Archive for the ‘Writing Ideas’ Category
How Do You Create A Character?
There are a lot of ways to create story characters. It all basically depends on the type of stories you write and the type of characters who’ll be starring in said story. For me, I usually have a pretty good idea of the characters in my head as I start out, but I let them grow as the story goes along. And like any other person, they have their good days and their bad days. It might not be the right way, but I’m not sure that there is a right or a wrong way to create a character.
When I start out writing a story, I think about the characters first. Who are they? Why are they in the story? What kind of people are they? Once I’ve figured out the basics of them, I interview them. Yes, I sit down and do a mock interview with my intended characters. It helps me in shaping them into realistic figures that readers can believe in. I don’t want a story filled with goodie-two-shoes, even if the story is about those types of people. They have to have some flaws. There has to be something about them that makes them human. After all, none of us is perfect, so why should the characters in our books be so.
I do the same types of interviews for both the antagonist and the protagonist. I also do this with all the lesser characters. It’s how I get a more 3-dimentional feel for them. It helps me come up with physical traits as well as psychological ones. It even helps me create some emotional issues that may not even come out in the story. But for me, knowing that those things are there, help me to create a story around the characters that are believeable.
What types of characters do you enjoy reading about? Do you like the perfect never-done-wrong types or do you prefer your heroes to be a bit on the flawed side? Do you want your villains to be a little bit sympathetic or should they be just down right hateful? How do you create a character?
How To Hide The Body
One of the things I’ve always loved about writing fiction is that I had the ability to kill people I didn’t like, and I didn’t have to worry about going to jail. No, I’m not talking about killing in reality, but the nice thing about being a fiction writer is that when people piss you off, you can off them. And yes, I mean that in any and every way imaginable.
However, that being said, there is a trick to writing out the perfect murder. It takes as much time and strategy in theory as it would in reality. You’ve got to come up with something that will keep your readers wanting more without them going “yeah, right” and throwing your book away. It’s got to be realistic, it’s got to be ingenious, but most of all, it’s got to be AWESOME!!
Think about some of the people in this world that just piss you off. Now we all know you’d never actually do it (right???), but how would you go about getting rid of that annoying person? Would you go the traditional route and leave the body in an abandoned warehouse or out in the woods? Or how about something wicked like feeding the body to your pet falcon? Hey, it’s fiction so go all out. Why not have the body shipped to another planet or sacrificed to that weird dude next door so he won’t eat you?
Now please understand, I am NOT condoning physical violence. But let’s face it, a really good book usually has some sort of violent tendency. Even if the person’s death was an accident in the book, it’s still there and it adds a touch of realism to the entire story. Maybe the main character has to solve the murder because they’re a detective or to prove their own innocence. The need for violence can be as vast as the number of ways a person can die in the book. The nice thing about going about things in this way is that you don’t have to worry about a real death sentence and you can get rid of a LOT of pent up anger.
Marco Polo Was A Con Artist
As I was thinking about my fiction post for the day, I started looking through some of my favorite sites. When I stopped by The Discovery Channel’s news page, I was struck by the headline of Marco Polo not really going to Asia. Of course I had to run over and read the story and realized it was an entire page about some of the biggest myths in history. (And yes, Marco Polo really did go to Asia).
That got me to thinking about how this could be used in a fictional sense and it just seemed obvious. There are so many great moments that define every aspect of history, but what if they weren’t exactly true? What if the truth behind the “facts” were even more grandiose, or on the other hand, extremely boring?
There is a school of thought that most of the legends that come from the ancient world are actually stories that are based in fact but embellished to make them sound better. And throughout the years, especially in the days before writing and stories were past in an oral tradition, those stories grew into what we consider myths today.
Think about some of the coolest, or oddest, points in history and rewrite them. But instead of trying to turn them into myths, create a “real” scenario behind them and see what you can come up with. Who knows, a hundred years from now, someone might find your work and think it to be the “real” thing.
