Describing The Known

Day 82
Today's word count: 494
Overall word count: 58,648

500 words today, 1,700 yesterday. A solid weekend.

I've noticed something, a difference between fantasy and non-fantasy novels. Writing a non-fantasy novel allows the writer a bit of shorthand. If a character is stuck in line at the driver's license bureau, I can say, for example:

Brett stood in line at the DMV, clutching his papers, waiting for his number to be called. The air was hot, close, and thick with the flat gray odor of nine dozen sweaty bodies. The fluorescent lighting lent a surreal look to the room. One bulb flickered and guttered, casting the surroundings in a sickly strobe light that was gradually giving Brett a migraine.

...and the reader's imagination will fill in a lot of the rest. Are the walls cinderblock? Are they flat white paint, stained with a million handprints? Are there highway safety ads plastered all over them? Is the floor made of linoleum tiles, or plain concrete? Are the clerks wearing street clothes, or khaki-colored pseudo-cop, pseudo-Boy Scout shirts, armpits darkening with sweat? Those details will vary according to each reader, but each reader is likely to see something in his or her mind's eye upon reading. Most of us have, after all, been in at least one DMV, waiting in line, wishing for death. And with a fixed image in the reader's mind, I can get along with my story. In essence, I'm using images that are already in the reader's mind (and they're vivid, because they're your own memories or imaginings) to make description easier.

In contrast, if I'm introducing you to the lobby of the White Tower of High Sorcery in the Alabaster City of Rel*, I feel pressure to describe it to you in much greater detail. Are the walls covered in scales scavenged from the carcasses of fallen dragons? Is the light in the room emanating from bat-winged imps holding magical glowing stones in their claws? Are the clerks wearing long white robes trimmed in elaborate silver needlework? HOW CAN I MAKE SURE YOU AREN'T PICTURING THE DMV WHEN YOU READ THIS SCENE?!

Luckily, I'm not in that boat, at least not too badly. My characters are real-world people stuck in weird situations, but no Towers of Sorcery. Writing high fantasy would be hard business, I think.

Also, I'm starting to think I need to get focused and finish this bad boy. All the threads are pointing in the same direction. A month. Less than a month, maybe.

Until next time! Random music video! Awesome 80s pop!

* Reference from my hilariously failed first attempt at a novel, fifteen years ago.