#character work

[bellisima-actually-writes]

The Surprise and Delight That is Letting Your Characters Lead

So, I am a planster. I have a beginning, and an ending, and I fill the middle of a story with the steps to get from A to B. But it's very much chaotic, where I don't know the steps until I hit them a bit with my foot, and I don't know how many steps there are until I make it to the top and have a view of the path I took to get there. I stumble through first drafts, and immediately turn around to descend the stairs and start again. But this time there's less meandering, more direct routes, and a sprinkling of warnings around what things are coming to trip up our characters. This is how I write.

And I have seen many posts by published and successful authors talking about how this is not the way. Plan it out, know your characters, ask questions like what food would they like and what's their favorite song, know the landscape, your flora and vegetation, government structures and even how characters on different planets use the bathroom. Those are things you must know before sitting down or you will inevitably waste time, words, and maybe walk yourself into a problem you cannot get out of.

It's impossible for me to do this, at this point in my life not only bc the brain I have works in a sort of circuitous fashion (as you can see by the meandering of this blog post) but also because it would eliminate my favorite part of writing which is: when my characters surprise me.

I cannot fathom how I could possibly plan out an entire story, with all the emotional beats, knowing how my characters would interact in a specific scene or react to a bit of dialogue. I just can't know all that, not unless I am standing in the room with them, hearing the words being spoken to them, feeling their reaction to them. I have to be there to know, and I have found the most insightful bits about my characters in these unplanned moments. This is precisely the reason I've never considered myself a creative person before two years ago.

Now, I won't lie, I WISH I could write this way, especially right now where every chapter in my manuscript feels like it could be a tragic error towards getting to the end. Writing this way would indeed result in much stronger works, if I were able to hyperfixate on the details so much that I had it all planned out. But, despite admittedly being someone who loves plot, I write for characters. To tell their stories, share their pain and joy, and show how they overcome things that would otherwise undo them. When I write, it's always for the characters.

And to me, removing that surprise means fitting my characters into a box, it means taking away their agency, and eliminating a bit of their depth and soul. And I can't possibly imagine doing that. I love my characters too much, and the joy I experience when getting to know them while I'm writing is my favorite part.

[huwage]

Character Work In Character... but the other way around

Being an author is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to role-playing games. Stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, or – for the purposes of this particular post – Shadowrun; anything where you yourself need to play a character. I have spoken before about how my own DnD character is so easy for me to act out and fun for me to think up backstory for that I’ve started writing some pretty hefty…

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[onehawtwriter-blog]

three days. four character profiles. an unreasonable amount of brain sweat.

and now i’m actually writing.

not even just writing—digging back into a chapter i haven’t touched in years and going “oh. oh there’s more here. there’s so much more here.”

like apparently the answer was not “force it” but “spiral into character psychology until the story drags itself back out of the grave”

anyway she lives. the story lives. i am once again being held hostage by my own narrative choices

[garthnightmare]

87- lingering thought

After a long day, it is my custom to take myself off to the Octagonal Study and shut the door behind me, after sending careful instructions not to be disturbed. The servants generally respect my wishes.

From here, the mullioned windows offer a wonderful prospect over the Grand Lawns, particularly in the spring and summer months when the evening light lingers and casts a most pretty pattern over the ornamental hedges and the stone planters I had the landscapers erect. Were I at all given to landscape-painting I should be at once immersed- but as I'm not, I am content simply to indulge in contemplation.

It pleases me to do so with a glass of something bold from the cellars- an Ashland '87 or a Marquis D'Clarembault '99. I never venture beyond the century's end if I can manage it, and a gentleman of my means always can.

So there I sit, glass in hand, scenery duly contemplated, and ready to savour the true purpose of my evening; my real nourishment lies in the Thoughts, provided by the multitude of minds who have crossed my threshold of their own free will. They are stored here, each decanted into a crystal retort of appropriate size and composition, and stored upon the great oaken shelves that encircle the room.

I run my fingers over the collection, feeling the faint thrumming below my finger tips, wondering which experience I am going to partake of this eveninh. Will it be a treasured memory? A sensory recollection of new-mown grass in some far-off field, or the precise shape, hue, and taste of a lover's lips? Or perhaps something vaguer; a day-dream about cities in the sky interlinked by railway lines, about impressing some chump of a crush, or winning an invitation to some ball attended by airheads as vapid as the thinker?

I have had years to perfect the process, and conceal my methods. At first it required a lengthy period in my study itself, gazing deep within the hapless vistor's eyes and drawing their thoughts from them, for all the world like the carrion bat they fancy I can assume the form of. But now, my method is superbly subtle, and does not require my presence at all. The visitor need only gaze at one of the lethe stones I have imbued with my essence, for no longer than a minute in most cases, and the work is done- whatever they are thinking about as they look is decanted into a retort for my perusal. The effect is barely detectable- the victim merely feels the sensation that they have lost their train of thought for a moment. A sensation that I am quite sure you are familiar with- what mortal isn't?

As far as I can tell, there are no lasting ill effects, either. There is a chance that the particuarly absent-minded, or those given to feckless daydreaming, might experience a degree of confusion- but these sorts of idlers are unwelcome in my company anyway. Bring me scholars, priests, philosophers, for they serve my most refined palette superbly.

To ensure no delectable conundrum or succulent scrap of speculation escapes my manse, I have taken precautions. I have planted lethestones in the graven gargoyles that guard the entry to my manor- it is uncommon for a visitor to avoid even glancing up at them! If they do avoid their gaze, there are stones pressed within the eyes of the self-portrait above the mantel in the Morning Room- what mortal eye could avoid gazing at so handsome a creature?- and within the mirrors in the lavatories. It's banal, I know, but mortal ladies are particularly careful to check their appearance remains unruffled in my prescence, and their imaginations are so perfectly fecund…to miss out would be a most tremendous shame.

And what a bounty is afforded me from the visitors I welcome! These lingering thoughts of theirs have sustained me for many more winters than I may have seen otherwise. Through their memories of home, their imagined plots for novels never written, their metaphysical speculation, I am thrice-fold inspired.

After I have selected the evening's dish, and dined at my lesiure upon fond memories and self-raising monologues, on searing self-doubt and half-baked ideas, I feel nourished by lived experience once again. It is the work of a half-hour to enscribe the requisite five hundred words upon the vellum; thus is my contract fulfilled, and my life extended beyond its span.

As long as visitors still appear, I see no reason for this pattern to break; I am, on all counts, a genius among my kind! Such glory is heaped upon the wonderful name of Scribious Barquentine, lord of letters, master of manuscripts, thane of thought!

[thatsaltyartist]

Redraw of my royals, it’s so wonderful to see them looking like what I always saw in my head. Any feedback / suggestions / notes are greatly appreciated as these characters are still being worked on.

[ap0ll0mutt]

So ive fully written chapter six because im a horrible bastard and I love shaking the bug jar but that means I now have to go back and actually write chapter five for character and relationship development purposes. But i also just really want to keep shaking the jar

[cuntycalloway]

I thought I posted this a few days ago—February 5th in honor of Sant’Agata’s feast day—but apparently I didn’t. Sigh… so embarrassing… but anyways…

I always equip Saint Agatha’s medallion because, 1. OP as heck, and 2. her story, her resolution, and her unwavering loyalty to her faith.

I’m not extremely knowledgeable or experienced in religion as a whole— coming from a mother who was reluctant to teach because of her own traumas, and a father that wasn’t exactly convincing or explanatory in his teachings, but I have admired this saint for a while and was very pleased to see her when I first starting playing.

But enough about me, because, as I was thinking about this, it got me wondering… What if Enzo resonated with different saints? ​What if his patron saint wasn’t Saint Barbara? Imagine him being different versions of himself depending on who his patron/patroness is.

I feel like that’d be pretty badass: picking your in-game patron as a sort of personality and/or morality based decision, giving us an Enzo that handles situations in ways that can either ever-so slightly vary from canon, or ways that are polar opposites to all other outcomes.

I mean, c’mon… Imagine picking someone like Saint Peter.

Enzo does still trust the members of the Torrisi family, but occasionally has insufficient faith in how much he really is able to rely on them—and other people in general, really—now (Peter denying christ out of fear and lack of trust). And then we get an alternate ending, where, for the last (third major) time, he doesn’t trust…idk…Cesare to cover his ass in a firefight. Leading to Enzo acting recklessly, which calls for Cesare to jump in before things get bad, and resulting in his own death and Enzo being drowned in guilt, grief, and self loathing.

So, he lives. Surviving, once more, by his own ways. By his own means. But he didn’t need to. Cesare would have protected him to his last dying breath— and he did.

And maybe—if the story doesn’t end right there—we see Enzo having to watch the others not missing Cesare, not caring that he’s gone, some even being glad for it. So everything goes on as before, for everyone else, just no Cesare. They don’t understand why Enzo is so morose and anguished over someone who was such a ‘wretched soul.’

So he hides it. Hides it until he can break down in the privacy of his own home, clutching Cesare’s necklace til it leaves an impression on his palm. Hides it until he’s alone and breaking glass and asking himself why he couldn’t trust. Why he couldn’t believe in his best friend. Why he couldn’t see past his own self preservation.

He doesn’t climb higher up the ranks so much as he is dragged; a ‘reward’ for his efforts and every job well done.

He also wears Cesare’s necklace 24/7 and fiddles with it frequently, in case anyone else is stuck on their twelfth reason. Yw, luv U.

But idk. This is kinda random. Happy late feast day to those who have Saint Agatha as their patroness. 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼