Different Worlds
Crossposted to the Deadline Dames. Check them out!
Small announcement: I will be doing #askawriter on Twitter, from 6:30-7pm, PST. Come ask me questions about writing and publishing, I will answer all I can within that timeframe. Be sure to use the hashtag! I’ve done #askawriter twice now, and it’s been a lot of fun, not to mention good practice distilling answers into 140 characters. Also, you can check my Events Calendar. I will be putting #askawriter and other chats on there, as well as appearances and signings.
A lot of people have asked me recently if I get confused between the different worlds and series I write. It’s a fair question, since I am seen as being pretty prolific. (I am not nearly as fast as I want to be, believe me.)
The short answer is, no. The lighting is too different.
The long answer requires a digression. But you pretty much guessed that, didn’t you.
I’m going to tell you (oh, all right, I’m telling the world, same difference) something I’ve never told anyone before. When I was a little girl, I would be sent to bed far earlier than my body clock liked. I had a lot of time, lying there in the dark. And what I would do is tell myself stories. But I wouldn’t just repeat them, words on a string. I saw them. I literally built them inside my head, like movies. I trained myself to see every scene, right down to the glasses on a kitchen counter or the titles of the books on a nightstand. I built very detailed scenes inside my head, and fell asleep inside them.
What I didn’t realize was that I was training to see stories. Recently at an event, a scriptwriter told me my books are “cinematic.” The reason is simple: I see them. I stop scenes, pan around, and the soundtrack gives me a voiceover of what the characters are thinking. I can slip inside a character’s head and see things from their angle, jump out and into another body–it was and is intensely liberating, for someone with such an emotionally impoverished and stricture-heavy childhood.
So, you will now understand when I say there is never any doubt or question for me what story I am in at any particular time. I can’t help but tell them apart, if only for the simple reason that the lighting is different.
For example, the Dante Valentine series had a very specific look. It was very Ridley Scott Bladerunner. The Jill Kismet books are very Alex Proyas, the first Crow movie. The lighting for the Watcher series is very Conspiracy Theory. My fantasy books are highly color-saturated, very Tarsem Singh, like the Cell or the Fall. (Or like House of Flying Daggers, which is what Kaia Steelflower’s world looks like inside my head.) Dru Anderson’s world, in Strange Angels, looks a lot like the lighting in Wong Kar-Wei’s Fallen Angels.
It’s become second-nature for me to go inside my head and let the scene open up around me. Then it is a straightforward matter of finding the most elegant or efficacious way to describe what exactly I’m seeing. The words and the vision go together for me, two wheels of a bicycle. I have two problems while writing: getting enough detail in the scene to help other people see it, and finding the exact right word to describe what I’m seeing. The first is often solved by one of my editors, who quickly learn to mark where I’m seeing the scene so clearly I fall into the trap of assuming everyone else can see it too. The second is why I am a word magpie, always hunting them down and stuffing them away inside my brainmeat. I need every single one I can find–who knows when I might have to use them to convey a precise meaning?
This is why I am never uncertain of what story I’m in. Often the lighting alone will give me clues about what sort of story it is, and I learn a particular story’s lighting very thoroughly by the time I’m done with a book.
Each book, each world, is a total-immersion hallucination for me. Which makes it sound crazy, yes. But that crazy pays the bills, so I’m not complaining. (“We need the eggs.”) I see, smell, touch these worlds. I know what the bars smell like, how the alleys look at three in the morning, what a sunrise means to people, the creaks of individual houses, the shape of characters’ noses. The training–literally hundreds of hours spent building them from the time I was old enough to understand what a story was–has been invaluable. I still fall asleep spinning stories and worlds inside my head.
I think many writers are afraid of letting their worlds become too real. Who wouldn’t be? “Don’t daydream, pay attention!” is something we’re told thousands of times, growing up. Learning that skill–and it is a learned, learn-able skill, to a better or worse degree–of building something inside your head isn’t just for writing stories or painting, though. Every day an adult human being runs through possible consequences of their actions, lightning-fast decisions based on scenarios. Seeing a story is, for me, no different than playing out “what will happen if I run this red light?” inside your head. I can visualize the resultant car crash or ticket just as vividly as I can block out a fight scene in Jill Kismet’s world.
If visualizing a story sounds like a skill that will help you, try setting aside some time for it during the day. I’m not talking much–five or ten minutes, with your trusty kitchen timer set to help. Close your eyes and start simple–try visualizing a point. When you’ve got the point, try a line. Make it a white line on a black background, and then change it to different colors. From there you can try flat shapes in different colors. When you’re ready to make the jump to 3D, try simple things–an apple, a brick wall.
I know some writers don’t visualize, but I think that’s probably the one thing I can’t imagine. So, my question for this week is, how about you? Do you “see” the stories you write? Do you hear or smell them? How does that work for you? Tell me how or if you see the stories you tell.
I’m listening.
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Tags: about me, Friday Writing, pennyworth advice, Writing (About)
September 18th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I was just reading a section of The Philosopher’s Secret Fire by Patrick Harpur in which he talks about the poetic imagination (in this case, Shakespeare’s) as a kind of shamanistic training. The shaman, or writer, is triggered by some cataclysmic event in their life to go into a kind of dream state, a highly detailed, highly realized imagination. Once there, they interact directly with the zeitgeist, the psyche, the soul of the age, which shapes their working imagination to enact the central myths of their age and hold a mirror up to their society. All covered over in metaphor, of course. Mirrors can’t be direct reflections in fiction, I don’t suppose.
The process you describe reminds me of that, and of John and Caitlin Matthews’ writings on shamanism.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I’m fairly sound-oriented when it comes to my writing, but mostly I feel them–I was a dancer growing up, so I’m very motion-oriented. I always know exactly how my characters move, exactly when they nod/bite their lip/cock their head, how they stand, etc. I’m not a visual person at all (and I often skip or skim description in books because so much of it is visual so it just doesn’t really speak to me) so I’m often not very good at describing the scenery. It’s one of the things I’ve been trying to work on, but I doubt it’ll ever be my best skill. I just don’t think that way.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I’m not surprised to hear it’s this way for you; one of the things I love about your books is the description transports me to into your world with such wonderful clarity.
Writing for me has always been a 3D, technicolor, surround sound experience, and I remember being shocked when I learned it isn’t that way for everyone. I know the way the air smells in a particular scene; I feel the texture of the clothing the character is wearing; I hear that little catch in their voice as they tell a not-quite-truth to the one the they love.
September 18th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Yeah, that’s quite like the way I work. Each scene is a movie. Every sound, smell, and visual effect is there for me to play, pause, or pan around within.
I might have 150 alien characters sitting around in a spaceport bar while 5 more carry on a conversation, but I can look inside all their heads to read their thoughts and backstories if the tale needs that sort of detail.
But the real reason I looked for one of your posts today is the blasted screaming uncertainty I went through after finishing a completed rough first draft of one part of a two part story last night. You were absolutely right about the bam, bam, bam of beating one’s head against a brick wall thinking that the story isn’t going to fit neatly into the concept of same that was its starting point. What I finished last night is good. What I outlined when I came up with the idea for the two parter is far less so. In short, there’s no way I’m going to be able to make what I wrote fit into the framework of what I *planned* to have written. I don’t want to throw the original idea away, but what I ended up with is far better than what I outlined. And no publisher in their right mind is going to read through my original concept of what I wanted for part one to get to the really excellent part two that I finished last night. Why did I write pt 2 before pt 1? I thought I might come up with stuff to forshadow and extra character backstory that would make pt 1 better.
This is a very frightening feeling: realizing that the finished 1st draft is nothing like the original idea, better than the original idea, and isn’t going to fit with the original outline of the *rest* of the story that I still need to write. I’m not asking you what I should do. I know what I need to do is to scrap the outline and let the story evolve on its own terms.
What I’m doing, in my long-winded way, is trying to thank you for warning me that this sort of emotional upset is normal for a writer to go through when they reach certain points in a manuscript. Without the advice to writers that you’ve offered in your blog over the last couple of years, I’d probably think I was nuts and just scrap the whole story as a failed attempt. Instead, I know that these doubts and second-guessing thoughts are normal, and will pass in a short while.
Thanks for having broken a trail for others to find. Remembering what you’ve written in your blog posts has helped me stay sane today.
Dan
September 18th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I’ve always been able to see stories as movies in my head, both my own and those I’m reading. I see the characters and the scenery, I watch them move about, I can hear the dialogue and know what their voices sound like.
I assumed everybody experienced story that way, just as I assumed that everybody saw mini-movies in their head when they listened to music (which is why I never got the point of music videos – the movies in my head were so much better). In fact, I was quite stunned when I found out that most people do not experience story or music that way.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
One of the things I loved most about Danny was that she placed great importance on the space inside your head. Ever since I can remember, that space was my sanctuary. The library sort of was a sanctuary as well, but it was more to give me ideas so I could create my own stories; a sanctuary I could take with me everywhere.
Due to a bizarre complex, I usually think I’m very unique in a lot of things I do. I was amazed to find another person who had the same thing I did, an inner sanctuary. We had great fun detailing our individual worlds to each other. Of course, we used pre-existing ones then (so, fanfiction), but now I’m getting back to where I was as a child, in worlds I made up. Once things settle down in my life, I will actually buckle down and write them out.
The only thing for me is that I usually have a hard time visualizing faces. If a director were to ask me if they could make my story into a movie, I would have no idea who to pick for the actors. Everything else usually is pretty detailed. I unfortunately don’t have the discipline to have it super detailed in my mind, but I manage to write it out anyway. The thing that’s usually most strong is the emotions in my inner movie theater. I will play scenes over and over again, focusing on the reactions, thoughts and feelings of the characters. I also focus on the exact intonation of the voices, even though I know I’ll never convey it exactly.
Thanks for writing this; it certainly is food for thought.
By the way, I just want to say that I love your blog. Before I started reading it, writing was a sporadic hobby. But you’ve inspired me to want to do it for a living, not to mention you’ve been a role model in other ways. I know that’s kind of off-topic, but I just wanted to say thanks!
September 18th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
I try to visualize the book’s world, like seeing it through someone’s eyes. That’s the easy part (sometimes). The hard part is getting what’s in my mind onto the page and making it easy enough for the reader to understand, all the while getting the entire environment in.
September 19th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I can’t write to save my life! That said.. I am an avid reader. Its nice to know other people see stories like movies in their heads- hear the character’s voices, etc. Reading has always been that way for me, even as a young child. I’ll admit that smells and sounds are probably the least of my reading experience but that may just be due to the fact that I am Deaf and so sound isn’t as rich a world for me. Music- on the other hand is. I wasn’t always Deaf and I still listen to music (headphones only cuz otherwise my husband would be deaf too*laugh*) and see it in my head as scenes and Signs; music is movement to me.
Anyhow, just my two cents. I DO enjoy the worlds you create as a writer and THANK YOU for doing so!
September 29th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
now i understand why i love your writing so much.
i did and do the exact same thing. i have really intense insomnia and end up living stories, living worlds inside my head when most people would be dreaming. i adore the Danny Valentine books and end up re-reading them ever time i’m really upset and just want to deal with the world the way Danny does. there is something calming about being able to look out of her eyes.
because that is how it is. that is what it feels like, as if i’m looking out of her eyes. it’s a complete sensory experience, not simply limited to a movie, a soundtrack, or a muted film.