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Mar. 27th, 2006 11:48 amI have just sorted through all my Sydney notes.
In my handbag I carry a little notebook for my current novel and lots of 6/4 scrap paper for everything else. At the end of a trip I sort the 6/4s and I discover that the weekend or week away was never quite what it felt like. I have notes on Magic Casements (which I will write up as a separate post, because I promised![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
threemonkeys posts on these things), and I found notes for a book review for girliejones. And along with the book review notes, I found one little piece of paper mysteriously entitled "blog".
I wrote notes to post here. Sometime when I was so busy I forgot writing them. I re-read those notes and thought "Oh, I must post this." Notes to oneself can look so clever sometimes...
Anyhow,speshal_k invented the DAMN Index as a tool for measuring the overall success of a magazine issue. You can see the DAMN Index on the ASif site just here: http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.php?id=damn_index (note: for concerned parents, DAMN is not swearing, it's an acronym)
In one of my more wayward moments, I realised that the DAMN Index could usefully transmute into the DAMN Feminist Index. I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but the original post is here: http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/104430.html
Anyhow, Magic Casements was a whole lot of thoughtful fun and the thought that I wrote down on my little piece of paper was that there was more to the DAMN Index than that.
One of the problems with writing a novel is that it is *so* intimately part of you, you can't necessarily see all the flaws. Well, I can't see them in my own stuff. Readers point things out and are a tremendous help, but it struck me that the DAMN Index could be used to check some of the obvious things. The thing that passed through my mind was that some writers described characters at great length (eg a woman as gentle and soft and sweet) and then all the actions ascribed to the character undermine the description (eg she throws dishes and screams and tantrums. No, this example is NOT based on me. really.).
If you describe a villain, you could adapt the DAMN index to check this out. This is a handy way of measuring the message the reader is getting from the descriptions *and* the actions and working out how they come out overall. You might *want* the tension between the character descriptions and his/her actions - it is a common enough plot device in murder mysteries, for instance. But it is a good way to check that you are doing what you think you are doing.
I have been looking for something like this for a while, because I ran into this problem last year and had to do a massive rewrite to give someone a love life because the character's actions said 'available' and I had it firmly fixed in my mind that she wasn't. I left the book for a few months and just re-read it (becauseyasminke just checked it for egregious errors in my Judaica, for which I am very grateful) and there is *such* a difference in it: it might be ready to go voyaging in search of a home sometime in the conceivable future.
In my handbag I carry a little notebook for my current novel and lots of 6/4 scrap paper for everything else. At the end of a trip I sort the 6/4s and I discover that the weekend or week away was never quite what it felt like. I have notes on Magic Casements (which I will write up as a separate post, because I promised
threemonkeys posts on these things), and I found notes for a book review for girliejones. And along with the book review notes, I found one little piece of paper mysteriously entitled "blog".I wrote notes to post here. Sometime when I was so busy I forgot writing them. I re-read those notes and thought "Oh, I must post this." Notes to oneself can look so clever sometimes...
Anyhow,
speshal_k invented the DAMN Index as a tool for measuring the overall success of a magazine issue. You can see the DAMN Index on the ASif site just here: http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.php?id=damn_index (note: for concerned parents, DAMN is not swearing, it's an acronym)In one of my more wayward moments, I realised that the DAMN Index could usefully transmute into the DAMN Feminist Index. I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but the original post is here: http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/104430.html
Anyhow, Magic Casements was a whole lot of thoughtful fun and the thought that I wrote down on my little piece of paper was that there was more to the DAMN Index than that.
One of the problems with writing a novel is that it is *so* intimately part of you, you can't necessarily see all the flaws. Well, I can't see them in my own stuff. Readers point things out and are a tremendous help, but it struck me that the DAMN Index could be used to check some of the obvious things. The thing that passed through my mind was that some writers described characters at great length (eg a woman as gentle and soft and sweet) and then all the actions ascribed to the character undermine the description (eg she throws dishes and screams and tantrums. No, this example is NOT based on me. really.).
If you describe a villain, you could adapt the DAMN index to check this out. This is a handy way of measuring the message the reader is getting from the descriptions *and* the actions and working out how they come out overall. You might *want* the tension between the character descriptions and his/her actions - it is a common enough plot device in murder mysteries, for instance. But it is a good way to check that you are doing what you think you are doing.
I have been looking for something like this for a while, because I ran into this problem last year and had to do a massive rewrite to give someone a love life because the character's actions said 'available' and I had it firmly fixed in my mind that she wasn't. I left the book for a few months and just re-read it (because
yasminke just checked it for egregious errors in my Judaica, for which I am very grateful) and there is *such* a difference in it: it might be ready to go voyaging in search of a home sometime in the conceivable future.