To smile, or not to smile?

Usually I agree with writing tips, but I fell across this one the other day and I wondered…

"a reminiscent smile rose to his lips". No! He can't see himself smile. He can only feel the reminiscence, and if he smiles, he smiles.

I let it simmer on the back burner for a couple of days. Often time allows a different perspective, but not this time. Surely the character can feel himself smile and most of the time knows what kind of stupid, goofy or reminiscent look he exhibits to the world? He uses muscles to smile, throw a punch or shoot a filthy look at an enemy. We all put on a mask for the world, and we use it knowledgeably.

If the POV character observes another character he may assume he knows the reason for the reminiscent smile. He may be wrong, of course. We all pick up signals from another’s body language and friends who know each other well can usually tell why one of them is reacting in the way they do.

Like everything else, there are always exceptions to every rule. Perhaps it is time for writing tips to be written in a less dogmatic way, or else readers should interpret them more loosely. I can’t remember if I’ve written any that are so black and white, but I hope not. But certainly, I disagree with the paragraph in italics above. What do the rest of you think?

Pic: Durham Castle and Cathedral (World Heritage site)

It's good to know

I finally got time to go back to the rules of fiction link I put up for you on my last post, and read through Hilary Mantel's ten points. Not that they aren't all good, but two of them struck a real chord with me, so here they are.

7 Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.

8 Description must work for its place. It can't be simply ornamental. It ­usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.

She says it so much better than me, but I realise that I have been trying to show all my description through a viewpoint character in my new stories Treason and Defiance. I don't always succeed, but I'm reassured to know I'm on the right track.

Men do not notice...

MOST improbable headline of the week? “Men do not notice women in high heels.”
It followed publication of a study by Northumbria University, where researchers observed men’s reactions as a series of women walked past, some wearing stilettoes, some not. Apparently their recorded emotional response to women in high heels and those in flatties was indistinguishable. Well I’m sorry but either the guys had water flowing through their veins or someone at the university had forgotten to plug in the machinery. Of course blokes “notice” women wearing high heels! Saying they don’t is like saying women don’t “notice” a man in uniform! (And by “notice”, we all know what we mean). Along with sheer stockings and lacy underwear, high heels are among the most potent weapons in a woman’s amour armoury. The research also said that the men couldn’t tell any difference in the way women walked depending on whether they were in pumps or heels.Whaaat?!? I refer you to an early scene in Some Like It Hot (the funniest film ever made) in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon watch Marilyn Monroe sashaying along a railway station platform. She is, of course, wearing killer heels. “Will you look at that?” Lemmon breathes to Curtis. “It’s like Jello on springs...” I rest my case. Men of Northumbria, hang your heads in shame.

This came from Richard and Judy in the weekend's newspapers. Since Northumbria Uni is where I did my library science and in my local city of Newcastle, I can tell you that there are some who dislike make-up and would claim that personality and intelligence far outweighs physical attributes. Sounds like the researchers hit on a group of such people.

And before you all die of boredom, here's the last set of rules for writing fiction

Neil Gaiman
1 Write.
2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7 Laugh at your own jokes.
8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.