Character Fact Lists
Character fact lists are a handy tool for entering your characters' worlds more fully. Zetta Brown "cobbled together" a template she's found useful here Help yourself.
Sometimes it's valuable to take the idea of that list and run with it: ever wonder what's on your characters' iPods?
I think music ranks right up there with fragrance in evoking memories. It becomes an important part of scene-setting, and I incorporate many instances in Shiva's Arms. For instance, on page 20 of the hardback edition of Shiva's Arms, I imagined that this song could have been playing when Ram first met Alice. Hippies after my own heart!
But Ram has his own favorites, vestiges of the culture he had turned from. "He hummed the same song every day and Alice had never asked him about it in all this time. She realized she would hate it if he ever quit. "(pg 90) Alice means this old Hindi movie song.
A melancholy insomniac like Alice uses music as both a distraction from, and a way to explore the boundaries of her own thoughts. What would she dig more than a little bit of Miles? Music was all the more precious to her because she had to yield middle-of-the-night music, among the other "...things she would have to give up once Amma arrived--no wandering from one DVD player to another all night..."(pg 71)
Amma has her preferences, too. Raised in the South Indian carnatic tradition,perhaps this carnatic lullaby was playing in the scene on page 96: "Amma sang along, humming an obligato of quarter-tones over the tune, beating time with the back of her hand on her knee."
Sometimes it's valuable to take the idea of that list and run with it: ever wonder what's on your characters' iPods?
I think music ranks right up there with fragrance in evoking memories. It becomes an important part of scene-setting, and I incorporate many instances in Shiva's Arms. For instance, on page 20 of the hardback edition of Shiva's Arms, I imagined that this song could have been playing when Ram first met Alice. Hippies after my own heart!
But Ram has his own favorites, vestiges of the culture he had turned from. "He hummed the same song every day and Alice had never asked him about it in all this time. She realized she would hate it if he ever quit. "(pg 90) Alice means this old Hindi movie song.
A melancholy insomniac like Alice uses music as both a distraction from, and a way to explore the boundaries of her own thoughts. What would she dig more than a little bit of Miles? Music was all the more precious to her because she had to yield middle-of-the-night music, among the other "...things she would have to give up once Amma arrived--no wandering from one DVD player to another all night..."(pg 71)
Amma has her preferences, too. Raised in the South Indian carnatic tradition,perhaps this carnatic lullaby was playing in the scene on page 96: "Amma sang along, humming an obligato of quarter-tones over the tune, beating time with the back of her hand on her knee."
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