Working with lines

[larryhammer]

Linky: telophase on the difference (first of a series) between professional and not quite there yet artists, with examples from manga. Warning: several large graphics. Of special note: a explanation of confidence of line that finally made sense.

Part of this sense is by anaolgy. There's an equivalent in metrical poetry -- which could even be called the same. It's a difference between a poet who knows meter and is making sure his syllables fit the pattern, and one who holds the rhythm in her bones and is saying something with that soundshape. One determining sign: when thére are áwkward pháses cút to fít the fórm, espécially sýntax tángled ór an éxtra wórd that páds it tó the stréss. Poets with confidence of line can write with and upon and against the pattern, playing with the line, using it as part of the expression.

The difference is more clear with rhymed poetry, and the syntactic contortions of a hamhanded poet trying to get the rhyme word at the end of the line (usually the phrase as well -- enjambment is rarely an option to this sort). But that's not so much confidence of line as tin ears.

ObWrity: Sent a 650-line epic off to Twenty Epics, polished if not entirely buffed -- but, ya know, deadlines. While thinking about whether (and if so, how) to rewrite the climax of the novel based on comments, I'm doing groundwork for the next novel. Which next I wrote half of back in August; I've finished recasting it in first person, and am now resettling the foundations of chapter 2 to support later plot developments -- plus taking the opportunity to collapse three characters into two. Ignore the whimper over the corner -- that's just the story/poem I was 80% through drafting when the first novel hit; it thinks it wants to be finished.

---L.

trackback: matociquala picks up the conversation (scroll down)

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

That's some kind of current music. Can you dance to it?

[larryhammer]

It has a better beat than the Silhouette Intimate Moments that's holding my other bookmark.

---L.

[junoxxiv.livejournal.com]

We just finished off a poetry unit a school. My co-teacher focuses on meaning for her classes, we talked about it of course but I am partial to rhyme scheme and meter myself. I had all three of my classes write sonnets. I cut them some slack by having them fit as close to ten syllables as they could, we talked about iambic pentameter, but I didn't hold them to it. I did tell them all about my amazing writer friend who just published a novel length poem in rhyme and meter. They were impressed.

[larryhammer]

Meter is hard. It took me ten years of seriously working at it before meter finally clicked and I started writing it for real. After which, I started working on rhyme -- and I'm still a little shaky on that.

---L.

[randimason.livejournal.com]

Just as long as you have a way of feeding the poem so it doesn't wander off.

And will have to look at the link when I'm not on a dialup. But it sounds like a solid analogy.

[larryhammer]

It's more likely to run (it's about mythological footracing).

---L.

[randimason.livejournal.com]

It's not a variation on Atalanta, is it?

[larryhammer]

Variation, nothing -- it's herself. Or more properly, what happens when a myrmidon (and her husband) competes for her hand. I stopped in the middle of the last race, too.

---L.

[randimason.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Intriguing :)

BTW, you can thank constant replays of "Free to Be, You and Me" for any knowledge of the myth at all.

And now I'm trying to get the thought of Alan Alda reading "Metamorphoses" (the Zimmerman take on Ovid) out of my head.

Time to put the CD up louder.

[larryhammer]

Alda was in the Broadway production? Which part?

<tries imagining Hawkeye as Midas> <fails>

---L.

[randimason.livejournal.com]

Not that I know of.
He did the narration on the album, though.

[larryhammer]

Ah. Odd, but ah.

---L.