marycatelli: (Default)
While stymied on one work, I went to work on another. And realized I hadn't described the characters.

Lucky me. The opening scene is when the viewpoint character remembers her life in another world. Nothing is more natural than her looking at her own reflection and at the members of her family and trying to remember whether her family looked like that. Her real family. If it was real. . . .

At least the descriptions are in.
marycatelli: (sunset)
Investigating springs. As in, reasoning that my one time seeing a spring perhaps was unrepresentative, and perhaps I should have some comparison.

It's amazing how many things are labeled as springs when they mean spring-fed.

Did find enough to ensure the unpreposing spring I was putting in was reasonable.
marycatelli: (Rapunzel)
Superhero fights can't be so dramatic on the written page as in the comics.

Still, I think mine need some work.  A baseline of energy attacks and some kind of defense lacks the magical touch.   Especially when I specify that every single knight has a unique prowess, however much they can be classified.  

Colors are only a start.  But they are a start.  
marycatelli: (Default)
Once a writer was skipping along in her work, describing a bear as cinnamon colored. . .

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marycatelli: (East of the Sun)
So when you are rewriting a sorta Sleeping Beauty tale, and the prince arrives and finds her --

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marycatelli: (Default)
Been a while. But Parts I, II, III, and IV still await perusal.

And the impact of point of view, particularly close point of view, has struck me recently.

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marycatelli: (East of the Sun)
The hero gets his first look at the heroine -- as red as blood, as white as snow, as black as a raven -- and I'm thinking, what color are her eyes?

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marycatelli: (Default)
When telling a story from a character's point of view, it's wise to indicate the limits of his knowledge and judgement by the vocabulary and grammar choices. 

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marycatelli: (Default)
When writing description in a story, always remember the point of view.

And when NOT writing description in a story, always remember the point of view.

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marycatelli: (Default)
My characters are not in my confidence.

A wise thing to remember. Especially when I had actually put in one character's mouth a fair innocuous explanation for their problem. The other character has to persuade him to assume they are in mortal danger, even with all the potential for accidents.

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marycatelli: (Default)
The first rule of description is to look. A lot. What does a sunset really look like? A rose? A lawn in the drought?

It helps keep you from errors like having the stump send up a sprout in the middle of the stump. (Trees sprout new greenery from the edge.)
marycatelli: (Reading Desk)
I suspect that it refers to that friend of our childhood, the prince of the old folk tale; the young man who travels for seven miles and comes to seven gates guarded by seven dragons, and passes through all sorts of perils, which are marked at once by moral heroism and mathematical symmetry. It is he who is to be exhibited in as a despot and oppressor; as a despot of elfland and an oppressor of seven-headed dragons. As he is rather a remote as well as a romantic figure, it may be a little difficult for historians to discover what were his true colours. His true colours, so far as I am concerned, are silver and gold and crimson, and all the colours of the rainbow.

G. K. Chesterton
marycatelli: (sunset)
Keeping an eye on natural things can help with story telling.  Both setting the scene and keeping track of time.  So you have your crocuses, tulips, irises, roses, and all the rest blooming in the correct order.
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mud

Jun. 13th, 2016 10:35 pm
marycatelli: (Strawberries)
Mud, Mary, mud.  remember the mud.

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marycatelli: (East of the Sun)

One constant of the fairy tale hunt is that it is a chase.  How else can the character get lost where he's bound, if not to get into trouble, at least to learn something?

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crowd scene

Feb. 4th, 2014 08:08 pm
marycatelli: (A Birthday)
Ah, the linear nature of prose.

An illustrator, or an animator, has to deal with the time spent filling up the page with all the figures of the crowd.  A movie director needs to worry about the budget, with all those extras.
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