THE OMINOUS WOODS

Greetings, fellow writers! As I explained on Friday, I’ll be posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a while. Here is today’s post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 2: The Eye of the Beholder (Part 3)

The Gliding Eye is a way to pay attention to surroundings while on the move. Walking, swimming, or biking can free your mind. You can also take a long train ride, car trip, or cruise, watching the world rush past.

The Child’s Eye looks at the world through the perspective of a child, playing with description for the sheer enjoyment of it.

The Dream Eye pays attention to your dreams. The goal here is to describe the scenes without trying to make sense of them. Images can provide insight into your characters or suggest plot elements. It’s helpful to keep pen and paper on your bedside table to record what you remember.

I like the premise of this chapter. We can enhance our description of objects by viewing them through new eyes.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Once I’m on my feet, I realize escape may not be so simple. I’m dizzy. Not the slightly wobbly kind, but the kind that sends the trees swooping around you and causes the earth to move in waves under your feet. I take a few steps and somehow wind up on my hands and knees. I wait a few minutes to let it pass, but it doesn’t.

The author never names what’s wrong, but I gather the character suffered a concussion from being too close to an explosion.

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The woods always look different at night. Even with the glasses, everything has an unfamiliar slant to it. As if the daytime trees and flowers and stones had gone to bed and sent slightly more ominous versions of themselves to take their places.

This describes both the scene and the character’s uneasiness.

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I always assumed the shopkeepers live a soft life. And it’s true, Peeta has always had enough to eat. But there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted. One thing about us, since I bring our food home on a daily basis, most of it is so fresh you have to make sure it isn’t going to make a run for it.

The character compares the fare of bakery owners to the food she gathers and hunts.

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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Thursday.