your canon, writ in air
Oct. 24th, 2022 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliAnd I thought the trains were an issue. . . .
There's a neat plot element. Among all the other ball bearings I am trying to corral and stick together into a story, there's neat little one that requires a character to hurt himself by doing something. Not as a consequence of doing something, something that depends on circumstances and setting, but directly by doing something.
Which is something that a lot of characters will be doing. Before, or after. Without hurting themselves enough to be as dramatic as this (even allowing for this being a particularly dramatic situation).
Hmmm -- I can do something to make his particularly harmful, but I do have to show other characters being harmed, however mildly.
Some writers find it hard to revisit the issues that they have made a decision on. (Or that someone else has; this makes filing off serial numbers more difficult.) But it's vital. It's your canon, and it's writ in air until you publish, and then it's set in stone only for that series.
Not only world-building. If your character, well named Patience, is waspish in one scene, you could tone it down, or change the character (even if you have to introduce a new, ill-named Serena to the story and cope thereafter), or if you can argue that the circumstances are such that she is showing a new side of herself, you can work that in -- BUT you can also go back and make her waspish in similar circumstances. Or even in general if you realize it works better, with her being patient less frequently or not at all.
Once you have a series going, you are locked in unless you revise the earlier works -- which is not popular. OTOH, if you realize that something would work better if it were different -- well, if you are still juggling early enough, you may realize it's actually better out of series.
There's a neat plot element. Among all the other ball bearings I am trying to corral and stick together into a story, there's neat little one that requires a character to hurt himself by doing something. Not as a consequence of doing something, something that depends on circumstances and setting, but directly by doing something.
Which is something that a lot of characters will be doing. Before, or after. Without hurting themselves enough to be as dramatic as this (even allowing for this being a particularly dramatic situation).
Hmmm -- I can do something to make his particularly harmful, but I do have to show other characters being harmed, however mildly.
Some writers find it hard to revisit the issues that they have made a decision on. (Or that someone else has; this makes filing off serial numbers more difficult.) But it's vital. It's your canon, and it's writ in air until you publish, and then it's set in stone only for that series.
Not only world-building. If your character, well named Patience, is waspish in one scene, you could tone it down, or change the character (even if you have to introduce a new, ill-named Serena to the story and cope thereafter), or if you can argue that the circumstances are such that she is showing a new side of herself, you can work that in -- BUT you can also go back and make her waspish in similar circumstances. Or even in general if you realize it works better, with her being patient less frequently or not at all.
Once you have a series going, you are locked in unless you revise the earlier works -- which is not popular. OTOH, if you realize that something would work better if it were different -- well, if you are still juggling early enough, you may realize it's actually better out of series.