Quick, before someone loses patience, Chelsea and I are working on revamping our writing project. Our prompt from two weeks ago got major away from both of us so we're going to ditch it and try over with a new prompt. Now, don't go flaying us alive for dropping this project saying something ignorant like "a real writer perseveres through difficult times in writing." That statement alone isn't ignorant, but applying it to this situation would be because writers do need to persevere [I cannot tell you how many times I've used that word in the last hour] through tricky parts of their writing but they also need to be able to recognize when a project needs to be put aside or just abandoned. Not all story ideas will pan out. In fact, I'd say that it's generally the opposite. So hold your horses, Sunday writing updates will be back :)
Now, to get to the mad I was actually referring to in the title of this post. Whilst I was performing some excellent bakery with Chelsea on Thursday night [I'd like you to know that even though it took an extra 50 minutes to cook, we did eventually end up with a healthy baby lemon/blueberry loaf. it was delicious] I had the chance to talk out issues I was having with my WIP. This is one of the many reasons that talking to Chelsea is a fabulous experience: she listens and she gets it. I mean, I could gripe to a lot of people about how I've been stuck for months at the end of one particular scene with no idea where to go from there but I think Chelsea is one of the few people I know who has the insight to suggest that perhaps my lack of ideas, considering the fact that I write character driven and not plot driven stories, may be because I don't know my characters well enough. The egoist in me wanted to rant and rave. Of course I know my characters! Why would you suggest such a ridiculous thing! But this problem of being stuck has been weighing on my mind for as long as I've been stuck and nothing I'd tried was working so I was open to suggestions.
Last weekend saw Tim and I up to Logan for a friendly visit and a break from good ol' Provo. While I didn't take time to consider big important things like "should I take that internship opportunity with it being such a busy senior year coming up," I did take some time to try drawing out my main character's personalities. I found some motivational holes in my middle grade MC and then I hit gold. Or should I say a vast, pitch-black, unexplored cavern in my MC's uncle. It was an unpleasant shock to realize what my notes and introspective questions were telling me: I knew next to nothing about this character. This has been a huge breakthrough for me. My MC's uncle is a massive part of his life and the way he will develop, so finding out that I knew so little about him kind of floored me. But it's also been really freeing and exciting because I get to delve into this character, flesh him out, generally my favorite part of story construction and something I can spend hours doing.
I haven't written more past that last scene yet but I do feel like I'm getting a much better feel for his character, who he is, what he wants, what decisions he'd make. It's like making a new friend :)
Do you write character or plot driven stories? What's holding you back from writing your story? Do you know your characters? Are you getting so wrapped up in detailing every piece of their life that you're forgetting to write the story?
I'm not a writer so I can't contribute suggestions or encouragement, but I do have a question that I'm curious to have your perspective on. My husband believes that female authors cannot write a convincing male main character because they don't get how the male brain works. It sounds like your main character is a male; so, what would you say to my husband?
ReplyDeleteThat is an excellent question. I never really wrote male characters until this year and I started out really small with short stories in my writing classes. I myself wouldn't say that I'm good at writing guys, but I say that out of lack of experience. My current WIP is a serious experiment because, logically, writing girls comes so much more naturally. But something I'd like to point out is that no one gripes when guys write girl characters. Why is that? Anyway. From the things I've read, I would disagree with your husband. I recently read Dead Iron by Devon Monk and her main character is a tough western-type guy and I think she pulls it off wonderfully, I actually had to look her up to make sure she wasn't a male writer [I'm so ashamed of myself for saying that]. Other examples that I would give would be J.K. Rowling [Harry gets a tad over-angsty in the 5th book but she wrote 7 MASSIVE VOLUMES, give her a break], Susan Collins [Gale I find annoying, but Peeta is really compelling for me, and no, not in the fan-girl way], and Cornelia Funk [her stuff is more middle grade but she her characters in the Thief Lord are almost all male and the father in Ink Heart as well as Dustfinger are fantastic].
DeleteNow, part of my problem in listing examples stems from the fact that I am personally less likely to pick up a book with a male lead character, they just don't exist much anymore with the current trends. But there are fantastic supporting male characters and just because they aren't the MC, don't knock them. One of the distinguishing things between good and bad writing is the author who doesn't develop their secondary characters and the author who does. I would recommend Sarah Addison Allen's Sugar Queen as well as most any Jane Austen story as favorite examples of the latter.
So, in an effort to tie that together....I think that the idea that women writers can't write male characters is freaking ridiculous. What honestly concerns me more is when I come across a book where the author [female] writes really good male characters, often supporting, and horrendously awful female characters, generally the protagonist. I mean, there is NO excuse for that.
I hope something in that mess answers your question ^^;