I’m worried about a certain type of scenes: the ones that can’t really be shown through action, simply because the characters need to be in a quiet situation to live them. I’m worried that they may seem boring, compared to the rest—boring, or inappropriate, or looking too much like a lecture.

It can’t be helped, really. Depending on the kind of story, at times the characters will learn certain things that can’t be presented otherwise than through another character, a book, a precise source of data… and it’s not during a fight or an escape scene that they’ll find the information they need. For instance, I’ve always disliked stories in which the heroes are thrown into an unknown world or situation, and accept it as if it was perfectly normal (read The Fionavar Tapestry to see what I mean: “Oh, you say you’re a mage coming from another world? And we need to go there with you for the 50th birthday of the King? Okay.”). No kidding, how would I react in such a situation? I’d ask questions. I’d ask a hell of a lot of questions. I’d bother the natives until they tell me why I’m here, what is “here”, how is the world ruled, how this and how that. It’s the kind of questions I’d ask, and I’d ask them expecting an answer longer than just a few words. This would imply sitting and talking, or at least doing it during an event that would be quiet enough for us to talk, such as a walk, riding horses, being in a subway train, or whatever else can work. When answers need to be given, the author must give them. No escape here.

Some time ago, I had been wondering about my lack of desire to describe one-time characters, but after having recently spotted a discussion on the NaNoWriMo forums, I came to realize that, all that simply, I don’t describe characters much, even the main ones, and especially when it cannot come in a natural way (when I write in the first person, among other things, unless one walks in front of a mirror or has a really striking feature that comes as important in a given situation, I very much doubt any of us would mention their brown hair or blue eyes in passing).

No matter how I want to consider it, I’m always torn regarding how and when I should describe my characters. In first or even limited third person, it doesn’t come to me as natural that a character would immediately describe or notice how the others look like, unless she finds herself close to them (in terms of distance, not of relationships), has nothing better to do, has the time to observe them, or is hit, as said above, by a specific feature. I try to reason the way I’d do it myself: I don’t meet someone average and think “he has blue eyes, she has red hair”. This is what makes it awkward for me, in a way—it’s easy, in theory, to describe a person, but to make it in a natural way is much trickier. We pay attention to what isn’t ordinary. How many of us would really be able to tell the color of their friends’ eyes? We don’t exactly waste time scrutinizing their physical aspect, even on a first encounter. Our minds register appearances, but not in a conscious way (at least, not in my case, unless I’m of these people who don’t pay attention to the facial features, but to the persona herself?).

This is an intermediary post—no reflexion, nothing really deep, just something to let everyone know that I’m alive and somewhat back.

I wouldn’t have thought that a week-end away would have thrown me so off-balance. My original plan was to depart on Friday morning and be back by Saturday evening. Yes, I spent this time at my parents’, as I previously mentioned; I’ve been living alone or with my boyfriend since I was 18, and it’s a fact that since that time, my relationships with them have grown stronger and better than they were before. I suppos I needed my own space to breathe; now that I have it, we can focus on the important things. It was a great week-end. I’m happy I went back to Colmar. It’s not what whacked me over the head.

Things ended differently due to this damned cold, and I took the train back on Monday morning only, going straight to the office, and only coming home on Monday evening at nearly 8 pm. No need to say, I was really tired, to the point of collapsing in front of the TV and not doing anything else (those who know me well also know that I never spend an evening in front of the TV if I can avoid it; I need at least some dose of more creative juice flowing in before going to bed, even if it’s only through writing a blog entry or an e-mail).

So now I’m trying to get my spirits into gear again, and not take time away from the blog! Because I don’t want to take a break, that is; I just need my brain to be back into its normal, regular strut.

I’ve already started to prepare my next entry for here, and will post it later on tonight… I hope.

I haven’t had the time… okay, scratch that: I haven’t had the energy to do any constructive preparation for a really relevant blog entry here in the past three days, having spent some time on the couch shaking away the rest of my cold while watching the first season of Monk with my parents (yes, this is the mysterious place I’ve been to, stranded a good 250 km from my house! And Monk is a really great series, by the way.). As a result, I think I can safely answer the call of tagging placed upon me by Lee lately, although I really don’t know as of yet who I’m going to tag. It looks to me like every and each of you have already been tagged in this. So here are the rules:

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas…
5. Tag five people to do the same.

The sentence is: The English version of this blog remains here, where it has always been. (You can also access it through the domain name ylogs.com.)

Yep, it was about having created a separate French version of this blog, and to be honest, I’d better had shot myself on that day rather than putting my foot in my mouth and bragging about it, since this proved a bigger task than expected. I don’t regret it, I like having my blog in two different languages, but it’s like having to write every post twice, and it often discourages me from thinking of longer, more detailed entries that I don’t want to completely translate. Well, at least it forces me to not gloss and babble for pages on end, which is probably a good thing in the end.

Now to find someone to tag… My mind is completely blank. Really.

Yesterday marked the beginning of my first cold of the season, so now I’m officially sick, and while not forced to stay in bed, I have to admit that my brain isn’t really able to, er, process important, complex and detailed information today. As a result, my usual reflexions on writing and the like will resume as soon as possible (probably this Sunday, given that I’m supposed to be away for the week-end on top of it).

However, because I don’t want to leave this entry at that, I’m also going to announce that the Niner Niner network doesn’t require any beta password to sign up anymore, from what I got told earlier on this week. Anyone who’d be interested to write for them, you can register at http://ninerniner.com. It doesn’t cost anything, the network’s owners are really nice folks, and they have a range of blogs on varied enough themes for everyone to possibly find at least one domain of interest there, even a very minor one. I’ve had quite some fun working with them so far, they’re pretty laid back, and it’s even pushed me to learn a few things I didn’t know before. If only for that, I have to be thankful. (And if you don’t want to post, you can of course read the blogs.)

Y Tags: blog | blogging | blog+network | writing