The secret life of writers

[pbray]

pbray: 4 more pages today. How are revisions coming?

jpsorrow: Good I think. I'm trying to up the worldbuilding. Meaning I'm trying to tell people more about the world, what cities look like, all that.

pbray: cities have buildings! worlds have mud and oceans and grassy plains and some tree crap!

jpsorrow: I threw in your plains snake today. For color.

pbray: Awwwww!

jpsorrow: I realized I did cut way the hell back on the world descriptions. I had them in the first version, but . . .

pbray: I just described a room with one detail-- "He wondered if she knew that there were bloodstains underneath the imported carpet."

pbray: Details are hard! Readers should just imagine whatever they want, and if there's cool stuff like snakes or trucks or monsters we'll tell them.

jpsorrow: Well, that's the important part. That's pretty much what I'd cut mine down to: only the important parts.

pbray: A snake driving a monster truck would be an awesome detail.

Comments

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

LOL. That sounds like a normal conversation for you guys.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Exactly! We're just as strange at home over IM as we are at any con.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know -- even never having met outside that environment (despite us living an hour and a half apart!) I know...

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

*snickerfits* You guys crack me up. You need to come down to the PA/DE area again soonish.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

As soon as we can find a snake driving a truck...

[dynastic-queen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like me and my best writer bud on a Right Brain day, for real. LOL!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

That's why us writer types need to hang together, because we scare the normals.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

SNAKES ON A MONSTER TRUCK

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Superhero snakes on a monster truck fighting evil!

[jemck.livejournal.com]

sorry for lowering the tone and all that - but on the actual topic of world-building, I once heard a crime writer, asked about scene setting, say that it was her job to draw the lines and the reader's job to do the colouring in, as it were. I liked that.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

That's a great summary. I lose all patience with writers who insist on coloring everything in before moving on to the next scene.

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

and next we know, there will a snakes in a monster truck movie coming out. With goats.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Snakes on a truck must be the logical sequel to Snakes on a plane. Perhaps this time we can get Bruce Willis to star...

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

So, so far we have snakes, goats, monster trucks, and bloodstains. Sounds good :D

I made the mistake of mentioning on Facebook recently that I was having trouble coming up with ideas to add conflict in a certain (apparently not very exciting) section. (Everything I could think of would at first seem like a great idea and then quickly be revealed as the second argument in the laundromat" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HowNOTToWriteANovel).) People immediately started suggesting that I add a nuclear mini-sub.

So I'm glad I'm not the only person this happens to. ;^)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

A nuclear mini-sub would be awesome, particularly if it was actually a nuclear mini-sub sandwich! You take it home only to discover they gave you the secret package by mistake and soon you're being hunted across North America.

:-) Just pencil me in as another one of those helpful folk who have great ideas that are absolutely no use at all. Although once when I was stuck jennifer_dunne did suggest adding livestock since they are inherently humorous, and sure enough that was exactly what I needed. I've been on the add livestock as a default setting ever since.