The Challenge of Description: First Impressions

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Previously I mentioned that I was having trouble with my new introduction for Shazemar, protagonist of my fantasy poem The Winds of Winter. I had a pretty decent description of him as an individual character — of the things that distinguish him from other Debroans, and give some sense of who he is; but I was having a hard time packing enough clues to Debroan culture into the description, because it was getting too long. And if you don’t get the culture, you don’t get the character.

Well, I could add the cultural stuff afterwards, couldn’t I?

Probably not to the best effect.

If you look at books from the Middle Ages, you’ll discover something that seems odd to us: they’ll happily put Hector and King David in medieval armor, as if they were 13th-century knights. That’s because medieval people had often heard stories about earlier cultures, but, unlike us, they mostly didn’t get to see illustrations of earlier peoples in their own dress. They filled what they didn’t know with things they were familiar with.

Modern people have seen many more pictures than they have, but still think exactly the same way. You can’t tell your readers everything; you haven’t enough room. Where you left a blank, they’re likely to fill it in — with something they associate with the details you did tell them.

If you’re a modern American, and the only thing I tell you about a character is that she’s got her hair in cornrows, odds are you’re going to picture her as black. You’ll fill in her hair color, her eye color, her skin color, and (in part) the shape of her face.

If I put her in hiking boots and a backpack, you may not only picture her footwear, but the trail she’s walking.

If I put her in a suit-jacket and pumps, you may move her to an office.

She could have worn hiking boots to the office. But odds are you’ll expect her to be doing typical things in typical ways, unless I give you enough information to make you imagine otherwise.

When I introduce you to an important character, I want you to form two impressions:

1. A quick idea of the surface things about her: gender, age, race, era, and place in society.  If I’m writing about a culture you’re at least somewhat familiar with, I may be able to present such an impression in a sentence, or even a phrase.
2. A glimpse into who she is as an individual. What sets her apart from every other woman who shares the same superficial characteristics?

In most stories, I need to give you the surface elements early.

Why early?

Because I don’t (usually) want you to form the wrong impression of the character. If I write in such a way that you’re picturing a young woman, and then two chapters later you discover that the character you’ve been seeing as twenty-five years old is really sixty, the sudden, drastic revision you have to make may jar you out of the story. Most often, I want to give you a substantially correct (if necessarily incomplete) idea of the character, and then I’ll deepen it as I continue writing.

In writing, there’s an exception to practically everything. There are stories where the author intentionally misleads the reader about a character’s superficial characteristics, often by playing to stereotypes and associations. At the climax of the story, the author reveals that the associations the reader has made by habit are wrong: the character is of a sort the reader didn’t expect to see in that role.

And there are stories where the characters themselves intentionally play to stereotypes to mislead other characters.

But I’m not writing a story like that. I need my readers to form an impression of Shazemar that isn’t drastically wrong.

Tags: cultural cues, descriptions, first impressions, The Winds of Winter fantasy poem
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The Challenge of Description

Monday, October 26th, 2009

A few weeks ago I was working on a late scene in The Winds of Winter, and it wasn’t coming together. I was wondering whether I should introduce an element that Shazemar (a sorcerer, the main character) deals with in my imagination, but which I hadn’t written into the story so far.

Somewhat coincidentally, I came across the Story Structure posts at Storyfix.com, and decided as a result of reading them that, yes, I did need to introduce that element, because pacing in the late scenes demanded a turn in the story rather than merely the progression of foreseeable events. But if I don’t set this element up early, it feels forced and arbitrary when I work it into the late scene.

I also could improve the story if I structured the beginning so that it posed more questions not immediately answered.

Both of these things indicate that I need to add material to the beginning.

Currently, Shazemar’s introduction is some ways in. The introductory scene is good. I wish I could move it right after “The Incantation of the Dragoness,” the opening scene, but both the action and the plot-significant remarks in it can’t happen any earlier.  And I need to cover some of what Shazemar’s up to before. So I need a new scene.

Thing is, Shazemar’s introduction is the scene that presently contains the ‘who are the (west) Debroans?’ material — the descriptions that give some idea of who they are, as a race and as a culture. The character description in this scene is in two blocks: first, of the group that’s travelling, so you get a general idea of the Debroans; then later of Shazemar as an individual. So it’s broken up. I don’t have one long chunk of description that makes the reader’s eyes glaze over because it’s too much to assimilate at once.

I tried writing a new earlier scene in which Shazemar is alone, and I’ve been having a problem with it. My description of Shazemar as an individual is good, but it doesn’t have adequate cultural cues, and I’m having a hard time working them in, because it makes the description too long. In my experience, you can ask people to focus on 3-4 elements of a description to form an impression. But if you start adding more than that, you have more an inventory than an image: the mind doesn’t form a coherent impression of so many items. I haven’t successfully licked this problem in this new scene.

I have an idea for a different approach to it, which I’m going to start on now. We’ll see if it works.

On other matters:

I still have more root canal work to be done, and I have a sinus infection. I will be updating, but not very efficiently. Look for a new section of Sigurd this week.

Next post will probably be about cultural cues in description. (Actually, the next post in the series turned out to be about first impressions in description).

Tags: cultural cues, description, story structure, Writing
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