What do you see when you write?
Chris asks us, while unveiling another brilliant painting of Kassandra. An extremely visual thinker, Chris sometimes sketches pictures of scenes in order to figure out how to write them.
I’m a visual thinker, too, but I draw about as well as I skimboard, and I still have a screwhole in my anklebone from my first attempt at that. So I fashion pictures in my head from amalgams of visual memories. Heathness, the setting of Knave, is a mashup of Lisbon, Rome, and Quebec City - cities on steep hills, Lisbon in particular has many alleys that turn into stairs, combined with the idea of a city that climbs up one face of a mountain. Quebec City is perched on a bluff that’s so steep that some of the streets wind back and forth, in switchbacks, to climb the side; it also has at least one funicular connecting its low town and the town center. Some thoughts of Venice in there, as well, which has alleys, marked as streets on the map, that are really tunnels; Venice also has a long, winding main canal, and Heathness has a serpentine main street. There are several parts of Heathness that I’ve mapped in my head, and some views that I can see as plainly as any real place in the world. Then there’s the place that Chris painted, which I never pictured myself:
The first character I pictured in Knave was Lord Helm, who’s a nasty dude, over seven feet tall and probably three feet wide; as a pyromancer, he’s always on the verge of bursting into flame and wears a cloak made of magically treated lead to reduce his cleaning bills.
Owen Barker, the POV character of the first chapter and one of the three heroes of the story, is slender, tall compared to anyone other than Lord Helm, and is always moving - bouncing on the balls of his feet, bouncing his sword off the ground.
Princess Martita is small, black-haired, and shy, always reading or writing or wishing that she were. She sits with her shoulders hunched forward, eyes downcast, but it’s hard to tell whether she’s deep in thought or afraid someone might be looking at her.
Dec 17, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Chris Howard says,
Hey, Skott! Great post. Did you write these character descriptions for this post, something off the top of your head (or filed away in your head), or do you write out short descriptions like these as sort of character guidelines that focus your writing?
One of these days I’m going to post about characterization from the perspective of music, asking myself “what does the character listen to?” –and then using that to keep myself focused. What does it say about a character who listens to Linkin Park or Violet or Handel or Liszt–and would it be helpful to listen to that music before (or while) writing a scene? I’m certainly willing to try it to see if it works. I read an interview with Nick Sagan in which he said he listened Rage Against the Machine over and over while writing Idlewild, Everfree and Edenborn.
Hey, I’m sending that artwork (View from Low Town) to Realms of Fantasy in the morning, one of three pieces, to see if I can get in there. Damn tough market, but RoF uses a lot of art–and in color.