Do you guys hate the moment-to-moment stuff as much as I do?

scribbledoutname said:

Describing stuff is awesome and can be really satisfying

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It also can be a major trap for a writer.

scribbledoutname said:

but I hate that you can't just write down what happened.

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Your problem in the quoted paragraph is that you really don't convey "what happened" very convincingly to the reader:

"Lucy stepped into her room and froze. Her things were strewn across the floor, and a burly man wearing a red stocking mask was shoving her belongings into a rucksack labelled Stolen Stuff. The thief noticed her standing in the doorway and ran at her. She pulled out the gun she always kept in her pocket and shot him and he fell over in a heap."

Way too much choreography. It takes a lot longer just to read than the incident would have taken to happen. And as i try to visualize this, all kinds of things just don't work. "Lucy stepped into her room" Bedroom? i presume. Bedrooms are usually pretty small, and I can't imagine she saw things strewn across the floor before she saw "a burly man wearing a red stocking mask". In fact, anybody facing this shocking, sudden situation is unlikely to notice much of anything the person was wearing. "The thief noticed her standing in the doorway and ran at her" Chances are he noticed her the same moment she noticed him. You don't have to tell that to a reader. And "ran at her"? How far away could he have been? Three steps, four maybe? Would she have had time to pull a gun from her pocket "where she always kept it"? Doubtful, in a small bedroom. And if she's already "stepped into her room", how can he notice her "standing in the doorway"?

Plus some of the description which needs to be there is vague. "Fell over in a heap" Heap of what? I know what you mean, but it could be sharpened to something more vivid like "collapsed face down at her feet".

For these kinds of scenes, actually acting them out, physically, can be very helpful. Find a room you visualize as similar to that of your story, and be both Lucy and the burglar. Move like them. See what works, and what doesn't.

Point being, the major problem is plain overdescription. Now, as first draft, that's all fixable. But you need to be able to understand the nature of the problem, not just have a vague feeling that "something" doesn't work. For me, action paragraphs need a clear focus. In this case, what is it? Lucy enters her room to find a burglar there, he rushes her, she shoots him. All very sudden, no time for contemplation. I'd also suggest, maybe, that she has already drawn the gun, perhaps having heard a noise from inside the room. It would probably be a good idea if the reader already knows that Lucy is carrying a pistol, so you don't have to produce one by magic, or spend words explaining it during the scene.

caw

I don't actually see anything wrong with the above paragraph as long as the following paragraph shows Lucy's feelings towards it all. Putting feelings in the middle of action scenes that happen fast irritates me. There's no time to think or feel in a situation like that, just react. Thoughts and feelings belong after the threat has been removed. IMO, anyway.

ETA: I cross-posted with blacbird, which just shows how differently people view description. I thought the first sentence was great. It gave me an instant clear picture of what was happening. The last sentence is awkward and needs to be broken into two, but otherwise I liked it. And bedrooms aren't necessarily small. Mine's twenty feet long with the door at one end. If a person was standing on the other end from the door there would be plenty of time both for them to run and to draw a gun.

I don't hate it as such - it's just not something I do in the first draft. In the first draft I tell the story like a child would - She did this, then this - but in the second I work for flow, get more in-depth. I can quite enjoy it, even if I find my inability to find the right word or phrase quite frustrating.

Ah, there it is. I don't dislike that part of it, I dislike that my writing skill isn't quite up to the challenge yet.

scribbledoutname said:

Describing stuff is awesome and can be really satisfying, but I hate that you can't just write down what happened. No, it has to flow and be well paced, too T^T

That's the most annoying part of writing for me. You can sort of tell when part of something you wrote isn't working. Like:

"Lucy stepped into her room and froze. Her things were strewn across the floor, and a burly man wearing a red stocking mask was shoving her belongings into a rucksack labelled Stolen Stuff. The thief noticed her standing in the doorway and ran at her. She pulled out the gun she always kept in her pocket and shot him and he fell over in a heap."

I've just written that, but it's a good example of what I mean. Even though I get everything across it still sucks and there's obviously something wrong how it plays out. The scene is sort of functional but it isn't ready yet. I know I could fix it by maybe playing with the length of each action, and possibly adding a bit more emotion for Lucy, so that there's more immediacy and emotion... I think.

Still, doing this is expanding and rethinking and tweaking is what I like least about writing and I seriously procrastinate for days because I hate fixing it up so much. I would probably just rush out a first draft in one day if I didn't think having to fix a whole book of this ^ would make me run screaming for the hills.

Ugh.

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I just feel like your paragraph's just a bunch of telling action. I don't think you need to add emotion into this paragraph right now if everyone's happening quickly. However, I would use less of verbs such as "ran" and "pulled" and something snappier. "Things" is vague, too. But I liked how the dude's got a bag marked Stolen Stuff.

Fixing it, even though painful, can be a good learning experience. And then someday, you'll be able to write what happened and make it flow the way you'd like automatically.

I don't hate fixing/expanding/tweaking/rethinking, because I know that it'll (hopefully) help make my manuscript stronger. Editing is like writing, but with a structure already there and less drunkenness.

The 'fixing' part is the part of writing I enjoy most. I also like writing everything out, but it often turns into a slog. Once the words are on the page however, I can enjoy manipulating them.

scribbledoutname said:

Still, doing this is expanding and rethinking and tweaking is what I like least about writing

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Better find something else to do with your time, then.

All kidding aside, the expanding and rethinking and tweaking is something I like quite a bit. It's crafting, and yes, it's hard, but that's part of the satisfaction, at least for me.

When I wrote my first draft of my first novel, it sucked. Too much description, not enough, telling instead of showing, basically a 60k word vomit. Once I stopped heaving, I had to do revisions and at first I thought it was awful. But after a bit I really started liking it, I knew exactly who the characters were, what was supposed to happen, everything. It was a lot easier to make it clean when I knew all this. Plus, I had a connection to my characters and story by then, I was invested and wanted to make it as good as possible for them.

I'm on the first draft of my second novel and I'm having the same problem you are. I just keep telling myself that I need to get the story down and then I can go back and make it great. But when I think about my first novel, compared to this one, it is rotten, I hate it, I want to throw my computer on the freeway and watch it get destroyed.

If you stick it out, hopefully you'll start to like revising, I know it doesn't seem possible, lol.

This

NonoNono said:

Once the words are on the page however, I can enjoy manipulating them.

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describes me perfectly. I try not to make my first draft all vomit, but I get it onto paper so it's easier to rework into something that I like.

I love playing around with the words as long as I can get in the right mood for the scene. When it starts working well it feels amazing. At least to me.

I've found that certain music can really help me get in the proper mood for the scene I'm trying to get right.

luxisufeili said:

But I liked how the dude's got a bag marked Stolen Stuff.

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This is exactly what I was thinking. I really dig that the bag was labelled. It was obviously goofy, but I liked that part a lot for some reason.

luxisufeili said:

But I liked how the dude's got a bag marked Stolen Stuff.

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That's a great and clever detail, BUT: How in hell does Lucy notice this? Really. It's completely misplaced, and yet another symptom of what's wrong with the paragraph. It would work if she picks up the bag after she kills the dude, and then sees it, but in the description given it's just impossible nonsense.

caw

blacbird said:

That's a great and clever detail, BUT: How in hell does Lucy notice this? Really. It's completely misplaced, and yet another symptom of what's wrong with the paragraph. It would work if she picks up the bag after she kills the dude, and then sees it, but in the description given it's just impossible nonsense.

caw

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I don't know about that. I mean, it sometimes happens, at least for me, that one notices weird little details when a whole situation isn't making sense or you can't wrap your brain around it.

Real life example: I recently read a news report about a "the butler did it" crime in which an actual butler staged a home invasion against his employer, an elderly rich British woman, in an attempt to extort money from her. It didn't work, he got arrested, tried, and was just found guilty several days ago. The article summarized how the crime went. Imagine:

This poor elderly lady and her friend at home are burst upon by masked men who beat them up and then tie them up in chairs. She is shocked, hurting, disoriented, terrified especially for the safety of her young grandson elsewhere in the house. One of the attackers jabs her in the shoulder with a hypodermic needle and tells her he has injected her with a deadly virus and he demands a large sum of money to give her the antidote.

And the news article quotes the old lady as saying, "I thought, what? An antidote is for poison, not a virus. This doesn't make sense." So she refused to give him money.

In all that chaos and terror, who would have expected her to focus on the attacker using the wrong word and thus become uncooperative with him? Yet there it is.

I can easily see Lucy noticing a bag labeled "Stolen Stuff" because it's so odd, and then not being able to describe the burglar at all to the police, but I would expect it to go something like that news story.

By the way, the real-life old lady couldn't describe her attackers, either. All she remembered clearly was her fear, a pair of blue eyes staring at her, and that silly word thing.

I get into the weeds of drafting difficult scenes like this, too, and I have to tweak them a lot. In the first draft, I just try to get the events and staging on paper. In later scenes, I will clarify my POV and try to get as deep inside that POV as I can, editing down to just what that POV character would sense and be aware of. I want to get that sense of things not making sense (without the writing actually not making sense). I'd want to try to render the scene as it is experienced by Lucy. The scene as written merely tells me what happened and therefore lacks drama. I'd want to experience the confusion of walking in on the bizarre scene, the suddenness of the attack, the kapow of the gun, etc.

blacbird said:

That's a great and clever detail, BUT: How in hell does Lucy notice this? Really. It's completely misplaced, and yet another symptom of what's wrong with the paragraph. It would work if she picks up the bag after she kills the dude, and then sees it, but in the description given it's just impossible nonsense.

caw

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It's this post that is impossible nonsense. I've been in terrifying, intense situations and I noticed all kinds of visual details. Really stupid things, like a dead June bug in a spiderweb in the corner of the bathroom where my ex tried to kill himself. All my favorite writers include little details like that. I don't want to read a meaningless, confusing blur without details to make it feel real.

I actually love this stuff. It's like revving a car engine, your getting excited, the tension is building, and all the good stuff is about to happen.

What I find difficult is the mundane stuff, the down-time when the reader needs a few minutes to catch their breaths. The scenes when my MC is in barracks, or doing drills etc, because he can't be chasing the bad guys all the time.

scribbledoutname said:

Describing stuff is awesome and can be really satisfying, but I hate that you can't just write down what happened. No, it has to flow and be well paced, too T^T

That's the most annoying part of writing for me. You can sort of tell when part of something you wrote isn't working. Like:

"Lucy stepped into her room and froze. Her things were strewn across the floor, and a burly man wearing a red stocking mask was shoving her belongings into a rucksack labelled Stolen Stuff. The thief noticed her standing in the doorway and ran at her. She pulled out the gun she always kept in her pocket and shot him and he fell over in a heap."

I've just written that, but it's a good example of what I mean. Even though I get everything across it still sucks and there's obviously something wrong how it plays out. The scene is sort of functional but it isn't ready yet. I know I could fix it by maybe playing with the length of each action, and possibly adding a bit more emotion for Lucy, so that there's more immediacy and emotion... I think.

Still, doing this is expanding and rethinking and tweaking is what I like least about writing and I seriously procrastinate for days because I hate fixing it up so much. I would probably just rush out a first draft in one day if I didn't think having to fix a whole book of this ^ would make me run screaming for the hills.

Ugh.

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Actually, the tweaking is what I love the most, but it bogs me down from getting new stuff written. I'll open up my manuscript, and first thing I do is re-read the last stuff I added so I can get my bearings, but it inevitably turns into a mini-edit because I just can't pass up the *wrong* word and leave it there. lol. Of course that leads to more tweaking and rearranging, and before I know it, I'm out of writing time and only have 600 new words.

Lucy froze as she entered her bedroom.Something was wrong.
Thats what I would write.Then I'd go into the descriptive bit.

Thinking about what I would do if I opened the door to my bedroom and a strange man was in there, (unless he's Kyle Chandler, in which case I would step in and lock the door so he can't get away!) After freezing in shock for a half a beat, I know I would give a little scream and dash down the steps and out of the house as quickly as I could. If I had a gun, I doubt I'd even remember it.

Two years ago my son was held up at gunpoint right outside of our old house. He had gone back after we moved to sweep and make sure we hadn't left anything. Some guy who had been loitering on the sidewalk, approached him and brandished a gun. My son's reaction was completely different than mine. He grabbed the gun, wrestled it away and threw it over the house (said he was trying to throw it on the roof, but I guess his adrenaline kicked in and it landed in the backyard.) I think it was at this point he ran. He raced around the whole block. Came back and either he or the neighbors called the cops. He probably wouldn't have even told us this, but we found out not long after it happened when the neighbor called my dh and said that her kids had witnessed the incident and wanted to know if our son was okay. Thankfully he was and he talked to police, etc, but it still freaks me out that my son went for the gun. *shudder*. He had already been working out a bit, but after that, he's become a fitness nut and lifting weights, doing cardio, etc. I can't help thinking it is his way of protecting himself by being in the best possible condition in case anything like that ever happens again. (he was 22 at the time of the incident).

muravyets said:

I don't know about that. I mean, it sometimes happens, at least for me, that one notices weird little details when a whole situation isn't making sense or you can't wrap your brain around it.

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I don't really want to keep harping on this point, but it seems to me a significant one. Other questions keep popping up in my head. Like, was the bedroom dark? Most burglars aren't real fond of working in a bright room, and even in the daytime, bedrooms tend to be dim unless there's a light on. Shades are commonly drawn.

What kind of bag was it? Most images I have for a burglar stuffing things into a bag involve something akin to a plastic garbage bag, something flexible and easily handled in a hurry. And crumpled. The concept of Lucy being able to discern the writing on a bag like that, under those likely conditions, just feels absurd to me. Like I said, it would work a lot better if she notices this after she kills the guy and begins to assess what has happened. Would be funnier that way, too, IMO. I like that kind of black humor weirdness a lot.

As for the example you cite, it isn't quite analogous to this example, which is a very quick interaction. Your victimized woman had already been subdued before she began to notice the "little details". My point was not that the details in the example are inherently wrong, just that the placement within the narrative seems wrong.

And, as I said, is an easy fix at editing time.

I teach English composition, and insist on seeing (not for grade) first drafts, critiquing those, and returning them for editing/polishing the final composition. One of the biggest problems I see is randomness in the placement of descriptive details, so I suppose I'm a little more sensitive to that than maybe some others are. But I also make the same kinds of errors in first drafts, and learning to pay attention to that stuff in the editing phase has, I think, made me a better writer.

I think. Maybe.


caw

Mileage may vary, but I don't think having just been beaten up and then injected with something by a home invader is actually the kind of situation that would lend itself to calming down enough to notice little details. I think that in reality, when we are in extreme situations, our central nervous system tends to bypass the conscious mind. Not everything we see and react to will get imprinted in memory but fragments might. Also in a situation that is extremely confusing, the conscious mind may latch onto any detail that seems to make sense in some way as a way to grasp what is happening.

For instance, in my real-life example, the elderly woman was caught in a sudden crisis that did not make sense to her. Certainly her brain and nervous system were busily trying to process all the sensory data that had come flooding in during the initial attack, but the first thing that got through intact enough to prompt a coherent response was the word thing. So that was what she responded to.

In the case of the Lucy example, I imagine it thus: I walk into my bedroom, flipping on the light as I do so. The light reveals something that should not be there -- a man, the room ransacked, the man shoving things into a bag. My nervous system and brain immediately snap into crisis mode, so suddenly, I am momentarily frozen. My eyes are raking in the situation so fast, I'm not even consciously aware of it, except that none of this makes any sense -- like that joke of a bag. "Stolen Stuff"? WTH? And then he's coming at me and I have to react. I pull my weapon and fire.

Due to the nature of the confrontation, I may never have time to process in the conscious mind, much less record to memory, all the rest of the details of the scene except that one thing that was so alien both to ordinary crime and to my bedroom that it stood out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, that's the way I think.

ETA: Of course, I suppose we must assume that Lucy's house is heavily carpeted and draped, so that neither Lucy nor the burglar would have heard each other before the confrontation. I rely on the fact that, in real life, it's not unheard of for people to walk in on burglars by surprise. One supposes they didn't hear or see anything that would alert them there was someone tearing their bedroom apart. I have a harder time imagining that than imagining she might notice the writing on a loot bag, but hey, it happens, so I guess it's possible.

muravyets said:

In the case of the Lucy example, I imagine it thus: I walk into my bedroom, flipping on the light as I do so.

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But the example (which I know is not part of a real work) doesn't say anything about a light. See, that absence of a crucial detail is part of my problem with this entire bit of description, and just one more reason to point out the difficulty in transmission of the description to the reader. We get detail about the red ski mask and the inscription on the bag, but nothing about the room or the conditions in which Lucy entered it.

muravyets said:

And then he's coming at me and I have to react. I pull my weapon and fire.

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What sane person carries a pistol around in a pocket with the safety off? Hence, my suggestion that she suspects something wrong, and has the pistol already out and ready to fire when she opens the door.

muravyets said:

Due to the nature of the confrontation, I may never have time to process in the conscious mind, much less record to memory, all the rest of the details of the scene except that one thing that was so alien both to ordinary crime and to my bedroom that it stood out like a sore thumb.

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So how in God's name does she see "STOLEN STUFF" written on the bag?

caw

I would like to start by saying to scribbledoutname, "See what you've started?"

blacbird said:

But the example (which I know is not part of a real work) doesn't say anything about a light. See, that absence of a crucial detail is part of my problem with this entire bit of description, and just one more reason to point out the difficulty in transmission of the description to the reader. We get detail about the red ski mask and the inscription on the bag, but nothing about the room or the conditions in which Lucy entered it.

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Yeah, but two things:

1) It's not a complete example. So I took a liberty. So sue me.

2) I am of the mindset that the reader will always supply a lot of the content of my stories. Here are what I would consider normal reader assumptions about unstated content in the hypothetical sample provided:

In the sample, I am being given an extraordinary situation of drama. It is set in an ordinary setting - a modern residence. We are told Lucy entered her room.

Unless we are given specific details that make Lucy's room unusual, it is normal to make certain assumptions -- that it is a bedroom, that it contains certain kinds of furniture, etc. -- based on how people in real life normally live and talk about their residences (when someone refers to "my room" in the US, for example, they typically mean their bedroom).

We can make further assumptions: We are told Lucy entered her room and sees things. That fact alone supports the assumption that there either was already light in the room or the light got turned on when she entered. You yourself made the assumption that a burglar would work in a darkened room, but since we are told Lucy saw him, then clearly, there must have been light. If you assumed darkness, why not assume the flipping of a switch, especially since it is normal for people to flip on a light switch by conditioned habit when they enter a dark room they are familiar with. A person's hand will just go to the switch without even thinking about it.

What sane person carries a pistol around in a pocket with the safety off? Hence, my suggestion that she suspects something wrong, and has the pistol already out and ready to fire when she opens the door.

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Well, that would echo what I said about finding it hard to imagine how people can walk in on a burglary in progress and be surprised by it. I mean, how do you not hear someone ransacking your room? But it happens in reality, so I guess it must be possible. I would prefer to have some description that would set me up for that, but in this particular sample, it's not a dealbreaker for me.

However, as to how she was carrying the gun, I feel as if at this point you are rewriting the sample rather than accept it as given. I think we should take the author at his word for what he tells us and then quibble about whether it is enough to allow us to fill in the blanks.

So okay, maybe it's stupid and crazy to carry a gun around in one's pocket, but the author tells us in the sample excerpt that Lucy always does this. As this is clearly an excerpt and not a complete, stand-alone micro-story, I choose to assume this insane habit of hers is somehow justified elsewhere in the book, so I just accept it as a fact for the time being. She has a gun in her pocket because she always has one. Okie-dokie.

Accepting as a fact of the story that Lucy always carries a gun in her pocket, that separates the gun's presence in her pocket from the question of whether she heard the burglar banging around in her room.

Now granted, it probably would have been staged better for the shooting if she'd had the gun in her hand rather than in her pocket, and that would have necessitated some descriptive explanation, but I see that as a different issue with the scene.

So how in God's name does she see "STOLEN STUFF" written on the bag?

caw

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Lol, like I said. Her eyes fell upon it and her confused brain said, "Wait -- what?"

ETA: I should point out that my faith in the reader to supply what I leave blank or implied is what makes this fleshing out of detail fun for me. I can get artistic. I can highlight what is dramatically important. As long as I give enough meat and bones to set the basics, I can highlight what is odd in my story without having to explicitly tell or show everything that is ordinary. Instead I can feed and set up my reader's natural assumptions about what is ordinary and then slap him/her with the bizarre.

For instance, my WIP has a scene in which a very supernatural ghost-like vampire invades the home of some people. By the time this happens, I will have already established the exterior of the house, the town, and the characters who live in the house. Because of this, I don't think I need to describe what their kitchen looks like. I can describe every way it is warped and distorted by the life and energy sucking presence of the undead and the violence that has just occurred before the vampire-hunting MCs enter, but I can just mention "lamp," "linoleum," "table," "back door." I don't have to describe the ordinary because everyone knows what a kitchen looks like.

Interesting path this thread has taken but. Scribbledoutname, instead of perpetually wringing your hands about things you've dreamt up but haven't written why don't you post something you've actually written in Share-Your-Work so we can see what you're finished effort looks like.

Maybe you are being light-hearted about it but revising and editing and polishing to achieve flow and clarity is a normal and necessary part of the processs and it's surely worth the effort to know folk will enjoy reading what you've written -if that's your aim.

Well, you certainly have gotten a lot of suggestions about a passage that you gave just as an example...but to answer your question, I don't mind the moment-to-moment stuff at all. My least favorite part of the process is when I get stuck while trying to outline. (E.g., I want to get from Point A to Point B but it's not clear how.)