The Novel Diary: Week 6
Word counts: 556 (Chapter 2); 13,186 (total).
I started Chapter 2 on Sunday and have made two piss-poor efforts to break it open. I have been distracted and lazy, but this week should be uninterrupted from now on. Unless I attend the “break the record” Iowa women’s basketball game on Thursday, I will try to make up for my anemic performances the next three nights.
One thing I realized is I have a bad habit of being too cinematic or theatrical in my descriptions: where the characters are, what they are doing, how they are reacting. It is needed sometimes, but other times I feel like I spend too much time on minute details and not pushing the story ahead. I get bogged down. Those are usually the nights when I struggle and stretch every sentence as much as possible to inflate the nightly word count.
However, one thing I almost never describe is the physical appearances of my characters. I think character description — fashion, hair style, build — is mostly frivolous for me. When reading, I toss out whatever descriptions the authors provide unless it is vital to understanding the story or character; I prefer to imagine characters of my own creation. Others, however, do not do that. During my only workshop in the Santa Cruz writing group, one member said he wanted to know what the characters looked like. I did not think it was important to the story, but he wanted the author to tell him specifically what the characters were wearing and how they wore their hair.
Sounds like time wasting minutiae to me.
I started Chapter 2 on Sunday and have made two piss-poor efforts to break it open. I have been distracted and lazy, but this week should be uninterrupted from now on. Unless I attend the “break the record” Iowa women’s basketball game on Thursday, I will try to make up for my anemic performances the next three nights.
One thing I realized is I have a bad habit of being too cinematic or theatrical in my descriptions: where the characters are, what they are doing, how they are reacting. It is needed sometimes, but other times I feel like I spend too much time on minute details and not pushing the story ahead. I get bogged down. Those are usually the nights when I struggle and stretch every sentence as much as possible to inflate the nightly word count.
However, one thing I almost never describe is the physical appearances of my characters. I think character description — fashion, hair style, build — is mostly frivolous for me. When reading, I toss out whatever descriptions the authors provide unless it is vital to understanding the story or character; I prefer to imagine characters of my own creation. Others, however, do not do that. During my only workshop in the Santa Cruz writing group, one member said he wanted to know what the characters looked like. I did not think it was important to the story, but he wanted the author to tell him specifically what the characters were wearing and how they wore their hair.
Sounds like time wasting minutiae to me.
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