T/P/S – On Old Patterns, Satisfying Writing, and What Writers Can Learn From Animation
From JP | 05.22.2025
This one is a bit less cohesive than my last couple of posts. I hope that its contents can provide you with some value, regardless. Also, I hope my fellow visitors to Roshar will appreciate some original Vorin poetry.
Thorns
I’m falling into old patterns. I recently rewrote a scene six times as I tried to reach a point where I felt comfortable moving on from it. I mentioned in an earlier T/P/S that it’s important to be mindful of my tendencies. This must be one of them. I wonder if/how I should alter my process to better accommodate this particular tendency of mine.
I notice that I tend to start over rather than refine. That tells me that I’m not initiating the process with a clear picture of what it should be. Could it be a lack of vision? In the book The 12 Week Year, it talks about “vision” as one of the most critical pieces to sticking to a plan. Maybe my tendency to rewrite entire scenes is an indication that I do not have a strong enough vision for what my story should be about, at least on the scene-level.
Petals
I just finished Wind & Truth by Brandon Sanderson. No spoilers to worry about. I just want to revel in the feeling of satisfaction of reading a story so complex that it is able to wrap up so neatly while also still having room to open things up.
Finishing this first arc of the story is a nice reminder of why I pursue writing. I want to leave my readers with the same sort of feeling: that their trust and time committed to my work has been worth it. I want them to not only care about the stories and characters that live in my head, but also to feel that those characters have taught them some kind of truth about human nature and/or the world.
Seeds
I want to try to employ a shift in mentality regarding my approach to writing. One based on something I’ve noticed about old animation in cartoons.
You know how in things like Tom & Jerry and Loony Tunes, the backgrounds seem to be these static paintings that look like backdrops, while the characters and anything they physically interact with look different from that backdrop? I think that a similar process can help guide how I should write descriptions.
I constantly get the advice to avoid “info/exposition dumps” because it disrupts the flow of the passage. Such advice is typically accompanied by the solution of only including descriptions for things that the character would pay attention to. For example, a character who is not an architect or artist is unlikely to expound upon the architectural intricacies of a background building’s construction while using especially technical language. Instead, the character would most likely only note its general appearance, while focusing on what that building means to them: what it represents, who they might find inside, or experiences they have had within.
In other words, the things that are worth the effort and words to describe are the things that are directly tied with the character’s actions and thoughts. So when contemplating where to apply your descriptive energies, it might help to imagine the scene as old-school animation. Picture your character walking across that painted backdrop (which you only spend a sentence or two describing), and describe the things that your character interacts with directly.
The only way to know if it works is to put it in practice, so I shall let you know if it’s a thought experiment worth looking into for your own uses.
Expression favors my joy. In written stories. Gifted stories, written in joy—my favored expression,
JP Violet
The Path Behind — A postscript
Last week, I tried employing the Method of Loci to try and improve my memory, and holy crap, it’s so useful. Naturally, I can’t do anything normally, so I don’t exactly stick to generally advised structure—I have an entirely fictional “mind palace” rather than a familiar pathway in real life—but I’ve found that it still works! My specific personalization of this technique involves memorable monsters that I use to represent the days of the week. When I need to remember something, I conjure a symbol for it and place it alongside the corresponding monster. I find that I am much more likely to remember the monster’s reactions and attitudes to the symbol, and am thus better able to remember the thing that the symbol represents. I’d call this particular experiment a success so for! I definitely recommend it for anyone else who struggles with their memory.
JP Violet 