Post: Things Fall Apart, Ch.3

This is Zelda Hawke, the reason why I'm a little late with my chapter.

I finally posted chapter 3 on all my usual places. I have two betas now and my, it was work looking through their edits. I was a bit late posting this chapter, but I was so caught up in Dragon Age II and spending time with my mom over the Hungarian national holidays that I simply forgot what day it was. Yeah, it happens.

My new beta, Icicle is helping me with my style. Her questions made me think of how I want to write and in my answers I put in some thoughts into writing on the subject. It was nice to actually express what I think about my writing and what I want to achieve. So I decided to copy some things here in order to remember them.

"I actually don't like short descriptions. In the past, I could have written the whole story in 10 pages. I had to work on being able to put more substance into the descriptions and such. I try to give details to things that point to the history of an object, or the person, communicate feelings (like the part about the Malfoy estate that is in chapter 7). I feel that these make the narrative more colorful and less abrupt. I never read anything that is under 10 000 words, for example. Perhaps it's partly because of the culture where I come from. Writers here feel that description is more important than dialog and often have much more of the first than of the second. I love adding little details. Take the candle for example. It partly gives me an excuse to have Harry stand up from his desk, because otherwise he would stay there all day and not meet Malfoy, which then gives him the idea of seeking help from him. Then the whole thing about the desk is there to emphasize what a miserable situation he is in. It was once said about Raymond Chandler that he used the description of a room to make us aware of the psychological state of the one in it. That is how I use environment."

"About my long sentences, I love them. I like to keep them long to string the words like beads on a necklace. When it's short, it's so because I want to drop a bead. When there are a lot of short sentences it feels clipped to me. Like the person doesn't want to spend the time."

"I guess I am kind of an old fashioned writer. Perhaps because the first time I realised I could write better than regular people was when I was in Hungarian Literature class in 6th grade. We had to write a prose version of a part of a long epic poem named Toldi. I still recall as I wrote about the moon, the church, the marshes from where the protagonist approached the house. It took me about 50 minutes to write when everyone was ready in 15. Next week, the teacher said that there was one work that stood above the others and she had to read it out to show how it could be done. I didn't think it would be mine. I felt embarrassed that I wrote for so long as my handwriting is generally snail-paced. So she started reading and I was startled to hear my words. I think I was as read as a tomato. It really was beautiful, not a single conversation in it. With everything I write, I try to bring back that wonder of the moon, the church and the marshes."

"Though I don't want to copy Jókai either, who is famous for writing too long descriptions. I once started on one of his books, 'The Golden Man'. The movies is great. I gave up on the book on page 22, where all the previous pages were about the Danube flowing. Really. I think I screamed at that point and would have thrown it against the wall, had it not been a library copy. I only threw 'New Moon' against the wall at page 144. Bella made me angry and I wanted to wring her neck."

While I was writing this, I already got my first review! Happy dance! I love my reviews and I get excited every time I get notification of one. I even get excited when someone adds me to story alerts on Fanfiction.net. It means that one more person is waiting for little ol' me to post a new chapter, or to be done.