Memes again
May. 4th, 2011 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonflySomeday perhaps I will come up with more interesting titles for these posts.
10. Tell me about your default icon.
The quote is from one of my favorite books, Little, Big by John Crowley. It actually comes on the very last page, and it probably makes more sense if you have the context of the entire preceding book to explain it, but for now I'll just explain that it's mostly about faeries and a house that is a door. (The image in my userinfo, with the house and the purple text--that text is also from the book. "Them" being the fae.) What the quote means to me is a bit difficult to explain. It's about stories, literally, but it's also about faeries.
"Stories last longer": the tales we tell last far longer than the actual events. The stories about the house in the book last longer than the house itself. The fear of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl lasts longer than the actual destruction there. Stories about faerie encounters last longer than the lives of those affected, or even belief in the faeries.
"But only by becoming only stories" (my emphasis): the tales may have resonance, but they don't have belief, at least not universally. People are afraid of the place where the house used to be, but they don't think they'll be dragged to Faerie if they go there. We still fear nuclear disaster, but people my age and far from Chernobyl, who only know the stories, don't have the visceral understanding of how destructive it could be. Few believe in faeries anymore. We still tell the stories, but they're nothing more than stories.
Still... we tell the stories.
Looking at the icon, I know it's not that well-made; I'm not much of a graphic artist, and I can see that the font choices and text colors could be better chosen, could fit more comfortably with the image. But I still really love it. I'm happy with the text placement, and how it worked out so the woman's face, wings, and hands are basically uncovered. I'm happy with the way the phasing looks in the icon. The image (which I stole from gettyimages years ago) and the text, of course, both make me very happy.
Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I kind of want to find other pictures and make new icons using the same quote. I don't know what kinds of pictures I would like to use, though.
Also, I would like to note that when I picked my layout, I didn't realize how well it was going to go with my icon--it was just my favorite color scheme for this beautiful layout. But when I noticed, I was delighted.
How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
That really, really depends on the story. I wrote most of a novel that started out with nothing but an image of a young woman in Victorian dress going up to a large house and knocking on the door. (I didn't finish the novel, but I got a lot of interesting backstory for that character!) I've written stories that I knew the basic outline from the start, though I don't think I've ever known the ending for a novel before I was, at the least, halfway through writing it. Mostly, I know about the characters, and often the world. Plot is harder for me.
I don't really use outlines. I never understood them, and then I started doing NaNoWriMo and writing by the seat of my skirt. (I never used them unless I was forced to in school, either.) However, now that I use Scrivener I do outline scenes a little; when I figure out a scene that has to happen either before or (usually) after the one I'm writing, I make a new card for it and put in a few notes to remind myself of what should happen in that scene. Sometimes I have six or seven scenes plotted ahead, sometimes I have none at all. I love the ability to do that in Scrivener, though. When I used Word I would just do a couple of returns and type in what I needed to happen later, so that it would always stay ahead of my cursor. I don't think I ever tried to add earlier scenes.
10. Tell me about your default icon.
The quote is from one of my favorite books, Little, Big by John Crowley. It actually comes on the very last page, and it probably makes more sense if you have the context of the entire preceding book to explain it, but for now I'll just explain that it's mostly about faeries and a house that is a door. (The image in my userinfo, with the house and the purple text--that text is also from the book. "Them" being the fae.) What the quote means to me is a bit difficult to explain. It's about stories, literally, but it's also about faeries.
"Stories last longer": the tales we tell last far longer than the actual events. The stories about the house in the book last longer than the house itself. The fear of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl lasts longer than the actual destruction there. Stories about faerie encounters last longer than the lives of those affected, or even belief in the faeries.
"But only by becoming only stories" (my emphasis): the tales may have resonance, but they don't have belief, at least not universally. People are afraid of the place where the house used to be, but they don't think they'll be dragged to Faerie if they go there. We still fear nuclear disaster, but people my age and far from Chernobyl, who only know the stories, don't have the visceral understanding of how destructive it could be. Few believe in faeries anymore. We still tell the stories, but they're nothing more than stories.
Still... we tell the stories.
Looking at the icon, I know it's not that well-made; I'm not much of a graphic artist, and I can see that the font choices and text colors could be better chosen, could fit more comfortably with the image. But I still really love it. I'm happy with the text placement, and how it worked out so the woman's face, wings, and hands are basically uncovered. I'm happy with the way the phasing looks in the icon. The image (which I stole from gettyimages years ago) and the text, of course, both make me very happy.
Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I kind of want to find other pictures and make new icons using the same quote. I don't know what kinds of pictures I would like to use, though.
Also, I would like to note that when I picked my layout, I didn't realize how well it was going to go with my icon--it was just my favorite color scheme for this beautiful layout. But when I noticed, I was delighted.
How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
That really, really depends on the story. I wrote most of a novel that started out with nothing but an image of a young woman in Victorian dress going up to a large house and knocking on the door. (I didn't finish the novel, but I got a lot of interesting backstory for that character!) I've written stories that I knew the basic outline from the start, though I don't think I've ever known the ending for a novel before I was, at the least, halfway through writing it. Mostly, I know about the characters, and often the world. Plot is harder for me.
I don't really use outlines. I never understood them, and then I started doing NaNoWriMo and writing by the seat of my skirt. (I never used them unless I was forced to in school, either.) However, now that I use Scrivener I do outline scenes a little; when I figure out a scene that has to happen either before or (usually) after the one I'm writing, I make a new card for it and put in a few notes to remind myself of what should happen in that scene. Sometimes I have six or seven scenes plotted ahead, sometimes I have none at all. I love the ability to do that in Scrivener, though. When I used Word I would just do a couple of returns and type in what I needed to happen later, so that it would always stay ahead of my cursor. I don't think I ever tried to add earlier scenes.
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Date: 2011-05-05 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 04:56 pm (UTC)