Writing Schitzophrenia
RwV gets on the important question of character motivation... and Meyer's sanity:
After laughing my ass off, I thought it might be time to return to the age old discussion: how much do you listen to your characters?
In a lot of ways I actually agree with Meyer (and yes, I washed after that statement). In my experience writing is basically character development, setting the developed characters in a specific situation, and then transcribing what happens. I have a really hard time making them act in certain ways; they just sort of... do their own thing, and I write it down. A couple of points to go with this, though:
Thoughts? Do you let your characters make the decisions? How's fanfic versus original fic work for you in that regard? Is Meyer nuts (um, for this specific reason as opposed to others)?
After laughing my ass off, I thought it might be time to return to the age old discussion: how much do you listen to your characters?
In a lot of ways I actually agree with Meyer (and yes, I washed after that statement). In my experience writing is basically character development, setting the developed characters in a specific situation, and then transcribing what happens. I have a really hard time making them act in certain ways; they just sort of... do their own thing, and I write it down. A couple of points to go with this, though:
- I am crazy.
- I write (by and large) fanfiction. That's a lot different than original works, because you're starting with existing characters. That is, you can't make them behave OOC (or shouldn't) because you're not the one who set the character parameters in the first place. If you're doing original fiction, you can make certain actions in character by changing the character to suit the actions. (But you have to be careful, 'cause that's tricky.)
- She seriously argued with Edward? There's just too much id on display here.
- #2 is easier if you're not writing a sequel. So... a little bit of sympathy for Meyer there again, I guess.
- Meyer's right (gonna have to wash again): under the circumstances laid out, given the way the character had developed so far, yeah. Edward was gonna leave. But she had the ability to control the plot circumstances and change the events to have Edward not leave. If you don't like the way your IC characters are behaving, change the plot so that their IC actions take them to a different place.
- Meyer is crazy also.
Thoughts? Do you let your characters make the decisions? How's fanfic versus original fic work for you in that regard? Is Meyer nuts (um, for this specific reason as opposed to others)?