Gravity, Describing, and Writing Ideas · 5:59am Sep 22nd, 2014
Hello my people! Today's going to be a random blog full of random things that I feel like writing about. Mainly because I'm sick and not exactly thinking clearly. I do my best thinking at times like this. That's kinda backwards....
First is something I've spent way too long thinking about; Gravity. You don't really appreciate it, but it's always there; holding us to the earth, holding the moon close to the earth and controlling the tides, holding the earth close to the sun so life can continue to... well, live. Holding the solar system together, holding the solar system in the galaxy, holding the galaxy together. Yeah, Gravity does everything. But then you really start thinking. Or at least I did.
I did a lot of thinking, and I have concluded that gravity is the ultimate force in the universe. Think about it; it can interact with literally everything, even things that don't interact with matter at all. It can bend and trap light, and even affect time. Yeah, gravity affects time itself. Enough gravity and you can trap time much like a black hole can trap light. In theory, at least. You'd need something millions of times denser than the super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Gravity is the only thing that can interact with literally everything, and the best part is we don't even fully understand what gravity is. All we know is that it's a force everything made of matter has, and the heavier/denser an object the stronger the gravitational pull. We don't know really what causes gravity.
Just think about it; how much do we actually know about one of the universes most basic and common of forces? We don't know what causes it, why it's there, or even really what it is. It's not magnetism or anything like that, but literally everything has some form of gravity. The person who can explain gravity truly unlocks the secrets of the universe. With the mastery of gravity comes the mastery of everything; time, light, matter, everything. The way I see it, we're in a race. A race against every other species living in our universe. The first to control gravity wins the race, and the prize for first place is the universe itself.
Moving from science and into some writing talk. Specifically, describing a scene. So many times I see knew authors struggling with describing the environment, so I wanted to talk a bit about it, and how I personally do it. First and foremost; don't go overkill. I've seen a lot of people spend paragraph upon paragraph describing an environment. Leave some of it up to the imagination of the reader. Build a framework, and let the reader choose the wallpaper. Make it flow nice, elegantly even. If you can get a good flow going in your descriptions it drags the reader into your world and shows them exactly what you want them to see. I have some problems with this, but I have a good idea how to do it.
For me, I find it easy to put myself in the environment I'm trying to create. I don't describe what I imagine it to look like, I describe what I see. Quite frequently, if I have to describe something new that I haven't seen before in pictures, I'll turn up my music, lean back, and close my eyes, and just look around at the area in my own head. It helps to have a good imagination, but even if you don't, just knowing what you want it to look like should be enough. Don't tell the reader what you want to see, tell them what you actually do see when you imagine it. If you can type without looking at the keyboard, start describing the environment before even opening your eyes. Look around yourself; what do you see? Just start typing, and if it doesn't flow or isn't quite right, start over again. a goo environmental description is crucial for reader immersion, and if you skimp out on it you miss one of the biggest chances to pull your reader in.
Finally, coming up with ideas. I see this a lot with longer stories; people running out of ideas to write about for the next chapter and the like. I'll tell you what my journalism teacher told me; do a brain dump, as he called it. Close your eyes (if you can) and type whatever comes to mind. Anything and everything. Just get it all out, every half-formed idea, every quote, anything that pops into your head. When you've done about 200-300 words of it, read back through what you typed, and see what you can use. 9 times out of 10 you'll find an idea you can expand upon. It helps a lot, trust me.
So, seeing as how I'm under the weather, I'm gonna head to bed and hope this goes away fast. Hopefully I'll be able to write something soon.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
Thanks, man (One thing I've noticed about guitarists (me included) is that we say 'man' a lot
) for the description guide. I needed a lot of help with that, being new to non school assignment writing. As for the gravity... I've got nothing. But should I go into science instead of defense, then I'll be sure to work on it. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I got pretty close to the formula they used to send man to the moon while laying in bed when I was 7.
I've always considered gravity to be a force that — lacking any high-level training in physics on my part, I admit I'm largely guessing — seems to work against entropy. It overcomes a cloud's tendency (essentially due to the other 3 base forces) to expand forever. Without gravity, our universe would've stayed a soup of hydrogen "gas". Nothing interesting would happen in such a universe, other than producing trace amounts of helium while still hot and dense. It would expand, cool, and spread said gas out thinner and thinner, probably reaching maximum entropy within years, instead of the trillions of years a gravity-bound universe such as ours might take. Fascinating, isn't it?
On the subject of more Earth-centric pursuits, I really should get to writing some stuff of my own: I've got a folder full of incomplete ideas. I totally agree with everything you mentioned about imagination, by the way. Every time I close my eyes, I see quite clearly the worlds I haven't written yet. Seriously, self, you should really get on to doing that.
Oh, and feel better soon, Kodeake.