- Mood:
Time for a few secrets
Regarding alternate scenes...
What I try to do is to put myself in place of the character and see it from their POV... to feel, to experience the situation and write the thoughts and emotions that I am feeling.
For example, In Chp. 6 of Group X: Sub Rosa, a major character just found out the death of a loved one. His subordinate gave him the news and it hit him hard. I wanted the scene to have the emotional impact that straight narration couldn't provide so I chose poetry to express it...
Staring at the message
I love you Sabre
Hearing Cassie’s voice
In his mind
Remembering the first time
She had told him that
Haunted by the memories
Of the past five years
The emptiness in his heart If I did straight narration, it would have been an ordinary description found in so many other stories. Roughly, it would have read like this without the poetic feel...
SE stared at the PADD.
"Sabre, I love you" Cassie's voice echoed in his mind as he read the words.
He remembered the first time she told him that. The memories of the past five years haunted him, an emptiness in his heart.
Now which version do you prefer? I like the poetic version. After each line, there's a pause so you can really understand the words as well as reading it a little slower than a regular sentence. To me, within that stanza, it expresses exactly how SE feels. I can feel his emotions. Do you?
In the narration version, I read the lines too fast and it doesn't tell me how he feels. It's bland. It's ordinary. I could make this version a little more descriptive or change a few words here and there, but it's still the same. I don't feel the emotion. Do you?
There are some scenes that I wrote that were in narration, but I found that poetry expresses it better. And um... don't tell anyone this... 
I use poetry as a crutch to help me save time by skipping past a particularly difficult element in a scene such as describing the setting or a situation. More often than not, this element has been beaten to death like a poor horse or I have no idea where to start.
For other alternate scenes, I approach the situation from another angle and compare that with the original one. There have been certain scenes that run through my mind and I'm the director yelling, "Cut!" each time then restarting it with a subtle difference. It keeps on running in my mind, sometimes for days and the only way for it to stop is to write it down. 
Once it's written down, it's in it's final form or close to it. 
I guess it's worth the restless days trying to get the scene out of my mind and onto paper or on the computer.
I do a majority of my writing using paper and pen. I find it easier to focus on writing then being distracted on the computer with online access. Yeah, I know... be more high tech, it'll save you time. 
That maybe true, but I'm not taking a chance that my computer could die before I can save it to CD. If I have my notebook, I can rewrite it without the edits of course, but at least I'll have it.
This is a long entry... does it make up for skipping yesterday which was mundane and you don't want to read that, do you?
Take care,
MSR
3 comment(s).
I've undertaken the daunting task of writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November for National Novel Writing Month again.
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