Look what I made up!
May. 22nd, 2004 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytI did more than just play Starcraft yesterday. Although I didn't get a lot of work on my fic done, I changed part of it so that it's a lot better. You know, I'm glad that I'm writing the whole thing before putting it up - I can be more proud of what I present that way, and people reading it for the first time will not see the stupid mistakes I make in the rough draft, as it were.
The change I made requires some explanation. In the Ruse comic books, I noticed, Simon has a particular gesture that he does when he's thinking, frustrated or feeling a bit devious. He crosses his arms and brings his left hand up to his chin with the fingers curled - not quite in a fist - in such a way that the end of his thumb touches his lower lip. Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid when I describe it. The gesture does not translate well from the visual medium of comic books to pure prose. Anyone who's read the series will notice this. Too bad I can't find a picture online...
That gesture gave me a bit of a problem. Simon does it fairly often, and to the astute reader it gives a hint as to what's going on in his head. But I can't exactly describe the gesture every time he does it, because that would be extremely awkward and slow down the story. I hit upon the idea of describing it in detail once, and afterwards using Emma's term for it - a manoeuvre en pensant (the "oe" in "manoeuvre" should be merged, but if there's a way to do that in Livejournal I don't know it). Makes me glad I spent three semesters in intensive French class - French is a particularly good language for such expressions.
For those who don't know French: the term manoeuvre en pensant is not easy to translate. I'm not even sure if it's grammatically correct as these things go, but if someone cares to correct me later, I won't mind. The meaning of the word "manoeuvre" is obvious - "en pensant" basically means "while thinking." So the best translation is "something one does while thinking," like pacing, drumming one's fingers, chewing one's lip, etc. I use the word "manoeuvre" rather than the more mundane "mouvement" (movement) or "geste" (gesture) because, face it, "maneuver" is funnier.
The best thing is that, since Emma is indeed multi-lingual, she is perfectly capable of making up figurative expressions like that. I'm quite satisfied with it - but it means that when I do my final revision I'll have to make sure to put it in the text in the appropriate places. Until then, I just have to write the darn story...
The change I made requires some explanation. In the Ruse comic books, I noticed, Simon has a particular gesture that he does when he's thinking, frustrated or feeling a bit devious. He crosses his arms and brings his left hand up to his chin with the fingers curled - not quite in a fist - in such a way that the end of his thumb touches his lower lip. Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid when I describe it. The gesture does not translate well from the visual medium of comic books to pure prose. Anyone who's read the series will notice this. Too bad I can't find a picture online...
That gesture gave me a bit of a problem. Simon does it fairly often, and to the astute reader it gives a hint as to what's going on in his head. But I can't exactly describe the gesture every time he does it, because that would be extremely awkward and slow down the story. I hit upon the idea of describing it in detail once, and afterwards using Emma's term for it - a manoeuvre en pensant (the "oe" in "manoeuvre" should be merged, but if there's a way to do that in Livejournal I don't know it). Makes me glad I spent three semesters in intensive French class - French is a particularly good language for such expressions.
For those who don't know French: the term manoeuvre en pensant is not easy to translate. I'm not even sure if it's grammatically correct as these things go, but if someone cares to correct me later, I won't mind. The meaning of the word "manoeuvre" is obvious - "en pensant" basically means "while thinking." So the best translation is "something one does while thinking," like pacing, drumming one's fingers, chewing one's lip, etc. I use the word "manoeuvre" rather than the more mundane "mouvement" (movement) or "geste" (gesture) because, face it, "maneuver" is funnier.
The best thing is that, since Emma is indeed multi-lingual, she is perfectly capable of making up figurative expressions like that. I'm quite satisfied with it - but it means that when I do my final revision I'll have to make sure to put it in the text in the appropriate places. Until then, I just have to write the darn story...
