Channeling a character - this can't be stressed enough - is not always pleasant. I had major trouble finishing Eyes in the Fire - the last eighty pages were so tough (my three main characters, well, it wasn't a happy ending), I went and lay on a beach in Hawaii because I'd start shaking every time I tried to write it. I came home and did it, but you can't just sit at a remove and play God: a book written with the emotions of the characters are, to my mind, the only ones worth reading. And that means breaking down a wall that aint always easy or pleasant to break down.

It's one of the reasons I almost never reread "clever" books. Oh, look, I can see the author, jerking the characters around rather than actually investing herself or himself in their lives, their feelings, their triumphs, their failures. No thanks.

Interestingly, the actiony drabbles I've written haven't been hard to write, and I think they've been pretty good. I think it's because they're so short that all I'm doing is jumping into the head of the character and describing their impressions. But when it's an actual scene and I have to do at least some set-up work just to show where everyone is and what they're doing, it turns all wooden and awkward on me.

Susan, awkward how? Is it a kind of impatience - a "shit, I don't want to bother with all this stuff, I just want to get right to it" deal?

Channeling a character - this can't be stressed enough - is not always pleasant.

Very true. It took me a long time a couple of years ago to realize the reason I was stressed and depressed was because of what I was doing to the main character in a fic in another fandom. I was trying to imagine what it would take to batter a personality to the point of surrender to another person's power--and not in a pleasant way, either. The character's despair kept leaching over. I never did finish the story, dammit.

Deena, that's a hard drabble to read for me. They had to resuscitate Hubby three times a few years ago. Miscalculation of anesthesia. Our hospital's policy is not to go for a fourth try. If my mind ran that way, I probably could have gotten a nice malpractice settlement out of them.

Susan, awkward how? Is it a kind of impatience - a "shit, I don't want to bother with all this stuff, I just want to get right to it" deal?

That, and my writing itself seems to loose all its polish and nuance. E.g., this week I've been drafting a scene from Jack's POV where he's part of the escort to a wagon convoy of wounded who are going to Lisbon so they can be shipped back to England, and they're surprised and captured by a larger French force that was scouting in the area. The key aspects of the scene are as follows:

1. Jack's commanding officer isn't competent to quickly organize a defense. Jack is.

2. Since I need to get the officer off the stage without actually killing him, I've got him on a nervous horse who runs away. But now that I think about it, having him severely wounded would work just as well and be more plausible, so I think I'll rewrite it that way.

3. There are two ladies in the convoy--Anna and an older officer's wife who's travelling with her wounded son. The other woman gets killed, because I need her offstage. Anna (who has decided that given the choice of being angry or freaking out, she'll take anger), once the shooting is over, gives the French commanding officer a piece of her mind in her best English schoolgirl French.

Those are the key pieces of the scene, and if I could get by with writing just that, I think I'd be fine. But I need to describe the terrain and how many French soldiers there are, and what the British do in their attempts to drive them off, and it reads terribly, like a report I might've written in middle school or something.

t ETA--off to take a shower. Back later.

Susan, you might try writing cinematically. In other words, don't feel you have to describe the whole scene and place everyone but let yourself roam around picking out interesting details. Reveal the troop strength by describing the sun glinting off bayonets, or the terrain by having a character tripping over one of the rocks which litter the scrubby hillside or something like that.

If the POV for the fight is Anna's she wouldn't know the military aspects of what she's seeing.

Connie, when I first read the drabble theme this week, I couldn't imagine anything to write, probably because I didn't want to think about it. Other than being unsure of the exact number of times they had to resuscitate my brother over the years (and he always signed a DNR when he went in) before he was finally able to die at home, the drabble's true. He hated them for bringing him back over and over.

Susan, why do we need that much detail? It's good that you know it, I think, because it informs the writing (using it as Robin suggested) but I don't think I'd want to read that level of detail in a story.

If the POV for the fight is Anna's she wouldn't know the military aspects of what she's seeing.

But the details could be telling nonetheless. Even her being unsure of what's she sees can be informative.

If the POV for the fight is Anna's she wouldn't know the military aspects of what she's seeing.

True, but then I'm afraid I'll lose the incompetence of the English lieutenant, and that really needs to come through. And I also really want the scene where she's yelling at the French major to be from Jack's POV. But I might try the fight part from her POV--if I can have her at the right place when it starts, I think I can make the incompetence issue come through.