Post by LJ Harris on Feb 9, 2009 3:19:00 GMT
NOTE: this post was moved from a different thread as I felt it deserved a thread all it's own. This article was written by mfelizandy
OK, first, a recommendation. Get a hold of Mark Twain's sketch-essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". Excellent primer on the common mistakes made by writers--and good fun to read, too, if you've ever been forced to read the miserable dullness foisted of as literature in high school English classes.
Next: Here's a list of some of the methods (and madnesses) I use when writing. If you use a different strategy, speak up! I'm always curious to know how other folks craft some of the fun things they write.
Character In my experience, the success or failure of a story depends absolutely on the characters. You can have a unique and detailed world, a complex and thrilling plot, and "stage props" that boggle the mind...but if your characters aren't relatable, the story's going to fall flat.
Writing fanfiction makes it easier to get the characters right, because there's already a canon in place to offer guidelines on how a given character might react in a variety of situations. I'm going to use Roy Mustang as an example, because I'm a Roy fangirl. I can guess what Roy might do if confronted by a squad of adoring teenyboppers, and I can imagine what his house and yard would look like, if he owned one. I know him, in a sense, from reading the manga and watching the anime.
With an original character, one has to get to know the person that character is, at least to the acquaintance level, before one starts to write. I like to picture the writing process as a sort of "studio lot" in my head, so to me, getting to know a character comes out as a sort of dialogue between me and the character. I like to know things like where the character lives, where he grew up, what his family life was like as a child, whether he's married/dating/unattached, has kids or is a kid, one or two hobbies...just the background stuff. Most of it will never get into the story proper, and I don't often write down all that background stuff unless I'm sharing it with a collaborator or something, but I need to have it tucked among my neurons somewhere to create a three-dimensional person, instead of a flat, uninteresting automaton.
I've had it happen before that a side character, someone I meant to use only in a few scenes to reveal some crucial point in the plot, or to add atmosphere to a scene by exchanging some small talk with a lead character, takes on a life of her own, all out of proportion to her intended significance. Sometimes she'll become an ongoing supporting character. My attitude on this is to let it happen and see where it goes. I don't prune my writing in the first draft, because a lot of times, when I let a character emerge from bit-player status, she ends up adding some really interesting details to the plot, or even rerouting it in an entirely new direction. I love this, so I follow it to see where it goes.
Now that you've got your character standing there, in whatever state of dress and hairstyle you had in mind, try this exercise. Get one of those wireless miniature video cameras and glue it to her forehead. Clip a mike onto her, and turn her loose. Now--as a writer, you can describe anything that camera sees, and transcribe anything that microphone hears. You may not penetrate the character's skull and read her mind, transcribing her thoughts. Send her to meet her best friend, or encounter a nosy neighbor, or out shopping. Pay close attention to the faces of the people your character meets. How are they dressed? How do they move? What do their voices sound like? When your character speaks to them, what expressions cross their faces?
I use this exercise to keep myself from "cheating" my readers. As a writer, one is of necessity omniscient and omnipotent. The writer knows everything that is happening or will happen, what each character is thinking, and where the story will end. (Usually, anyway.) This tends to lead to paraphrasing, and skipping over a lot of important details. Using the camera-and-microphone arrangement makes me slow down. Instead of simply saying that Roy Mustang is in a bad mood, and rushing on, I'll take the time and verbiage to describe him stalking into his office with his back ramrod-straight and his eyes glittering in fury. Then I'd have him snap at his subordinates and slam his papers around looking for a pen, and sign his name on them in fast, angry lines. As a reader, one gets a much more vivid impression of a character's mood when one is given the detail necessary to imagine the scene and interpret the character's behavior for herself. That's how we do it in the real world, after all. We can't read each other's minds (which is a blessing), so we rely on facial expressions, tones of voice, body language, clothing choices--all kinds of things that will tell us about the people we meet. Doing the same thing in a story will pull the reader in, because she'll be able to see the characters and listen to them talk, and her natural understanding of human interaction will kick in...which makes the character seem more interesting and real.
Aaaaand it's my bedtime. Time flies when you're rambling on a favorite topic.
OK, first, a recommendation. Get a hold of Mark Twain's sketch-essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". Excellent primer on the common mistakes made by writers--and good fun to read, too, if you've ever been forced to read the miserable dullness foisted of as literature in high school English classes.
Next: Here's a list of some of the methods (and madnesses) I use when writing. If you use a different strategy, speak up! I'm always curious to know how other folks craft some of the fun things they write.
Character In my experience, the success or failure of a story depends absolutely on the characters. You can have a unique and detailed world, a complex and thrilling plot, and "stage props" that boggle the mind...but if your characters aren't relatable, the story's going to fall flat.
Writing fanfiction makes it easier to get the characters right, because there's already a canon in place to offer guidelines on how a given character might react in a variety of situations. I'm going to use Roy Mustang as an example, because I'm a Roy fangirl. I can guess what Roy might do if confronted by a squad of adoring teenyboppers, and I can imagine what his house and yard would look like, if he owned one. I know him, in a sense, from reading the manga and watching the anime.
With an original character, one has to get to know the person that character is, at least to the acquaintance level, before one starts to write. I like to picture the writing process as a sort of "studio lot" in my head, so to me, getting to know a character comes out as a sort of dialogue between me and the character. I like to know things like where the character lives, where he grew up, what his family life was like as a child, whether he's married/dating/unattached, has kids or is a kid, one or two hobbies...just the background stuff. Most of it will never get into the story proper, and I don't often write down all that background stuff unless I'm sharing it with a collaborator or something, but I need to have it tucked among my neurons somewhere to create a three-dimensional person, instead of a flat, uninteresting automaton.
I've had it happen before that a side character, someone I meant to use only in a few scenes to reveal some crucial point in the plot, or to add atmosphere to a scene by exchanging some small talk with a lead character, takes on a life of her own, all out of proportion to her intended significance. Sometimes she'll become an ongoing supporting character. My attitude on this is to let it happen and see where it goes. I don't prune my writing in the first draft, because a lot of times, when I let a character emerge from bit-player status, she ends up adding some really interesting details to the plot, or even rerouting it in an entirely new direction. I love this, so I follow it to see where it goes.
Now that you've got your character standing there, in whatever state of dress and hairstyle you had in mind, try this exercise. Get one of those wireless miniature video cameras and glue it to her forehead. Clip a mike onto her, and turn her loose. Now--as a writer, you can describe anything that camera sees, and transcribe anything that microphone hears. You may not penetrate the character's skull and read her mind, transcribing her thoughts. Send her to meet her best friend, or encounter a nosy neighbor, or out shopping. Pay close attention to the faces of the people your character meets. How are they dressed? How do they move? What do their voices sound like? When your character speaks to them, what expressions cross their faces?
I use this exercise to keep myself from "cheating" my readers. As a writer, one is of necessity omniscient and omnipotent. The writer knows everything that is happening or will happen, what each character is thinking, and where the story will end. (Usually, anyway.) This tends to lead to paraphrasing, and skipping over a lot of important details. Using the camera-and-microphone arrangement makes me slow down. Instead of simply saying that Roy Mustang is in a bad mood, and rushing on, I'll take the time and verbiage to describe him stalking into his office with his back ramrod-straight and his eyes glittering in fury. Then I'd have him snap at his subordinates and slam his papers around looking for a pen, and sign his name on them in fast, angry lines. As a reader, one gets a much more vivid impression of a character's mood when one is given the detail necessary to imagine the scene and interpret the character's behavior for herself. That's how we do it in the real world, after all. We can't read each other's minds (which is a blessing), so we rely on facial expressions, tones of voice, body language, clothing choices--all kinds of things that will tell us about the people we meet. Doing the same thing in a story will pull the reader in, because she'll be able to see the characters and listen to them talk, and her natural understanding of human interaction will kick in...which makes the character seem more interesting and real.
Aaaaand it's my bedtime. Time flies when you're rambling on a favorite topic.