character part i: relationships with your imaginary friends

John - sorry if I got your relationship with your chars wrong or off base; go ahead and tell me and I'll fix it. I'm trying to remember back to our conversations =)

Today I will cover characters. Chars, for short. I love chars; they're probably my favourite aspect of writing - or at least the aspect that I spend the most time with. My characters - like the characters of many writers - permanently reside inside my head and frequently talk to me...usually in loud, obnoxious voices, telling me what to write and when. I have several characters who show up more often than others, but invariably the characters from whatever piece I'm working on will take center stage in my head for as long as I'm working on their piece.

The first five minutes after I meet a character or a set of characters are the most valuable; it's during those five minutes that I usually learn the plot overview of whatever short story or novel that I will [apparently] be writing. (Apparently, because I don't really have a choice in the matter - the chars inform me that this is my new story and they won't shut up until I agree). Beyond those five minutes, however, the characters are usually just there to bug me with what if possibilities while waiting for me to sit down in write. I'd say about 80% of the material my characters give me is utterly useless - it doesn't advance the plot, the character relationships, the theme...it's mostly just, "Day in the life" stuff. I love it, but I can't use it, so I don't write it.

I have a friend whose relationship with his characters is different. They, too, live in his head...but they prefer to tell him the story as it happened over the course of time, in chronoligical order (well, almost - they tend to pick and choose parts of the story that they want to speak about, but once they've decided they'll talk about that section in order). They tell him their stories, and he writes them exactly as they say. With me, my characters tell me how the story goes and I stop thinking and just write, so neither of us is in charge...John writes what they tell him to write. If he tries to force it to go his way, they'll stop speaking until he realizes that he wasn't doing it right. Then they'll pick up and talk to him again.

He has to write down essentially everything they say to him, because they don't [seem] to deviate the way mine do. I don't spend the day inside John's head so I can't say for certain, but from what I've heard it doesn't seem like they show him about the time they were all at home after the story had happened, and it was hot, and they had some water guns lying around, and...well, you can guess where that went. Completely unhelpful. Now, this doesn't mean that John will automatically use everything they tell him; sometimes they include useless information that will later get deleted. However, it's information that has to be written down originally because - at least while the char is telling him the story - it's important to that char.

He then, later, goes through and deletes the superfluous scenes. His chars act more like real people than mine do in that respect; come on, how many of you go off on tangents or include the minor details when you're recapping something that happened to you the other day?

Anyway, my point is that characters - to me and to every writer I've ever spoken with - are like physical people who live inside your head. However, they speak in different ways. How do your characters speak to you?

decisions, decisions

Today was going to be about characters - all about characters - but as I got to around the halfway point and I looked at the clock and realized that it was 11:27 pm and I'd been writing for over an hour...I edited my ideas. See, ultimately I could write about character for a week straight and not run out of things to say. I could. The way we view characters in our heads and the relationships we develop with them could take up an entire entry; the things I've learned about characters from various books on writing or on characters as well as experiments that can be played with characters - that could be a complete other entry (two, even); good books and websites on characters, naming characters, creating characters, getting to know characters, etc., as well as exercises to help develop characters - that could be a completely different entry as well! I can keep going on and on with character on Monday and Wednesday, and still have more to say on Friday.

So I will.

Next week, prepare yourself folks (all one of you): it'll be Character Week. Because I have an over-obsession with characters.

Today, I'm going to discuss my writing. Which means I'm going to talk about my writing classes, because that's really all the writing I've been doing lately.

I'm a little stuck right now for my fiction class; we're supposed to write up a six page short story rough draft, 11 pt font...1.5 spacing. That's great, really it is. One problem: I can't decide what to write. I've got two options, at least, and it ultimately boils down to which style I want to use.

The first story I want to write would be continued on from a two page expansion that we wrote for that class. The prof has already pointed out, in class, that she thought it was effective where usual stories of its ilk are not. In the barest terms, the story is about a woman finding out that she's pregant, but there's a lot more going on than just that (mostly because of the characters - see? They're very important elements). It's an overdone topic that most people just can't pull off [apparently]. According to the prof, I succeeded. In two pages, whoop for that. And, ultimately when I was writing it - I wanted to expound on it. However, now I'm worried that if I do, I'll just ruin it - and I'm not so sure I want to write it because it's basically the same style as the other two expansions we've done this quarter and this story will be the one we work with the rest of the quarter.

On the other hand, I've got this other story - it's essentially a prequel to the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo, which I'm trying to rewrite. My NaNo novels tend to be a lot more whimsical and "random", and this one would involve the main character saving the dinosaurs from aliens who want to possess their giant bodies so they can win and intergalactic swimming contest. The MC then, after saving the day, has a party. She gets drunk. Her adopted mother bets her a penny that she can't hit Earth with an asteroid. She takes the bet. She rides the astroid, manually changing its trajectory so it will crash into the Earth. Wakes up the next day. Has an OH SHIT! moment. You get the point.

It's hilarious, but I'm not sure if I can write the story in such a small space and still get across what happened, as well as the characters, and the proper tone.

Then, of course, I always have to take into account the possibility of starting something completely new. Unrelated to either story.

*Sighs*. What to do, what to do? I'll have a conference with the prof to discuss it on Friday, and the first draft of 6-7 pages is due on Wednesday of next week, so we'll see.

I also have a rough draft for a nonfiction piece due Friday for my creative writing class. I'll have to write that tomorrow. Work until five thirty, six o'clock ish, should probably cook, and then writing. I think I'll also try to write a little bit of the second option story, just so I have a good beginning to go from. I can decide better then, and maybe get an idea from the prof.

Anyway, it's technically 3 minutes after midnight here so I'm technically posting this on Thursday. I might have to rearrange the days I write so they still manage to get posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That means there will probably be another post up a little past midnight tomorrow, as well.

Take care, readers! All one of you...heh. =)

Introduction

This blog, which will hopefully be updated three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, will contain any and all of my thoughts regarding writing. This includes story or novel ideas, how the writing process is going for me, things I learn, questions I have, answers I have, research I've undertaken, my ideas on any subject that pertains to writing, possible clips of things I've written, etc. Today, I suppose I will just give a bit of an introduction to who I am.

My pen name is L.V. Ana. I've self-published but not real published; I have short stories for sale on LuLu.com and I frequently post short stories on deviantART.com. I'm currently and strongly considering a creative writing major, and I'm taking classes towards that goal as I decide. I've been telling stories since I could talk, and writing since I knew how to form letters. I'm heavily interested in experimental fiction at the moment, but I write more than just experimental. YA (which is always heavily experimental anyway), fantasy, science fiction, action adventure, etc. Mostly I write novels but I do write a number of short stories when I can't get the words out for the larger pieces.

I'm not sure how much else I have to say. Mostly right now I just want this to be an introduction. Welcome to my journey, as a student and a writer. =)