(no subject)

[tanaise]

No job just yet, but I've got another interview with a temp agency tomorrow. And it's close to where I have to go shop and look for shoes. Maybe it will even not be cloudy and cold, but that's probably asking too much.

Andrea and I were discussing, recently, the utter lack of percieved 'magik' in most non-celtic/new agey/folk type bands, and how much it irritates me when I'm reading delint, for example, and one listens to anything but that sort of music. Presumably that's the stuff the secretaries and lawyers listen to, you know, the unmagical people who suck! I just get so endlessly bored. Oh, look, it's a red headed girl, presumably with some sort of magic about her (a selkie? a mermaid? a waitress?), and thus she loves only celtic flighty type music. Now, I have a number of celtic CDs, and I totally loved it for a few years in HS. But...I listen to all sorts of music. And I always did, even when I loved celtic. So this ends up feeling like the same thing as deLint's utter lack of people who had happy healthy childhoods, who were always loved and never abused etc, etc. We don't matter. Only injured people matter, only injured people have magik in them.

bah! I say. The music I listen to is no less magic than any other sort of music.


This also ties in with another thing that drives me crazy--mistaking 'telling detail' for 'highly detailed.' It maybe a stylistic thing, but I do not need to know everything that is in the room. I do not need to know every detail of lunch, or every thing on their desk. because then it just starts getting weird. I loved The Ill-Made Mute. (didn't finish it, exactly, but loved what I'd read of it) And I remember how the first 100 pages were like molasses. gah. The only reason for detail in stories, in my mind, is to advance the story. So it only matters if you've got the biggest slice of pizza if you're going to do something with it. It only matters if the cup is chipped if it adds something to the story. If it's just a detail, just because, I try not to mention it. Because unless there's a reason for it, there's a really good chance that you're just cluttering up the story with unecessary details that will end up distracting or trapping the reader--I use detail to guide my reader's attention to the right (or wrong) thing, but to make sure they're looking the way I want them to look. To scatter detail around indiscrimantly just ends up confusing the reader when they don't know what's important and what's not. And it *never* is all important.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Well, agree and disagree. I think a perfectly acceptable use for detail is grounding the reader and giving him a world to move through so he doesn't have to maneuver in a white room.

But used properly, it's invisible. It becomes part of the flow of the narrative, and enters seamlessly into the whole.

It's when it's used clumsily that it stands out as clots of description, or a lack of setting, or whatever.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I think there's a level of detail that just automatically is clumsy, even in experienced writers. and this may simply be my own preference, i don't know, but there's just...I would much rather have too little details--but right details, what few there are--than too many details. A white room is preferable to a highly detailed study of the room and all that's in it. The benefit of a white room is that you can see right away that the important things in it are different colors. Too much detail, and the reader stops paying attention to any of it and start skimming.

It's not a seamless narrative if the detail is not something that's necessary for the story, I think is my ultimate point. No detail for detail's sake. If the room is given more than the basic details, I want a)them to be telling details, and b)the room to be important *in and of itself*, not just as a room where something fancy happened.

[marrael.livejournal.com]

Ditto on a lot of things. You know, music tastes are so personal, I actually don't want to know what a novel's characters like to listen to, because I might disagree horribly and start disliking the protagonist(s). And, I dislike movies where the crazy evil guy likes Italian opera because, well, I like Italian opera, and such movies want you to believe that the hero probably thinks Italian opera is pretencious and mostly listens to the gangsta rap that's on the movie soundtrack. But that's going off on a tangent. And I can only think of one movie like that really.

Ditto again on too much detail. Don't like it unless it's important and setting an unusual mood, or the setting is highly exotic and deserves description.

Good luck on the continuing job hunt. :)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

You know, music tastes are so personal, I actually don't want to know what a novel's characters like to listen to, because I might disagree horribly and start disliking the protagonist(s).

For sure. I'm suspicious of the use of music to set a mood or some such, because there's no guarantee that the song the author's husband sang to her on their first date that makes her all starry-eyed and melty now is going to do anything at all for me--and if it was playing on the radio of the car my kidnapper drove when I was six, ho, boy! I'm sure people like Five For Fighting, for example, but I find their songs horribly whiny.

It's not always a deal-breaker and you can definitely use music effectively, but it's something to be aware of, anyway.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I think part of the effectiveness is to make it very very specific to the character. So the character who gets stary-eyed and melty over happy birthday because it's 'their song' needs to know it's just her, and that her friends all laugh when she gets choked up and can't sing it. It's the 'this is how I the author feel, and thus you the reader must feel the same way.' attitude that leads to trouble.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I'm okay with like, a mention of music (and this ties in with my details stuff) *if* there's a reason to mention it. For example, she's listening to her favorite tape while she's working out and doesn't remember until halfway through it that it's got a song by her ex-boyfriend on it which makes her cry. That's acceptable. Or that she has a secret guilty pleasure of listening to Brittney while working out--a *mention* is fine. She can set the music up because it gives *her* a certain mood, likewise, but I don't like generalizations in stories, and yeah, if the music-opinion combo seem wrong to me, I don't trust the character as much.

Really, it *all* seems to come back to, 'is it necessary for the story?' and too many answers are, "well, no but..." and that's just the wrong answer. "Yes, because" is the right answer, and even then, sometimes you're just fooling yourself. "Yes, because it makes you sympathize with the character's pain," for example, is so wrong that I should be allowed to go to people's houses and smack them for saying it.

and good luck with the new laptop hunt. ;)

[straif.livejournal.com]

Pardon the rambles and generalizations.

I would say that Celtic and folk music (I probably wouldn't put new age in this group) are both played by "feel". Unlike classical music, you don't play by sheet music and keep careful track of tempo. Rather, it is the ornamentations that are injected at whim that give the music its character. Rock, pop, and such are shaped by what the record label thinks the record buyers want, rather than what the musician wants to play.

I would also expand folk music to include most world music (a category in which Celtic would belong). I think there is a place for jazz, blues, and punk here too.

There is a magic that comes from music played from the heart and soul, from his or her own being rather than what the conductor or studio exec demands.

You know what? What I just wrote is complete crap, but I think it is the thinking behind that attitude.

What is more magical? The middle-manager that spends his weekends listening to the most banal pop music while handcrafting furniture? Or the guy that night after night goes to an Irish bar in Boston, listens to Tommy Makem on the overhead speakers and gets pissed on Guinness?

Who is more magical? The single mother that listens to NPR as she shuttles her kids to and from soccer practice and dance class--and enjoys every minute she gets to spend with her kids? Or the teenage girl that listens to "Keltik Magick, volume 1", has learned her wicca-foo from watching Buffy and Charmed and reads everything by Wolf Silverraven?

Who is more magical? The guy that likes to wander out into the woods and play his fiddle? Or the guy that listens to the top 40 station as he plans to bulldoze that same forest to make a golf course?

You are not magical because of the music you listen to. You are not magical because of your hair color. You are not magical because your childhood sucked.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

It depends. is the guy who's wandering in the woods playing his fiddle Tom Rhymer? cause then automatically the guy with the bulldozer is more magical and less slimy.

Which brings up something else that I actually studied in a history class once: why is the golf course less magical than the forest? we have what, 5% old growth forests left these days. So really, they're equally man made. And really, why wouldn't fairies prefer the nice smooth grass of a golf course over briars and holes and such in the woods? It seems to me that everything has an equal opportunity to be magic. Not everything takes advantage of this chance, but it's not just given out to mood music and forest streams.

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

Because only people who pay money have access to that golf course. (And just cause a forest isn't old growth doesn't mean that it was actually intentionally planted.)

Totally agree on the Tom Rhymer bit though.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I still don't believe that golf courses are automatically less magical, or rather that forests are automatically more magical. We always went skiing and sledding on the one near us. It had a pond, it had trees--why is it less magical because humans designed it?

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that that's the reason. I think it's less magical because access is restricted on what used to be public land. (If the land the golf course is on wasn't public land, all bets are off.)

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

I think it's seen as less magical because it's designed, and therefore, someone somewhere knows where everything is. In a forest (and to some extent, in a city), it's wide and tangly and just grew like that, so anything might be out there without you or anyone else knowing - on the golfcourse, there aren't really the hiding places, or the areas where things just grew. Same way suburban homes aren't 'magical' (to the imagination - they may be if you live there) but abandoned, derelict houses are - it's the areas of chaos where odd things happen.
Having said all that, I find some designed environments very magical - thinking of the university campus where my dad worked and where I spent a lot of time growing up - 60s concrete buildings in the middle of former manor-house parkland. And golfcourses have that feeling of being wide open to the sky, which is also magical, especially at night... But, that's in reality. They work as magical places to experience, but they don't work so well as symbolic representations of magical experience in literature, due to aforementioned lack of chaos...

[piratejenny.livejournal.com]

Of course, the same people who think this don't realize that so many "wild" gardens are designed, or even that Central Park has a very specific design to it.

But then, people often refuse to see the magic in everyday things.

(Me, I'd just like the magic of not feeling muzzy-headed and feverish again.)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oh, look, it's a red headed girl, presumably with some sort of magic about her

Everyone knows redheads are cliche.

[two-star.livejournal.com]

You forgot blues, which is black-people-magik.

I have a half-started story which mentions music the protagonist is listening to, and it is celtic, but only because this allowed me to use an atrocious band name pun. (There's an important bit of exposition in the way he is listening to it, so that's my excuse.)

---

Handling detail in IF is one of the things that simultaneously makes IF writing easier and harder than static fiction writing. Easier because the player can decide what to look at, and in what order, and what level of subobjects to look at, and you can write little disconnected paragraphs of description without worrying how they fit into the flow of the story. Harder because if there's anything important in a description and the player misses it, it screws up their experience of the game, so you have to guide the player to details without seeming too blatant. And you end up writing more of it.