A whiter shade of pale
Jul. 14th, 2005 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonSleep: it's a wonderful thing. I highly recommend it. I got almost a full night last night, enough so that I'm not feeling quite so wuzzy and tender today.
I'm closing in on the end of chapter 24, too. Probably finish up tomorrow. I've been kind of dragging my heels, as this chapter is the start of a chain reaction of Doing Bad Stuff to my characters. I always hesitate to hurt them, to be the bad guy. Once I launch myself on that course, though, I can get pretty ruthless. A friend once said, "For someone so tender-hearted towards her characters you wind up putting them through hell." Not always, but...yeah.
Another friend, one of those organized-as-opposed-to-organic writers, laughed at my hesitance. "They aren't real people, Pam."
Well, yeah, they are. Not really real. I don't expect them to walk through the door, don't believe they have an existence separate from the pages of my book and the imaginations touched by them, but they are real. In their own way.
Writing lesson of the day: Beware the dreaded everyone-I-like-is-noble syndrome. My novel's MC has shading, I believe. He acts in contradictory and less-than-noble ways; fails to always do the right thing; gives into his baser instincts. Sometimes. But sometimes those surrounding him, the ones he cares for and who care for him, seem too good to be true. They may flare briefly with irrationality or anger or other salty emotions, but they seem to swing back to center too quickly. I don't always give them enough time or energy in human terms to work through things.
Some of this is a consequence of the first draft process and can be addressed in rewrites. But it's a persistent tendency I have to be on the watch for. Like today. Note to self: add in more human frailty next time around.
The other curious thing is that I don't think I have trouble shading the villains in my novels, giving them some sympathetic aspects. Dark areas in the heroes, places of light in the villains—it's just those folks in the middle who need tweaking.
Kind of like life?
I'm closing in on the end of chapter 24, too. Probably finish up tomorrow. I've been kind of dragging my heels, as this chapter is the start of a chain reaction of Doing Bad Stuff to my characters. I always hesitate to hurt them, to be the bad guy. Once I launch myself on that course, though, I can get pretty ruthless. A friend once said, "For someone so tender-hearted towards her characters you wind up putting them through hell." Not always, but...yeah.
Another friend, one of those organized-as-opposed-to-organic writers, laughed at my hesitance. "They aren't real people, Pam."
Well, yeah, they are. Not really real. I don't expect them to walk through the door, don't believe they have an existence separate from the pages of my book and the imaginations touched by them, but they are real. In their own way.
Writing lesson of the day: Beware the dreaded everyone-I-like-is-noble syndrome. My novel's MC has shading, I believe. He acts in contradictory and less-than-noble ways; fails to always do the right thing; gives into his baser instincts. Sometimes. But sometimes those surrounding him, the ones he cares for and who care for him, seem too good to be true. They may flare briefly with irrationality or anger or other salty emotions, but they seem to swing back to center too quickly. I don't always give them enough time or energy in human terms to work through things.
Some of this is a consequence of the first draft process and can be addressed in rewrites. But it's a persistent tendency I have to be on the watch for. Like today. Note to self: add in more human frailty next time around.
The other curious thing is that I don't think I have trouble shading the villains in my novels, giving them some sympathetic aspects. Dark areas in the heroes, places of light in the villains—it's just those folks in the middle who need tweaking.
Kind of like life?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 12:13 am (UTC)