A certain sameness

Every city I visited in England is situated on a river, and I managed to walk beside all of them at least once. Of course, picturesque riverbanks just invited photographs, so I came away with quite a collection.

When I looked at my pictures after I got home, I noticed a certain similarity to them.

Winchester

Stratford-upon-Avon

 

Bath

Windsor-Eton

Do you see it? Every single picture features a willow tree. True, there were willow trees along all the rivers, but couldn't I choose something else to frame the photo?

I notice the same thing when I'm revising. During my last project, I actually wrote, "Find someplace other than the library!!!" across the top of a chapter in block letters, because every other important scene happened there.

In the Netherfield portion of HIS GOOD OPINION, my setting of choice was a garden walk. Any time Darcy needed to think--something he did far too much of--he took a walk through the gardens. By the time I reached the last scene, I knew as I wrote it that it would need to be moved. (Another garden scene?) shows up right in the MS.

Now, for all you members of Over-Thinkers Anonymous, this is not something to worry about during your rough draft. You notice that even though I caught it, I still went ahead and wrote the scene.

However, when you hit the revision stage, things probably need to be reworked. In my writing, if multiple scenes are set in the same place, it's often a clue that I've written the same scene more than once. That was the case with HIS GOOD OPINION. Like I said, there were way too many scenes where Darcy wandered off to think. Is he a thoughtful man? Yes. Does any man think that much about love and relationships? No. Therefore, I cut the love bit out of the first scene and then combined the second two into one.

The other possible reason is (sorry to say) laziness. This was my excuse in my earlier project. I didn't want to think about the setting any longer, so I didn't create other places in that world. I'm not one of these writers who can build whole cities out of nothing. My best work is with characters. Painting the backdrop for them to live on is tedious work to me, and sometimes that shows.

I'm working on both of these flaws. When I get to Pemberley, I will spend some time just thinking about the estate and the house itself. How many floors, how many rooms, what would the rooms be used for? If I have a clear idea going into that section, I'll have a much easier time moving things around and describing them.

What about you? Do you find yourselves leaning on a setting the way writers sometimes do a certain word or phrase?

Getting the perfect shot

The week before I left for England, I bought a new camera and three 4gig SD cards. I didn't want to fret about space every time I thought about taking a picture. Three weeks and 1200 pictures later, I believe I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

After deleting all the blurred shots and awkward camera angles, I still have 800 decent photos. Of those, I selected 222 to share with my family this afternoon. That's approximately 1/6 of everything I took, or 1/4 of the good ones.

And here's where we get to writing: Because I gave myself permission to take as many pictures of whatever I wanted in the beginning, I came away with some pretty awesome shots. If I wanted to take a picture, I didn't debate with myself. I didn't wonder if I had the composition just right, or if the lighting was perfect. I pulled out my camera and shot the picture. Obviously there were some less than pretty files taking up space on my cards, but those were the practice shots. They eventually gave way to pictures like these:

Bath Abbey, with birds

I've got a dozen good pictures of Bath Abbey. This one is special though because I captured the birds in flight. It was serendipitous, but I also made my own luck. If I hadn't had my camera to my eye, I wouldn't have got the shot.

Chandelier in the Octagon Room

Unlike the Abbey, I have very few good pictures of the Octagon Room at the Assembly Rooms. I took at least three other pictures of the chandelier, but they're all blurry. On a whim, I stood underneath and shot this photo. It's one of my favorites from my entire trip.

London Eye at sunset

The sun was setting as my friend and I walked along Victoria Embankment in search of dinner. When we saw the sunset behind the London Eye, we stopped for pictures. I took roughly two dozen pictures of that sunset. This one captures the hazy, end of the day feeling perfectly.

Writers tend to over-think. Do I have this scene right? Did I use too much dialogue/not enough dialogue/would my character really say that? There is definitely a time for all of those questions, but it is not when we are in the middle of a first draft. When you're writing a first draft, you have all the space in the world. Write the scene from different angles. Play with the setting and the mood. There will be time enough for thought later.