{"id":8576,"date":"2020-10-15T08:41:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T12:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8576"},"modified":"2020-10-19T08:33:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T12:33:38","slug":"where-do-ideas-come-from-who-are-these-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8576","title":{"rendered":"Where Writers’ Ideas Come From: Who Are These Women?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"sangria-colored<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Archer Landis, the Manhattan architect at the center of my forthcoming novel, has been married and faithful to his wife Marjorie for thirty-odd years. But Julia Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, a new associate in his firm, has unexpectedly stolen his heart. For me as a writer, describing these two women and their worlds didn\u2019t happen all at once. At first, my thoughts were akin to a sketch I kept going back to\u2014adding, subtracting, refining, and shaping details\u2014so that their ultimate descriptions show them to be distinct three-dimensional characters. Writing my first or second draft, I did not understand them well enough to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where They Live<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the novel\u2019s first chapter, you see Julia\u2019s Chelsea apartment as Archer, with his strong design sensibility, sees it. He\u2019s aware of all the references to her Spanish origins\u2014the sangria-colored walls, the heavy dark curtains, the chaise longues upholstered in deep carmine velvet. \u201cIt would require all his French curves and a full palette of rose and violet pigments to reproduce the effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archer and Marjorie\u2019s penthouse in an Upper East Side high-rise is light-filled, with floor-to-ceiling windows and views of the East River. The apartment is all straight lines, its walls are pale gray, the furniture has white leather upholstery, and a painting by Joan Mir\u00f3 provides only \u201ca confetti of color.\u201d A totally different woman lives there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What They Wear<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archer thinks of Julia as the bright bird in his office. She wears simple silk dresses in shades like watermelon pink, lime, and saffron. She has licorice-colored hair. You get the picture. In Landis\u2019s eyes, she\u2019s delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marjorie dresses in long knitted skirts, tunics and drapy attached scarves in the palest rose, taupe, beige, and off-white. Colors so faint that, over successive scenes, Archer cannot always identify what they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How He Feels about Them<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My intent is that these details say much more about the differences between Julia and Marjorie than their taste in interior decorating and clothing. Much later in the book, Landis muses on his love for them both, calling Julia his dazzling sun, and Marjorie his moon, the one who could regulate the tides within him and light the darkness. This analogy (I hope) recalls to the reader the earlier evocative descriptions constructed from specific details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoiding Clich\u00e9 Traps<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Superficial inventories (height, hair, eyes, clothing, voice) when a character is first introduced tend to be flat and uninteresting. They read like the author is ticking the boxes. They\u2019re akin to the first impression of someone, and nothing like the rich descriptions and telling details that reflect the real person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying for an intriguing first draft detail, maybe, have you noticed how often authors give a female character green eyes? I am one of the two percent of people worldwide<\/a> who actually have<\/em> green eyes, so I notice this. A green-eyed woman has become a bit of a clich\u00e9. (One of my characters has them too!) In any case, eye color is not a significant <\/em>detail. Rarely does a plot depend on the color of a character\u2019s eyes (or hair). Height, maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some interesting research bears out the prevalence of male and female stereotypes<\/a> in physical description that, thanks to overuse, no longer connect with readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other posts in this series: Why an Architect?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: andallshallbewell Tumblr page<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archer Landis, the Manhattan architect at the center of my forthcoming novel, has been married and faithful to his wife Marjorie for thirty-odd years. But Julia Fern\u00e1ndez, a new associate in his firm, has unexpectedly stolen his heart. For me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Where Do Ideas Come From? Who Are These Women? - 360-degree character descriptions","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,174,5,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-imagination","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ek","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8593,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8576\/revisions\/8593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}