giving them their heads
Feb. 20th, 2011 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliSome writers fill out long character sheets before writing. Others interview them.
Me, I turn them loose on the page.
Granted it's the outline's page nowadays but it's always been the page. Contemplating interviews with my characters invariably ends with them edging out the door to avoid this obvious lunatic with this silly "interviewing" business (except one Mongol-type raider on civilization from the steppes, whose reaction to the question of why he raids is "What a womanish question" -- and I don't know anything more about him).
Then, my inspirations tend to be incidents, not individuals. A brief flash of person, place, and plot, none of them complete. The work is building sufficient structure to hold it (or them, if inspirations stick together) in a coherent plot.
Time was that I had to build this entire structure to figure out who my characters were. They're a little more forthcoming nowadays, but still, if they're not running about in their native habitat, it doesn't come out.
Me, I turn them loose on the page.
Granted it's the outline's page nowadays but it's always been the page. Contemplating interviews with my characters invariably ends with them edging out the door to avoid this obvious lunatic with this silly "interviewing" business (except one Mongol-type raider on civilization from the steppes, whose reaction to the question of why he raids is "What a womanish question" -- and I don't know anything more about him).
Then, my inspirations tend to be incidents, not individuals. A brief flash of person, place, and plot, none of them complete. The work is building sufficient structure to hold it (or them, if inspirations stick together) in a coherent plot.
Time was that I had to build this entire structure to figure out who my characters were. They're a little more forthcoming nowadays, but still, if they're not running about in their native habitat, it doesn't come out.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-20 05:46 pm (UTC)I know what I need to know about my characters.
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Date: 2011-02-20 07:29 pm (UTC)When they don't ask what he did in high school, which he did not, of course, attend.
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Date: 2011-02-21 12:43 am (UTC)I happen to find the Zen sensei-type guys are even worse, BTW--that one has a sense of humor. I haven't even *begun* trying to write anything with them in it, I'd probably have to be ninety years old to get half what they mean.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 05:14 pm (UTC)I, too, like the turning them loose method...though I do find that secondary characters sometimes need me to sit down and really think out their motives.
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Date: 2011-02-21 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 09:41 pm (UTC)