No Stone Unturned
I'm down to the last week of my vacation. I have to make a decision soon about what kind of freelance work pace to set!
In the meantime...
There's a short montage scene in the film production of the The Golden Compass where the evil Mrs. Coulter is shown wearing a whole bunch of lavish formalwear. It's the sort of thing you never see in TV productions because, in live action, it's ruinously expensive on the budget, and, in animation, dressing a character differently is seldom done because their outfit is so important to their overall look. So we really only get to see this kind of extravagance in motion pictures.
And, of course, in the written word...if we use our mind's eye!
I love heterogeneity of this type, not merely in dress but in all things, particularly locations. Whereas most creators are exactly the opposite, favoring a small number of regular contents and gradually crystalizing around those, I've always chafed about it. For instance, how locations have we ever seen in the USS Enterprise? Surprisingly few! That has always bugged me supremely. The argument (aside from cost savings) is that it provides consistency to have fewer things (be they settings, outfits, etc.) in a story. But, while I concede this is true, I don't buy its implication: that the consistency derived this way is essential to good storytelling.
Whether or not that's true, it's how I work. You may remember the Prelude consisting of a fairly long list of settings which were never revisited (except for the action in the Western Veranda moving outside and then back inside); you may have noted something similar in The Great Galavar; this is very much in keeping with After The Hero itself. Mate of Song is the same way. In Galaxy Federal, even without being deliberate about it, I have, except for scenes set on the Command Deck and in Captain's Village, set nearly every scene in its own location, both on the relevant ships and elsewhere. Even within the few popular locations that I do revisit, there are numerous sub-locations such that the action is rarely set in exactly the same place more than once.
I don't do this to be lavish, as was the case with Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass. It's not even truly aesthetic. Rather, it's a part of how my brain works. Whether we're talking about locations in a setting, or other depth of lore elements, such as the size and sprawl of the Galan or Galaxy Federal governments, the list of folkways and customs in a given society, tactics in war, food dishes, background history (such as artistic movements), or anything else you like, I am inclined to continually flesh out these larger, implicit superstructures by visiting the new rather than revisiting the old. The illustration of these lore "superstructures" reflects the way my own mind works: I suspect, if you were to scan my brain, it would reveal itself to be "overconnected" with respect to the typical brain. Vast, indeterminate superstructures are my specialty.
Because I do things this way, the question, then, becomes: How can I make the most of it as a storyteller?
In the meantime...
There's a short montage scene in the film production of the The Golden Compass where the evil Mrs. Coulter is shown wearing a whole bunch of lavish formalwear. It's the sort of thing you never see in TV productions because, in live action, it's ruinously expensive on the budget, and, in animation, dressing a character differently is seldom done because their outfit is so important to their overall look. So we really only get to see this kind of extravagance in motion pictures.
And, of course, in the written word...if we use our mind's eye!
I love heterogeneity of this type, not merely in dress but in all things, particularly locations. Whereas most creators are exactly the opposite, favoring a small number of regular contents and gradually crystalizing around those, I've always chafed about it. For instance, how locations have we ever seen in the USS Enterprise? Surprisingly few! That has always bugged me supremely. The argument (aside from cost savings) is that it provides consistency to have fewer things (be they settings, outfits, etc.) in a story. But, while I concede this is true, I don't buy its implication: that the consistency derived this way is essential to good storytelling.
Whether or not that's true, it's how I work. You may remember the Prelude consisting of a fairly long list of settings which were never revisited (except for the action in the Western Veranda moving outside and then back inside); you may have noted something similar in The Great Galavar; this is very much in keeping with After The Hero itself. Mate of Song is the same way. In Galaxy Federal, even without being deliberate about it, I have, except for scenes set on the Command Deck and in Captain's Village, set nearly every scene in its own location, both on the relevant ships and elsewhere. Even within the few popular locations that I do revisit, there are numerous sub-locations such that the action is rarely set in exactly the same place more than once.
I don't do this to be lavish, as was the case with Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass. It's not even truly aesthetic. Rather, it's a part of how my brain works. Whether we're talking about locations in a setting, or other depth of lore elements, such as the size and sprawl of the Galan or Galaxy Federal governments, the list of folkways and customs in a given society, tactics in war, food dishes, background history (such as artistic movements), or anything else you like, I am inclined to continually flesh out these larger, implicit superstructures by visiting the new rather than revisiting the old. The illustration of these lore "superstructures" reflects the way my own mind works: I suspect, if you were to scan my brain, it would reveal itself to be "overconnected" with respect to the typical brain. Vast, indeterminate superstructures are my specialty.
Because I do things this way, the question, then, becomes: How can I make the most of it as a storyteller?