The Mirror and The Sword: Chapter 4 (2,207 words)

[hitori_ryuu]

Shyla woke, blind with sweat in her eyes. Despite the rain from the night before, a miserable cloud of hot and moist mist hung in the air, clinging to every leaf and sinking into every pore. She stood and stretched, feeling the stiffness and aches in every single tendon and fiber of her body. Every last inch of her was covered in cuts and bruises

Comments

[mavinmaverick]

I'm glad it was helpful. Like I said, with fantasy there aren't any real rules, so you can do what you want, so long as you're consistent. The main thing to remember is to give each character a voice, and know what that voice sounds like in your head. Make sure the words you put down on paper are really what you believe that character would say in the way they would say it. The hard part with that is often characters will start to sound the same, and you have to watch that. An adult wouldn't necessarily talk like a child. A man and a woman would probably sound/think differently from one another. You could even introduce regional and cultural differences using dialogue word choice.

Basically, developing characters doesn't take a psychology degree, but it helps if you understand people and motivations on some level. Once you really know your characters like this, developing dialogue for them comes more easily. To get a sense of this, it might help to pick up a fantasy novel (YA or otherwise) and read some of the dialogue out loud, giving each character a different voice. If the author did a good job, you'll be able to pick up the differences and project them out loud. That's what you want to end up doing for your reader.

[hitori_ryuu]

Definitely. I know creating and maintaining individual voices for my characters is something I need to work on, same with coherent and believable motivations. I've certainly got a lot to work with here, so as always, I'm thankful for your input and effort. I know it'll really help me in the long run. C: