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tricks and techniques and depth
Aug. 9th, 2010 11:55 pmAm pondering a couple of techniques I have heard of writers using. Both of them for depth.
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feeding up your story
Mar. 14th, 2010 10:32 pmSometimes, your story falls into the Unpublishable Void. Say, at 45,000 words. There aren't markets, not at that length.
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philosophy on faction
Feb. 4th, 2010 11:54 pmLong ago I discovered the charm of the character sheet, which made looking up the name of the red-haired and catty gossip three chapters ago a lot easier.
Recently I have started to discover the charms of a faction sheet, which is rather more distilled. It has a list of the factions in the story and therefore excludes all the bit characters and lumps together all who want the same objective and are working together. Rather handy when I'm stumped in the outline. I look at the list and pick someone who could be doing something now. Preferably something that demonstrated bone-headed inability to understand the character I just dropped. (Dramatic irony is the great tool of a multi-POV story.)
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Recently I have started to discover the charms of a faction sheet, which is rather more distilled. It has a list of the factions in the story and therefore excludes all the bit characters and lumps together all who want the same objective and are working together. Rather handy when I'm stumped in the outline. I look at the list and pick someone who could be doing something now. Preferably something that demonstrated bone-headed inability to understand the character I just dropped. (Dramatic irony is the great tool of a multi-POV story.)
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purposes and motives
Jul. 7th, 2009 08:54 pmOne advantage of hunting around for deeper motives (which I rambled about here) is that having given your character motives for their purposes, you can then utterly deny them their purpose and see what happens next. I find it works best in the opening or even in the backstory. Jack wants to steal the Eye of the Night to get revenge for his father's having been framed and killed to keep him quiet about the jewel. And in the first chapter, the noble has the Eye of Night crushed into diamond dust for magical purposes. . . .
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why can't you both lose?
May. 24th, 2009 03:07 pmNothing puts me off a book faster than contemplating the conflict, eying the characters in it, and saying, "Why can't you both lose?"
And the commonest way to do it is to make the characters too morally equivalent.
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And the commonest way to do it is to make the characters too morally equivalent.
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religion and motives
May. 10th, 2009 07:37 pmOne area where the religion in world-building is weak is in the arena of character motivations.
First ran across it in D&D when I would announce, while we rolled up characters, that I was willing to play the cleric, and lo and behold always got to play the cleric. (Indeed, I could sometimes get some really interesting stuff because the DM wanted to keep me happy because -- I would play the cleric!) The commonest reason was that they didn't want to play a puppet. No matter how long they had played in the same group as me, merrily playing along with motives and all that stuff. . . .
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First ran across it in D&D when I would announce, while we rolled up characters, that I was willing to play the cleric, and lo and behold always got to play the cleric. (Indeed, I could sometimes get some really interesting stuff because the DM wanted to keep me happy because -- I would play the cleric!) The commonest reason was that they didn't want to play a puppet. No matter how long they had played in the same group as me, merrily playing along with motives and all that stuff. . . .
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threshold guardians
Mar. 18th, 2009 10:04 pmIf you've read anything about the Hero's Journey, you've read about threshold guardians: nasty things along the way that test you and may give you help afterward.
Haven't found much else useful in the Journey notion, but threshold guardians can be useful. You know you need to get your character to be able to do X. So you think up someone who could let them do X. And then, in order to keep the story fun, you have to dream up the reason why that someone doesn't want to give your character X -- and a way by which they can work it around that. Or you've already stuck a character in to help your character, and you want to make the story more complicated. So the natural question -- or one of them -- is to ask how can I make this character an obstacle as well as an aid? (The other natural question is how can I make helping this character a significant event to the character who is doing the helping -- but I didn't get that from the Hero's Journey. 0:)
Was working on an outline today and had no idea what would happen when certain characters got certain news. So I dumped a few events and said that in fact they didn't get the news to these characters and that's the problem. This particular threshold guardian is having fun.
Haven't found much else useful in the Journey notion, but threshold guardians can be useful. You know you need to get your character to be able to do X. So you think up someone who could let them do X. And then, in order to keep the story fun, you have to dream up the reason why that someone doesn't want to give your character X -- and a way by which they can work it around that. Or you've already stuck a character in to help your character, and you want to make the story more complicated. So the natural question -- or one of them -- is to ask how can I make this character an obstacle as well as an aid? (The other natural question is how can I make helping this character a significant event to the character who is doing the helping -- but I didn't get that from the Hero's Journey. 0:)
Was working on an outline today and had no idea what would happen when certain characters got certain news. So I dumped a few events and said that in fact they didn't get the news to these characters and that's the problem. This particular threshold guardian is having fun.
what does Jack want
Jan. 10th, 2009 05:05 pm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sartorias posted on character development, which got me thinking about the only real technique I've used to develop characters. (Naming them is more an intuition sort of thing.)The first step is to conclude: What does Jack want? More than anything else in the world. What he has his heart set on.
And the second step is to consider the reasons why he doesn't want to get it. (Some writers prefer to phrase this: what does he want that he can't have if he gets it. I find "why does he not want it?" more evocative.)
Any sort of contradiction in character, if done well, will develop the character: if Jill is sometimes sweet and kind and sometimes cruel and we are convinced that she is really the same woman, she is deeper than a Jill who is all one or the other. But I find developing the desires the best way to do it.
One way to jog ideas is to look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, loving/belonging, esteem and "self-actualization." The last is misnamed, because it is the one least occupied with self, but with whatever the character has dedicated himself to. Still, you go up and down it, itemizing all the ways that a certain aim would fulfill the goals, and then all the ways it would thwart them. And, of course, the same aim can thwart and fulfill the same need. Stealing puts the character's life in danger but allows him to eat. Achieving may win his father's approval but convince his schoolmates that he is doing it to show off. Etc.
