Things I'm doing, and a bit about Evocation.
It seems I needed to carve out some dive time to get through Chapter 12 of the new novel... which I did, and have rolled solidly into Chapter 13 now. It's going fast and 14 may continue the trend. The first pass of editing is following my progress closely, and there may be an additional effort to go back and do a second pass through the early chapters. I'd really like to get Chapter 1 as a stand-alone sort of "prequel" in the hands of a few select readers, and not too long after that I might post it here as a promotional read. We'll see.
One thing that has come out in discussions has been how certain phrasing and certain references in the text of the manuscript are evocative far more than a lengthy description of a moment or a mood would have been. That's a known thing as a goal in writing, but I've been interested in what works, and what doesn't work, when I try it.
Music references are apparently a mainstay of what I write. They have been part of my inspiration, and are a solid way to evoke a sense of the era of the story... if the reader knows the song. Which is a bit of a problem when I'm writing about things in a fictionalized version of 35 years ago. It was notable in Remember When, but the song references there were all fairly strongly alluded to in the text describing why they mattered.
In my new-novel writing, they are much more a thing stated in passing, and depend on the reader actually knowing the lyrics to get the full effect of the reference. It is a notable enough weakness that I may actually include a playlist of songs and artists in the End Notes of the novel, just so readers who don't know the era can find them and listen to them. But that's asking a lot of a reader to do, so I may need to expand upon the references in context in the actual telling as well.
Here's a (fabricated for this post) example: If I mention a song like "All She Wants to Do is Dance" by Don Henley, recorded in 1985, as a reference to a scene set in 1986 Honduras, that's probably going to very evocative of the time and place to anyone who knows the song. Anyone who doesn't know it, but reads the song title, might get some sense of a female character ignoring something about her life or surroundings in the pursuit of her own enjoyment, however...
... they'd miss out on the Molotov Cocktail being the local drink. Yeah, it's a song about a dude trying to do something in a 3rd World country in the midst of a civil war. The girl is just part of why and how he is there. The reader would have to know the song to get that.
Music isn't the only evocative reference, of course. The more common sort of those are all based on things you would sense, and then project a context on. Sight, smell, sound, all the senses are superb evocation tools. Here's an example from a bar scene in the new novel, describing in one line some of the patrons of the bar:
Everyone
else in the place smelled of cigarette smoke and attitude.
Right then, that's pretty straightforward. There are some want-to-be or actual bad-asses of the scruffy kind hanging out in this joint besides the characters of note. Someday, when cigarettes are as rare as cocaine in cola drinks, that won't work. For now, though, it's a lock as a one line evocation.
Here's hoping you find this interesting. I sure found it interesting to consider.
