September 9th, 2010%
A writer can be a door or a window to a story, depending on their intention and their ability to fully embrace a character’s way of seeing.
How would this character in this moment interpret this room and this interaction with this person?
Does it matter if the reader is aware of the writer whispering stage directions and observations to their characters? I find it distracting when I get Déjà vu halfway through a collection of stories. What’s with hands? Why is this character acting like that other one in that totally different story?
The way that I see things, even through characters, is unique to me. Maybe this is the problem. Not necessarily what I notice, but how I notice it and translate it into imagery. Dialogue is much easier to fake because you’re using someone else’s words.
Any art has the potential to cast the shadow of the creator, whether it’s film, literature or music. Chapter 13 by Common; Flava In Ya Ear by Craig Mack; Mona Lisa by Slick Rick are two early 90′s tracks and one late 80′s track with guys using food and cultural references to make their point. Impressed? This is clearly gratuitous so I’ll get to the point.
If I use a character as a lens, my distorted imagery will still betray my presence. You can’t hide behind a lens.
August 23rd, 2010%
Your characters are pretty smart, especially the half-created ones who you’re still getting to know.
When I start editing a cold draft, I have a better chance of understanding my characters as more than the playing pieces I’m using to tell the story.
Based on my workshop group during the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, I’ve got two examples of why characters just show up:
- Issue: You want to avoid telling the hard part of the story
Result: You created a symbolic, feel-good character
- Issue: You’re not sure where the story is headed
Result: You’ve got half-developed character(s) lurking at the edges of scenes
I’ve also experienced characters who show up and misbehave. They won’t shut-up or leave a scene so I’m forced to write past my ideas of how much gets said and where the scene ends. I look forward to editing these parts when I’m ready to close on the story.
August 18th, 2010%
Certain thoughts, words, expressions, or moments may need to be written. You decide why or why not. Your relationship with your thoughts becomes your journal. It’s going to be dysfunctional. Get over it.
Only mean people judge themselves because they hate themselves. Seriously, get over it.
Old journals are useful tools for writers because they help us remember how to:
- Use language to express thoughts and feelings at different ages
- Understand how language is influenced by mood
- Notice patterns of comprehension within different phases of a relationship
I’ve gone back to my journals to get ideas on how to make characters and situations more artistically dysfunctional, not autobiographical.
August 6th, 2010%
I enjoy learning how a character thinks through dialogue rather than narration.
In her introduction to Plato’s Five Great Dialogues, Louise R. Loomis summarizes Plato’s solution to how we can discover knowledge that is true:
Our sense impressions, taken alone, are misleading and superficial and tell us nothing about the real nature of the things around us. Common opinion, grounded as it is on sensation, hearsay, and habit, cannot be trusted as a guide to truth. But through our reason we may arrive at what may be rightfully called true knowledge and understanding. Through reason we may use our sense experiences and memories of past experiences as material for a process of analysis, classification, and synthesis that bit by bit builds up for us a pattern of permanent, invisible order behind the perplexing panorama which is all that our sense alone perceive.
This conversation from His Girl Friday or this conversation from Born Yesterday, which were both written as plays and then adapted for film, use character reasoning to communicate a true knowledge within the context of the story.
August 3rd, 2010%
Characters get their personality and motivation from strange places. Many people or one person can inspire us to create something worth walking through a few scenes.
When I need to intensify a character or figure out how they might react to another character, I start reading horoscopes for archetypes. I don’t think, oh, this one is definately an Aries, but I do look through a few of the horoscope descriptions to match up basic attitudes.
Eric Frances is great for getting a sense of individual sign motivations. For relationship ideas, I look at Sun Sign Compatability from About.com.
Stereotypes are boring, but archetypes can help you develop a character.
