copyright: SnaPsi Сталкер
Bridges aren't heights. I won't walk within two yards of the edge of a cliff, but bridges don't scare me. Every time I go to B.C., the billboards showing the Capilano Suspension Bridge give me the proverbial chills. In a good way. I dearly wish to someday cross a suspension bridge. That must mean my fears are inconsistent/irrational, or I'm just plain out of my mind. Hm.
I neglected to finish posting my Canadian Rockies photos, which is a shame because they include the most stupendous gorge I've seen, in or out of the Pacific Northwest. Maligne Canyon is so profound that, in some places, you stare in vain for sight of the bottom, only to see an abrupt, a very abrupt, absence of light.
It is hardly easy to fathom what distances can make the bottom of a canyon invisible, and in broad daylight. You can hear the river, always. You can see it, running through the rocks with many large twists and turns. Then it's gone. Did it go too far? What makes darkness so imposing--the effect or the cause?
I like what my history teacher remarks: I don't know. You tell me.
Like all such remarks, it isn't meant to be answered.
I digress, I suppose? Well, not really. Bridges rest atop chasms, but I prefer to be on a bridge than anywhere near the edge of said chasm. Logically, it makes no sense. I'm afraid of heights, aren't I? Tall buildings especially. Well, it makes no sense; at least, not at a glance.
It makes me think of writing. There's such a fine line between writing three-dimensional characters and soap opera characters. All I can surmise is that it boils down to this: some unexpected, unusual, "inconsistent" character traits are consistent with a given character. The rest are simply not. The trick is to find which ones match the character and to limit yourself to those. Because a good character is always, always consistent, even if there are seeming inconsistencies within their lives, actions. You can think of a character as a square with distinct sides and boundaries. Within the square, the character may be anything. But they must stay within the boundaries you already established. [I am talking about a type of character development, not a character arc per se.]
And now I've really gone off-topic.
But whilst on the subject of writing, we could talk about paragraphs and one of my greatest pet peeves, the topic sentence. The overrated topic sentence. Case in point (emphasis added):
He gained the bridge and returned to the north shore, where he remembered having seen in one of the narrower streets a little obscure shop stocked with cheap wood carvings, its walls lined with extremely dirty cardboard-bound volumes of a small circulating library. They sold stationery there, too. A morose, shabby old man dozed behind the counter. A thin woman in black, with a sickly face, produced the envelope he had asked for without even looking at him. Razumov thought that these people were safe to deal with because they no longer cared for anything in the world. He addressed the envelope on the counter with the German name of a certain person living in Vienna. But Razumov knew that this, his first communication for Councillor Mikulin, would find its way to the Embassy there, be copied in cypher by somebody trustworthy, and sent on to its destination, all safe, along with the diplomatic correspondence. That was the arrangement contrived to cover up the track of the information from all unfaithful eyes, from all indiscretions, from all mishaps and treacheries. It was to make him safe--absolutely safe.Descriptive or narrative? I'd say both, and a brilliant paragraph at that. But some people might tell you to split it into two and get rid of those random sentences that make it magnificent.
I guess it would be logical, but again, I don't believe logic enters the equation.
Thoughts?
