Events and landmarks, if you want to get it down early. But really, just paint a portrait of the place, and people it with characters that are true the time in which you're writing. If the thought patterns, societal mores and physical surroundings match, the reader will walk into it.

So you don't think the completely unsuspecting reader would feel adrift? Of course, most readers won't start reading something without having some clue of what's going on, be it from a summary on a web page or the blurb on the book. I don't know why I'm obsessed by the idea of a reader coming to the text completely cold and how to pull them into the story.

This, I think, is part of the phenomenon of a writer being aware of techniques that are subliminal to a reader.

See, I never drabbled before Steph started her weekly challenges, so I've been treating 100 words as a ballpark figure.

connie, I use little headers like "Gloucestershire, June 1810," all the time. It's probably a crutch, but it's such a useful one in allowing me to plunge straight into dialogue or action knowing my readers have enough basic orientation that I can work in description gradually.

Also, how much description is necessary to establish that folks aren't wearing jeans and t-shirts, and how much is just self-indulgence in pretty clothes?

I'll occasionally lavish description on something like a ballgown, but other than that I rarely describe much. Of course, for the time being I'm writing Regency historicals--if I were doing an era whose fashions are less well-known, I'd describe a little more.

Dear god, Deb, you need to sleep. Any chance you can take a nap today? On the upside, you should get your birthday prezzie (early, I'm sorry) today.

Also, I agree that a 100 word restriction on poetry would not work (for me at least) at all. I can see "under 100 words", but not 100 words precisely.

The thing I did upstream a little, "Locks", was a hundred words precisely when I finished it. But I wrote it, as I write everything, in Word, and as I'm writing, I do period word counts. That lets me know, ballpark, how much I've got left to say what I want to say.

But I sat down and crafted that deliberately as a 100-word drabble, not as Edmund Crispin described writing poetry: for a moment, you feel as though the rose or whatever it is is shining at you, and only at you.

Mine was done the way I'd do prose; I wouldn't even attempt to soul-pour and try to restrict it.

Jayzus wept, I'm tired. Empty and played out. I forgot, I wanted to answer this:

So you don't think the completely unsuspecting reader would feel adrift? Of course, most readers won't start reading something without having some clue of what's going on, be it from a summary on a web page or the blurb on the book. I don't know why I'm obsessed by the idea of a reader coming to the text completely cold and how to pull them into the story.

Well, you're quite right about the blurb (if it's a hardback, the inside of the book jacket gives the reader a tidy synopsis, designed to whet the appetite). But if it's well written, if it's clear two pages in that the writer knows their stuff, cares about their setting and their charactres and their story, is taking some joy in sharing it? The blurb or synopsis or jacket copy is icing.

Slee-eep, deb. Slee-eep.

Slee-eep, deb. Slee-eep.

I managed about a 90-minute nap on the sofa, between six and half past seven; that's a start, I suppose.

Busy brain, recycling the same thing over and over and over. Maybe tonight, I'll see if I can find someone with a sleeping pill they can spare. If I do this two nights in a row, I'll be toast.

What I really ought to do is try working right now; tiredness produces some truly interesting shit, especially when you're writing about an incubus.

When I write on sleep deprivation, I find myself later staring at a screen of "slx/xxxnder jell 3slii.c?"

I wonder if that's how Microsoft writes their computer code.

Heh. No, I find genuine exhaustion produces some truly interesting chinks in my fixed sense of how something ought to be described.

I rarely try to write dialogue when I'm this zonked, but description? It comes out just fine.

It's complete thoughts and sentences about which I can do bugger-all in this state.

Gods. I can't feel my legs; that's how tired I am.

So, I'm curious. Since Teppy's challenge is still in place, why not try for a 100-word opening paragraph of something historical? See if you can get it down in 100 words? And if you can't (I doubt I could), it will show where your needs are.

edit: OK, this is interesting. I just pasted those two opening paragraphs that I quoted above, from FFoSM's prologue, into Word and ran a count.

The two together? 99 words.

I got a tagline once out of the fact that my friend couldn't follow my first thoughts of the morning...I just go on writing as if the recipient is...sitting on my medulla oblongata or something. So he sent me a whole message that was "What the Hell is that?!" Which, being a writer, he used a lot more words than that. So, I wait an hour and clear the cobwebs out first.