Setting the Mood By Jeri Westerson
One of the reasons I’ve never gone in for writing screenplays is that I love writing the narrative prose of a novel. I love the descriptions, setting the tone and mood of a piece. I’m a prose whore, and nothing gets me all a-tingle like some well-written sentence, or a paragraph or page that puts me in another world.
And you must sense it, too, because the readers of this blog love to sink into these different worlds, different places.
I was once in conversation with another author about world-building. We know the masters of it; J.R.R. Tolkien, JK Rowling, George R.R. Martin—they take what we know from history, from the world around us, throw in a smattering of mythology, and make a perfectly reasonable alternative reality to what we know. But my contention was that every book has some measure of this world-building, even in the historical mysteries that I also write, because readers need to be re-introduced to medieval London, to the everyday life and customs of such an intimate society. And the same is also true of paranormal novels. It’s the writer who must set the world first in a reality that the reader can relate to before she can expand upon that foundation. Only when that foundation is firmly in place can you use it as a jumping off point. Continue reading “Guest Author Blog Post: Setting the Mood By Jeri Westerson”
Rhys Ford 