Glares at knee.

Last week I was rudely tripped by a poorly maintained set of steps with an angular lip that first caught at my shoe and then caught in my ankle. I had thought that two thwacking great bruises were the worst of it, but I seem to have somewhat strained the posterior cruciate ligament in my left knee, so this week is slow, ineffectual, and filled with moments of me standing on my right leg saying rude words.

It will all be fine, but my large pile of beta duties remains partially done. I think this is because I make the mistake of beta-ing almost exclusively for talented and clever people. It is so very much easier to edit bad fiction, where one can wield a blue pencil with gay abandon. Smart and well-constructed prose with distinctive voices requires actual brains, which are dulled by painkillers and have sadly been in short supply at chez Brammers since June. Oh, all right, since 1993.

Anyway, I wanted to share one small thing that was apparently an epiphany to some of my young writer folk the other day when I was talking about the need to differentiate characters for class, region, taste, nationality and many other things, but to retain the knowledge that underlying humanity is pretty much constant.

These three rooms …


... are separated by about 30,000 years, but they all say the same thing. My tribe/family is successful; we have many things; this place indicates our status and our power, you should be impressed and marvel at what we have wrought. If you took Cosimo de' Medici (the middle room was his) and popped him back in Stone Age Australia (with the ability to communicate), he would say 'Not enough boomerangs! Do we have any axes we can stencil? Bring Mandawuy over here so we can stencil his hand, he's huge! We want people to look upon this and quake!'

So, although most of you out there are brilliant and already know this, if any of you are like my young friends and have fallen into the trap of writing The Rich or The Poor, remember, that bit of your house where you have your treasures on display in the hopes that visitors will see them and be impressed? That bit is exactly the same as the rooms above. Only the detail changes. Admittedly, the detail is important, too, but that's another post.

Glares at knee.

Last week I was rudely tripped by a poorly maintained set of steps with an angular lip that first caught at my shoe and then caught in my ankle. I had thought that two thwacking great bruises were the worst of it, but I seem to have somewhat strained the posterior cruciate ligament in my left knee, so this week is slow, ineffectual, and filled with moments of me standing on my right leg saying rude words.

It will all be fine, but my large pile of beta duties remains partially done. I think this is because I make the mistake of beta-ing almost exclusively for talented and clever people. It is so very much easier to edit bad fiction, where one can wield a blue pencil with gay abandon. Smart and well-constructed prose with distinctive voices requires actual brains, which are dulled by painkillers and have sadly been in short supply at chez Brammers since June. Oh, all right, since 1993.

Anyway, I wanted to share one small thing that was apparently an epiphany to some of my young writer folk the other day when I was talking about the need to differentiate characters for class, region, taste, nationality and many other things, but to retain the knowledge that underlying humanity is pretty much constant.

These three rooms …


... are separated by about 30,000 years, but they all say the same thing. My tribe/family is successful; we have many things; this place indicates our status and our power, you should be impressed and marvel at what we have wrought. If you took Cosimo de' Medici (the middle room was his) and popped him back in Stone Age Australia (with the ability to communicate), he would say 'Not enough boomerangs! Do we have any axes we can stencil? Bring Mandawuy over here so we can stencil his hand, he's huge! We want people to look upon this and quake!'

So, although most of you out there are brilliant and already know this, if any of you are like my young friends and have fallen into the trap of writing The Rich or The Poor, remember, that bit of your house where you have your treasures on display in the hopes that visitors will see them and be impressed? That bit is exactly the same as the rooms above. Only the detail changes. Admittedly, the detail is important, too, but that's another post.