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Post by hodudududuh on Aug 9, 2008 19:31:18 GMT -5
One of the things I like to do before sitting down and actually writing a story is to do a series of little vignettes from the perspectives of my characters with the use of some sort of semi-random prompt, to really get into their heads, see how they would react in certain situations, and so on. I've decided to elaborate on a couple of my strategies here, in case some of you want to get in on the action. It's a lot of fun, and occasionally produces some really good writing of its own accord.
Technique #1:
Take a list of between five and ten random words, and write a single piece for each one. The pieces can be any length you like, but the idea is to stay concise, to capture only a brief moment. Each individual piece probably shouldn't be much longer than this post. It's like taking a polaroid with words. If something develops and it needs more elaboration, great; keep going, perhaps you could even keep it for the larger work you're planning. This is a great way to develop the smaller things about a character - anything from the way they move to the things they own to the everyday workings of their lives, relationships, etc. If anyone is interested in an example, let me know - I have a short, unfinished set in my deviantart gallery which I can link to.
Technique #2:
Now this one is a lot of fun, and a fantastic way to stick your character into situations that you'd never have anticipated and see how they react. What you do is pick a book of any sort - novel, textbook, whatever - and take the first sentence off of pages 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc., as far into the book as you'd like. Using these sentences as a prompt, write a short drabble. Again, the idea is to be concise. You do not have to use the entire first sentence if you don't want to; a phrase or just a word is fine also if the sentence as a whole is not particularly inspiring. All that matters is that it is indeed the first sentence you are using - no picking and choosing, unless you come across something you really can't use, and in that case you just skip the page entirely. I don't have an example of this at the moment, but I've been thinking of tossing one together for a while now, so if anyone would like to have a peek at that if/when it's finished, again, let me know.
So... er... yes. Hope these techniques help somewhat; I find them indispensable, personally, but then a lot of my writing is more of an exploration of characters than of storylines, so knowing who I'm writing about is indescribably useful. Feel free to ask questions, post examples, whatever.
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Post by Belladonna on Aug 11, 2008 5:21:31 GMT -5
These are great! A fun way to get writing and see what happens. And once you're interested in what you're writing about, you're off to a flying start. I don't have a project in mind for GothNoWriMo yet, but I think I'll give this a go and get things jumpstarted. Thanks for posting.
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Post by NutmegAngel on Aug 11, 2008 8:23:53 GMT -5
I am not doing any work on my gothnowrimo story until October. Or my nanowrimo story. I know roughly what I'm doing in October, haven't even thought about nanowrimo. But if I start planning, then I'll either start writing it now or I'll be bored with it by the time it gets to October.
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Post by hodudududuh on Aug 11, 2008 9:20:59 GMT -5
These are great! A fun way to get writing and see what happens. And once you're interested in what you're writing about, you're off to a flying start. I don't have a project in mind for GothNoWriMo yet, but I think I'll give this a go and get things jumpstarted. Thanks for posting. You're quite welcome! I find them quite useful when I only have a rough character design in mind. I like fleshing them out for myself, so that even if they're going to remain somewhat ambiguous in whatever larger work I'm planning, I know who they are, and I know how they'll behave and why. Obviously I'm never going to know them as well as I know my best friends, or myself, but getting to know their major motivations, the way they think, their minor quirks... I find it essential to keeping them true to themselves, which can be a hard thing to do - I think sometimes you want a character to behave a certain way, but they don't want to do so themselves. I don't know. Perhaps I give them too much autonomy. I am not doing any work on my gothnowrimo story until October. Or my nanowrimo story. I know roughly what I'm doing in October, haven't even thought about nanowrimo. But if I start planning, then I'll either start writing it now or I'll be bored with it by the time it gets to October. I'm not sure this is a matter of planning so much as a matter of getting to know your characters. Allowing yourself a depth of familiarity so as to make them more like real people and less like figments of people, which allows you to keep them in character more. That's what I think, anyway. I'm nothing if not a seat-of-the-pants writer; and yet I use these exercises quite regularly. Very, very rarely do I take what I've written here and use it in a larger piece. These are stand-alone, usually entirely separate from whatever situations the characters I'm writing about will be placed in in the overall story. That having been said, I don't like to do even these until I'm nearly ready to start actually writing, because I suffer from the same issues with attention span. Thanks for commenting, in any case.
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Post by NutmegAngel on Aug 11, 2008 13:10:54 GMT -5
Yes, but when you don't get to know your characters properly until you start writing, all sorts of unexpected things happen. Like nice, quiet, motherly secondary characters suddenly turn out to have a really, really ruthless streak, be a different species to what you first thought (spirit instead of angel), develop all kinds of interesting back stories, and that kind of thing. And quiet technicians who're supposed to be the love interest and nothing more turn out to be heroes to rival the MC, with an even more intriguing family history, and very interesting personal history too. And bear in mind I'd written five books about these two before that came to light quite suddenly. My characters do unexpected things. My subconcious often plans for it, but I don't.
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Post by Lain on Aug 11, 2008 14:18:02 GMT -5
I've used number one before... Never the second. That one sounds neat. I probably won't use it for planning for GothNo or NaNo because I hate any sort of planning, but I'll probably end up using it for other stories. Thanks for sharing.
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Post by hodudududuh on Aug 11, 2008 14:55:13 GMT -5
Yes, but when you don't get to know your characters properly until you start writing, all sorts of unexpected things happen. Like nice, quiet, motherly secondary characters suddenly turn out to have a really, really ruthless streak, be a different species to what you first thought (spirit instead of angel), develop all kinds of interesting back stories, and that kind of thing. And quiet technicians who're supposed to be the love interest and nothing more turn out to be heroes to rival the MC, with an even more intriguing family history, and very interesting personal history too. And bear in mind I'd written five books about these two before that came to light quite suddenly. My characters do unexpected things. My subconcious often plans for it, but I don't. Being surprised is pleasant at times, but consistency is more so. Well, I can hardly expect the way I do things to work for everyone, just the way other people's methods don't often work for me. We each have our own ways of organising thoughts. I personally plan practically nothing aside from the characters themselves, generally, but since the characters are always the more important part of my writing, I put that step on the same level that others might, perhaps, put outlining or plot construction. I enjoy writing spontaneously more than I do writing something planned, but the quality of my writing is much improved if I take a little time to think some things out beforehand. As I said, though, that's just how I do things.
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Post by Belladonna on Aug 12, 2008 3:57:10 GMT -5
I can see both sides of the discussion. I agree that the techniques aren't as much about planning as they are about getting to grips with a character, and that characters on their own do not a plot make. (It starts turning into a plot when the character finds themselves in a situation that upsets the status quo.) On the other hand, I completely understand that if you know certain things about your characters, your brain might go into overdrive and create a plot, which runs the risk of the writing becoming a monotonous exercise of setting down what you already know, rather than discovering something new. One way to overcome this would be to do the techniques, get to know your characters, and then allow an element of surprise into the writing by choosing a prompt to kick start the story. WritingFix have a good prompt generator about half way down the page, or if you prefer pictures, then www.outdoor-photos.com/ is a good site to look at - there are some stunning landscape images there. Some writers simply like to have a blank canvas, let their muses fly free, and follow wherever they lead. Others like to have an element of stability so that they feel they have the reins in hand and a balance between known and unknown. (I fall into that category. ) But the two things we all have in common is that we love writing and we're here on [glow=green,2,300]GothNoWriMo[/glow]
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Post by NutmegAngel on Aug 12, 2008 4:47:54 GMT -5
I do sometimes use characterisation exercises mid-way through a story, but usually that's just to find new ideas if I'm starting to run out of steam. But I might try to do a little. I have a very intriguing MC, and it might be worth getting to know him a little...
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covewriter
Dark Child
Wordcount: 1% 376 / 30,000
Posts: 26
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Post by covewriter on Sept 26, 2008 12:40:37 GMT -5
These are going to help me a lot. Thanks.
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Post by purplexfire on Sept 29, 2008 0:11:42 GMT -5
My strengths, I suppose, are description and idea..but I have such a problem with characters. My best chance is to just write..heh...
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Post by hodudududuh on Sept 29, 2008 10:32:47 GMT -5
My strengths, I suppose, are description and idea..but I have such a problem with characters. My best chance is to just write..heh... See, I have the opposite problem. It's always the people in a situation that interest me - what they're thinking, what they're feeling, why they're thinking and feeling that way... so I tend to get really caught up in that aspect of it and lose the rest. One of the many reasons I think I'm going to fail miserably at GothNo. I just don't write long texts well.
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Post by ladyxofxsorrows on Sept 11, 2009 23:36:06 GMT -5
Could I get an example of the first technique? I wanna try it but I want to make sure I'm doing it properly too
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dcValentine
Dark Child
Wordcount: 27% 4800/17500
Posts: 38
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Post by dcValentine on Sept 12, 2009 8:54:02 GMT -5
Ooo! Thank you SO much for posting this! It solves two big problems of mine:
1. When I'm working on something original (not fanfiction. For some odd reason I'm really good at characterization when I'm writing fanfiction) characterization is one of my biggest struggles. During stuff like NaNo I feel like I don't REALLY know them that well until the end of the month and even then I have trouble showing what I know about their motivations and such in the narrative. This should be a big help with that.
2. I've been trying to get in the habit of writting every day this month so I'll be prepared for GothNo and NaNo but I keep getting stuck on what to write. Now whenever I get stuck I'll just do one of these exercises for one of my GothNo characters.
Again, thank you very much!
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Emma Daiou
Dark Child
Wordcount: 12% 2,460 / 20,000
Posts: 30
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Post by Emma Daiou on Sept 12, 2009 10:57:32 GMT -5
Oooh, the second technique sounds like an awesome exercise and excuse to put off my schoolwork a while longer. I think I'll try it right now!
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