From: bobthrollop@gmail.com   
      
   On Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 12:48:16 PM UTC-8, A. Tina Hall wrote:   
   > On 18.12.18, Brian Pickrell   wrote:   
   > > On December 15, 2018 Tina Hall wrote:   
   > >> On 16.12.18, Brian Pickrell wrote:   
   >    
   > >>> Thanks for the suggestions so far, although I'm not really asking   
   > >>> for advice here.   
   > >>   
   > >> Just thinking out loud too? :)   
   > >>   
   > >> I know talking about it can help, will comments be welcome, or would   
   > >> you rather not have replies?   
   >    
   > > Oh, it can't hurt.   
   >    
   > Great. :)   
   >    
   > > What I have actually been doing, since the last posts, is reading   
   > > Virginia Woolf (Of course! you say--why didn't he think of that a   
   > > long time ago?)  Posting here prompted me to check in on Patricia   
   > > Wrede's blog, and she mentioned Ursula K. Le Guin's _Steering the   
   > > Craft_ which gave an approving citation of a character study from a   
   > > Woolf novel, so I got a completely different one of her novels   
   > > because it was available at Half Price Books...Virginia Woolf has her   
   > > strengths and weaknesses, which may or may not ever bear on anything   
   > > I do.  At least her near-magical way of setting a scene is less   
   > > magical now that I'm starting to understand it.   
   >    
   > Interesting. Not that I know any of those books. :) It's cool though     
   > that you found something that helps.   
      
   I'm 70 pages into her first novel, _The Voyage Out_ (1915).  Two passages from   
   her other novels were cited in the Le Guin book; Woolf describes the contents   
   of a bedroom in a way that leaps deftly from item to item and from thought to   
   thought, throwing    
   in the "omniscient" narrator's judgments at times, resulting in a pretty   
   potent portrait of the room's resident's personality without ever mentioning   
   him in the flesh.   
      
   The current book is much the same.  It catches every glance and fleeting   
   thought as a suite of characters talk, jumping into each one's head at times.    
   She seems to notice everyone and is exquisitely sensitive to their thoughts.    
   Could I do the same and    
   sustain it for an entire novel?   
      
   The catch is that the author doesn't notice anything else.  There's a slight   
   bit of physical description of the characters, and none of their   
   surroundings.  The setting is on board a ship, and there's zero mention of the   
   ship, or the crew, or anything    
   outside of the two staterooms and saloon where the conversations take place.    
   There have been a couple of meals, but no idea where the food came from; at   
   one point someone notices that the ship has started moving, but that's it--I   
   don't even know if it's    
   by sail or steam.  I remember once reading a comment about sword-and-sorcery   
   novels to the effect that the world of the story seemed to end six feet from   
   the path the heroes were on; this book reads exactly like that.   
      
   Conclusion:  this sort of description won't do for any story that depends on   
   setting or action, i.e. I'm not missing much.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)