Romance Writer's Revenge

Influence this week: My theme song for Cin.

S.O.S. (Anything for Love) – Apocalyptica ft. Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil – Worlds Collide (Special Edition)

Cyanide Sun – H.I.M. – Venus Doom

It’s the first requirement of almost anything you do. It’s glass top absent of a speck of dust. It’s the gentle heart that breaks and the flinch in her eyes. The glance to the door every second. The way she memorizes the room as she walks through. Writing a scene is like reading the fine print. Everything is in the details, including how you hook the reader.

***

The first thing I noticed when I pushed open his front door was that it wasn’t locked. The second thing was the broken glass on the floor and pressed into the bottoms of my feet. My heart thudded painfully in my chest and even though I had nothing to do with this; I couldn’t help but think someone had come looking for me and found him instead.

Night had settled upon the humans, and street light shined through his window blinds. I slipped through the darkness and made no sound as I neared his bedroom. The door was cracked, the wood bowed in and hung from the hinges by just a couple of screws. The smell of his blood was faint and I closed my eyes and held my breath to keep my control. Blood smeared on my hand as I touched the door, sticky and cold, long since been shed. I rubbed my hands on my pants, and turned away from the door.

I moved through his apartment and into his living room, carpet thick and plush under my feet, glass flakes shimmered like a million diamonds around his brown leather sofa. The fire in the fireplace had long died out and the red hot embers smoked and cracked as they crumbled into ash. It was here that smelled strong of blood, and red dripped from the edge of his coffee table and onto the tan area rug. The sound reminded me of a dripping spring in the winter, the sound embedded into my memory. It was times like these that I wish I had a voice and didn’t have to settle for the silence.

***

I write description as though I’m the one walking into the situation. Say I’m walking from the ship deck to my bunk. I go through it frame by frame. You have to set the scene behind your character. How are they framed? “The reddish and orange hues of the sunset played off the white capped waves of the sea. All was quiet on the mighty RWR tonight as I moved silently across the deck to the mast. The feel of the breeze on my skin raised goosebumps and rustled through my hair. I smoothed it down as I reached up for the first metal peg and hoisted myself up. The climb relaxed me as I let my body go fluid with the rocking motion of the ship. Each step brought me closer to solitude. A long day of rum guzzling and man oogling was tough on a hard working ninja like myself and I was ready to kick back in the crow’s nest for a little nap.”

Description is different through different sets of eyes. That may sound redundant; but some people catch the fly on the wall and some merely glance over it and never truly see it for what it is. Writing description is like this as well. Writing the description calls for us to be overzealous with our attention to detail. What color are the walls? What sort of layout? What is in the room? Where are you standing? Does he own his great-grandmother’s Victorian sofa and crystal or something new and modern and a bear skin rug in front of the fireplace? The detail makes the character you learn to know and love. Their flaws and virtues are intricate details we iron out as we write them.

So today, let’s work on our scene description. How would you describe the most mundane of things? If your character was walking into a room, how would they choose to see it? And are you the type to catch the fine print detail or are you more caught up in the moment?