- Joined
- Jun 26, 2013
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- 10
So I realised I have a thing where I use design to introduce colloquial language, certain cultural themes, and other...feels?....into my world. And, of course, certain things you just want to look awesome. A good example of this is Star Wars - Instead of AT-ST you have "Chicken Walker"; instead of the often grubby, functional design of the rebel fighters you have these pristine tie-fighters with design themes of hexagons and geodesic curves and mass production; when you see a star destroyer its brutalist, geometric design tells you its a militaristic machine of oppression.
It's a useful tool in film - and great for creating iconic images associated with the IP. And can be applied to books. However, it tends to be done in more abstract and thematic language. Take the Expanse for instance. The Laconian Magnetar ships are alluded to as looking like they've been grown, and are slightly Martian in origin. They mention their size and presence, but a clear description is not forthcoming. Hell, even the Rociante is not that well described - "It looks like a big chisel with an upturned coffee cup on it's back" - Praxidike Meng.
So, I get it. You can use a few short sharp sentences and character PoV to really distil down the themes of design, and then just use a consistency of language to build that colloquial layer over time. Sprinkle in a few details, here and there, and you have a vocabulary toolkit to do the job. Great.
But what if you want to properly convey the image of the spaceship in more detail? What if it looks cool and you want to show that - because something in the design stands out and you want to burn that image into your reader's brain so they all could draw something roughly the same?
The way I see it, you run into a couple of problems. One is simply the language is drier and more technical - try describing the Enterprise-D and it starts to sound a lot like a written tutorial for building it in Blender. Just calling the it a 'disc' doesn't do that gorgeous shape justice. And you're likely to use the word 'eclair' at some point. Secondly, it uses a lot of words. If you really want to get across a ship design you're going to have to accept you're going to spend a couple of paragraphs, which expands even more if you want to include some sort of functional explanation for later use. You can loosen this descriptive stodge up a bit in the same way you do with exposition, but that just leads to even more words (Show don't tell also means a higher word count)....
And lastly, does anyone really care that your ships look a certain way at all? Are the 14 words used to describe the Rociante enough, and the rest is just characters endlessly commenting how good it looks? Or simply calling it a Klingon Bird of Prey and leaving it at that?
So what do you all think? Is it worth the word count, or do you just accept it's a first draft flourish purely for you, the writer, to enjoy and that it's going to end up cut in the first draft? I'm interested to know where you think the line sits between truly building an image, and just building the toolkit you need for your story.....
It's a useful tool in film - and great for creating iconic images associated with the IP. And can be applied to books. However, it tends to be done in more abstract and thematic language. Take the Expanse for instance. The Laconian Magnetar ships are alluded to as looking like they've been grown, and are slightly Martian in origin. They mention their size and presence, but a clear description is not forthcoming. Hell, even the Rociante is not that well described - "It looks like a big chisel with an upturned coffee cup on it's back" - Praxidike Meng.
So, I get it. You can use a few short sharp sentences and character PoV to really distil down the themes of design, and then just use a consistency of language to build that colloquial layer over time. Sprinkle in a few details, here and there, and you have a vocabulary toolkit to do the job. Great.
But what if you want to properly convey the image of the spaceship in more detail? What if it looks cool and you want to show that - because something in the design stands out and you want to burn that image into your reader's brain so they all could draw something roughly the same?
The way I see it, you run into a couple of problems. One is simply the language is drier and more technical - try describing the Enterprise-D and it starts to sound a lot like a written tutorial for building it in Blender. Just calling the it a 'disc' doesn't do that gorgeous shape justice. And you're likely to use the word 'eclair' at some point. Secondly, it uses a lot of words. If you really want to get across a ship design you're going to have to accept you're going to spend a couple of paragraphs, which expands even more if you want to include some sort of functional explanation for later use. You can loosen this descriptive stodge up a bit in the same way you do with exposition, but that just leads to even more words (Show don't tell also means a higher word count)....
And lastly, does anyone really care that your ships look a certain way at all? Are the 14 words used to describe the Rociante enough, and the rest is just characters endlessly commenting how good it looks? Or simply calling it a Klingon Bird of Prey and leaving it at that?
So what do you all think? Is it worth the word count, or do you just accept it's a first draft flourish purely for you, the writer, to enjoy and that it's going to end up cut in the first draft? I'm interested to know where you think the line sits between truly building an image, and just building the toolkit you need for your story.....