Gill Lee
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Such beautiful, sensual writing. In awe, Kate! But agree with others that I think (!) your paragraph starts at 3 and goes to 5. And is only 3 because of ‘feel’. I so envy your effortless, seeming, use of PD 4.
Yes, Steve. Of course, Steve. Whatever you presume, Steve. Love this bit. Gives such a clear insight into your character with so few words. A whole relationship captured!
I think I’m having a light bulb moment (or maybe not?!) but that first sentence ‘Anna pulled her red Golf into the carport of her refurbished 1950s home’ didn’t quite ring right to me. Is this the reason PD1 tends not to use names….I feel as soon as she is called Anna she knows what kind of car she drives and what kind of house she lives in, so doesn’t have to tell us? If it was ‘Anna maneuvered her little Golf into the narrow carport’ – it would kind of work though I think it would be PD2/3. or ‘The woman pulled her red Golf ‘ works for PD1. Anyone understand what I’m trying to say, here?
Love the bang, blow, done. Very rhythmic!
Hi Anja,
Can definitely see the use of PD1/2 here, because it allows us to see Wendall in his wax raincoat and with his brolly. I’m getting vibes of ‘ Josh / The Underdog must win’ here (available in Netherlands from our channel 4? He definitely has Wendall vibes for me. Yes, my viewing habits are low…..).
To be PD5. I’m with Paula. Wouldn’t it go something like – Bloody mother and her bloody advice. Bloody right again! And me. Stupid, stupid stupid. (The ‘stupid’ bit definitely PD5.)’
But we need quite a lot of the earlier stuff to be able to make sense of the PD5. Has anyone done a piece starting with 5?
Ha yes. You’re definitely (?!) right about the PD1 having elements of PD2. Is it the ‘huddled’ which implies a feeling – Laura as narrator knows Laura as character feels threatened and is looking for comfort?
Hi Kate,
So that time thing is really interesting. So looking at her, we would only knowing she is reading. When we are her, we can tell she is re-reading. oooow, interesting
A lovely scene, Gillian. I really enjoyed the way you’ve used the loss of the environment to echo other losses in her life. Moving.
The verb tense thing is really interesting. The shift from past tense to present along with the slide from PD4 to 5 (?) brought me closer to your character and made me feel the connections she is making in her head! ‘She had to sit. Both parents dead. Home sold. No more water voles. All gone.‘ But then I felt the next sentence was back out again, sounding more logical and more of a thought than a feeling/ impression, so should go into the past again ‘Making the inventory brought relief ‘(4?) or just’ The inventory brings relief,‘? And is it closer in the present? Then there’s something about the ‘making‘ combined with the ‘determined‘ that puts it into the distance a bit, I think….? Would ‘The inventory brings relief. The determination to preserve these worlds, watery and wild‘ be closer. 4 maybe if not 5.
So I’m wondering if word order being ‘looser’ also brings us closer. Is ‘watery and wild’ closer somehow than the logical order of ‘watery world’?
So complicated isn’t it? So interesting!
Anyway, can’t wait for Debi’s feedback on your passage which is quite lovely!
Hi Chithrupa,
Loving the aviary and the way you’ve used it to tell us about Mum, Rico and a bit about the narrator (son or daughter?).
I might be wrong, but I think your PD4-5 has PD3 in it, too – which I take to be the view of things as ‘filtered’ by the character. So here you’re use of ‘wanted’ in ‘I’d always wanted’ means we’re seeing it as filtered through the character’s eyes, whereas 4 and 5 we see it as the character does. So something like ‘ The architect deserved to be garroted in an iron maiden. Criminal maybe, but deserved. Or straight execution. Burned on a fire, maybe. Crackle. Hisssss. ‘ Your ‘threw in the Toucan’, yes! Love the squinty-eyed toucan by the way!
You are so correct! Will work on that sentence. Though the paragraph as a whole doesn’t appear. I think you’re right about that – is it maybe unusual to go all the way in or out in one paragraph when you have awhole novel to play with? Useful as an exercise but not that common, maybe.
Flipping the sentences is so interesting, because I was aware of doing it with the previous one. ‘The tall windows sent slabs of light into the oak-panelled room and its occupants yawned and stretched at their desks, on which sat vast ledgers of old newspapers, or stacks of plastic spools. ‘ which I originally started with the newspapers (since its a newspaper library), but flipped to do the PD 1, but flipping also allowed/ encouraged those more descriptive verbs.
So for my own writing – before Debi’s feedback which may change everything! – I’m definitely thinking to be more conscious of slides, to use 4 much more with touches of 5. Most single word sentences are going to be 5s in fact, aren’t they? Because we tend to use those single word sentences to embody an emotion. I’m reading Emma Flint’s Little Deaths at the moment where she writes the scenes where the mother discovers and grieves her children largely in 4, with just flashes of 5, with very little fragmentation, and it is so effective. Interesting…..
Good question! Got to do some more ‘reading like a writer’, I guess.
Yes, that’s it. So use PD5 sparingly and for moments of high emotional intensity you reckon? But maybe also sprinkle in 5s? For example, my characters (not so much Laura but the others) swear quite a lot. And swear words would tend to be 5s wouldn’t they? Along with ‘Yuck and ‘uggh’! We could play a whole game on this….And definitely I should use far more 4 than I’m used to using. Though I think your prose is wonderfully full of it. Anyway, I’m going to shut up now and see what other people have made of it…
You’re defo, right. I keep mixing them up! Wondering if they overlap with emotionality, then. Like a character will ‘feel’ a setting if it’s emotionally important, close in (5? Yes, 5), but if it’s the narrator’s view of it, so not so emotionally imbued at that point in the narrative at least, it will be further out. So if Mary, say, is having an averagely good day in the supermarket, the description of it might be quite far out, and if she’s having a bad day thinking about it, being in it, being acted on by it, the description would be closer in? Her description of it would be more coloured by her emotions, and voice-y For example, my daughter regularly refers to the city she studies in as a shit-hole but when she’s had a grim day, the description becomes much more laboured and full of the smells and rubbish. When she’d had an okay day, or she’s describing an okay experience there, her description becomes more distant. It’s still a shit-hole, but only that!
So sometimes a setting is just that – a place where the action takes place, while sometimes the setting becomes imbued with far more meaning. So in your example, the piece is about the supermarket and the character’s experience of being there. it’s not a background to the action but much more part of the ‘action.’ Same with the Virginia Wolf example from ‘To a lighthouse’
This may be complete ramblings.
Is it slightly the problem with the long shot analogy? That comparison kind of makes you think of scenery as a long way out and therefore 1 (Yes? 1) whereas a description of that scenery could become really voice-y and important in a scene. It would still require a long shot in a film for us to see it, but it could be ‘close’ in a narrative. ‘Lowering hills swallowing me, clouds guzzling at me, seas spitting and drowning, great rifts tearing, eating at the land’ whatever?
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This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by
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This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by
Uh no. Keep mixing up my 5s with my 1s! 1 = far away, 5 = close. Keep trying, Gill!
Hope so. Though I could have developed them better! Will follow some else’s lead next week. Like a relay, huh!
Why it was all damp in here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they want to hang a beast’s skull there for? gone mouldy too. And rats in all the attics. The rain came in. But they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had gone, so the doors banged. She didn’t like to be up here at dusk alone neither. It was too much for one woman, too much, too much.
Answering my own question about setting. Here from Emma. Defo bits in PD5
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This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by
