Yzabel / September 17, 2005

Dialogue vs Description

Triggered by the tidying of a still unexplored room in our house and finding some old “classic” French books, I remembered a belief I had when I was younger. Although I can’t exactly recall why I had it, I suspect it had to do a lot with studying a certain amount of said classic books at school.It could be summarized as follows: “description is better than dialogue”.That’s it, I thought that the longer and the more detailed descriptions were, the better the book would be, too. Dialogue? Some puny thing, used only to provide some relief to the eyes among heavy blocks of text. In fact, I’m more and more certain that our teachers had told us at some point that dialogue was “easy”, and that it denoted a lack of talent in writing.Tell you what, twelve years later, I’m not convinced of this anymore, at least not when it comes to fiction works, and frankly, where else would dialogue wield so much importance anyway?Read More

Yzabel / September 14, 2005

Second Person (Points of View, Again)

Today, this particular question came to mind again (I had already wondered about it when I was reading “No Plot? No Problem!”, a few weeks ago): does anyone use the second-person point of view? I mean, for real? Or is this just a joke? Come to think of it, if I hadn’t remembered these well-known “choose your own adventure” books, I would indeed have be tempted to think no writer in his right mind would ever use that.However, this very morning, as I was broswing through old archives (not mine, fortunately), I realized that some people use, or has used it. In technical documents nonetheless. Oh, the horror.It’s not about addressing the reader, no: it’s clearly a second-person point of view, and the result is very awkward sentences sounding much like “you see a window in which you click…”. I’m not kidding, and it’s a good thing that I’m decent at writing English, else our current manuals would be really icky.Someone please tell me that it’s not the way technical writers are supposed to work in English…documents, writing

Yzabel / September 13, 2005

How Many Points of View?

I know, I know, I should stop thinking so much… I simply happen to very often ponder writing matters, these days. This time, I found myself wondering about points of views in stories. There are many questions attached to these, after all, and it’s not always easy to know how to write, and at what moment.I’m not sure whether first person or third person is better to tell a story; it probably heavily depends on the story itself, and on the author’s ability to use them to their full efficiency. For instance, I know that instinctively, I tend to use the third person one from my character’s perspective, rather than its omniscient version (it’ll happen, of course—just not that often).Read More

Yzabel / September 12, 2005

Writing From A Plan

I don’t think there’s an absolute answer to this question, as there very likely are as many solutions as there are writers out there. Therefore, I’m going to consider this from a subjective point of view only: drafting a precise plan and outlines for a story before writing it, is it an effective method for you, or not?Weirldy enough, I’ve always worked with a plan for non-fiction writing, such as school essays or technical documents later on. For fiction stories, on the other hand, I work much more loosely, not even writing chapters in order. These days, I’m trying to use both methods, so that I can compare them and see which one is more efficient for me. It’s not that evident to define.Read More

Yzabel / September 8, 2005

Sketching the Thoughts

A little musing on my mind today: in the case of fiction (since I assume that it’s not really appliable to non-fiction works), do some of you also happen to sketch their characters, or even landscapes, actions, and so on, instead of directly describing them in your books? This is regardless of style and skill, and only as a personal way of fixing your ideas, not as artwork in itself.My own style isn’t what you could call “realistic” (my influences mainly come from comics and manga, as well as a certain type of vector works), but I’ve found that more often, sketching helps me to write better descriptions, as what I want to show is clearly pictured in my mind already. Moreover, in the case of action scenes, it’s also a good exercise for me to see if said action can be performed by a human body, or is just looking nice in my own perception. If the latter can seem laughable, sometimes it really isn’t, and has already allowed me to avoid… many mistakes.characters, drawing, sketching, writing

Yzabel / September 4, 2005

Languages in Fiction Stories – Part 1

Surely I’m not the only one dealing with the creation of a whole foreign language in my world of fantasy. Since I’ve started to think of it more closely, there are a few “rules” I’ve been able to isolate, both from my own attempts and from observing the works of other authors. This is still a loose list, in a way, but I feel that it can be interesting and useful to lay it down in full, since I know this whole language matter can become bothersome for the reader if not used properly.These rules sure aren’t carved in stone; feel free to add your own if you need to deal with this. I’m going to begin here with the creation of languages; the second part of the article will be developed in another post due to its global length.Read More

Yzabel / September 3, 2005

And Ideas Sprang…

Another of these reflexions about writing that came to me through means to which I wouldn’t think at first…It was 8 AM, I was up since 6, and after some time spent writing, I was itching to move. The weather that wasn’t too warm yet decided me to do something I seldom do: running. Therefore, I laced my shoes and simply stepped out (the good thing with wearing simple tops and shorts is that I’m always ready for such whims).I normally don’t like jogging. I’m much more a squash and strength-training person, and the only thing close to “cardio” that I really like is dancing. This time, however, there was something in the air, or perhaps in my way of viewing the world, that made it different. I didn’t have a MP3 player with me, I didn’t have any company, not even my dog. It was just me and myself, ready to have a little internal dialogue while running with my eyes on the clear sky. This is one of the nice things when living in the country: there are plenty of tracks and places to run, far from cars and other people.And the ideas started pouring in.Of course, I couldn’t note them down on the spot, but I had so much time alone to think of them that they still managed to stick in my mind. In about half a hour, I got ideas for a good nine or ten short stories. I probably won’t use them all—you can be sure that I scribbled them down afterwards to make sure I don’t forget—yet no matter what, it’s a very fine feeling to find myself with renewed inspiration.Too bad I don’t really enjoy running. If I had done this more often, without any other distraction, perhaps I’d now have a really huge stash of ideas.ideas, running, writing

Yzabel / September 2, 2005

Et In Arcadia Nos – Part 4

[Last installment of this story. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.]First came the terror, the terror at seeing how Ewell was wiped off the surface of the planet in a matter of minutes, after the first and last use of the A-M bomb prototype. No more shiny cristal cities, no more communications, no more Rims nor Kellens, no more floating islands in the sky of the main land, architectural and technical wizardry meant to create additional space in a once overpopulated country. Varsa’s government itself started to panick, when every satellite liaison broadcast showed the world what was now left of a whole continent.Second came the Flood, the sudden void created in the middle of the ocean causing the waters to subside first, then rise. When they finally retreated again, finding a new, fragile balance, the face of the world was never to be the same again.In the end, caught in the chain of events that had boiled for decades only to culminate without any point of turning-back, the lead countries and their allies annihilated themselves in a last display of raw, brutal strength.Read More

Yzabel / September 1, 2005

Developing A Story Through The Years

It’s always weird and somewhat thrilling to realize that some of my methods are close or even exactly similar to those of known fiction writers. Today, while going on reading How to Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy, this is exactly what happened to me.In the second chapter of his book, Card describes the genesis of Hart’s Hope, one of his rare forays into fantasy, that took years to develop. How it all started by the map of a town scribbled on a piece of paper. How the town had specific doors that made it so that a traveller entering through God’s Door could only have access to the Temple area, and not to the others. The many processes that made it develop into a town where the gods of old had been defeated by a mere mortal. How this mortal had been able to acquire such a power, through a blood magic to which only a crime could give so much strength and efficiency. I’m not telling more about it here, but do know that it was really fascinating, to see all of these elements gathered through the years combine to shape a whole world and, finally, the plot of the story.Read More