Saturday, July 7, 2012

Mystery Night

Can he figure it out?  Does he want to?

This was an image that I found a couple weeks ago.  Thankfully when I find really visually interesting photos I'm more apt to save them.  I used to just move on by if a story didn't present itself immediately.   But while this is a sexy image I found myself just asking questions without an answer.  Where is she?  Why is she looking out the window?  Why is she nude?  Why is she only wearing a bracelet and ring?  Normally the answers to these questions set up the story, but I didn't have any answers.

It hit me though... why couldn't THAT be the story?  The questions themselves.   So I started writing this without an ending in mind.   Just that this used to be a guy, and is now a woman.  He wakes up and.... and I started to write his/her inner dialog.  I tried to not edit out unclear thoughts or places where I jumped around because that's how I think.  I can be walking down the street and this is how my inner dialog is working:

'I can't believe I passed that test... damn, I'm a nurse now!  well... a nurse without a job.  I wonder if I should start applying to smaller hospitals. Hey that movie poster looks interesting.  Is that Kira Knightly?  Is that her name?  I hate how I can't seem to remember actresses names.  I wonder if that's just me, or is that Hollywood?  I mean actresses don't seem to have the same career type as actors.   I wonder if I could have been an actor.  I only did the one audition in high school and I mumbled every single line.  But that's the way I talk.  I wonder if I should go to the High School reunion this year.'

On and on, I just keep thinking and thinking bouncing from subject to subject.  So even though I don't think this is the best writing I've ever done, I think it convey's the bumpy thought process that a person under duress would have.

Something that I've noticed in my last few caps... I'm using less and less names.  When writing, the name of the subject just doesn't seem to flow into the story naturally.  When I am writing for someone else (like Smitty in "Sissy Olympiad") I make sure to get the name in there.   But in caps like this I don't feel it's necessary.  I mean when I'm thinking to myself, I rarely use my own name.

As a question... does that bother you?  Does it help put yourself in the cap?  Is it good? Bad?  I'm curious what you think about it.

1 comment:

  1. One of the hardest things to write is a single person alone in a room. There's a fine line between realistic internal dialog and just spouting off exposition for the audience. I think you did a pretty good job with this caption of keeping the narrator's voice fairly, for lack of a better term, "realistic." It was a bit disjointed at times but I think that actually helped build up the idea that the character was disoriented and trying to figure out where he/she was. Overall, nice caption.

    And as for the name thing, I personally prefer to leave out names unless there's going to be a lot of back and forth between multiple characters, meaning names help keep track of the action. I'll also use names for longer captions where I don't want to use "he" two hundred times in a row. But for captions like this, I feel that names tend to get in the way of both the story and the readers' ability to immerse themselves in the caption.

    ReplyDelete