Last month, when I was up in Rhode Island, I was working on one of my stories by trying to ground it so that the unusual elements would be seen as a natural part of our world. It should have been easy, since I was describing natural beauty and there I was -- surrounded by the sunlit waters of Narragansett Bay in one direction and by the dazzling trees of Newport in the other direction. But it wasn't easy.
It takes constant work for me to walk a story along, not put it in a car and drive it. By that, I mean "take the time to feel and see and hear everything that's present in the episode." Many of those details will be eliminated in the end, but they still underlie the story. Eliminating them doesn't reduce their role to a blank. They alter descriptions that I do leave in. They warm up the tone I take to the characters.
And now that I've taken the time to say how I pull my hair out over this challenge, I'd better go back to pulling out my hair. And probably nobody will understand this post except another writer.
