My character is new to the Second World; it’s intimidating for her, but I want to show that she is intrigued as well. It’s a different, yet still exciting place; new, but not scary. For this, I chose an outdoor market as my scene. It had to be descriptive–a challenge for me, as I’ve already said.
My first crack at it:
It’s mid-morning. The day is warm and temperate; a fresh sea breeze cools the air. They come to the edge of the market, a vibrant, bustling square of food venders, clothing venders, button venders, [DESCRIBE MARKET; CONSIDER THE WINTER VAULT DETAILS. INCLUDE SENSORY DETAILS AND UNPREDICTABLE DETAILS. DESCRIBE HOW PEOPLE ARE DRESSED, TOO.]
The Winter Vault is a novel by Anne Michaels, a beautiful, lyrical story, one that includes an impressive description of a market. It’s less the details that I remember, and more the evocation of place. The author uses what I know I have to use: sensory detail and unexpected detail (i.e.: a girl reading to her blind grandfather).
So I worked on that, trying to emulate the lush beauty of her language.
Lyra returns the wide smile of a hollow-cheeked granny, a woman whose wrinkled face sags under the weight of her years, and Lyra laughs with a heavy-lidded middle-aged apple-seller, whose accent is almost impossible for Lyra to decipher. At David’s insistence, Lyra tastes a xxxx, but spits it out before the burning fire on her tongue can slip down her throat and she swats David on his arm when he laughs.
She likes it here in the market. It’s vibrant, it’s raw, it’s real.
Not even close. Not even close to close. But that’s ok; it’s a draft. Drafts are meant to suck. At least I knew I needed a lot of work.
Yet it wouldn’t come together. I tried so many different combinations of images, looking for the right words to create the right feel.
Until I made a startling and embarrassingly obvious discovery: There’s no way on Earth I could imitate Anne Michaels or her market scene.
I focused so much on trying to write like Anne Michaels, I forgot to write in my own style. My novel is YA; my audience and purpose are different. My strengths are different. My characters are different.
I started over:
The market does not disappoint. It is a carnival, a street party, a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds and smells—cinnamon and saffron from the spice sellers and sweet mangos and papayas from the fruit sellers and fresh bread and croissants from the bakers. She and David are shoulder-to-shoulder, stepping sideways through the boisterous crowd, an uneven assortment of vendors, sellers and tourists, who, Lyra notices, are very much like her. She watches a wrinkled old woman, her eyes sunken by her loose skin, prod a tall, white First World backpacker to examine a handcrafted blue beaded bracelet; Lyra sees a sun-beaten middle-aged man, his food stall almost empty, retrieve crates of black olives from his dusty farm truck and replenish his supplies; she smiles at a gangly brown pre-teen who, over the yap of a mangy mutt beside him, bargains loudly with a reticent shoe seller for a pair of brilliantly yellow-neon soccer cleats. The boy must have prevailed; he skips away with his prize, his dog trotting happily at his heels.
I like that I’ve focused on individuals (the wrinkled woman, the sun-beaten man) and I like my specific detail (neon soccer cleats). More importantly, I feel it’s now in Lyra’s voice.
I think it can be tightened–that’ll be work for my third draft–but I’m back on track. My own style, my own story.
LESSON LEARNED: Trust your own style. Work on it, improve it, sure, but keep it your own. Trying to be the “next” Anne Michaels or J.K. Rowling or Stephen King or whomever will get you nowhere. (They made it there before you did). Good writing or bad, I’d rather be the “first” Jen Braaksma.