I’m trying to write an Epilogue to a short(ish) story I just finished recently, and I was having an extremely hard time picturing the room in which the scene took place. I’m just not a detailed person. I know the basic plot. I know where my characters are going and where they’ve come from. But don’t ask me what sits in the corner of Aeda’s room or what color her curtains were. I don’t know- but I should. There’s an exercise I’ve been trying to practice before I write a scene: I sit down and I try to imagine a 360 degree view of the room the scene is taking place in, down to every little detail. What sounds would my character hear? What would they smell? How would they feel? What colors were those curtains? It’s a work in progress. But I sat down last week to immerse myself in what exactly the room would look like, I couldn’t picture it. Everything was fuzzy, even the basic structure of the the room eluded me. I sat for nearly half the morning, I even tried drawing it out on graph paper. Nothing worked.
But lucky for me, I now live within 30 miles of at least twelve Palaces, and so over the weekend I took a day trip to “do some research” for the scene. Boy, it did not disappoint. I was overwhelmed by how creative and ornate and unique every single room was. Every chandelier was different, every fireplace was carved from different stone, every floor design had different markings. And the details that went into each room were so precise. I couldn’t even imagine how many artists had spent countless hours working through the designs and carrying them out, or how many builders it had taken to complete the task.
The creativity was inspiring, and I walked away with thousands of ideas of which I’ll probably steal two or three for my book. There were things I had never even thought of: hidden beds, flowered chandeliers, and rooms made entirely of glass. These are the master artists, who can take a grand idea and narrow it down piece by piece. It really opened my eyes to think smaller, and to really imagine every single detail just like they did. But I think the biggest lesson I learned is that yes, sometimes you gotta wall yourself in a room and get to work, but there are other times when you need to put down the pencil (or the paintbrush, or the keyboard, or whatever) and go out and see the beauty that someone else had made. “We were never meant to create alone.” And sometimes that means collaborating together with out community, and sometimes that means gaining inspiration from artists that lived hundreds of years ago.
I’ve attached some of the pictures I took below. *Warning: I’m no photographer, but I just couldn’t help myself.
rebekah.eckard 