Stage direction always feels clunky to me on first draft, and sometimes on second and third. The thing that intimidated me the most when I got the idea for the wip was I knew it'd have several important action sequences, and hence much stage direction, while the first book was much more about people strolling and riding about pastoral English countryside being talky meat.
As for the visual/sensory stuff, I feel like what I've somehow accidentally figured out is how to tap into people's existing store of mental images and say just enough to make them flesh out the picture themselves. Because I'm certainly not painting word pictures or anything of the sort. But I don't know how I'm doing it. Not that I'm going to lose any sleep over it, as long as it's working.
And I don't know if I even have the skills to write what I picture, anyway.
Yes, you do. Your problem at the moment is with placement of scene, and a tendency to let your protagonist think instead of having her act.
Small stuff. The language? You've got that.
Thanks. I expect a lot from myself, is all.
Wow. I'm just getting home and caught up after two weeks, but just, wow. You people? You sure can write.
Lalalalalalalalala monday lalalalalalala new challenge lalalalala....
Eager? Me?
Heh. Lookit Ms. Impatient Pants Deb!
Fellow drabblers, this is a monumentous occasion -- this weekly drabble challenge is #52. We've been at this for 1 year, a year that has yielded some kick-ass writing, and, I hope, motivation for them that needed it to return to writing, to move forward on a project, or to start writing regularly. You all ROCK. Hard.
As for the current challenge....
Challenge #51 (heaven and/or hell) is now closed.
I'm craxy busy at work, so Challenge #52 is another Random Photo challenge, from the Look At Me photos. You have 10 choices, linked below, and you may write a drabble about each, or several drabbles about the same one, or several drabbles about more than one -- whatever tickles your writing fancy.
When you post your drabble(s), please include a link to the picture, for easy reference on the part of the reader. Thanks!
Picture One.
Picture Two.
Picture Three. (This might be the same dude from the picture w/the two women, on the couch.)
Note -- this one is kind of grim, featuring a coffin w/body inside: Picture Four.
Picture Five.
Picture Six.
Picture Seven.
Picture Eight.
Picture Nine.
Picture Ten.
Next week, I'll try to cook up something good for the 1-year anniversary drabble.
Yay, pictures! Yay a year!
[link] Picture Three
(Teppy suggested sequels)
"Rudolph, how many times do I have to tell you about that camera?"
"I don't like the idea of evidence linking us, Pierre."
"Robert, you worry too much. Jeanne, get him a Bloody Mary."
"I don't drink. We're supposed to making plans."
"Plans. Such as when you'd be talking to your friends at Interpol?
. . .
"How foolish of him. Thank you, Rudolph. Jeanne, a fresh Bloody Mary. Less bloody."
For the Look at Me Anniversary challenge: Picture #9
All the Pretty Little Horses
She began dancing before she could properly walk: she danced to television commercials, to the radio, to the music in her head. Her family joked that she danced as she slept, choreographing lullabies: Hushabye, don't you cry, go to sleepy little baby...
She began lessons at age four. She learned to stretch her hamstrings, to stand at the barre, the forms of the pliet. She learned, too, to watch with disproportionate, heartbreaking anxiety the appearance of any extra weight. She danced, and she starved.
At fifteen, bulimic and anorexic, she died of kidney failure. All the lullabies died with her.
