117/ chapter 2: The taupe-carpeted corridor that ran down the center of the West Wing was quiet. Senator Linda Haig looked at her watch. Almost half an hour late. Hardly surprising; that woman was never -
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127/ yep, this works SO well I read one sentence, and I can picture the shoe-less scamp, the market stalls, the stacks of goods, the piles of coiled fiber optic cable, the hot samovar, the illegal wares, the tall hero wading through the chaoshttps://twitter.com/JASutherlandBks/status/1253053549916889090 …
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128/ and getting back to economy of words: if you really WANT to make sure that the reader knows some detail is there, you don't have to call it out as a separate element; you have the hero "push past the tea vendor, jostling his samovar". One sentence, multiple facts.
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129/ Tying together the "push past the tea vendor" and also the bit earlier re Luke and his light saber - we are a visual culture, because of a century of movies. People understand visual language. Use that. Picture what the "camera" is focused on, what's in frame, what's not
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130/ I consciously chose to write in a style called "third person close". I think to think of this as "the camera" is perched on the viewpoint character's shoulder. Maybe it picks up a few words from inside his head, but not many. Camera PoV = character PoV
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131/ here's an example. The character's head and the narrative PoV track in the same direction. When Allan looks up at the handhold, so does your attention.https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1253049622500708352 …
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132/ another when Linda Haig looks down at her watch, so does the reader PoVhttps://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1253049503395045380 …
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134/ When the reader's attention is drawn, via the "camera", to the "maroon loincloth draped from his belt", our attention is focused there. What's the hero's attention focused on? OH, JUST THE DEMON THAT'S TRYING TO KILL HIM. This focus mismatch is excruciating.
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135/ ok, I gotta stop with the Burger University Remote Learning Class - I've only written 2,500 words today and need to get back to it.
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136/ a reminder: we read and analyze and criticize terrible fiction not to hurt anyone's feelings, but to learn from it - what mistakes bad authors make, and thus how we can avoid thempic.twitter.com/QrbPVvYmuv
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137/ > as long as there's an audience Didn't you read the part where I analyzed his sales numbers? He basically doesn't have an audience. Learning how to write could change that. https://twitter.com/SherlockTowers/status/1253100001749762049?s=19 …
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