270 words on A Stain Upon His Hands.
Jan. 23rd, 2011 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleAnd I'm working with two tricky things in this passage: a dream sequence, and a narrator who isn't sharing everything. It's not unreliable narration, exactly, because there's no trickery about it. Jordan admits, in the privacy of her own head, that she's holding something back. But she's successful in not thinking about it, so the audience doesn't get to see it any more than Casimir does. I think I managed that okay.
The dream sequence is a little harder. I was trying for a compromise between the needs of the narrative (that this dream, which is not a normal dream, tell us things in a narratively satsifying way) and verisimilitude in describing dream-logic and the experience of perceiving the dream. Jordan has the sense that in the dream she has two selves: the actor-self, who is experiencing and interacting with the dream as if it were reality, and over whom she has no conscious control; and the observer-self, who is aware that she is in a recurring dream and can think separately, while being privy to the actor-self's thoughts and reactions, but who cannot influence the events of the dream or communicate in any way.
Which is, as you can see, a damned difficult thing to describe in a compact and comprehensible way, but still an experience which I, at least, have had in countless different dreams. Am I alone in that? Reassure me, if you would. And tell me, too, if you write dream sequences, what kind of approach you take to them, because I could use the input.
There. A wordcount post which leaves some room for discussion, I devoutly hope.
The dream sequence is a little harder. I was trying for a compromise between the needs of the narrative (that this dream, which is not a normal dream, tell us things in a narratively satsifying way) and verisimilitude in describing dream-logic and the experience of perceiving the dream. Jordan has the sense that in the dream she has two selves: the actor-self, who is experiencing and interacting with the dream as if it were reality, and over whom she has no conscious control; and the observer-self, who is aware that she is in a recurring dream and can think separately, while being privy to the actor-self's thoughts and reactions, but who cannot influence the events of the dream or communicate in any way.
Which is, as you can see, a damned difficult thing to describe in a compact and comprehensible way, but still an experience which I, at least, have had in countless different dreams. Am I alone in that? Reassure me, if you would. And tell me, too, if you write dream sequences, what kind of approach you take to them, because I could use the input.
There. A wordcount post which leaves some room for discussion, I devoutly hope.
