I essentially failed at this exercise. But whatever. I think switching to random characters for this week might have done me in, but there are worse things I could do. I'll fully admit to pretty much describing the different places I go to in Omaha, and I definitely caricatured them up a bit, but part of that was for Kyle's character as I made him up. The cheapness of literally calling places North Omaha, South Omaha, and West Omaha (there is no East Omaha - that is downtown) gave the world a more coherent feel than it really had, to me. It isn't easy to balance having characters and building a world, but Jade was right - a world comes alive because of the characters who inhabit it and interact with it, who observe it and comment on it and try to change it.
This exercise mostly brought home my utter inability to spatially process places alone in my head without visibly seeing what I'm describing. I think I improved as the week went, coming up with a lame if coherent story line and developing a fairly solid character for Kyle, who shall go the way of the dodo with whatever the impending challenge may be. In looking back, my sense of description improved, because in considering what I'd write for the day I'd watch the world around me and try to categorize the little visual details that fed into my overall impression of the place. (South Omaha has houses crammed closer together than in North Omaha, but North Omaha somehow feels more ghetto and unsettling than South Omaha.)
Well, better luck next week. At least I got my daily words, right?
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