The time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things.
Here’s your story prompt for the day. What if the creature depicted in this picture were sentient?
Someone asked me about the pictures I use in this blog. The majority of them are taken from my own photos. I like taking pictures for my own amusement. While some are from my cell phone, I’ve started carrying a digital camera around on a regular basis for freelancing work. I figured I might as well put them to use making the blog look more attractive. My plan is to keep doing prompts on Wednesdays, and as always, I’d love to see a snippet of what you produce if you use one of these.
Oooh, I Like! I’m in the van (not driving atm, lol) and will write this story as it is already forming in my head. Right now, though, I have to grab my voice memo recorder before I forget stuff — thanks for the prompt!
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Today's Wordcount and Other Notes (8/21/2014)
Three whales this morning - they came out of the water enough that we could see there was one large and two small and think they might have been humpback whales. Vida pura, indeed.Lots of skipping around, often what I do when I’ve got several projects in the works.
So here’s the breakdown and total:
650 words on Circus in the Bloodwarm Rain
673 words on “Carpe Glitter”
534 words on “Prairiedog Town” (working title)
200 words and editing finished on a story in a semi-accepted state, plus sent off to the magazine that requested the changes.
Total word count: 2058
Not too bad, particularly when I’m working on getting back into productivity’s swing.
Today’s new words in Spanish: aire acondicianado (air conditioner), apogon (power outage), ballena jorabada (humpback whale), cafetera (coffeemaker), calambur (pun), picadura de mosquito (mosquito bite), la puerta de teja metallica (screen door), reinicializar (to reset, usually a machine).
And Wayne woke me this morning to watch three whales (we think a large humpback and two smaller ones) in the surf.
If your world has something unusual (like dinosaurs), it needs to be signaled early on, or else you will surprise and alarm your readers when someone gets eaten by a Tyrannosaurus. This week focused on delivering information and description. Next week we’ll talk about revision, rewriting, and otherwise preparing a story to go forth into the world.
In the course of one workshop the topic of writing about rape came up and Jim C. Hines has provided a timely article about it in the most recent Apex Magazine. In brief, Don’t use rape as 1) easy motivation for a character or 2) shorthand for how bad someone is and do some research about things like the mental aftereffects if you’re going to write about it.
Landscape and long descriptions are often a feature of fantasy and science fiction. Often the purpose is to look gee-whiz pretty, but it can inform the story in many ways. Here, for example, is the beginning of Gormenghast:
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbor until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the season, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Things worth noticing about that paragraph:
The phrase “certain ponderous architectural quality” has its own ponderous architectural quality.
The focus of the novel is the castle. Same with this first paragraph.
There’s a tension between the mouldering castle and the humans around it, whose dwellings are described as “an epidemic” and “clamping” (great verb!) themselves “like limpets.”
The tower is compared to a mutilated finger, it points blasphemously, it’s filled with owls, all things that will resonate throughout the book.
The last sentence slays me with its beauty. Isn’t that nice? Good use of a semi-colon, too.
Description needs to accomplish more than gee whiz. It can:
provide sensory stimulation
convey information about the thing being described
convey information about the character through whose perceptions the description is filtered
convey information about the context of the thing being described, i.e. the setting/world
convey tone
convey style
underscore or advance motifs and metaphors
Too little description and the reader has nothing to hold onto. Too much and they feel buried.
In writing description, think about the impression you’re trying to create. Visualize the scene – what is the atmosphere? What does it look/sound/feel/smell/taste like?
Good verbs add energy, sensory input, interest, and precision. Did verbs for description exercise in class.
Description adds texture, creates “crunchy” prose. Don’t write prose that is dull as oatmeal. Give us a meal – a solid, meaty verb or two, an edge of sweet lyricism, a dash of bitter irony, the precise crunch of details, a texture we can run our tongue over, and tiny seeds of unexpected words that we can pop between our teeth, one by one.
Some ways to deliver information
Through dialogue of primary character(s)
Through dialogue of secondary character(s)
Through description
Through embedded documents
Through exposition
Twin Peaks scene where Dale Cooper goes over the suspects while throwing rocks is an example of getting away with lots of exposition by making it weird and entertaining.
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2 Responses
Oooh, I Like! I’m in the van (not driving atm, lol) and will write this story as it is already forming in my head. Right now, though, I have to grab my voice memo recorder before I forget stuff — thanks for the prompt!
Rock on, that’s awesome! You’re quite welcome.