yowser
Quirk
- Joined
- May 5, 2014
- Posts
- 3,237
I think this is a fabulous example of two things:In the entirety of my two Ranger Ramona stories (Hopefully a third coming this year), I never described Ramona's appearance. In the first paragraph, I wrote, "Most little girls grew up dreaming about wearing their wedding gowns. All she had ever wanted was to one day don the gray and green uniform of a Maine Forest Ranger."
Everything the reader needs to know about her is in those two sentences. The 100k words that follow are all extrapolations from them. To be a ranger, she needs to be physically fit, that is a given, but beyond that, what she looks like is irrelevant.
Not the quantity of the detail, but the distinctiveness. That wish for the ranger uniform illuminates, reveals, outlines a character's motivation and desires. The description contains a whole world. And enchants the reader - tell me more about this person, what she will do, how it will all go.
An outstanding beginning, the enchanter's spell....