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

[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.