Truth is sexier than fiction
Jan. 28th, 2005 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, I was doing research for my characters, trying to come up with names. And I learned that toward the end of the 16th century there was a brief fad in Southern France for giving upper class children American Indian names.
It's right in my revised timeline too. I was struck, briefly, with the idea of giving my noblewoman the name "Marquise Cheyenne de Chamonix", but I don't think my audience would buy the Cheyenne part.
Sometimes, the old ways are best. The first fifty pages of the Journal Entries were written on paper, with a pencil. Well, I've graduated to a pen (Jetstream Uniball) and a notebook (Moleskin, of course), but I've written the opening scene down to Moon, Sun, Dragons, and I actually think I know where I'm going with this. Neal Stephenson is right-- the word processor lets you write faster than you think. A pen is humane speed.
I tried reading the scene aloud, and it works okay. My litmus test is this: if I can't imagine Steven Pacey, the actor who played Tarrant on Blake's Seven, reading it aloud, it's not a good scene. Why Pacey? Because he's been the reader for two audiobooks that I think were better read by him than when I read them myself: Dunnet's Niccolo Rising and Harris's Pompeii. Although for the love scenes I might imagine Jeremey Irons reading it.
Oddly enough, as far as I can tell, I have no love scenes planned for Moon, Sun, Dragons. I wonder if that could hurt sales?
It's right in my revised timeline too. I was struck, briefly, with the idea of giving my noblewoman the name "Marquise Cheyenne de Chamonix", but I don't think my audience would buy the Cheyenne part.
Sometimes, the old ways are best. The first fifty pages of the Journal Entries were written on paper, with a pencil. Well, I've graduated to a pen (Jetstream Uniball) and a notebook (Moleskin, of course), but I've written the opening scene down to Moon, Sun, Dragons, and I actually think I know where I'm going with this. Neal Stephenson is right-- the word processor lets you write faster than you think. A pen is humane speed.
I tried reading the scene aloud, and it works okay. My litmus test is this: if I can't imagine Steven Pacey, the actor who played Tarrant on Blake's Seven, reading it aloud, it's not a good scene. Why Pacey? Because he's been the reader for two audiobooks that I think were better read by him than when I read them myself: Dunnet's Niccolo Rising and Harris's Pompeii. Although for the love scenes I might imagine Jeremey Irons reading it.
Oddly enough, as far as I can tell, I have no love scenes planned for Moon, Sun, Dragons. I wonder if that could hurt sales?
