Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Something I Noticed...

My imagine has mostly been taken over by an "original" idea. So far, when it comes to these original ideas, I start with characters long before I start with story. With this case, I started off with a look. An outfit. And from that sprang a character. Then I kept thinking of the character. Trying, and failing, to draw him. And then I thought of a situation involving him. And then a few more. And from there, came three more characters.

After a while, I needed to start writing this down. I needed an outline. And when I started writing, I wrote out a sentence for each of the four characters. Today, I finally gave them names.

Out of these four characters, only two of them actually seemed defined. The other two, I'm still having trouble with.

Before, most of my fictional writing consisted of romance, so I thought of these four as pairs, as two couples. I knew that whatever their story ended up being, I wanted these couples to be together. But that may be why I'm having trouble with the other two.

Here's what I noticed: The characters that are more defined and identifiable in my head are characters that sprang from character arc ideas. While I hadn't before known their names, I knew what sort of arc they would go through. The other two, however, were not. When I started thinking of those other characters, I didn't have much of an arc for them, aside from the romance. Those two characters weren't conceived as characters with their own arcs, they were conceived as love interests whose arc revolved around their respective crushes.

So that's something I need to think about from now on. It doesn't matter what trappings of a story I want to incorporate until AFTER I fully understand and know who my characters are.

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