Poll!

[icepixie]

ETA: Let's see if this works right this time...

This is just something I've been thinking about lately. Also, I've never done a poll before. Fanfic applies to both questions if you want it to.

[Poll #525641]

Please elaborate in comments if you want. I'm interested in anything you have to say relating to these questions.

For me, about four out of five times, my first inking of a piece of writing will come in the form of a location to set it. I usually tend to draw these locations from real life. Whether they're from RL or purely imaginative, I know everything about how it feels to be in that place, from the exact location on a map to the air temperature to the background sounds and smells. Not all of this information makes it into the description of the place, but it helps me form the action that happens and the characters that would be found there. The other times are divided between a character--including fanfic explorations of characters seen on TV--and a "hey, wouldn't it be cool if" kind of plot. But mostly it's location: I'll think, I want to write a scene that takes place at a fireworks store, in a cornfield, on the front porch of a 1920s bungalow near a speedway on a summer night, on a snowy day in Atlantis, whatever. Everything else just falls into place after that. Of course, this tends to lead to fragmentary writing; once that scene is over, what do I do? Ideas where the character or plot come first aren't as rich in detail, but they seem to carry me through longer stretches of writing and larger goals.

Similarly, I enjoy pieces that make good use of descriptive language to really pull the reader into a scene. Thomas Hardy, my perennial favorite Victorian soap opera novelist, is a great example of this. In fact, when we were reading some Hardy stories in the Kenyon Seminar this semester, we had a brief discussion about descriptive language in novels. Matz suggested that some people "do the work" of imagining everything that is described as far as location, objects, etc., while others just skim to get to the action. I was somewhat astonished that anyone could not see everything as it was described. It's not a conscious decision for me; when I read, my mind pretty much translates it into a movie in my head. I take the description of the setting, realize it it full color, add any details that are lacking to make it cohesive, and then the action just takes place there like it would on a TV screen. After a while, I can't tell you the words I just read; I can tell you what the scene looks like in my mind, with my own words, but I probably couldn't repeat any of the sentences used by the original author. Maybe this comes from watching too much television as a small child, but I think even if I had no idea what movies or TV were, I'd still do this. Maybe not as well, but I think that's still how I would read.

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Also, regarding my answers on the poll: I answered Other on the first question for the reason I was trying to articulate above. I guess what I get first is closest to setting, but really it's just a feeling, usually based on a phrase--oddly enough, it's often a phrase describing something visual, but not something I actually see. For example, one story I was planning last year was stuck until I got an idea of this scene in a country lane, late autumn, and the phrase "the leaves curling like flame around them."

As for my second answer, it's usually some combination of style and character, although in general style is most important to me.

[icepixie]

I know what you mean about a phrase launching something, although for my part I usually do see/feel/hear what it is the phrase is describing. Usually that's what gets a poem going for me; for stories, it's more of a feel of a place, like you say above.

I was having trouble deciding between style and character, too; usually a really interesting bit of language will draw me in, but I need to connect in some way to the characters to keep reading beyond the first thirty pages or so.