I worked a bit more on my novelette this weekend, The Cliffs of Oakenrah.\u00a0 The wordcount is now up to 5,600.\u00a0 I\u2019m still on scene 5 of 21 though, but it\u2019s a rather long scene.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because I am out of practice, and I haven\u2019t been forcing myself to write everyday whether I feel like it or not (as some writers do), but I am finding the process to be mentally exhausting.\u00a0 Some of it is because of the actual writing; trying to find the right words, trying to describe things as simply as possible, trying to make sentences flow easily together.\u00a0 But some of it also has to do with the internal imagining of the world.\u00a0 If I were just going to sit and daydream, it wouldn\u2019t be very hard; I could probably go through scenes in my head as if they were parts of a movie.\u00a0 But when I have to write down everything that happens, I have to always slow it down, play it over again and again (and of course it\u2019s always a bit different each time), and pay attention to the details.\u00a0 Not that my writing is overly detailed, but it\u2019s easier to imagine travelling through a mysterious cave than it is to describe it in words.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to imagine the look and movements of fantastical non-existent creatures than it is to describe them in words.\u00a0 I find that process to be very mentally exhausting.<\/p>\n
Dialogue can also be annoying, because as the author I know what I want the characters to talk about, but if they\u2019re talking about something completely different, I have to find a way for them to flow into the desired topic, without it seeming completely forced.\u00a0 And I have to continually change world-view perspectives in my mind.\u00a0 The story might be from the point-of-view of one character, but I have to know the world-view and motivation for every character that says something important to write his or her dialogue believably.<\/p>\n
And then of course there\u2019s always the balance of info-giving.\u00a0 Especially since this is a fantasy novelette, there\u2019s a lot of other-worldly stuff I could spend time describing.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t want to \u201cinfo-dump,\u201d which might bore readers.\u00a0 On the other hand, I don\u2019t want to leave too much out, which would confuse readers.\u00a0 Finding the balance is tricky, especially since it\u2019s something I don\u2019t really think about directly while writing; it\u2019s more an element I just have to get a feel for through feedback I think, since my world is always completely clear to me, the writer.<\/p>\n
OK, that\u2019s enough blather isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I worked a bit more on my novelette this weekend, The Cliffs of Oakenrah.\u00a0 The wordcount is now up to 5,600.\u00a0 I\u2019m still on scene 5 of 21 though, but it\u2019s a rather long scene.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because I am out of practice, and I haven\u2019t been forcing myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[62],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-8b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}