#and id be happy to rephrase or explain something i brought up | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

glorified-red · 1 year

Note

Things only get added into the room if the character interacts with it. If the character doesnt, then you're just telling the reader what to imagine.

can you go a little more in depth with this?

I'd love to! This is a really good question, too.

So most writers I work with are visual learners and need some kind of visual to understand an abstract concept, and with writing, there's many.

So sure I could say "Show. Don't tell."

But what does that look like?

So I say your story starts with an empty room. It's a little 4 x 4 room, no windows, no doors, nothing on the walls, no furniture, just absolutely nothing. When you start writing, your character gets plopped into that room.

The room is the setting of your story, but if you haven't specified a setting yet, the room is empty. Sure you can tell the readers that the room is supposed to be a forest, a classroom, or a mall.

But, you haven't detailed the room yet, it's still empty, it just has a little sign in the middle of the room that says "forest". But forests all look different, so that tells me absolutely nothing.

Plus, that's telling, and we don't want that.

So with my writers, I make them write me a scene with only one rule (fun little writing exercise for those who wanna try):

Nothing gets added into the room unless your character physically, mentally, or emotionally interacts with it. If your character doesn't? It doesn't exist.

You wanna specify that there's a desk in the corner of the room adjacent to the bed? You can't tell the audience, you have to find a way for your character to interact with it and show them that it exists.

This also applies to pre-existing scenes. If you read a scene and your character only interacts with the bed, yet you spent two paragraphs describing the furniture layout of the room?

I make them delete it.

They can then see visually that now there's only a bed in that once empty room. Plus, if your character only interacts with the bed and nothing else in that scene?

Then what's the point of describing the desk.

At that point you're just controlling your readers imagination because you can. You're taking away the readers freedom to imagine any room they want to, a room that they find familiar, find intriguing, or just think would look cool for the story.

Micromanaging the visuals of a story is fine if it's pertinent to the plot or you have a specific vibe (then you use tone, connotation, etc. Instead of focusing on specifics of where shit is, specify what it looks like because if you want a vibe, that's important to character portrayals which is therefore important to plot), or your character interacts with it in a specific way.

Otherwise? Does it matter?

Especially when talking about fanfiction. The entire point of reader-insert writing is for anyone to picture themselves and their situation into the fic and micromanaging what they can and cannot imagine limits that projection.

That's why all my fics are as vague as shit. So you guys can picture your bedroom or your kitchen, because me saying the countertops are marbled doesn't affect anything but your ability to effectively immerse yourself into the story.

Now if I were to have a flashback or reference that you and your comfort character spent a week remodeling the countertops and you can trace the spot where you tried writing your signatures in the marble---that affects the plot, that would be a fun tidbit.

So when it comes to setting and scenary, there's a fine line between creating enough things in the room to make a cohesive story, accidentally creating nothing at all, and creating too much.

And it all boils down to your audience, what your writing, why you're writing it, and your platform of writing.

Specifically in fanfiction, listing off scenery is fine to create the mood, but it gets boring when done in excess. I like for my writers to get out of the habit of relying on telling the audience what to imagine for the sake of "just 'cause" because that's the quickest way to tread the path towards excess.

"The desk was pushed against the furthest wall, the window next to it shining light against the array of notebooks and broken crayons. The bed was in disarray. Pillows made their way to the foot of the bed and the blankets were crumpled and half falling onto the carpet below."

Like yea, you could absolutely do that. It paints the scene well even though you're just telling the audience what to imagine.

But the key in that paragraph is that all the things I mentioned in the room had a purpose. I'm not just saying there's a desk in the room because I'm picturing a desk so therefore you have to picture the same desk (aka micromanaging imagination)

No, I'm showing that the room is chaos which could then bridge into a story about why. Maybe the character is going through Shit™ or that's a character trait. It's still showing the audience something in the subtext even though it's telling the setting.

(This would be an example of room vibes which helps with character portrayals like I mentioned earlier. Notice how I didn't specify where the desk or bed was In relation to each other, instead I focused on details of said things to get the message of chaos across [crayons, blankets, notebooks, etc]. I also implied that a character interacted with the room because how else would crayons break? How else would blankets fall to the floor? This is what I mean when I say a character can interact with the space without it being inherently physical [can be emotional or mental], it can also be implied. That implication counts towards creating stuff in the room because technically, your character interacted with it. So yes, I told you what's in the room. But I also had the character interact with it in the past. Fun little loophole to my rule.)

You can have both at once.

Sure I'm basically listing off bullet points of what the room looks like. But there's reason behind it. Because if a character walks into the chaotic room, it's showing the audience that hey, there's a reason why the room is chaotic, stay tuned to find out. Even though I never actually specified that there's a reason in the first place.

So you kinda gotta ask yourself where you want to show and where you want to tell, cuz showing all the time gets too poetic and hurts brains unless you want to be an asshole and write poetry.

But just telling makes for a shitty story.

So you gotta find a balance. And the exercise above with the empty room is for you to practice showing setting instead of telling it because it's an easy habit to fall into. Some people don't need the practice but by god do most.

You don't have to use the empty room analogy all the time, but if you find yourself spending 2-5+ paragraphs telling the audience what to imagine, it might be a good exercise to try out to see what matters to plot, what your characters are interacting with, and what your habits are.

I usually write out what the room looks like in detail and then begin the scene. After I finish, I delete all the paragraphs of me describing the room to see what the characters actually needed to make the scene run.

Then If I need to, and only if I need to, I'll re-describe the room with only those things in mind. And most times? I don't need to anyway.

Honestly that's why most of my fics jump into things immediately or start with dialogue because I don't need to describe that shower caddy hanging from the side of the standing shower, I don't even need to specify it's a standing shower and not a tub shower, I just have to say it's a shower.

Especially in fanfictions where the setting has already been created visually (aka the manor, the batcave, bedrooms, etc). Most often, your readers already have a visual of those things based on the canon content they consume.

Describing your version of the batcave is just, again, micromanaging their imagination. But yes, absolutely go into detail about how there's coffee mugs scattered beside the batcomputer and theyre all different shapes, sizes, colors, and filled with different liquids.

Because that implies the Batfamily is up together and each have mugs and it's cute and could affect the plot. (This is also implying character interaction in the past!!! This then allows the batcomputer to materialize into the empty room because the characters have interacted with it. Yes it was in the past, but they still did!)

But please, don't spend so much energy telling me the medbay is next door to the safe room. Cuz in my brain, it's not, and I'm just gonna ignore you.

#i really hope this made sense #its a lot to unpack #if it was a jumble of words and you dont get it #let me know #and id be happy to rephrase or explain something i brought up #especially with implying character interaction #and purpose #and when to delete shit #cuz its funky #asks #writing help #writing tips #writing advice

126 notes · View notes