Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 15:26:43 -0700 From: Antaeus Feldspar Subject: TECH: "Tenning" (was: Falconia) While I agree with Robyn on the KIS rule, I think there's a simple exercise which may help you expand in the ways you're looking to: "tenning." The rule is simple; just pick a category and then don't stop until you've found ten different answers. Then, to expand your limits, ask yourself how the answers you've given are different, and what effects they have. Here's a sample one; I'll give the category and do it right now. "The woman ahead of me in line was wearing _________." 1) Hot pants in late September. 2) A dingy tennis visor turned wrong-way up. 3) An ankle-length skirt with a frilly hem. 4) A rhinestone pendant on a chain that probably wasn't real gold. 5) Work jeans and a man's flannel shirt buttoned up to her chin. 6) A starched white blouse with a cameo brooch at the collar. 7) A T-shirt with ironed-on letters spelling out a beer brand. 8) A midriff sweater and bellbottoms. 9) beach sandals and pale pink toenail polish. 10) a tuxedo shirt and black bow-tie. Now, each of these gives a different picture, some more and some less complete, about the woman and to some degree about the speaker (since which details he notices tells us about him.) Ask yourself what you expect from the woman with the cameo brooch that you don't expect from the woman in the hot pants. Even better: what separates the woman in the ankle-length skirt from the one with the cameo brooch? This gives you something better than a vocabulary of words: this expands your vocabulary of characterization. And since there's no reason you can't expand it to settings, word choices, and every other element of your fiction, you can expand in those areas as well. ! -jc IS feldspar@netcom.com ! ! "'Asa Nisi Masa!' How strange! But what does it mean?" !