The Challenge of Description

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

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under The Winds of Winter fantasy poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.