Sandbox Discussions

[DanielH]

I was thinking the same thing, but from a position of not having either so I wasn’t sure. I have never had that Sense of Wrongness about a character I’ve written (though I have ad it in other circumstances), and I would need to deliberately decide about any sort of romantic feelings a character might have.

[AndaisQ]

My people are... in some ways awake, mostly not. I can pose questions, but it generally takes the form of dialogue between themselves. So, for instance, when I wanted to figure out how Sally felt about having a dagger that turned people inside out, it was less "hey Sally how do you feel about this," and more thinking out a scene of Ari and Sally discussing it. Other times I'll just get a line (often something to the effect of "I don't have time for this shit" or "I want to be able to have this power".)

As a test, I tried talking directly to them. Ari seemed uncomfortable with the arrangement; Sally declined to respond at all; Leo got all nervy and weird; Xan said, quote, "fuck off, God." So, they don't like it, I guess.

[anthusiasm]

Xan said, quote, "fuck off, God."

Filed under "Reasons Why Xan Is Great".

[DanielH]

And what about YHWH?

[Aestrix]

Plenty of my characters also started out as self inserts. Honestly? I think there's a lot of value in writing yourself as a self insert, and attempting to get it as accurate as possible or letting the character evolve on their own. If it's the former, you learn more about yourself and get better at analyzing how one person (specifically, you) works. If it's the latter... Congrats! You now have a character. Either way, you win, because you have practiced writing.

I think the key to writing is not 'have the exact same mental state that your writer friends have when writing' but instead 'practice it a lot.' Even if you're concerned about your writing ability - anyone that says they started out just as amazing as they are now is lying. It's a skill that you practice, like any other. The first thing I wrote was a shitty fanfiction about horses, and the characters had zero personality, there was no plot that wasn't stolen directly from the book I was fanfictioning, and it was overall kind of terrible. I didn't know how paragraphs worked. Getting better is done in two ways: writing, and reading.

[Nemo]

Wow, this sounds like you all have a superpower.

When I try to write a character doing a thing, I consciously think "what would X think here" and figure something out. I can't imagine putting a character in a situation and them doing anything I didn't decide they should do. I might later think I had them act inconsistently, but they don't express opinions at any point.

(Separately, I do get a Sense of Wrongness any time there's a free variable, something that could have been anything but I chose to make it one way instead of another. My usual response is to do something along the lines of how the description of the Lord Ruler's reading room is straight out of the Raven, and practically every word in this post is a reference to something, but this works less well for characters. As you can imagine, I don't write a lot of characters.)

[Bluelantern]

I think we should move the "characters are awake" discussion here because this has been off-topic since page 106?

(also Pep talk Miles is the cutest thing, I want 20)

[Ezra]

Anyone that says they started out just as amazing as they are now is lying.

Sometimes I think that I'm bad enough at writing that I must have started out just about as good as I am now. Then I remember some of the utter shite I wrote in high school.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

Lying or wrong, then. An important distinction.

[Nemo]

I've been mildly surprised all along that Steel managed to successfully trade with Thorn without anything at all going horribly wrong. That was really tense to read.