[Saxony Tarn]

Nar -- very good point about characters dropping their cues (sort of the opposite of the ad-libbing that mine have been perpetrating on each other and me) Another thing i'll notice is that in one night i may pound out a torrent of scenes, then looking back at it several days later, after having written a few more twists' worth, something that seemed rough will finish itself, or something that appeared to be missing will suggest itself (same way in a gaming group session or in a well-constructed movie -- some people/characters/plot threads speak louder than others, and you don't always hear the softer voices the first time around. i recall discovering things in the FOURTH iteration of FOTR that i had missed in the first three, and now that a pal's got Harry Potter on DVD, i'm going to go play plot-point treasure hunt in that realm soon enough)

Also remind me, while i'm waiting for the caffeine to take effect, what's Jeremy Irons got on his movie-role resume? Help me get a picture of him under Náin's dark red wig and beard, purple pirate headscarf and scale-mail. How un-tall is he? What makes him a shoo-in for a Dwarven Tinker? (for the same reason that,say, casting Grace Jones as my half-Orc allows me to use her for the human mother w/o the make-up & fangs) Changed the Elf's actor to Cary Elwes & i think that was a better casting (esp. after he played that delightfully dastardly officer in Jungle Book) And he can probably speak with an Elvish accent, too... B)

Basically, when you can see these characters acting out your plot plans as if you were directing them on set, you've either got something really strong going with your story, or you've got to check your drink for hallucinogens. The tricky part is conveying that vividness to your average reader, who might not always have her imagination tooling along in fifth gear, and you want her to feel like she's watching your story on IMAX with Dolby Surround Sound. (or you want him to have as bold an impression of your world as you did when writing it, such that he's testing his water for hallucinogens -- or bottling it & selling it)

But i digress (as is my wont) and probably sound like the melting ice in my drink is releasing some sort of psychotropic compound into my soda (along with my caffeine) -- so before i go test my tap water, let me toss another one out, harkening back to "half a page to describe a tree", let's talk about colorful metaphors (my native language!)

i'll offer up the sacrificial example -- as previously confessed, i have plenty of paranormal powers operating in my tale, and have to describe the implementation, effects, operation... of such abstract concepts as concrete sensory images. This gives rise to an iconography of symbolic representations, for example, the grey mist that's become a running metaphor serves to obscure things, negative-emotion hindrances take the form of restraints or barriers (The Black Cage of Envy is a salient one) and much of Iârangol Nûrbôrniel's mana output is infrared, dark red, or temperature-linked. More conventionally to those familiar with such concepts, the energy pathways of Middle-Earth all bent sharply toward Orodruin, such that it looks to those who can perceive it like a grid representation of a black hole, sucking energy into the volcano and bending the usual "faery trackways" out of their alignment to the point where anything utilizing them stands a chance of being sucked in (and once the Ring is thrown in, the whole process reverses -- we hope!)

The hidden topic here would be, to paraphrase the very clever title of a book that i've not yet read, "what is the Color of Magic"? How do you describe its manifestation, its operation; how do you rip a hole in the Space-Time continuum, have a column of flame pour down at your mage's direction, and have a non-gaming, new-to-the-genre reader convinced that, even if only for the Biblical precedent, yes, this could happen?

|_|) <-- go for it!

s.t.