Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Pieces

I had a different entry planned for this week, but I stopped after about two paragraphs because it was boring.  Granted, another round of "this is what I learned about writing this week" would have been better than another round of "this is why I'm doomed to failure", but really, most of my blog this year falls into one of those two categories.

To be more specific, the entry was going to be about the character work I'm doing for the story I'm plotting, and how it's turning out when I hammer out the basic plotline from start to finish and then fill in character details.  This is not my usual plotting process, but it's going well, else this would be another downer of an entry.  But thinking about the characters led my train of thought down another track:

Just how much of the characters we write comes directly from ourselves?

I never attempt to write myself into a story, and I don't think I ever would.  Aside from a bunch of other issues, odds are good I wouldn't survive most of the stuff I put my characters through.  Seriously, one of the characters I'm working on dies at the start of the second act, and if I was in this book, that would probably be me.

However, I did something different when working on development for the book's four main characters, and I didn't even realize it until I wrote up the profile for the fourth one.  Every one of them started with a specific trait of my own, and I built them up from that, figuring out their backgrounds based on the world they live in, knowing where the story would take them and determining out how they would react.  (None of them seem like they're going to run away with the plot, which I'm thankful for, but I might end up eating those words later.)  I know I put a little of myself into everyone I write, but I've never done it so deliberately.

One has never felt like she fits in, no matter where she is.  One feels that he never gets what he wants out of life.  One worships his heroes more than he should.  And one would rather hide away with her books than face the rest of the world.

Now that I've finished the writeups for all four of them, I find myself looking back at some of my writing and wondering just how much I've done this for all the characters I've worked on.  I know there's always an element of wish fulfillment in writing; I think that's a lot of why we write, as it's not just to create the stories we want to see, but it's the chance to live in them for a little while.  A lot of my characters are a lot more daring and clever than I'll ever be, and they not only get into but get out of more trouble than I could ever get away with.

And I do admit that there's a lot more of me in Shiloh than there should be, which is part of why getting nothing but rejections for BoLR hurts more than it should.  >_<

I know this is nothing new or earth-shattering. but it's not often that I see writers really talking about this.  As for the characters I'm still working on, I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle things when I write the fully fleshed-out plot and put them through those paces.  I don't think they'll react like I would, no matter what pieces of me they carry in them.

Next week,  IWSG: Starting Again, Again.

10 comments:

  1. A lot of writers say there is a piece of them in their characters. Interesting you found a trait of yours in all four. Outside of Byron's perfectionist nature, there's nothing of me in him. There's certainly nothing of me in Aden.

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    1. I think it's interesting that you say there's nothing of you in a character you write. It's not that I don't believe you, it just seems like it would be so hard to write a character like that. Even my villains have something of me in them - usually something I don't like about myself and work to overcome.

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  2. I'm not sure if there's a bit of me in my characters or a bit of my characters in me. In certain situations, I find it very easy to channel my character Cera, and play myself off as super confident and totally amazing. Unlike Cera, I know that's not always the case. Though, it might say something about me when three of my characters don't quite catch on as quickly as the others.

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    1. Heh. ^_^ I've had times where I'll spend a lot of time thinking about a character, or thinking *as* a character, and then I'll act or speak as they would, and it usually ends up being something I have to explain a moment later. Kind of weird, but hopefully I'm not the only author this happens to.

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  3. I hear you on the rejections hurting more when it's closer to you. I'd say that's just the business, but it really hurts. It's like they said they didn't want to be your friend. I hate that part of querying (right up there with lost submissions and the dreaded "it's not you it's me").

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    1. ...yeah. It's way, way too easy to see it as a personal rejection, and feel like no one wants the story. I know it's not personal - these agents don't know me, it can't be personal, unless I've got the same name as someone they hated and even then that's not my fault. But that doesn't make it easier to shrug it off.

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  4. I believe there's always a piece, no matter how small, of the writer in the main characters, but then the story comes from the writer, so I'm not sure it can be avoided.

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    1. Very true. Like I said above, I think it would be very, very hard to write someone who didn't have anything of myself in them.

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  5. Characters have never been as big a problem for me as plotting. That's what I would normally have said, but your post makes me think differently. What if the real problem is that all my characters stick too closely, too close to my profile as a non-risk-taker. What if that's been holding me back -- keeping me bound to the cliched and the known ...?

    There might be more to be discovered if we let go of our fear and control curiosity -- and just do the job we were meant to do.

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    1. I think I know what you mean. I see common traits in my characters, and I know they're traits that come from me, so it's hard for me to escape those. Writing characters who are otherwise is really difficult for me. But I keep trying.

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