Question Character without a story

Angeldude wrote:

CrazyMinh wrote: tip: don't ACTUALLY attack your keyboard. Type with care, as keyboards are vital pieces of equipment for writers.

As I started while on a drive, I actually decided to try typing the entire thing with my phone. I have no idea if that helps or not.

As for her name, currently it's Angela. I personally love the religious imagery of my own name despite being non-religious. It's also cute enough to work in this situation. Of course, if I go through with that, I'm going to need to give her some form of wings down the line. Eh, I'm sure she could build some.

Writing on a phone is either masochism or desperation. Of course, we also have authors who have gotten used to working with Dragon (speech to text conversion system)...

That said, I want to note that you're raising several separate concerns as if its all one thing. Let's break the big problem into smaller, controllable parts:

1. Confidence is a debilitating factor if you allow it to be. After all, if you're so worried about the outcome that you never actually work on it... its self-fulfilling. You can't create a readable story if you can't put the words on a paper for someone to read. BUT... having confidence about writing things is FAR simpler than, say, being confident giving a speech to a large crowd. For one thing, you greatly control your audience. When you walk out on stage to speak, you accept that everyone in the place can listen to what you say and 'judge' you based on it. But with a story, you can create something and read it yourself... and choose never to share. Or you can share with people you trust. Listen to what they think and then decide whether to share it with anyone else. Slowly widening your audience until you feel that there is a need for improvement in what you did before you share it further. YOU control the size of your reading audience and who is in it. So there is ZERO reason to suffer from lack of confidence. Especially during writing. Want to have a break down while you wait for that first reader to get through all your words and respond with what they thought? Yes. That happens. But no need to have those fears until you have something finished. And then, as I said... always remember that YOU control who reads it.

2. Creative writing. Anyone who tells you that most writing is 'creative' is lying to you. Witty dialogue, plot twists, sympathetic characters, unique gimmicks... none of these are actually 'creative' aspects of writing a story. They are just as practical and should be planned for and mapped into your work just as technically as using sentence structure and punctuation. You have to choose a narrative perspective. You have to decide upon a protagonist and give this protagonist a 'before' version of a steady state and then introduce change and obstacles into their life. They must then find ways to cope with the changes, overcome or bypass the obstacles, and find their way to a new 'after' steady state. These things have to be in nearly every story for us to recognize them as stories.

Where our creativity comes into play is the way in which we put these puzzle pieces together. And how they come to take on a life of their own. But like Frankenstein's monster... you have to sew together all the pieces first. Only once all the parts are in place, can you imbue it with lightning and quicken these pieces of flesh back into life.


3. Technical writing. This is 100% a matter of practice. When you've got experience you can consciously consider changing which words you use to force different rhythms in words. Or shorten sentences to up the pace. If you read a lot, you'll see this in practice easily enough... just apply the same tricks to your own work. But technical aspects of writing are the least important. Yes, they're the first readers will comment on. But there's actually no reason to stress these issues unless you have an interesting story first. who cares if you misspelled five hundred words, have partial sentences in a third of what you've written and your stream of consciousness has a bad case of "cute little duck... oooh, shiny rock.. rabbit!" Also... this is the part of your work where you bring in an editor. Ideally an editor who will take the time to walk you through what is wrong instead of someone to just try to fix it. Because really, once you see where you're going wrong technically; its just a matter of implementing the same fix every time you need it.



SO... first. Confidence. Commit to working on the story. Don't over-commit though. You're in a 'trial' period here, trying to see what you can achieve. So give yourself a reasonable goal. Don't try to write a novel (80-100k words). Or a novella. Or even one of our weekly 20k word episodes. Plan for a short story. 5-10k words, maybe. Or even something shorter. A great many short stories and story parts posted on sites like BCTS are only like 2-3k words.

But lets assume for the sake of practice that we're going to do something at 5k words. So we know that within that time frame, we need to set the stage. That means revealing enough of the environment/setting for people to feel like they know where they are. You also need to place the protagonist within the setting, ideally involved in some activity that really reveals the protagonist's personality. Engaged with friends in a game around a well? Chasing a dog and there's a ball involved? Mostly sunny day with a solid breeze, people trying to fly kites?

Don't take too much of your story structure for this exposition, but maybe the first 1000 words is reasonable. That establishes your 'before'. The steady state condition of the world before things change. Introduce an agent of change. An older brother. Striding across the tall grass of the clearing in a way that sets him very much at odds with the frivolous nature of play. The wind is too blustery to shout over so he's nearly in the midst of the play around the well before he starts shouting, all the muscles in his face aligning in rigid grim angles. A girl starts to grab up his hands to dance around the well with her before everything comes to a halt and they see his left hand, wrapped in bloody bandages. The ball, already in the air and heading his way, hits his chest and he grabs it with his uninjured hand angrily.

The protagonist is supposed to be helping their father. The older boy was hurt and takes it out by throwing the ball, it drops down the well. The dog bounds after it and seconds later is in the water at the bottom of the well. Now you have reason to change. You have obstacles to overcome. You have conflict. And you are maybe 2k words into this story. Spend the next 2k words rescuing the dog and figuring out how the brothers reconsider... if they do... and then use what's left to wrap up the story. Maybe now the older brother is amidst the play, trying to get a shivering wet dog to fetch a ball while his hand drips blood into the grass.

Don't try to make it be 'everything' ... but at the same time, don't make it sparse. Make sure there's conflict. Find a way to resolve it, that suits the characters. Give it at least one twist. Maybe instead of the older boy getting hurt helping dad, like might be implied at first, he actually cut himself peeling potatos while helping mom, the boys changing which parent they aid each night. And remember that people have things they want to do, things they need to do, and things they want and need to avoid doing... and those goals/motivations don't automatically change just because you put an obstacle in front of them or change something about their world. It gets very easy to just have things play out like a ride at an amusement park. Life doesn't run on rails. Just because we want the story to turn right, doesn't mean the character should oblige us. For example, your character is craving red meat. You don't have to make the next chapter a shopping trip for meat. The character should acknowledge events and obstacles that we put in front of them... but the older and degree to which they attack them? Can very much change.


Enough for one post, I think.