Re: Opening

Nicky wrote:

On Sep 27, 12:43 am, s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jonathan L Cunningham)
wrote:

I'm becoming increasingly covinced that I'm misreading Catja: that what
she *says* is her objection means something different to me than she
intends.

I don't know. Looking at you intro again - i can see that it is quite
difficut to work in a description of the castle without upsetting the
scene. There is also more description in there than I remembered which
just goes to show how memory becomes distorted by opinion - or
something like that.

I can show you what I think Catja means but I don't that it helps
much in your context.

' She was already attracting the not entirely unwelcome attentions of
the stable boys and ostlers, the young squires, the apprentice cooks,
blacksmiths and dragon farmers; the sons of minor nobility and even
the handsome 'friends' of the Ladies at court: in short all the young
men who lived and worked within the gorgonstone boundary of the outer
ramparts.'

Something like that, yes. Maybe not quite as many details in one place
so it would mesh better with Jonathan's sparse style, but definitely
going in that direction. Just a gorgonstone wall would pique my interest
and tell me 'we are not in Kansas.'


"You want to go and see the Prince in procession, don't you?" her
tutor, Prof. James Gillum asked. From what was visible of him behind his
dragon -claw desk

I don't think that substituting 'dragon-claw desk' for 'desk' would
destroy the writing; but that's of course Jonathan's choice - but it
would give me a better anchor in the story.


The point is that there are ways of making descriptions more specific
which can limit the infinite possibiities of the reader's imagination.
You have said before that you don't care about the detail of what the
reader imagines ( If I'm remembering correctly) so what you lose in
simplicity may not for you be outweighed by any scene setting gain.

I think the problem is that few readers will read in a vaccuum. I'm
probably less visual than most, but that doesn't mean I don't imagine
the setting - I might imagine it in terms of feel more than visual
details, but to me action does not take place in a vacuum.

The problem becomes a problem the moment the story hits a point of
uniqueness. And yes, this might be a personal preference, but it's one I
appear to share with millions of other readers: I like stories that are
uniquely interwoven with their characters and their settings: stories
that could only happen to _these people_ in _this world_. It's one of
the reasons I love the Barrayar books so much - _Only_ Miles Vorkosigan
could have those adventurs. Put his cousin Ivan into his place, and the
books turn to smoke. And they could _only_ happen in this particular
universe, with Barrayar's customs and the technology available to them.
Take the uterine replicator out of the storyverse, and you wouldn't
_have_ a story.


It may be that you don't notice thing like that when you read and so
it seems reasonable to limit the cluttery stuff from your own prose
and stick to the meat that interests you. That seems fair enough,but
this might have been the kind of thing Catja was talking about?

It was. Part of the problem is, I think, that I see it as a progression
of kind: I had to learn how to notice and incorporate telling detail,
and fought hard for that skill. Much of my earlier stuff was taking
place in a generic fog, talking (and moving, and internalising) heads.
Maybe I'm being unfair and closeminded, but now that it's come to my
attention, I a) like my own writing much better, especially if a few
years have passed and I have forgotten what it felt like and I now have
specific details to help me get back into that world, and b) I've come
to notice that the books I like - even the ones I bought long before
becoming conscious of this - all share that richness of detail, that
unity of time, place and character.


Nicky ( climbing, the beige carpeted stairs of her Victorian townhouse
with weary tread, dreaming of a Stannah stair lift and a nice cup of
Twinings tea, served in a bone-china Wedgewood tea -cup, by a handsome
liveried gentleman with steady hands....)

You need to train your sons better ;-)

Catja

--
writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What SF is written and read?
    ... The point of writing for me is to tell a story about people facing ... We have plenty of readers who want that when they ask ... But genre and such labels are often artificial, ... books, including SF, that has a lot of character development, something ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: What SF is written and read?
    ... The point of writing for me is to tell a story about people facing ... We have plenty of readers who want that when they ask ... But genre and such labels are often artificial, ... books, including SF, that has a lot of character development, something ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Where is everyone??
    ... possible inside the books, and without any proof (either direct or ... indirect) I could well imagine that this has influenced her writing ...
    (alt.fan.harry-potter)
  • Re: Dean Koontz?
    ... He's still writing, I believe. ... The early books I've seen are science fiction and fantasy; ...
    (rec.arts.mystery)
  • Re: Where is everyone??
    ... possible inside the books, and without any proof (either direct or ... indirect) I could well imagine that this has influenced her writing ...
    (alt.fan.harry-potter)