Write Every Day - April Day #4

[auroracloud]

Today's Writing

Today once I got home from work, I've just been super-tired and have hardly had the energy for anything. But I managed some notes on the novel-thing again, so at least that's something.



Tally

Day 1: auroracloud, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, navaan, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilme

Day 2: auroracloud, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, navaan, shopfront, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, trobadora, ysilme

Day 3: auroracloud, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, navaan, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, trobadora, ysilme

Let me know if I missed you or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join us or drop out any time.

Comments

[carenejeans]

I...took a long, hard look at a section of the novel and ended up cutting about 1200 words. It was clunky, it didn't really fit into the plot, and it was too weird. Not good weird, just -- odd. Sigh.

After that I did some remedial world-building, or I guess I should say set-building, since all the action takes place in a BOOKSHOP. 8-/ How hard can 'worldbuilding' a bookshop BE? Hah. Large or small? (Middle-sized.) Swanky or down at the heels? (Not swanky.) In a detached building or part of a complex? (Detached.) How many floors does it have? (Two.) Does it have oddball sections along with the usual? (Yes.) A rare book room or just a few cases? (A room.) How many people work there? (Four.) How long has it existed? (65 years or so.) Did the current owner start it up or did he buy it from a Grade-A Eccentric? (The latter.) Does it have a basement in which, somewhere among the boxes of books, old typewriters, catalogs, furniture, shop mannequins and fallout shelter supplies, lies something... magical? (Well, yeah.)

Shotgun or square? Old-fashioned deep display windows or not? Register in front or to the side? Display cabinets or cases? Seating? I'm feeling punchy. Maybe I should take a break from it...

[ysilme]

As a reader, I'd totally want as many details about that bookshop as possible, so go you! How a bookshop looks is IMPORTANT IMHO.

[auroracloud]

Editing is important, too, even if you end up cutting a lot of text. And sometimes you need to have written something anyway, to know the characters/world/something better, or just to find out it doesn't work.

I agree with Ysilme, bookshops are important! I love reading about bookshops! So worldbuild it all you like! That's a good example, anyway, of how worldbuilding isn't just about creating continents and mountain chains and countries for fantasy worlds or species and geography for a foreign planet, but it can be some small intimate setting like a bookshop or someone's flat. If you don't spend some time thinking about its details, either it's going to feel vague and the reader doesn't feel they're there, or you end up defaulting to some particular place you know well. I always have to spend some time making sure all my characters in modern stories don't live in my flat, or all the country houses in my historical stuff aren't my grandparents' house.

But yeah, if you feel like the bookshop is starting to swirl in your head (or appear in your dreams or whatever...) then taking a break from it may always be a good idea. :-D

[carenejeans]

Heh, funny you should mention the danger of defaulting to a place you know well... My husband and I own a used bookshop. I have to work to keep from defaulting to it, but I'm getting there. The fictional one is sort of an amalgam of several shops that I've liked over the years.

(Our bookshop is small, not swanky, part of a small shopping strip, one floor, shotgun, rare book cases behind the counter, two employees (husband, myself), we started it from scratch 15 years ago, and there is no basement. 8-))