inspiration.

I just finished Mockingjay a couple of nights ago, even though rightfully I should have been doing homework instead of plowing my way through one of the most impressive series I've ever read.  I could fill this post with spoilers, but I'm not going to; I'd rather have people actually go read the trilogy.  I've actually been pushing it in the general direction of a lot of people.  Most of these people - to their own loss - have been ignoring me.

The writing style really struck me as I read the trilogy.  At first, I didn't like it.  It was first person.  It wasn't first person present, though, so I didn't hate it.  I got over my frustration with that pretty quickly, though.  I began to notice the setting and the characters.  The descriptions weren't too much, though.  They were enough.  Enough to spark my imagination.  Collins said "electric fence" and from there I created the interior of the coal-mining town that was District 12.  She described the clothes that Katniss was wearing, but only when it was important and related to Cinna.  It wasn't over-detailed, like some aspiring authors do, and it's wasn't brand specific (it couldn't be, of course).  Nobody could feel out-of-the-loop about her descriptions.  I think that's really important.

Her plot was mind blowing.  I keep saying "it's just a distopia book" and it is... but at the same time, it isn't.  I really want to go back and re-evaluate 'Tweens now.  I want to look at my characters and make sure they're flawed.  I want to describe more.  I want to pinpoint specific references to popular culture and eliminate them.

I want to make my stories very real.  Fantasy enough that the reader can step out of them, but real enough so they cannot forget.

hello darkness, my old friend

Let me set the scene for you.

The air inside the cabin is dank and musty, and you feel your allergies acting up, so you step outside on to the rough wood porch overlooking rolling fields.  The sun is just creeping up behind the farthest green hill, and the sky is splattered in pink and blue.  You're not alone on the porch, even though it's just barely sunrise.  But you're not surprised.

Leaning against the dipped wood rail, her hands are wrapped tight around the bone china teacup.  She doesn't say anything to you; just flicks her short red hair over her shoulder and takes a sip.  It's a little strange, seeing an experienced army pilot watching the sunrise and drinking herbal tea from a cup painted with dainty yellow flowers.

Meet Jylouna Martin.

She is my nemesis.

For the last I-don't-know-how-many-weeks I have been fighting a silent battle with her.  I avoid writing in her perspective because she simply disapproves of it.  Just.  Can't.  Get.  Into.  Her.  Voice.  Ever. I love her character (I love all my characters) but whenever I read back what I have written I feel like crumbling up a piece of paper and throwing it violently at... something.  Only I write on my computer, and it's harder to crumble my laptop screen.

I was pacing back and forth in my room when I reopened Chapter Four of Fate for editing.  Partially because Jyla was up to her old "you're-going-to-write-in-my-voice?--I-think-not" tricks, but my difficulties were also coming from a different character:  Timothy Brown.  Since my goal is to finish 'Tweens by the end of the year, I've been writing, even thinking a lot in Timmy's voice.  So as I was trying to write Jyla, I was writing Timmy.  Editing is slow.

Ever have that problem?  A character voice you have a lot of trouble writing in?  What is your greatest difficulty when switching efforts from one work-in-progress to another?

Also, I wanted to share this.  I know I'm three months early, but I just discovered the band All Caps and I thought maybe some people could relate to the sentiment of this video.

the world around us

As a writer, I am terrible (terrible) at setting.  I know in my head what I want, and I see it all very clearly, but I often forget to actually relay it to my readers through the written word.  For example, in 'Tweens, Timothy has a recurring dream where he starts standing at the top of a spiral staircase that descends deep into the earth.  I know for a fact that I have relayed that the staircase is wooden, rickety, and painted white.  The white paint is chipping and peeling off, and it leaves little flakes like dandruff on the creaky steps.  That's what I tell the reader.  But there is so much to setting that I don't tell.

I don't tell that there are pine trees and elm trees in the distance, and the sky is a dull, grayed twilight.  There is a gentle wind, but barely enough to move the stagnant air.  The air itself is warm and heavy with humidity, but the breeze, when it does come by, is cool and refreshing.  The abyss itself is an anomaly.  It's a hole in the earth with crumbling dirt walls that harden to rock the deeper into the earth one travels.  The air smells like rotting meat and honey from a buzzing bee-nest that is buried in the ground a few feet away from the hole.  The land all around the hole, until it stretches out of the trees and to the distant mountains, is grassy plains.  In some places, there are dandelions, and in some areas the grass is much taller.

All those things are beautiful and they paint the image in my own head.  Where, in writing setting, should we draw the line?  I've learned through photography that no matter how good the camera, how good the photographer, we cannot grasp the true image as our eyes see it.  What is enough?  What is too much?  Great writers, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien spent pages devoted to the setting.  How much does it take for The Modern Reader to get bored?  That, in the end, is where the line is.  If The Lord of the Rings had been written in 2010 exactly the way it was when Tolkien first published it, I don't think it would get the same response, because The Modern Reader doesn't have the same patience as he used to.  Two pages into the twelve (twenty?  fifty?) at the Council of Elrond would be enough to make the reader put the book down.

How much time do you spend devoted to setting?  How important is setting to your work(s)-in-progress?  How many details are too many details?