Wisdom for the day ...

[ysengrin]

This just jumped off the screen at me, so I throw it out to y'all.

... now I began the long process of comprehending that what is so vivid in your head doesn’t automatically zap into the reader’s head. That phrases like Her eyes flashed with scorn did not, in fact, shoot into the reader’s mind the image of my heroine’s wary tilt to her head, the tightly crossed arms, her bitten thumbnail, her threadbare summer gown and the wisps of hair straggling onto her forehead, the smooth black glinting blue in the morning sun. I saw that. The reader just got a common phrase signaling sexual tension. If she was reading just for a story of sexual tension that would eventually resolve with a happy meeting of minds (and lips), then it didn’t matter if she didn’t see the complete picture. But if I wanted her to see the picture–if I wanted her to remember my heroine as distinct from all the other heroines whose eyes flash scorn–then I had to disassemble the movie, and rebuild it on the page as text, image by image, noun by noun, verb by verb.

Via Book View Cafe Blog.