On the healing powers of caffeine...
Dec. 10th, 2005 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranHad my first coffee in over a week today, at an espresso bar in Miranda. I was just thinking as I sat down at the bar that the problem with the WIR was that there really was no way to show the character's particular emotions and emotional development in the first half of the story, without getting all angsty and introspective. Three sips later, I saw a way.
This is actually kind of scary, especially since I've been stupid to the point of gibbering for the last week.
As for the solution I found, it involves thinking of the story in a different way and paying special attention to the focus of the characters, including some who are currently non-existent. It means a whole set of rules for deciding what to show and from whose perspective.
More generally, this is a familiar feeling. When I first starting writing again, after a break of over ten years, I had what I thought was my own distinctive writing style. It was fantasy, but with "more complex" emotions and more "realistic" events, written with a distinctive voice that allowed access to the characters thoughts. As I learnt more, I came to realise that this wasn't a distinctive style at all. It was just how some beginners wrote when they didn't fully understand how to show character or how much character could really shown without headhopping. Or how much plot could be dramatised in a wordless scene. Or how pointless fantasy can seem without the necessary evocativeness.
Now, if I could just find a way to get some writing time again...
This is actually kind of scary, especially since I've been stupid to the point of gibbering for the last week.
As for the solution I found, it involves thinking of the story in a different way and paying special attention to the focus of the characters, including some who are currently non-existent. It means a whole set of rules for deciding what to show and from whose perspective.
More generally, this is a familiar feeling. When I first starting writing again, after a break of over ten years, I had what I thought was my own distinctive writing style. It was fantasy, but with "more complex" emotions and more "realistic" events, written with a distinctive voice that allowed access to the characters thoughts. As I learnt more, I came to realise that this wasn't a distinctive style at all. It was just how some beginners wrote when they didn't fully understand how to show character or how much character could really shown without headhopping. Or how much plot could be dramatised in a wordless scene. Or how pointless fantasy can seem without the necessary evocativeness.
Now, if I could just find a way to get some writing time again...
