- looking kind of like
an afgan with squares joined by crochet (like in MOSSFLOWER or toward the
end of most Discworld books) -- is one KIND of product. And a story where
these things blend smoothly and aren't so different (as in Pierce's FIRST
TEST and PAGE, and parts of Wrede's MAGICIAN'S WARD) is another KIND of
product
R.L.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/houseboatonstyx/
RL at houseboatonstyx
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