On Writing
Do you ever have an idea for a fic where, maybe after a bit of searching, when you hit on it you just grin and nod to yourself and think, perfect? I love that feeling. I've missed that feeling this November and beginning of December, since school and especially finals took over my life. Yesterday I had that feeling twice with my Glee fic that
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What you're saying about the filter or lack thereof really strikes me. The metaphor I was tempted to use was whether characters have masks. I don't know if I'm going to phrase this right, but I think it says a lot about which direction one writes a character from, in to out or out to in, if you start with what's going on in their head to figure out what they'd say or if you start with what they say to figure out what's going on in their head. Or like the difference between method acting and classical acting. I think I usually use the out-to-in/classical acting approach, but thinking about it in that way might be useful to get inside certain characters with very thick masks/filters.
The observy-ness thing...I've often wondered why I do that so much. One aspect that I'm conscious of is that it's so hard to get across what's really going on when the character undergoing emotional turmoil is also your eyes. If I want a view that's not utterly skewed--and usually skewed so much that those eyes can't see what's going on with any other character, either--I'd better use a character with a bit of distance from the conflict. Sometimes I fear that it's me, though, that I just like telling other people's stories more than my own. That's what fiction is all about, but...I don't know. That thought's not fully formed, but it's late and I can't come up with anything more precise.
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It is so hard to write people with thick masks/filters! I wrote Kendra/Lee once and it was so hard! I had difficulty writing Lee at the time and Kendra! Talk about a thick filter! I had to write it from Lee's POV but it took me months to write that little fic. And yes, I wrote about Kendra through Lee's observations of her and things she said. It was still skewed, though. Lee wasn't completely objective about her.
Don't even get me started on Baltar. I knew nothing about him, and Millari loved him and helped me a lot with getting to know him. I call her my Gaius-wiki. :-) Gaius has such a lack of self-awareness. He honestly believes the things he tells himself, true or not. It was so interesting to write him in my last fic because it's almost like the reader has an understanding of him, that he doesn't have quite have himself. And that innocent Felix, whose POV the fic is from doesn't have, either.
For me, I like to get right into the characters head. This is why I love watching and writing Kara Thrace. She's a character so unlike me that I get to live vicariously through her by watching her say and do things on screen that I never would. I like to get right inside the character's skin if I can. But that says a lot about me in RL too. I want these authentic experiences in life where I'm in the driver's seat and not in the background. This doesn't always happen because again, I'm not Kara Thrace. But I do seek how to be right inside a thing. It's those times that I feel really alive. :-)
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