Friday, June 10, 2005

Switching POV

It came to me yesterday that part of ch 4's problem was that too much was in the heroine's pov. The reader needed to know more about the hero and his motivation/conflict. I spent the morning switching it around and it now reads better.
At the moment, I seem to be enamoured of dark. His dark curly hair, dark circles under his eyes, dark thoughts. This is not good. It is getting way to see any half way decent writing. Dark hair has to be described a different way and thus allow me to bring the reader more into the heroine's thoughts. What would she think of when she saw dark hair -- charcoal, raven's wing or black stones on the edge of a pool shimmering. Deciding how a character would describe a scene is one of the more interesting parts of writing. What is important to them and why would they notice a specfic feature. The way a room looks to someone can often tell you about their mood, character and general state of mind.
Snow for instnace can be suffocating but it can also be fun. It can treacherous hiding dark secrets, or it can make an ugly landscape become reborn. Snow can mean survival but it can also mean a chance for play. What your character brings to the scene helps determine what sort of snow it will be. It is the character's reaction that is important rather than the actual snow.
Anyway, I think the changes I have made have helped to make the story stronger as the individual personality stamp was missing. Hopefully it is now there.

In other news: the ducklings now look like they have punk hairdos and their wings are in pin. Sometimes, one of them stretches her wings and she bears more of a reseblance to a cormorant or a shag than a duck with ragged short wings. Each also is developing a green sheen to their feathers. They are becoming quite pretty little things. (Yes, I know I shall have to do some more pictures) I have been rather worried about them suddenly developing primaries and flying away, but my husband assures me that there is no need to clip their wings until the autumn.

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