Postby pengwenn » Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:03 pm
Mudge is right. People are just wired differently and so they're going to approach their writing differently.
For me I don't like to know too much about a character before I start writing. I start with a VERY sketchy idea like "what if the cops showed up at your front door" and see what characters and situations come from that. (For that idea I turned it into a fantasy story with a guy who was previously exiled from one kingdom only to be sought out to be exiled again. I did it for a challenge here and if I can figure out which one I'll let you know.) As I thought about what type of character would be exiled the story just started to flow from there.
Personally I don't like having full character sketches because what if I want to change something later on down the road? Like what if I decided that my exiled character actually grew up with a very happy normal childhood and only came into trouble later in life? I start writing my story that way only to find that I need to have my exiled character experience a very traumatic period in his childhood. Now my character sketch doesn't match what's happening with my story. If I put my character sketch into writing then it's law for me and it's very hard to change my way of thinking about my character.
I know not everyone operates the way that I do. I've known writers who write everything down while in the "planing" phase of the writing process. They write up a detailed discription of every character and every scene of the story. They kind of treat this process like a first draft. The bare bones of the story is finished and just needs to be fleshed out. They say the benefits of this process is that they know where the story is going and they don't get sidetracked by minor plot or characters or pointless plot points. They also seem to have to do less editing when they're finished writing because they've worked at all the kinks ahead of time.
At times I envy these people. When they start writing they know how it will end and they also know they CAN end it. That's not always the case for things I write. Some times I'll put countless hours and pages into a story that just won't go anywhere . . . except my garbage bin.
No matter how you approach your writing just know this: THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THE STORY. You can write the most beautiful, detailed character shetches or plot outlines, but if you don't sit down and write the story what good are they? You can also sit down to write with only a vague idea in your head but if you can't unfold that into a story on the page that's not going to be any better.
Is this my reality or yours?
