973 réponses à ce sujet

[Tryynity]

I agree if you read enough real accounts of peoples experiences you can glean a certain amount of information needed to pull off a character, actors do this to submerse themselves into a character.

Although many actors will go as far to live the life or put themselves through similar experiences of a character also, there is a lot to be said about real experience.

Take Sophia's choice - I cried so hard when I watched that scene and began to identify with the character and still can when I conjure up the scene, because I identified with the mother as a mother, but I wonder how many mothers that had been through a similar ordeal had an entirely different experience and understanding.

I can write down every moment of what it feels like to have a doctor deliver to you the news your baby has been born with Down Syndrome, I can describe to you my reactions, feelings etc but unless you go through it you cant really know I dont think.

However it is impossible to experience everything so for the most part we fake it alot.

I think however the author was really trying to give your characters more depth, like you have.

Discover your different masks. I know I have a mask for every situation Im in, we all do I bet. We are role-playing our entire lives.

We are different around our parents, boss, friends, acquatainces, lovers, children, strangers. So your characters should act accordingly, with many layers.

Modifié par Tryynity, 02 mars 2012 - 08:21 .

[Sialater]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

I seem to be doing ok just making stuff up and doing a little empathic research on issues I haven't experienced personally...

Looking at the exercise I can only agree with others about having a boring life.

I have to agree with you and Corker.  I've never experienced everything Meghan Shepard has. (Thank God.)  But I've been told she's very vivid and that I've been very respectful of people who survived her sort of background.  But, I'm also writing from the point of view of all that being in the past.  She's older, wiser and less angry, now.

But, I've never experienced what she's lived through.

Modifié par Sialater, 02 mars 2012 - 02:51 .

[Zaxarus]

I like very much to write about the DAO in novell form, may it be covering the complete story or only highlights, describing only those scenes which should be important for my character (not necessarily for the whole story as such).

I like to change the companions a bit, to accentuate one or two aspects of them i especially like or hate. And i love to write adding normally unavaiable chars (as Handmaiden Iona in my main story) and about groups with 2-3 wardens aside from Alistair to have additional interaction in the group. I only regret that i often lose interest in those stories after a few chapters. Perhaps i should concentrate more on the "highlights"-stories as it is easier to finish something with only 10-30k words planned.

What do you think about changing an original character in a strong way? I thought for example about a story with a dark Alistair, an Alistair somewhat broken by his experiences in his youth.

btw:
I really love to read stories of other authors. I often get small ideas from them or think: oh, yes, that you've forgotten (such as in one story where the author thought about dwarves being very susceptible to sunburn). And often i read about the political sqabbling that is needed for all those decisions that are only worth a oneliner in the game (for example city elves to get a Bann).

[Klidi]

FFN alerts were not working for a day or two, but it should be working now.

[tklivory]

Again, a *huge, huge thank you* for everyone who is participating in our weekly discussions and concrits!

      

This week's new stuff:


New article for discussion:
Vanessa Cohen's From Fanfiction to Just Fiction

List of previously discussed articles can be found here.


New sacrificial lamb concritter:
AmbraAlhambra's A Memory of Time, Chapter 1 - An editable Google Doc has been created for comments here. You may also PM AmbraAlhambra on BSN with a comment.

List of previous concritters can be found here.

Front page post has also been updated!

---

A huge thank you for all those who send me article links as well!  Always feel free to send those on to me via PM here on BSN!

Modifié par tklivory, 04 mars 2012 - 09:26 .

[The Sarendoctrinator]

Nice article. I think my favorite part was, "A lot of the fun of writing comes from putting interesting characters in tough situations and seeing how they get out of them." I know I like to push my characters to the edge to see just how far they would go to fight for something. It says a lot about who they are.

Also, I thought it was interesting how the author talked about taking her original characters from videogame fanfiction and writing stories about them. I've actually gone the opposite route - taking characters from my original stories and playing them out in a videogame to see what they would do in those situations.

[Corker]

At the risk of repeating myself...

I don't see anything wrong with using fanfiction as practice, or a stepping stone to original fiction. This week's article talks about it, lots of people say that's their goal in doing it, and that's fine and awesome.

BUT I also don't see anything wrong with writing fanfiction because it's fun.

As a perfectionist over-achiever in an achievement-prizing culture, I think it's really very important that we sometimes take a step back and let ourselves play, particularly in the arts, without worrying about monetizing it or being "successful." Make music, draw pictures, write and tell stories. It builds community, exercises the brain, and brings joy.

I will take two dozen amateur folk singers around a campfire over a crowded stadium concert any night of the weekend. Your mileage may vary, and that's fine, but I'm not going to tell my folk singer friends that their art isn't real or worthwhile unless they're on-track to writing their own songs and recording them. It's okay and not shameful to not want to do that.

[Corker]

Can anybody tell me if Daveth and Taliesen have the same accent? They sound alike to me, but I'm not really well-versed on the nuances the very many British accents out there.

[Merilsell]

Corker wrote...

At the risk of repeating myself...

I don't see anything wrong with using fanfiction as practice, or a stepping stone to original fiction. This week's article talks about it, lots of people say that's their goal in doing it, and that's fine and awesome.

BUT I also don't see anything wrong with writing fanfiction because it's fun.

As a perfectionist over-achiever in an achievement-prizing culture, I think it's really very important that we sometimes take a step back and let ourselves play, particularly in the arts, without worrying about monetizing it or being "successful." Make music, draw pictures, write and tell stories. It builds community, exercises the brain, and brings joy.

I will take two dozen amateur folk singers around a campfire over a crowded stadium concert any night of the weekend. Your mileage may vary, and that's fine, but I'm not going to tell my folk singer friends that their art isn't real or worthwhile unless they're on-track to writing their own songs and recording them. It's okay and not shameful to not want to do that.

Word.

Especially the bolded part. I write because I have a story to tell within Dragon Age's world and because there are still few stories which are taking a Dalish Warden serious and in a realistical way. So I write because there is no story that is how I'd want to read it, and hence I need to tell this sort of story myself.

I think in this regard my favorite and very fitting quote is this one here:

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

This is what I do with my FF, basically.

I indulge myself in this tale because I have fun to linger longer in the world I love and can explore and get to know each character (not only Lenya) a lot more and better. It is fun for me to slip into their mindset, to use the distinctive voices and find out how they tick to make them into personalities I would want to read about. Sure I don't own any of them, (except for Lenya), nor the world, but I love both (Characters and world) so much that I can't be bothered to built up my own. I love to play within this world and kick over a few sandcastles without any strings attached.

I'm not an aspiring writer with plans beyond writing FF for the fandom(s) I love, I don't have the goal to get published, nor to write my own book. I just want to have fun.

No more, no less. *shrug*

Modifié par Merilsell, 05 mars 2012 - 08:44 .

[maxernst]

AmbraAlhambra wrote...

Corker wrote...

As a perfectionist over-achiever in an achievement-prizing culture, I think it's really very important that we sometimes take a step back and let ourselves play, particularly in the arts, without worrying about monetizing it or being "successful." Make music, draw pictures, write and tell stories. It builds community, exercises the brain, and brings joy.

I will take two dozen amateur folk singers around a campfire over a crowded stadium concert any night of the weekend. Your mileage may vary, and that's fine, but I'm not going to tell my folk singer friends that their art isn't real or worthwhile unless they're on-track to writing their own songs and recording them. It's okay and not shameful to not want to do that.

I definitely agree with you Corker and I think in our crazy society that that tends to get... maybe not looked down on but dismissed? I think we all do need to just do something not because it is on the path to achievement but because it's fun and we enjoy it. 

I get the same thing with my singing. I love singing and I sing karake all the time and regularly have people tell me I should be going on American Idol - but I have absolutely no desire to do this, and people have a really hard time understanding that. Singing is something I love doing, and I'll sing at weddings for friends, or for other purposes (or totally rock karaoke night!) but I have no desire to make money off it because then it would stop being fun, and the only reason I sing is because it's fun and stress-relieving for me. Have I entertained fantasies? Sure, when I was younger especially, but... I'm happy with how things turned out. I have no problem singing to my kindergarteners when I become a teacher instead of doing it on stage.

Karaoke is a really good comparsion to fan-fiction.  We do it because it's fun, but--like fanfiction--we still want to do it well, and we get better at it through practice, because it's more satisfying to do something well than badly.  AndI don't doubt that singing karaoke would be good practice for someone who aspired to become a professional singer, because singing into a microphone in front of people becomes much less scary.  But it's not why most of us do it. 

I think the impulse to create is a basic instinct for human beings.  People express it in different ways, ranging from home renovation to karaoke, and from cooking to refurbishing antique automobiles.  Yes, all these things can be done professionally, but there will always be amateurs who do them simply because they're forms of self-expression.

Modifié par maxernst, 05 mars 2012 - 10:21 .

[Bethadots]

AmbraAlhambra - I'm so sorry, I was writing some concrit for you this morning and then I had to rush out of the house to help my friend and I didn't finish writing my concrit, so you have like a couple of random nit-picky comments from me and no properly helpful feedback. I'll write more soon, promise.

I LOVE the comparison of fanfic to karaoke, I think that's how I'm going to explain it to my friends and family from now on.

Corker wrote...

Can anybody tell me if Daveth and Taliesen have the same accent? They sound alike to me, but I'm not really well-versed on the nuances the very many British accents out there.

I can't hear a difference and I am British.

Modifié par Bethadots, 06 mars 2012 - 05:45 .

[The Sarendoctrinator]

Corker wrote...

As a perfectionist over-achiever in an achievement-prizing culture, I think it's really very important that we sometimes take a step back and let ourselves play, particularly in the arts, without worrying about monetizing it or being "successful." Make music, draw pictures, write and tell stories. It builds community, exercises the brain, and brings joy.

I agree. It can get stressful to just concentrate on the important stuff that will bring us success. I know it's hard for me to focus on my novel and nothing else... which is where gaming comes in. I don't write fanfiction, but I create stories that play out in my mind with the characters from these game universes and the others that I add to it. That's mostly just for fun. Playing RPGs can help me start thinking in-character as a preparation for writing though.

Merilsell wrote...

I think in this regard my favorite and very fitting quote is this one here:

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

I like this quote. It sounds like what I've been doing for most of my life.

[maxernst]

The Sarendoctrinator wrote...

Playing RPGs can help me start thinking in-character as a preparation for writing though.

Play-by-post RPG's are particularly good for this because you're actively writing the dialogue.  It's especially good if you're playing against type.  I was involved in one game that I joined in progress and had to play a working class 19th century englishman who had been brought in more or less as hired muscle in a Call of Cthulhu campaign.  It wasn't so hard to get into his emotional space but I don't know the things he would know and vice versa--for example, he was supposed to have been in the Navy and my nautical knowledge is minimal.  On the other hand, I had to bite my tongue when the group found a note that I recognized immediately as cuneiform.  And then there was language.  Although he was a smart guy, his education was limited so his way of expressing himself was totally alien to me.  I'm not sure I was entirely successful--he ended up sounding too much like Eliza Doolittle's father in Pygmalion, I suspect--but if I worked as hard on the voice of every character in my fanfics as I did on his, they'd be much stronger.

[maxernst]

AmbraAlhambra wrote...

Well, as for the article itself I am definitely someone using fanfiction as a stepping stone into fiction itself, but one thing I worry about with regards to writing fiction is exactly that transition.

The way I'm writing my Blight fic, I'm basically writing it with the assumption in mind that anyone reading it already knows quite about about the story universe and therefore I take care not to rehash things that I think the reader will already know so I can keep the flow moving forward. In fiction, where the world is my own, I definitely worry that I will have difficulties conveying the world to the reader - who would know nothing about it. Has anyone who is writing their own novels/fiction - and written fanfiction before - come across that difficulty?

I've never written a real novel before but I've written stuff in a world that is unfamiliar.  Since huge amounts of expository writing are usually hard to make interesting, there are a number of approaches you can take.  What I did was that my story was delivered as first-person narration to someone who is foreign and only vaguely familiar with the region, so I was able to drop in some exposition on a need-to-know basis.  Although a friend of mine was startled when my character after describing having grown up in a peasant village and setting off on his own casually mentioned that among the dangers on the road are enchanted creatures from the ruined wizards towers that dotted the landscape.  I hadn't mentioned magic was present in the world at all to that point. 

Another way is to have the point-of-view characters be quite ignorant of the world at the beginning, so that they're constantly discovering and/or having things explained to them.  Of course if your protagonist is a visitor from another world, this is a very easy approach.  Some writers like to throw in short expository passages that are excerpts from works that exist in the world, like codex entries in Dragon Age.  It's not a choice, I'd personally make, but in skilled hands, it can work.

There are writers who get away with just dumping foreign settings on you almost without an explanatory filter, as if being narrated by somebody who assumes all this makes sense to you.  It can give an exotic, mysterious effect, but books in that style (Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series, for example) tend to be a challenging read and not suit all tastes.

[Corker]

Limyaael's rants deal with this a bit.  Language can get a bit NSFW (the ocassional f-bomb is dropped):

Avoiding Infodumping - probably the most relevant.

Balancing dialogue, description and action - also relevant

Balancing showing and telling - she makes a case for when telling is appropriate, which is often in conveying setting information

Explanation vs. over-explanation - when to explain those bits of world-building without drowning in them.

[maxernst]

For a bravura performance of concise world-building, read Ursula K. LeGuin's the Lathe of Heaven. I think she does an amazing job of remaking the world every chapter (it changes due to the main character's dreams) without huge amounts of exposition. The novel is actually quite short.

[Sialater]

AmbraAlhambra wrote...

Well, as for the article itself I am definitely someone using fanfiction as a stepping stone into fiction itself, but one thing I worry about with regards to writing fiction is exactly that transition.

The way I'm writing my Blight fic, I'm basically writing it with the assumption in mind that anyone reading it already knows quite about about the story universe and therefore I take care not to rehash things that I think the reader will already know so I can keep the flow moving forward. In fiction, where the world is my own, I definitely worry that I will have difficulties conveying the world to the reader - who would know nothing about it. Has anyone who is writing their own novels/fiction - and written fanfiction before - come across that difficulty?

One thing to do is to start practicing right now.  Yeah, we know what it all looks like.  But we don't know what it feels like, smells like... and we have a very limited knowledge of what it all sounds like.  For instance, Denerim should be a LOT noisier.  And every foot fall should echo in the Deep Roads.  Heck, they might even echo in Orzammar.

[Tryynity]

I liked the the links you posted Corker - naming them Limyaael's rants was a great choice on her/his part, omg can he/she rant LOL however those rants had interesting points - once I located them.

The one of most interesting was a blog post re: showing V's telling and another about Omni... something narrative.

Both of those related to the kind of mistakes I fall into with writing.

Just need to address them somehow - Im not sure I can even recognise it when I am doing it.

BTW I am getting around to the concrit thing - I promise I will get to you (especially if you did me the service)

Modifié par Tryynity, 08 mars 2012 - 11:45 .

[The Sarendoctrinator]

AmbraAlhambra wrote...

The way I'm writing my Blight fic, I'm basically writing it with the assumption in mind that anyone reading it already knows quite about about the story universe and therefore I take care not to rehash things that I think the reader will already know so I can keep the flow moving forward. In fiction, where the world is my own, I definitely worry that I will have difficulties conveying the world to the reader - who would know nothing about it. Has anyone who is writing their own novels/fiction - and written fanfiction before - come across that difficulty?

I did a writing exercise of my own years ago for practice in this sort of thing, just describing the environment of a fictional world, and at the same time, introducing the main character and a few rules of the world. It worked out well.

For my current novel, this isn't really an issue. It's completely different. The story takes place in our world, so I have to describe a certain location and all the emotional value that goes along with it, and at a few points, a character's "outsider's view" of our world. So I guess it's the opposite. We know the world, but a lot of the things we're used to seem foreign to the main character. (And I don't want to spoil the story, so I'm being vague here. )

[Corker]

Question on in-game dialogue for y'all:

I'm writing a chapter that includes a Hawke/Meredith throwdown, right at the place 'The Last Straw' would start in canon.  I'm even considering opening the scene with the Meredith/Orsino argument that Hawke walks in on, just before boom-time.

Do I go transcribe the original dialogue?  Paraphrase it?  Substitute something entirely different?  (The whole world is going AU within minutes of this, so a little discontinuity isn't such a big issue.)  Use the original, but elaborate on it?

I sort of hate to parrot the original dialogue, but I also hate to just ignore it.