Monday, August 6, 2012

The Curious Man/ Arlo's first three

Not much to add or change here, just packing in a little more description. First person creates some pitfalls in describing other characters. Normally people don't stare at and mentally describe the individuals they encounter. if this sort of description isn't handled with care, it can come off as a meet-cute, which gets awkward when it's guy on guy, or you're wrestling with not making "love at first sight" happen because it can seem like weak writing if not done purposefully (or, in this case, both). That being said, I love describing my characters, so perfecting this skill was a must.
--
In Arlo's first three chapters, by contrast, my conceited little hog farmer can go on at leisure about how he looks, which given the above-mentioned obstacles not only lets me avoid the usual problems, but comes as a characterful rarity (You wouldn't see Larkin standing around looking in the mirror). I keep referring to these chapters as a lump because I have lumped them. In total, they came to ~3600 words, and I think the simple change of grouping them together cuts down on the it's-another-Arlo-chapter phenomenon. They were written well after the rest of the book was (basically) set, since I decided to include Arlo in the first book only after I came up fairly short on my word count. I started writing them in little chunks to keep it modular enough to be placed in the already-arranged book, but they ended up all going in a row. No matter, the only real loss here are the original chapter titles, Cream, Trough and Axe. I decided to call them all Farm, the counterpoint to Home, his final chapter. Which no one will notice, but I don't care.

No comments:

Post a Comment