A new theory about a hotly-debated religious relic recently popped up in the news (and the news item will remain unnamed in this post so as not to attract any attention from the flaming sector of debaters). Since I once extensively researched a similar artifact for a story, a friend e-mailed me the link. Then, because my friend believes the newsy relic is authentic, we ended up debating it:
Me: It's a fake. It's an excellent one, and the artwork is really convincing, but it's a fake.
Friend: No, it's real. They've done all kinds of scientific tests on it and they can't explain how it was made. It might even date it back to the time of Christ.
Me: Okay, so they faked it in the time of Christ.
Friend: You're going to burn in hell, you know.
Me: Undoubtedly. But it's still a fake.
Friend: How can you say that? You weren't there. You don't know.
Me: I know just from looking at it.
Friend: How?
Me: Let's agree on two things first: I know fabric, and I know how to drape, yes?
Friend: Those curtains you made for the livingroom are pretty awesome. I agree.
Me: Let's also agree that [the relic] contains a perfect image of the Holy One's face, right? Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, it's all there. Every detail.
Friend: That's why it's real.
Me: Sure it would be real, if the Holy One had been a paperdoll.
Friend: What?
Me: Unless they're the victim of a total facial smash, or their family tree only had one branch on it, human beings generally have three-dimensional faces. Wrap or drape a face with cloth -- even a mystical one that has the power to magically transfer an image of what it's touching -- and at best you'll get contact impressions from the highest points on the face: a blob in the middle for the nose, maybe a blob under that for the chin, and two vertical ridges for the eyebrows. The eyes won't show. Also, when you flatten out the cloth it will distort the image.
Friend: But--but--
Me: The relic's image is complete and perfectly flat. Like a paperdoll's. As if it were rendered by people who sucked at realistically portraying dimensional objects. Like, say, medieval people who faked stuff.
Friend: I hate you.
Me: You're welcome.
When you're writing about your characters, you generally need to describe them to the reader. Beginners do this like a laundry list: He was six-foot-five with shoulder-length pitch black hair. His eyes were gold, his nose was patrician and his mouth was sexy. His cheekbones were sharp. His jaw was hard like concrete. His chin was dimpled (the big tip-off that you may be laundry-listing is the endless use of was, was, was.)
Even after a writer improves enough to get past the wases, there's still the tendency to describe all of the character's features at once to the reader in hopes of giving them a clear visual.
I think it's more interesting to scatter character description through the story. When you look at someone, what's the first thing you notice? Eyes, hair, clothes, body frame? I've tested myself and I tend to look at their clothes first, probably because I really do love fabric. Also the colors, patterns, fit and style of clothing choices offer interesting hints about the person. This is also why many of my character descriptions begin with what they're wearing.
Rather than listing details for the reader, I try to portray them by seeing them through another character's eyes and working in their impressions of who they're looking at from their POV. We all have some sort of emotional reaction to what we see, especially when it's other people, and those emotions help paint a more dimensional portrait for the reader.
Writers, how do you approach describing characters? Readers, what sort of character descriptions work best for you? Let us know in comments.
Showing posts with label description. Show all posts
Showing posts with label description. Show all posts
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Color Reference Notebook
Over the years I've collected or put together so many color-related swatches, charts, pamphlets, palettes and word lists that I decided to consolidate them in one reference notebook. That way the next time I need to describe a particular shade of white I can have all the whites I've saved in one place.
Color referencing in fiction can be tricky, as I think the writer's first tendency is to grab a cliche or relate something to food. Who hasn't read at least one story in which a frightened character went white as a sheet, or possessed flawless creamy-white skin? But we know this is really lazy writing, and we owe the reader a bit more originality and effort.
I started my notebook with white, which happens to be my color reference nemesis. I discovered how difficult it is to describe white when I made the eyes of my Jorenian characters in the StarDoc series that color -- and subsequently cursed myself for doing so for the next thirteen years. All my color references to white were contemporary, and here I was writing in a far future where 99% of them didn't exist. Anyway, most of the time I fell back on a blind-person analogy or the white-within-white thing. It was lame, and it's probably the reason I started collecting color references in the first place, to broaden my understanding of color as well as beef up my descriptive powers.
We all see and respond to color differently, so this kind of notebook is a great exercise in originality. You can put anything that inspires you in a color reference notebook; what you want is something that naturally stimulates your powers of description. I find combining paint charts and photos with word lists related to the color usually primes the well for me, but I also plan to use cover art, scanned images from my favorite magazines (Artful Blogging has tons of ladies who do the all-white decorating thing) as well as poems I associate with particular colors or palettes. Here's a page with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, definitely my #1 white poem:
A color reference notebook is also a good storage encyclopedia for references you've already used in stories past. This can help prevent you from becoming that a descriptive repeater who in every book has a character with chocolate brown eyes or flaming red hair. Doesn't seem like it would be a problem, but wait until you've written twenty or thirty novels and suddenly you notice that every other guy character you write has laser-beam blue eyes.
What would you put in a color reference notebook to help jog your descriptive powers? Let us know in comments.
Related posts: Palettes with Color Names ~ Story Palettes ~ Character Palettes
Color referencing in fiction can be tricky, as I think the writer's first tendency is to grab a cliche or relate something to food. Who hasn't read at least one story in which a frightened character went white as a sheet, or possessed flawless creamy-white skin? But we know this is really lazy writing, and we owe the reader a bit more originality and effort.
I started my notebook with white, which happens to be my color reference nemesis. I discovered how difficult it is to describe white when I made the eyes of my Jorenian characters in the StarDoc series that color -- and subsequently cursed myself for doing so for the next thirteen years. All my color references to white were contemporary, and here I was writing in a far future where 99% of them didn't exist. Anyway, most of the time I fell back on a blind-person analogy or the white-within-white thing. It was lame, and it's probably the reason I started collecting color references in the first place, to broaden my understanding of color as well as beef up my descriptive powers.
We all see and respond to color differently, so this kind of notebook is a great exercise in originality. You can put anything that inspires you in a color reference notebook; what you want is something that naturally stimulates your powers of description. I find combining paint charts and photos with word lists related to the color usually primes the well for me, but I also plan to use cover art, scanned images from my favorite magazines (Artful Blogging has tons of ladies who do the all-white decorating thing) as well as poems I associate with particular colors or palettes. Here's a page with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, definitely my #1 white poem:
A color reference notebook is also a good storage encyclopedia for references you've already used in stories past. This can help prevent you from becoming that a descriptive repeater who in every book has a character with chocolate brown eyes or flaming red hair. Doesn't seem like it would be a problem, but wait until you've written twenty or thirty novels and suddenly you notice that every other guy character you write has laser-beam blue eyes.
What would you put in a color reference notebook to help jog your descriptive powers? Let us know in comments.
Related posts: Palettes with Color Names ~ Story Palettes ~ Character Palettes
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Props
In Naming the World, a how-to with a collection of essays and exercises from writers/editors/teachers, author Nick Arvin wrote a piece about revision, specifically about how to revise physical objects in the story -- what he refers to as props -- to make them more effective as a story element. He mentions Chekhov's Gun, one of those literary theories they beat into our heads in high school.
According to Chekhov, no object in the story should be there without a reason:
"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." —Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)
I agree with Chekhov, sort of. I think of props as active and benign; the active ones are there for a reason, the benign there for the setting. Active props are probably the least-used story element in genre writing, and it's a shame, too, because when employed with some imagination they can be pretty effective. Not only as elements to provide some foreshadowing for the reader, but as inspiration for dialogue, focal points in an otherwise ho-hum scene, etc.
My new Darkyn trilogy is unusually object-driven. When plotting I always like to use unusual active props, so it's probably no surprise that I employed Mickey Mouse ears to inspire and put a fresh spin on what would have otherwise been a pretty standard confrontation scene (and if you want to see how I did it, head over to the stories blog and read the partial scene here.)
Most of the time I see great stuff in other writers' stories that is only described, and this kills me, because when I come across that mysterious urn of ashes or portrait of a one-legged man I start telling myself stories about them while I'm reading. Then I get to the end of the story and those great props are still sitting there, unused and covered with dust, like story clutter.
That said, not every prop in a story has to have a reason for being there. Some props are active and others aren't. Not all rifles go off; sometimes they really do just hang on the wall as part of the setting description. If we didn't have at least some benign props, every story would be written in a series of empty rooms, vacant lots and flowerless meadows.
What's your favorite type of active prop in a story? Do you think the rifle hanging on the wall always has to go off? Let us know in comments.
According to Chekhov, no object in the story should be there without a reason:
"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." —Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)
I agree with Chekhov, sort of. I think of props as active and benign; the active ones are there for a reason, the benign there for the setting. Active props are probably the least-used story element in genre writing, and it's a shame, too, because when employed with some imagination they can be pretty effective. Not only as elements to provide some foreshadowing for the reader, but as inspiration for dialogue, focal points in an otherwise ho-hum scene, etc.
My new Darkyn trilogy is unusually object-driven. When plotting I always like to use unusual active props, so it's probably no surprise that I employed Mickey Mouse ears to inspire and put a fresh spin on what would have otherwise been a pretty standard confrontation scene (and if you want to see how I did it, head over to the stories blog and read the partial scene here.)
Most of the time I see great stuff in other writers' stories that is only described, and this kills me, because when I come across that mysterious urn of ashes or portrait of a one-legged man I start telling myself stories about them while I'm reading. Then I get to the end of the story and those great props are still sitting there, unused and covered with dust, like story clutter.
That said, not every prop in a story has to have a reason for being there. Some props are active and others aren't. Not all rifles go off; sometimes they really do just hang on the wall as part of the setting description. If we didn't have at least some benign props, every story would be written in a series of empty rooms, vacant lots and flowerless meadows.
What's your favorite type of active prop in a story? Do you think the rifle hanging on the wall always has to go off? Let us know in comments.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Define Yourself
Five Questions About Branding
All About Me: Tomorrow you'll write your autobiography (or someone else will write a biography) with a focus on your writing life. What's the title?
If I write it, Cacoëthes Scribendi (read the poem on Bartleby.com)
If someone else writes it, That @$!&#* *&$!@# @*&%$#!
Catalyst: Your writing triggers a new literary movement. What will it be called?
The Unmoved
Symbolic: Your marketing department asks your for something animal, vegetable or mineral that they can convert into a logo and put on all your books. What do you choose?
What else? Cheetah
Tag Phrase: A book buyer wants a brief tag phrase to identify you in their catalogue (i.e. Stephen King is frequently touted as "Master of Horror".) How do you tag yourself?
Jill of All Genres. Ha. No, probably stick with Paperback Writer.
There Can Be Only One: Your publisher asks for one word to define all your writing work. What's your word?
Amaranthine (only because they probably wouldn't let me use αμαράντινος)
Now it's your turn to define yourself: what are your answers to the questions? Tell us in comments.
Image credit: © Paul Buxton | Dreamstime.com
All About Me: Tomorrow you'll write your autobiography (or someone else will write a biography) with a focus on your writing life. What's the title?
If I write it, Cacoëthes Scribendi (read the poem on Bartleby.com)
If someone else writes it, That @$!&#* *&$!@# @*&%$#!
Catalyst: Your writing triggers a new literary movement. What will it be called?
The Unmoved
Symbolic: Your marketing department asks your for something animal, vegetable or mineral that they can convert into a logo and put on all your books. What do you choose?What else? Cheetah
Tag Phrase: A book buyer wants a brief tag phrase to identify you in their catalogue (i.e. Stephen King is frequently touted as "Master of Horror".) How do you tag yourself?
Jill of All Genres. Ha. No, probably stick with Paperback Writer.
There Can Be Only One: Your publisher asks for one word to define all your writing work. What's your word?
Amaranthine (only because they probably wouldn't let me use αμαράντινος)
Now it's your turn to define yourself: what are your answers to the questions? Tell us in comments.
Image credit: © Paul Buxton | Dreamstime.com
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Color Blind
Writers often obsess about little details, and I'm no exception. For the last month I've been trying to figure out how to describe the eyes of one of my characters. Her eyes are blue; a very specific shade of blue. I can see her face clearly in my mind, but try as I might I cannot come up with a description of her eye color that satisfies me and conveys to the reader what I envision.
Yes, she has blue eyes, but they're not just blue. If you're a writer, you understand what I mean.
No one ever discusses important writing stuff like this. Only once did I get a handout cheatsheet during a romance writing workshop from a big name author who takes color names from cosmetic products for her eye descriptions. I've never used it because I hate makeup and some of the color names are stupid (like plum brown -- last time I checked, a brown plum was a prune. She had prune-colored eyes? I don't think so.)
Aside from real people, food, weather and nature have been my primary sources of eye color description inspiration. I also like to read through yarn magazines for unique color names. Yarn manufacturers never sell just blue yarn, you know. They sell Hyacinth, Night Sky, Dark Teal, Marine, Royal, Cadet, Morning Glory, Sea Spray, Heather, Delft, Montana, Cobalt, Lake, Beach Party and Periwinkle blue yarns. Thanks to Lion Brand's latest catalog, the next female character I write may end up with champagne-colored eyes.
But none of those shades of blue, beautiful as they are, match my character's eyes.
I'm starting to wish I'd given her black or gray eyes. Those are my two favorite eye colors to describe because you can find a lot of synonyms for black and gray that don't sound too hokey or overblown. You can overuse an eye color in fiction, so once I write a protagonist with black or gray eyes I try to use different colors for at least the next five books. Which is probably why I gave this silly ditz blue eyes. Not that they're just blue, you understand.
New writers may think eye descriptions are tough to do in the beginning of your career, but I think the more books you write, the more difficult the task becomes (if you're not interested in repeating yourself over and over, that is.) After writing all these novels, I'll admit it's become a real chore to think up something I haven't done.
My guy has gorgeous hazel eyes, which he passed on to our son. Our daughter got stuck with my genes, and our eyes are gray, green or blue, depending on the lighting and what color we wear. The department of transportation says they're green, my optometrist says they're gray, and my mother says they're blue. My daughter and I call them sea-colored to cover all the bases.
But no, my character's eyes are much lighter in color than ours, and they don't turn green or gray, so forget that.
I should have given her brown eyes. I love brown eyes. I grew up in a neighborhood chock full of beautiful Latinas, and I think that's why I've always envied girls with brown eyes. A lot of my favorite female characters have big brown eyes. Except this one. Or I could give her glasses and cover them up. But actually very few of my characters wear glasses to correct vision. This is because I've lived in the damn things since I was three.
I'll keep working at it. No matter how original you try to be with describing eye color, eventually someone else is going to cook up the same idea. I'd never read a book with a character with opal-colored eyes, so I was feeling rather smug and pleased with myself when I used that to describe Marco's eyes in the Juliana trilogy -- until a few months later, when another author came out with the same description for her protag's eyes.
Hmmmm. I wonder if I can get away with giving her blue opal eyes . . .
Related links:
Val Kovalin over at Obsidian Book Shelf has a great page here about writing eye colors.
Want to know how eye color is passed along? Check out How Are Human Eye Colors Inherited?
Want to know what color baby's eyes will probably be? Try Antro.com's Eye Color Calculator.
Yes, she has blue eyes, but they're not just blue. If you're a writer, you understand what I mean.
No one ever discusses important writing stuff like this. Only once did I get a handout cheatsheet during a romance writing workshop from a big name author who takes color names from cosmetic products for her eye descriptions. I've never used it because I hate makeup and some of the color names are stupid (like plum brown -- last time I checked, a brown plum was a prune. She had prune-colored eyes? I don't think so.)
Aside from real people, food, weather and nature have been my primary sources of eye color description inspiration. I also like to read through yarn magazines for unique color names. Yarn manufacturers never sell just blue yarn, you know. They sell Hyacinth, Night Sky, Dark Teal, Marine, Royal, Cadet, Morning Glory, Sea Spray, Heather, Delft, Montana, Cobalt, Lake, Beach Party and Periwinkle blue yarns. Thanks to Lion Brand's latest catalog, the next female character I write may end up with champagne-colored eyes.
But none of those shades of blue, beautiful as they are, match my character's eyes.
I'm starting to wish I'd given her black or gray eyes. Those are my two favorite eye colors to describe because you can find a lot of synonyms for black and gray that don't sound too hokey or overblown. You can overuse an eye color in fiction, so once I write a protagonist with black or gray eyes I try to use different colors for at least the next five books. Which is probably why I gave this silly ditz blue eyes. Not that they're just blue, you understand.
New writers may think eye descriptions are tough to do in the beginning of your career, but I think the more books you write, the more difficult the task becomes (if you're not interested in repeating yourself over and over, that is.) After writing all these novels, I'll admit it's become a real chore to think up something I haven't done.
My guy has gorgeous hazel eyes, which he passed on to our son. Our daughter got stuck with my genes, and our eyes are gray, green or blue, depending on the lighting and what color we wear. The department of transportation says they're green, my optometrist says they're gray, and my mother says they're blue. My daughter and I call them sea-colored to cover all the bases.
But no, my character's eyes are much lighter in color than ours, and they don't turn green or gray, so forget that.
I should have given her brown eyes. I love brown eyes. I grew up in a neighborhood chock full of beautiful Latinas, and I think that's why I've always envied girls with brown eyes. A lot of my favorite female characters have big brown eyes. Except this one. Or I could give her glasses and cover them up. But actually very few of my characters wear glasses to correct vision. This is because I've lived in the damn things since I was three.
I'll keep working at it. No matter how original you try to be with describing eye color, eventually someone else is going to cook up the same idea. I'd never read a book with a character with opal-colored eyes, so I was feeling rather smug and pleased with myself when I used that to describe Marco's eyes in the Juliana trilogy -- until a few months later, when another author came out with the same description for her protag's eyes.
Hmmmm. I wonder if I can get away with giving her blue opal eyes . . .
Related links:
Val Kovalin over at Obsidian Book Shelf has a great page here about writing eye colors.
Want to know how eye color is passed along? Check out How Are Human Eye Colors Inherited?
Want to know what color baby's eyes will probably be? Try Antro.com's Eye Color Calculator.
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