Activity

HELLO RILLUMEN.

Hi.

Sorry.

HI!

I have been very gone of late.  I’m sorry about that, the last two weeks just happened so fast.  It honestly feels like I posted last here yesterday.  (I did not, jsyk :P)

BUT I’M BACK NOW.

One of the reasons I’ve been gone is that I’ve been stuffing my free moments by reading “A Writer’s Active Guide to Setting” by Mary Buckman.  It is phenomenal, and I’m so excited to share the things I’ve learned.  But first, we have a few announcements:

– As some of you have heard, Merki won the guild war.  (But hey, our next guildwar is going to be another word war, so we’ll be up to bat again soon!)

– WE HAVE TWO NEW LUMENITES!  Here’s a big welcome for @Cassidy and @torah-smith!  Glad to have you on board!  Feel free to ask any questions either here or over on our guild questions page.

– This announcement HAS A DUE DATE.  Story Embers is just about to launch a new forum initiative and they want YOUR help.  So here’s the deal, we need to come up with a “home page” for Rillumen by tomorrow.  What should it look like?  Well… that’s largely up to us.  But swing over to the topic I created for it and we’ll get some ideas rolling.

– NANO IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.  Any takers?  Who’s got plans?  I started a topic for Lumenite NaNos here.

OKAY, MANY ANNOUNCEMENTS.

But cool, now let’s move on.

WE HAVE AN ACTIVITY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN LIKE A MONTH.  (I’m really sorry it’s been so long.)

Like I said above, I’m reading a book all about description and it’s giving me some really great ideas for cool activities and tips and I’M MUCH EXCITED.

But before we actually sit down and describe things, I want to talk about something that has really become clear to me these past few weeks.  Description should never, ever, ever, be just about how something looks (feels, smells, sounds, etc.)  Description should never be about just description.  A good description can reveal character (either the POV or a secondary character), it can set the mood, it can set up a plot twist, it can control pacing… etc etc etc.

In the future, we’ll get into how you can make it do these things, but for now, let’s just look at the writing we’ve already done.  Look at the last three settings you described and ask yourself what the descriptions accomplish other than describing.  If they don’t serve double duty, think about what purposes they could serve.

For example, my last description:

Towards the end of the corridor, the walls angled together, forcing us into a more or less single file line.  I feel my heart against my ribs.  Not thumping, just swollen.  I feel my throat just start to announce its presence, waiting for the nerves to take over.  Over the head of the (short) couple in front of me, I can see the gate where they’re checking ids and rifling through bags.

It’s not a great description to start off with, but it doesn’t really add anything other than description.  The situation (the MC is sneaking off on a decade long space cruise) has lots of emotions attached to it, but this description doesn’t build on that emotion at all.  If I wanted to show more indecision, I could add someone crying and pushing back through the crowd after chickening out.  If I wanted to create a sense of euphoria, I could cut out the descriptions of his body’s reaction and insert some running internal monologue about just how great the trip is going to be.  If I wanted to set up a plot twist, I could have him meet the man impersonating another employee of TIME Magazine (for which the MC is journaling his adventures.  The impersonator later gets into a lot of trouble.)  If I wanted to develop the character, I could describe how heavy or light he’s packing, I could say what he thinks of the loud, small family in line behind him, or I could show him ignoring phone calls from his mother who is begging him not to go.

So, take some time to go through your recent descriptions.  What is their purpose?  Why did you write them the way you did?  How could they contribute more to your story?

Can’t wait to get into more of this again!

@gracelivingston
@emma-starr
@missfaeriekaiti
@happyholly_c
@corkybookworm
@scribbles
@quinn-ofallon
@kayla-joy
@nuetrobolt
@pookiemonster
@inkling-for-christ
@sir-leeds
@morgan-tailor
@rolena-hatfield
@grace-tolkienista
@graceabounds2129
@wordsmith
@brie-donning
@cassidy
@dwight-schrute