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Uther Pendragon
Note:
The original version of this post can be found at Well, I read the question and something like eight answers. I hope you have done something similar, 'cause I'm not going to be quoting earlier posts. The first thing to know is that "There are nine and sixty ways of composing tribal lays, and Every Single One Of Them Is Right." (To quote Kipling) Not, one might add, every single one of them is right for *you*. 1 So, when you read here: "This is how I do a story," that means that it is possible to do stories that way. It doesn't mean that it is the only, or the best, way. It doesn't mean that it is the way for you. But, if you don't like the method that you are using, this method is available. 2 And these methods work for the particular person because of how he *is*. I use a method quite close to those of Sigerson and of Slot. I don't write down my character descriptions. (And, if you think that Uther's characters are insipid, stop here. Why do you care what I do, if you don't think it works?) I certainly don't work them out before hand. I start with a scene, the first scene. Sometimes, I have something towards which I'm working; but I have that in my *mind*, I usually start writing with the first scene anyway. I get the voices of my characters well in my mind. Then I let them play out the scene and go from there. *BUT* When I do that, those characters develop consistently and in rich interactions. The first sentence in the first story that I posted to ASS was the thought of a character that his new bride was spending too much time in the bathroom. And, without writing them down, I can remember how my characters interact. With Bob passionately poised at her portal, Jeanette is tensed under him. Needing something to distract her, he tells her that she forgot to pack her hiking boots. That determined that their honeymoon would be spent hiking. Etc. etc. What I *don't* remember is my characters physical descriptions (beyond the minimal) and often their *NAMES*. Indeed, I often write down the names on the top of the first page. When I need another character, I make up another name and put it up there. (I find the advice that you "Develop Characters first," puzzling. A story is the interaction of characters; how do you develop characters independent of the interaction? Sure, in a crime story in which you see Smith planning to rob the bank and Jones newly appointed to the head of the bank-robbery squad of the police, they develop independently. But in most of our stories, the characters either met long before the story begins or meet on the first page.) So, Uther writes some things down and not others. But he writes down the parts that slip out of *his* head, not the parts that every author should keep in a notebook. 3 Also, the *kind* of story influences the way we write. (Or, alternatively, the way we write determines the kind of story we can write.) I had my method of writing down pat, even putting it in some posts as "character-centered writing." Then I tried to do Science fiction that way. It was a total disaster. The problem was that starting from the beginning and working straight through doesn't convey the background in the right spots. (I should explain that I have a very narrow meaning of "SF." If you can describe the background by pointing to another story, it ain't what *I* mean by SF writing.) Some books recommend that you sketch out the important places (whether house plans or street plans) of your story. I didn't have to do that; I had a clear picture of the houses in which my stories take place. Then I got to "Heart Ball." I realized that my clear picture was the clear picture of one houseplan. (Apartments are different, and I'll swear that I've never lived in that house.) Anyway, I noticed that Shannon, Steve, and every kid for whom Shannon babysat, ALL lived in identical houses. I went back and changed that. It doesn't matter much that the senior Brennans and Jim Madison of "Trust" live in almost identical houses. (Not quite identical, the Brennans have a mansard roof and a much larger kitchen.) But when all the scenes in a single novel play out in a large number of identical houses, that's a problem. So I changed them. Katie talks about her outlines, but she writes a particular kind of story. She writes so tightly within a subgenre that the highest levels of the outline are almost given by the subgenre. A character-centerd story fights against an outline. Every once in a while, the character goes off in some other direction. That scraps the outline. 4 OTOH, character-centered stories require a willingness to take an extensive rewrite if necessary. In my tie story, "Moving Experience," started from the woman's perspective. I soon realized that I was calling for Mary to surprise John with a strip tease. Surprises are best seen from the perspective of the person being surprised; so I rewrote the firs quarter of the story -- all I had thus far -- from a POV that alternated between the man and the woman.
Uther Pendragon
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