I need some fairly odd writing advice...

[BlueDagger]

I come to you forum peoples in need of.... Writing advice!
... For the story I'm currently writing(sort of short, I'm on page 25, and I doubt I'll make it very far over 30 without dragging it on.) there's this seen... It's actually the very next seen from where I left off tonight:

My main character has to get undressed. He's alone in a room he's renting at the local inn(yes, an inn. It's fantasy), and he should probably get undressed befor ehe goes to bed. You just don't sleep in your armor.
I don't think there should be any nudity... Maybe... I don't know... It migth be fun http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif
basically I just don't know how to go about writing this seen.

Can someone give me some advice? Encouragement perhaps?
[If you're a writer] have your characters ever had to get undressed?

[Dangerous55]

Don't say he gets undressed. Kinda something like the cold sheets feel strange compared to the usual tug of chainmal. Or whatever.

[Nai_Calus]

"Wearily, he stripped off his armor and dressed himself in his nightclothes." Assuming he's weary; use other mood-setting words as necessarily. Just a simple quick sentence will suffice. Mention the action without describing it, unless the exact order and method of the removal of the armor and dressing is necessary to mention for some reason.

Example sentence doesn't mention his clothes, but that can be inferred by the subsequent action. If we simply say that someone has dressed for bed, we can infer from what we know about our own nightly rituals that he first took off his day clothing.

You can even simply say that he readied himself for bed, and the reader should be able to infer from there that he took off his armor and clothing and got into his nightshirt or whatever he sleeps in.

[geewj]

Skip it.

If it's not important to the story, then it doesn't need to be in the story. You didn't describe how he scraped the shit from his ass after going to the bathroom, ...right? People are fully capable of writing the unimportant parts themselves. You just need to let them know the rest.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Your first problem is that you assume that nudity automatically invokes lewdness. You can talk about your hero stripping down for the night without devoting a paragraph to the weight and girth of his pen0r, nor what he likes to do with it before going to sleep (clean out his ears, brush his teeth, play a rousing game of 2 on 2 street hockey, etc).

As geewj points out, the scene could be omitted entirely if unimportant to the story; summed up in something as simple as, "he found an inn and rested for the night," but I assume that you're using the time to express your protagonist's thoughts on his situation or perhaps to make a point about his condition, or some other such concept. In which case, focus on talking about those things, and leave the description of his actions in the background.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2007-03-01 10:31 ]</font>