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If your book were a house, would you want to live in it?
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I have a great house in my debut novel. I wish I owned it.Built into a granite hillside in New Hampshire near Mt. Cardigan and Mt. Kearsarge, with uninterrupted views, its own hill with hiking trails, and a massive fireplace.
I would love to live in it.
For as and when I shall be finishing writing my books, for each one of them, here is my word ~I literally live in the houses I build when I write them out, the bricks and mortar in the form of words. (Meanwhile, I do throw about some bricks at others, in the form of reviews & my other worldly views, for them to build foundations out of them. :P ) Anyway, coming back to the subject, I wonder, how is it possible not to live in this house you've constructed called your book? Each book is literally a dream, a trance I have been through when I get to pen it down. It is also a cloud that has hovered above me and then rained as hail, storm, fits of lightning, thunder, light showers, snow, sleet, a downpour, varying from a deluge to a drizzle or even a cloudburst. Do you get it? I've become all sort of things with these kinds of flurries and blizzards, from quails to the gail that I am. And then settled down in my house as the new creature I have turned into and turning that new house into a home.
I have been so many of the characters that I have owned in my mind when living in that house. Each book is a dream come true, just like the house we build is an achievement of a lifetime. It is never a matter of 'would you want to live' but always a matter of 'There is no choice! It is fated, it is destined!'. How can you escape being there, becoming a resident of the place that owns you so overwhelmingly that you literally live, breathe, drink, eat, chew, stew, spit and pee that very idea constantly? Rather, the question should be, does the house you live in become YOU instead? Or to be more precise, become your MUSE? In more ways than one, I mean it here. This question, the second one, is spun pun. You can muse about your house or you can make it the comfortable kept you can ride each time you want to dream to escape your reality. It becomes your whore who is also your confidante. Or it could be the woman of your designs, or the man of your dreams, or the object of your intentions, as and when you want it to be, because it is THE place where you go to to fetch you your trances, to snort in your drug, your fantasies, your imaginations. So the house you build becomes interchangeable with the house you built, ask my friends, esp Asghar 'bout this,, many have moved house thid year, including me, we both know how painful it was to leave our old homes behind and get to new ones, just because they promised to be the lands of better bookish dreams, our Shangri La. I hope they don't end up as the Utopian drowned Atlantis or El dorado, only imaginary lands promising gold a the end of the rainbow, our supposed hopeful Gold Coasts.
~ Purvi Petal 11 April ©2016
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Good point, Purvi. We do make a home in our books while we're writing/constructing them. Maybe that's why criticism of the 'decor' irks me. Continuing the metaphor...from the notes left by my last two editors, I imagine they prefer to live in houses with plain white walls.
Joe wrote: "Good point, Purvi. We do make a home in our books while we're writing/constructing them. Maybe that's why criticism of the 'decor' irks me. Continuing the metaphor...from the notes left by my last ..."Hahaha, you're point on about plain staid walls, and bdw, I stand by you about adjectives and metaphors, it would be such a boring world without them, leave alone houses! How could you make homes out of houses then if not for the adjectives?
Great topic. :o) I think we all include our loves and dislikes as we write, environments and homes included. Leaving little pieces of us scattered within the books pages.
Oh, to live in Emeritias, and visit Calageata, the Otherworldy heaven, home to the Sindria elementals. A magical place that has found a perfect balance with nature. Yup! My kind of home. :o) Bliss!
I would love to live in my book. That would mean I'd be back in Shanghai, which I miss dearly.
My family saga series is called Davenport House, so my book title is literally a house. Yes I would love to live in the mansion with 40 rooms, only I would try to avoid the family drama by hanging out in the gardens or claiming an obscure sitting room. The bedrooms are awesome too with silk curtains hanging from the canopy beds. Servants do all the cooking and cleaning, so it's a pretty cake life in most respects. *sigh*
J.M. wrote: "I would love to live in my book. That would mean I'd be back in Shanghai, which I miss dearly."My latest novel takes place in Shanghai and I've never been but after thorough research I'd love to visit. So yes, If my book were a house I'd love to live in it!
If my books were a house there is no way I'd want to live in it. Deception and mistrust would cloud the entire place. I hate drama personally but the characters which populate my writing are nothing but the Queens of drama induced mayhem.
My book, if it were a house, would creak and groan under the weight of its personality. Sometimes my book feels lonely. Where there's not enough dialogue, I invite some characters in to fill the void. Where it's too dark. I try to liven things up by finding the inner spirit of the scene. Where it's too verbose or flowery, I decide to 'kill my darlings', asking everyone to kindly leave. 
This house has stood for over a century without anyone noticing its existence. And now the land sharks have started circling the block. Will a fresh coat of paint and a new roof be enough to stave them off, or will this old house be reincarnated as a mini-mall?
I think I live in my books, and my characters are also wandering out here in some form.
Joe wrote: "So I got a familiar note from my editor today. 'Too many adjectives'.
My response, "But, I like adjectives. They are the ornamental details of a story. They add style and color. You wouldn't ..."
I know what you mean about adjectives being the ornamental details. I'm a very visual person, and also a fan of China Mieville and Clark Ashton Smith, who are both very generous with their adjectives and metaphors. I love a book with lots of "decor".
That being said, I'm not sure I'd want to live in a house based on my book. At least not in a house made from the mortal side of the world. It'd be creaky and hot all the time, and I'd always have to worry about samurai jumping out of the closets.
My books Underworld (as in Land of the Dead, not black market) would make a pretty fun house, though. There'd always be a huge party going on with diverse and eclectic guests. And lots of intricate fancy decorations all over the walls.
My house is where I live with my family. We don't have to worry about whether other people will like it. It only has to work for us. It can be as wacky or as individual as we want.My books are where I want my readers to stay, at least for a short while. My readers have different expectations to me.
In other words, my house is a home. My book is a hotel. It's a commercial product which has to give the consumers the experience that they are expecting.
When editors say "too many adjectives" they are usually not saying that all adjectives are bad. They are saying that the level of description doesn't work (in their opinion) for that particular book. Too many adjectives can break up the flow of a scene. If they're not adding anything, the reader might skip them. And if readers start skipping passages, they might soon decide not to read a book.
Homes and stuff we write for fun can be whatever we want. We need to take a little more care with hotels and novels that we want to sell.
It can be hard for an author to let go of the adjectives. We know where they absolutely have to be there. We've got this image in our heads that we want to give to the reader, exactly as we are picturing it.
Writing - good writing - doesn't quite work like that. We need to leave gaps for the readers to use their imagination, because the details that they supply from their own minds are a lot more vivid than anything we can write.
So it feels wrong to cut out the adjectives. How can the reader possibly see what I am seeing unless I describe it in detail? The truth is that readers will never see exactly what you are seeing. And perversely they will get a better experience is you reduce the adjective count and give them space to think for themselves.
A commercial novel is not your home. It belongs, in part, to your readers.
I would love to live in my book. Luxury houses, castles, all over the world.
So I got a familiar note from my editor today. 'Too many adjectives'.
My response, "But, I like adjectives. They are the ornamental details of a story. They add style and color. You wouldn't want to live in a house without any decor would you?"
Got worked up and wrote the first real blog post of my entire life.
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...