What does LJ know of SJ...?

[desperance]

One of the joys of my job: I have been working all morning and I'd just hit not a problem but a pause, a time for thinking. Specifically, my narrator was just off to a formal reception where she simply had to be for reasons of credibility, but I didn't have a story reason for her to be there, it was going to take up pages and I couldn't see how it would advance the reader's engagement with the plot or the character or the setting; so I went for a walk. Halfway round the graveyard - of course! Among the people she meets there are the Catholic priests who will play such a significant part later on, I knew they had to turn up somewhere, obviously this is it...

So I walk on, cheerfully at one with myself and my craft; and five minutes later, in the hospital grounds, I suddenly think, oh hey, how's about if they're Jesuits? Not at all unlikely, in context, and it adds that extra layer of richness. But. Do they introduce themselves as Jesuits, is that what Jesuits do? And if not, is there a button, a pin, a ring, some outward and visible sign of their inward and spiritual grace...?

Wiki doesn't know. It says there's no particular habit of dress these days, so that's out, no identifiable cut of cassock. Does LJ know? Anyone...?

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That's how it works. I'm glad it was the right sort of oblique angle you needed.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Of course - this being Taiwan - she could just have glanced at the business card he greets her with, and seen 'SJ' after his name. But this way is just so much more elegant, they start off outsmarting each other; only trouble now is that I have a seriously interesting character barging into the middle of my story, which is completely not ready to deal with him. God only knows what he's going to do in there, but something...