Questions I Was Not Prepared to Answer

 
With the arrival of the first (and, sadly, imperfect) proof of New Fairy Moon (GoSH1) yesterday, my daughter, Serene, decided to draw the bedrooms of the three main characters. The story starts in the bedroom of one of the characters–and that bedroom was modeled largely on my daughter’s bedroom–so that one I know. Mostly.
 
One of the other character’s bedroom gets some text-time in the story, as well, but not in as much as detail. In fact, all that’s ever mentioned about her bedroom is that she has a closet, a door, a bed, a window, some vague posters on the wall, and a place to put her pet rat’s cage.
 
What does the front of their houses look like? I don’t know. One of them has a balcony over the front porch. One of them is probably vintage red brick.
 
See, I don’t bother to think up stuff I don’t need to tell the story. I don’t have detailed floor maps of the houses the girls live in with lists of their furniture. I haven’t even named all their parents. Eventually, as I write further books with those characters, I will know all this stuff. Until then, what’s the point?
 
In tech parlance, this could be called “just-in-time story detail”. When I need to know, I’ll make it up.
 
This is an advantage of novel writing over filmmaking. If I were filming these stories, I would need to fully dress the sets, even the ones that have very limited screen time.
 
On the other hand, I am striving to be more detailed in my character and setting descriptions, so I guess it’s good that I have to face this kind of interrogation every once in a while. Help me up my game.
 
I’m having to order a new proof of the book for review. The first proof had a couple issues that required some significant (and tedious) effort to correct. In the process I actually found a few minor things to correct in the manuscript, so I guess it all works out. My current hope is to announce the release of the book before the end of next week. The ebook version is ready to go for Kindle, Nook and Smashwords. I’m just waiting on my desktop publishing skills to be up to the task of making the book I see in my head the book that comes off the printer.
 
-David
 
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