I can't not try to write the shiny. Ever since I started noticing prose in books - which isn't really that long - I've been drawn (moth to flame, you might say) to prose with the loft and rhythm of poetry. I'm not that good at it, right now: and in the end, ideally I'd like to achieve prose with the loft and rhythm of poetry that, nonetheless, doesn't call too much attention to itself.
Which is not, eh. Half as easy as some people make it look. Rosemary Kirstein, to take one example. Mary Gentle. Chaz Brenchley.
(I would sacrifice innocent goats to small gods in order to have the writing chops of Kirstein and Gentle. And I'm talking prose, story, worldbuilding, the whole nine yards.)
That aside.
Ah. So that was what you were asking. I wasn't sure if you were being specific or not.
Now I know, I appreciate you asking the question. :)
Yeah, I can tell you, mostly, who Sorrow is and what makes her that way. And why she makes the choices she does and does the things she does.
I could talk about it here, but it'd run long. Because that's the iceberg, isn't it? The story is only the tip. Part of my problem is keeping the iceberg out of the story, and only showing the tip.
I'm not a very good story-teller. It's probably the thing I'm worst at in the whole writing process. Because I have the shape of the story in my head, but the details are always murky: it takes any number of false starts to start making the stuff I put down on paper match the feeling in my head.
I can't write mechanistically, or to outline. I've tried. I have to hit tone and voice and theme at just the right angle, or the plot-events and the characters come out wrong.
Which is why, I suppose, I'm still less than half-finished with a novel I started writing in early 2007.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-10-06 10:52 pm (UTC)Which is not, eh. Half as easy as some people make it look. Rosemary Kirstein, to take one example. Mary Gentle. Chaz Brenchley.
(I would sacrifice innocent goats to small gods in order to have the writing chops of Kirstein and Gentle. And I'm talking prose, story, worldbuilding, the whole nine yards.)
That aside.
Ah. So that was what you were asking. I wasn't sure if you were being specific or not.
Now I know, I appreciate you asking the question. :)
Yeah, I can tell you, mostly, who Sorrow is and what makes her that way. And why she makes the choices she does and does the things she does.
I could talk about it here, but it'd run long. Because that's the iceberg, isn't it? The story is only the tip. Part of my problem is keeping the iceberg out of the story, and only showing the tip.
I'm not a very good story-teller. It's probably the thing I'm worst at in the whole writing process. Because I have the shape of the story in my head, but the details are always murky: it takes any number of false starts to start making the stuff I put down on paper match the feeling in my head.
I can't write mechanistically, or to outline. I've tried. I have to hit tone and voice and theme at just the right angle, or the plot-events and the characters come out wrong.
Which is why, I suppose, I'm still less than half-finished with a novel I started writing in early 2007.
(That and college, the necessary timesink.)