It's always been a huge struggle writing dialogue, for me. I think I only begun to think of it as something fun shortly after discovering figure skating fandom (ha, you know I was going to bring this up!) because of the way banter is deployed in a lot of Johnny/Evan fic there, and the fact that Be Good Johnny Weir has a whole bunch of soundbites so you really get to familiarise yourself with the way Johnny Weir speaks.
So for a long, long time I felt like my favourite part of writing was describing scenery, and this scene is a pretty classic in terms of that. I've kind of had the prototype for this scene in my head for a long long time -- I'm not sure if this came from another book or a scene on TV or what, but basically I was writing about this and thinking about snow or ice, and how it makes everything, including sound, more muted. And paper is white like snow, right? Also the fact that everything being made of paper would necessarily mute a lot of stuff. When I wrote this I was essentially imagining a scene of immense silence, and I enjoyed thinking about it. I kind of wish I could live in a paper town. /o\
And of course, the magical realism bit. This whole lack of reaction is one of my favourite things about magical realism; the fact that the weirdest shit can happen and people only get slightly surprised by it. Brendon's certainly never seen a paper town before, but he isn't that fazed. It's the reappearance of the toyshop that is genuinely noteworthy, although that too isn't so much amazing as it is really, really annoying. I kind of like where you cut it off there!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: Wednesday, 28 April 2010 09:00 (UTC)It's always been a huge struggle writing dialogue, for me. I think I only begun to think of it as something fun shortly after discovering figure skating fandom (ha, you know I was going to bring this up!) because of the way banter is deployed in a lot of Johnny/Evan fic there, and the fact that Be Good Johnny Weir has a whole bunch of soundbites so you really get to familiarise yourself with the way Johnny Weir speaks.
So for a long, long time I felt like my favourite part of writing was describing scenery, and this scene is a pretty classic in terms of that. I've kind of had the prototype for this scene in my head for a long long time -- I'm not sure if this came from another book or a scene on TV or what, but basically I was writing about this and thinking about snow or ice, and how it makes everything, including sound, more muted. And paper is white like snow, right? Also the fact that everything being made of paper would necessarily mute a lot of stuff. When I wrote this I was essentially imagining a scene of immense silence, and I enjoyed thinking about it. I kind of wish I could live in a paper town. /o\
And of course, the magical realism bit. This whole lack of reaction is one of my favourite things about magical realism; the fact that the weirdest shit can happen and people only get slightly surprised by it. Brendon's certainly never seen a paper town before, but he isn't that fazed. It's the reappearance of the toyshop that is genuinely noteworthy, although that too isn't so much amazing as it is really, really annoying. I kind of like where you cut it off there!