Wednesday, 21 July 2021

These are observations on what works, from critiques I made during my Summer 2021 Worldbuilding Course

Small-scale Moves

• Application of pointed observation: 
  • “Marq exhaled a harsh breath. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, but there was nothing like stress to bring back old habits.”
  • “but I’m too hyped on adrenaline and fear to be reasonable.“
• Arch /coy reference—no need to spell out. “…while sipping from a flower-patterned teacup. There wasn’t tea inside it, of course. Vampires only drank one thing.”
• Resonance, but with contrast. …setting aside his teacup on the saucer with a soft clank on the table between them. A smudge of blood glistened on the cup’s lip, next to a delicately patterned rose. 
• ‘Yes, of course they would do that…’
  • Bamor then glanced over at me. I had a feeling he was going to make me capture the thing… <#> Slowly, I descended into…
  • <protagonist is told what happened while he was passed out, and the story indicates that others took credit for what he did>
• Sarcasm: “Just endanger me by association. No biggie.”
• Embodiment and proxemics: 
  • “A bubble of abandonment formed around me.”
  • “They edged away”
  • ‘She threw open her arms and took a deep lung-stretching breath of the cold mountain air.’
• Full-spectrum description: sensation, embodiment, tendency
  • “While her sister slept, Olivia lived in the waking world. She was four years older, with snowplow shoulders and choppy, dirty-yellow hair. She fought anyone who offered to “wake Sleeping Beauty.” 
  • “Olivia’s mouth tasted sour and coppery. She had bitten her lip in the fall. She spat a glob of soil and blood as Eloise pulled her to her feet.”
  • “Rosemary’s legs pumped up and down to the rhythm of her lungs as they strained for oxygen. Her normal tailored skirts and shiny loafers were abandoned for sweat-stained denim and sneakers with holes in the toe.”

Larger-scale moves

• Tension leavens ambiguity. It is good to try to strike a balance between ambiguity (the number of unanswered questions) and the tension: more ambiguity requires more tension to pull the reader along
• Frame invocation. <Invoking a ‘frame’ (like salvaging) or <script>  in the opening is an effective way to reduce exposition because it invokes a set of expectations, goals and roles.>
• Persistent metonym: “Chill seeps through dad’s jacket.” Recurring motif across scenes contects to history and motivation.
• Linguistic tics: Paralinguistic habits – stuttering, word or phrase repetition, unusual but customary syntactic constructions – can help distinguish one character from others.