wherein Liz segues from Heian Japan to fights to character voices and viewpoints

[edenfalling]

I wrote surprisingly little over the weekend -- instead, I finished reading The Pillow Book, and The World of the Shining Prince, which is sort of a sketch study of Heian Japan, based on evidence from The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, and various diaries of aristocratic women of the period. Interesting stuff.

I did, however, get through two fights in chapter 13 of "Apartment Manager," -- Naga vs. Makiba Kohaku of Hidden Grass, and Kuroko vs. Nagoyaka Kafunnokaze, also of Hidden Grass. Writing fights is an odd experience for me, because I try to plan them out before hand but then the realities of the people's skills and personalities set in and they start doing things I'm not prepared for. It can be a struggle to lead them to the right outcome while still remaining plausible and true to the characters. In any case, I now only have to write Aishou vs. Mouten Junichi (both of Hidden Mist) in order to finish the chapter.

I also fiddled around with a new original story; wrote a couple hundred words of "Harvest," my long and unfinished Ekanu story; and rediscovered "More or Less the Same, my BtVS WIP that I save for moments of inspiration or great boredom. Anna has been dredged out of the backwater of my imagination and is now set to visit Willy's bar with Scuzz and Danny. And then I think there will be a fight. Yay violence!

I like writing "More or Less the Same" because I like writing Anna. She's easy to write, in one sense, because she's deliberately modeled on me and her reactions are mostly my reactions. But that also makes her tricky, because I have to be honest about myself and my flaws. And Anna's voice isn't exactly mine -- she has a distinctive turn of phrase that kind of weaves in and out of my own voice, and I always have to go back over her narrative to make sure I haven't slipped from her to me without noticing.

Characters with distinctive voices or mindsets are like that for me -- incredibly easy to write once I 'set' myself into the voice or perspective, but nearly impossible until I relearn that mental twist. This is why Naruto is tricky and why Luna Lovegood drives me buggy; their voices and viewpoints aren't natural for me. Hermione is sneaky, since she's close enough to me that I can fool myself into thinking I 'have' her when I really don't. I write Sasuke with a point of view that I don't use much anymore, but which I still remember fairly well from my teenage years. Ginny and Sakura are tricky when they think about boys, which I don't do much, but otherwise I find them easy to slip into.

Harry and Ron I still don't quite 'get.'

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The World of the Shining Prince has its points (I mean, you definitely cannot say that Ivan Morris did not know his stuff), but it's seriously flawed as a sourcebook for Heian life. Heian literature in Japanese? Swell. But if you can read the Chinese that the officials and monks wrote in, the picture changes drastically. (Add archeology to find out what the rest of the people were doing, again a different story. But that's as to be expected, I suspect.) And if you know that stuff, the fiction sometimes comes out a little differently. The point of the Tale of Genji isn't the politics--but they are there, and sometimes very subtle unless you know how the game was played at the time, and once you do.... The economic issues are about the same. (He's also a bit wrong-headed about some of the superstition and religion I think, but that could be me.)

What we know about Heian has advanced a lot since that book was written. Unfortunately, most of the information (of course) is in Japanese. There's a book in French on life in middle-Heian, but I don't think it has been translated yet. Still, within ten years, I suspect that there might show up a companion to Morris' book that fills in some of the gaps; or at least, so I hope.

-passing graduate student

[edenfalling]

Oh, I'm aware that it's a limited picture -- basically upper-class women -- which is why I said it was a sort of sketch study. :-)

I read it mostly because I picked up Morris's translation of The Pillow Book from my local library and wanted some background on Sei Shonagon's society. And also, even if he misses points and misinterprets some other stuff, I like to learn about cultures that are different from modern America. It's always interesting to see how many ways humans can arrange a society, and how many vastly different beliefs and cultural assumptions can be accepted as just "the way things are."

...Someday, I should probably learn French. There seem to be many fascinating books I can't read because nobody's translated them into English yet. I can work my way through academic German (with a dictionary close to hand), but French...

*sigh* A linguist I'm not.

[chrissysparkle.livejournal.com]

Hi there! Agree with you about characters' voices; that's why I find it hard to write fics about not-so-well-known characters, like Parvati and Lavender, for instance. It's almost like writing original fiction, sometimes - you almost have to create their characters from scratch. I like writing from Ginny's PoV, and from Hermione's, although she is a little trickier. I don't find Ron too difficult, but I think the general 'fandom' view of Ron has created a new fanon-Ron; all one has to do is make him sound a bit thick and he's down pat. I think I need to reassess my 'Ron-voice' to bring him back to being canon-Ron, if that makes sense!
Just as an aside, I first visited your LJ a while ago to read Paint the Town...it was brilliant, you know!!

[edenfalling]

Ron is hard for me to write because he and I just do not think the same way. I don't find him dumb at all, but his viewpoints, assumptions, and speech patterns are very much not mine, and every time I try writing him I have to go back over the dialogue with a fine-toothed comb. *sigh*

I'm glad you liked "Paint the Town" -- I had a lot of fun working on it, and it remains one of my favorite things I've written.