Welcome to 2007
Jan. 2nd, 2007 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizwilliamsWe've been having a very family-oriented few days: had dinner with my parents last night and this evening are heading down to Dorset tonight for dinner with T's brother and sister-in-law. 07 kicked off well, with a rather damp day at the races - but driving up, it could almost have been early March, with peewits wheeling above the fields and the meres full of flocks of swans.
Otherwise it's back to the shop, and some writing: I'm about to hit 4K with GREAT LEAP and so far, it seems to be shaping up, though not the plot I expected to be writing. Characters keep elbowing me in the ribs and demanding airtime. Happens.
On this note, I have just been taking a look at another author's response to some negative feedback (won't say who, but I'm sure you'll have some idea) about a long-running and very popular series which started off as police procedurals, but then turned into something else entirely (romance is a polite way of putting it). In her comments, she mentions the reality of her characters to her (finding oneself in the mall and thinking 'that would make a good present for character X', for instance). I will say with some caution that this is not my own approach: characters do possess a limited life of their own, but they are, at the end of the day, fictional components of my own imagination. I don't have long conversations with them inside my own head when I'm not writing, although I do think about what they might do next. Maybe that's where I fall down as a writer, though....It's an interesting issue.
Otherwise it's back to the shop, and some writing: I'm about to hit 4K with GREAT LEAP and so far, it seems to be shaping up, though not the plot I expected to be writing. Characters keep elbowing me in the ribs and demanding airtime. Happens.
On this note, I have just been taking a look at another author's response to some negative feedback (won't say who, but I'm sure you'll have some idea) about a long-running and very popular series which started off as police procedurals, but then turned into something else entirely (romance is a polite way of putting it). In her comments, she mentions the reality of her characters to her (finding oneself in the mall and thinking 'that would make a good present for character X', for instance). I will say with some caution that this is not my own approach: characters do possess a limited life of their own, but they are, at the end of the day, fictional components of my own imagination. I don't have long conversations with them inside my own head when I'm not writing, although I do think about what they might do next. Maybe that's where I fall down as a writer, though....It's an interesting issue.
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Date: 2007-01-02 05:53 pm (UTC)Um, yes, well... I began the very very first version of the novel I'm currently working on when I was still at school, which means that some of the characters have been hanging around in my head for 40 years. It's one of the reasons why I'm determined to finish their story this time, even if it's totally unsalable. I just want it all wrapped up so they'll leave me alone.
Except then they'll no doubt keep bugging me until I write the final volume. *g*
But seriously... As long as the method works and as long as the writer doesn't genuinely believe that they could buy a present and actually give it to one of their characters, then it's fine.
As someone else said higher up the thread, saying that characters are "taking over" is really just a shorthand way of saying that the story generating part of the unconscious is working overtime.
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Date: 2007-01-03 07:23 am (UTC)Lord and Lady, do I know that feeling... But that's not what I can write now!