Because what is boringness?
Nov. 30th, 2004 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Thought grown out of responses to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_ming and natasha1805 and orlisbunny.
Because what is boringness? The trick is not to make it nastiness. To create someone who's boring but nice. Because nasty, of course, isn't boring: it's kind of interesting. So a boring person can't be too nasty. For that matter, can't be too nice, either. I kept thinking myself into situations where I've had the pants bored off me by somebody or other. What, exactly, constitutes a bore?
In the end, I think, I came up with at least two versions of a bore. There's the main Boring!Orli who does boring everyday things and pays slightly too much attention to them, who's slightly obsessed with things like bodily hygiene, lists and appointments but not overly obsessed, and who reacts in a rather muted, deadpan way to adventures and interesting things that happen to him. He calls a spade and spade; he's kind of sensible but not overly so; and he simply does not rise to the challenge of a nuance. This is difficult to write.
Then there's Dom who's the chatty, rambling-on-forever bore, going on and on about his personal hobbyhorse. This is more like the Private Eye type of bore and not as difficult to write. In a way, this is more of a bore to be around than a bore to read: it's great fun writing the rambling monologue of the chatty bore, and I suspect it may also be fun to read because there's a sort of quotative meta-element to it. Although if you had to sit next to this type of bore on a ten-hour flight, you'd want to reach for the parachute.
I could sum the difference up this way: Boring!Dom talks about boring things in an enthusiastic way. Boring!Orli talks about interesting things in a levelling, unembellished way.
The philosophical question: Who bores a bore? Do bores hang out together? Or do they like surrounding themselves with interesting people, implying that bores somehow know they are boring?
And then: how to turn the bore magically into an interesting person while preserving his essential personality? And how to convey that to the reader? (I'm still not sure I ever managed to pull that last one off.)
Well. Nothing like analysing one's own WIP. *snorts* (It's all really just an excuse yet again to post this now totally outdated icon.)
_ming and natasha1805 and orlisbunny.Because what is boringness? The trick is not to make it nastiness. To create someone who's boring but nice. Because nasty, of course, isn't boring: it's kind of interesting. So a boring person can't be too nasty. For that matter, can't be too nice, either. I kept thinking myself into situations where I've had the pants bored off me by somebody or other. What, exactly, constitutes a bore?
In the end, I think, I came up with at least two versions of a bore. There's the main Boring!Orli who does boring everyday things and pays slightly too much attention to them, who's slightly obsessed with things like bodily hygiene, lists and appointments but not overly obsessed, and who reacts in a rather muted, deadpan way to adventures and interesting things that happen to him. He calls a spade and spade; he's kind of sensible but not overly so; and he simply does not rise to the challenge of a nuance. This is difficult to write.
Then there's Dom who's the chatty, rambling-on-forever bore, going on and on about his personal hobbyhorse. This is more like the Private Eye type of bore and not as difficult to write. In a way, this is more of a bore to be around than a bore to read: it's great fun writing the rambling monologue of the chatty bore, and I suspect it may also be fun to read because there's a sort of quotative meta-element to it. Although if you had to sit next to this type of bore on a ten-hour flight, you'd want to reach for the parachute.
I could sum the difference up this way: Boring!Dom talks about boring things in an enthusiastic way. Boring!Orli talks about interesting things in a levelling, unembellished way.
The philosophical question: Who bores a bore? Do bores hang out together? Or do they like surrounding themselves with interesting people, implying that bores somehow know they are boring?
And then: how to turn the bore magically into an interesting person while preserving his essential personality? And how to convey that to the reader? (I'm still not sure I ever managed to pull that last one off.)
Well. Nothing like analysing one's own WIP. *snorts* (It's all really just an excuse yet again to post this now totally outdated icon.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-30 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-30 11:05 pm (UTC)Btw, are there any comments of yours I should be responding to? I haven't dared to check my emails because I'm up to 300+ unread ones and the Portal Page only gives you comments in your own journal.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-01 08:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-01 10:01 am (UTC)Presentation will only get you so far. If a topic is truly boring, a showy delivery isn't going to make it interesting. A boring topic however, can be made interesting by someone who knows how to pull up the interesting parts of it.
I suppose boring people hang out together in the sense that people with common interests will find each other. Hence, my boss and I will spend hours talking about the Romanoff dynasty, while cute little co-worker with not a single serious thought in her pretty head looks obviously and completely bored. Boss and I however, are immensely entertained by each other. So, to each other at least, we're not boring.