Sunday, part deux

[pbray]

Writing: 1,351 words today. (*self-mocking on*)Took four pages to get Josan out of his cell in the dungeons up to the palace above. At this rate I'll be a hundred thousand words into the story and he'll still be having breakfast.(*self-mocking off*)

Went out midday for shopping, and had one of those writer's moments as I sat at the bar of Ruby Tuesday's having lunch, looking over what I'd written yesterday and deciding how much detail I wanted to put in about the prince's torture. People around me were talking about the Superbowl, or lamenting the fact that sales tax amnesty week ended today, and I was trying to decide just how far I wanted to push the reader's (and my own) buttons. It didn't strike me as strange till I was done, and as I came up for air I realized the contrast between my thoughts for the past half-hour and those of the people around me.

In the end I came down on the side of implying horrors and letting the readers fill in the blanks rather than explicitly describing them. Rather like the boggart of the Harry Potter universe, it's a way to let the reader fill in their own darkest fears, and they wind up scaring themselves far more effectively than I could.

Comments

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

"letting the readers fill in the blanks rather than explicitly describing them."

An excellent choice!
I prefer sex scenes written in the reader-fills-in-the-details style too because I tend to laugh at the typical language usage in sex scenes. :-)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Writing: 1,351 words today. (*self-mocking on*)Took four pages to get Josan out of his cell in the dungeons up to the palace above. At this rate I'll be a hundred thousand words into the story and he'll still be having breakfast.(*self-mocking off*)

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one having this problem.

Over the past week, about 45 pages spent getting Jani aboard a ship so that she could investigate, come to a conclusion, convince those who didn't want to be convinced, and be threatened by a "friend". It started as one chapter, then stretched into two. I don't feel comfortable about it at all. I just keep telling myself that at least it's written now.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Glad to know I'm not alone in my fears. In the past few scenes it seems that it's taking forever to get from plot point A to point B, yet I don't know what else to do except to keep writing, and wait to see how the rest of the novel unfolds.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I'm having exactly that same kind of thing going on with the book I'm writing now. I keep staring at it and thinking, "Arthur Dent rolled out of bed. He put his left sock on first. Then he put his right sock on and wandered into the bathroom to brush his teeth, which he did thoroughly except for the second to last molar on the left bottom side."

Or however that scene goes. :)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's exactly how I feel about what I've been writing.