James118
Ascend the rainbow
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2015
- Messages
- 178
Just as theatrical actors must portray a character on a script, we act as the conduit between the characters in our imaginations and the audience. Indeed, every part of this process is bifurcated, just as actors read our scripts and come up with a way to deliver that concept to the audience: there is the idea itself, then how to deliver it to everyone. The duality even stretches to the characters themselves, just as it does for every person: you have a thought process, and then you choose how to express yourself. The latter is defined by the former.
Before I came to this realisation a few years back, I'd always just use my own reaction in the story, unless the character was notably different from me. But even if the character is very similar to me, in real life, no two people react the same way to anything. Your reaction to a disaster, approach to authority, greeting people of various social standings and levels of familiarity, all of those things you do are different to how I do them. Sure, they may share similarities, that's the axiom of communication and humanity. But there will always be differences, subtle or enormous.
And that strikes me as incredibly daunting. More than creating worlds and cultures, more than believable yet meaningful narratives: how am I to know how this character would react to such a thing, when they don't even exist? Worse, what if the audience (as one reader) identifies with the character more than I do, and expects a different reaction than what I wrote? Their life experience is different to mine. Maybe there are shared themes, but the actual experience, the places, people, sights and sounds, etc. are all different from mine, and therefore shaped a person that isn't me. And that person would do things differently.
Making 'spider diagrams' is probably the best way to tackle such an amorphous subject. I tend to stick to my laptop for all my creative outpourings, though I do have a paper pad (Doctor Who themed, hells yeah) for when I can't use the laptop. Though the hassle of drawing lines and bubbles on a computer would detract from the spontaneity of it all, but yeah, I just bash it out on Google Docs. When it isn't stored in my head. As a visual guy, you'd think I'd make more diagrams. But I don't. Not sure why. Oh well, my method mostly works for me, though two novels into one series and a handful of stand-alones begun, I should probably give it a pop at some point, just to be certain that I'm not making colossal oversights with my characterisations.
Before I came to this realisation a few years back, I'd always just use my own reaction in the story, unless the character was notably different from me. But even if the character is very similar to me, in real life, no two people react the same way to anything. Your reaction to a disaster, approach to authority, greeting people of various social standings and levels of familiarity, all of those things you do are different to how I do them. Sure, they may share similarities, that's the axiom of communication and humanity. But there will always be differences, subtle or enormous.
And that strikes me as incredibly daunting. More than creating worlds and cultures, more than believable yet meaningful narratives: how am I to know how this character would react to such a thing, when they don't even exist? Worse, what if the audience (as one reader) identifies with the character more than I do, and expects a different reaction than what I wrote? Their life experience is different to mine. Maybe there are shared themes, but the actual experience, the places, people, sights and sounds, etc. are all different from mine, and therefore shaped a person that isn't me. And that person would do things differently.
Making 'spider diagrams' is probably the best way to tackle such an amorphous subject. I tend to stick to my laptop for all my creative outpourings, though I do have a paper pad (Doctor Who themed, hells yeah) for when I can't use the laptop. Though the hassle of drawing lines and bubbles on a computer would detract from the spontaneity of it all, but yeah, I just bash it out on Google Docs. When it isn't stored in my head. As a visual guy, you'd think I'd make more diagrams. But I don't. Not sure why. Oh well, my method mostly works for me, though two novels into one series and a handful of stand-alones begun, I should probably give it a pop at some point, just to be certain that I'm not making colossal oversights with my characterisations.