30 Days of Writing Meme - Day 27 + INCEPTION
27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
This is one of those things that's a yes and no, sort of sometimes, depends on how they generated and what I need to establish for the reader type of answers.
Original characters usually come to me, in many ways, fully formed. Sometimes there's information I need to discern, but I can see them in my head pretty clearly. For Strays, one character in particular, in the opening scene (yeah, those of you who read it, I mean the dumpster scene) I saw utterly perfectly. Per-fect-ly. From his hair color to his eye color to the shape of his goddamn hands. In the case of steampunk, I had a dream, and literally I woke up with my muse screaming in my ear "write them before you lose them!" Their clothes weren't perfect, sure, I didn't know it was steampunk yet. But I a couple of the characters are... cast in my head, so to speak. I couldn't leave the details the same or it wouldn't diverge clearly enough as who they are versus who they were cast as, and that's not fair to anyone.
When it comes to fanfiction, there's a lot of the appearance already built in. I don't need to establish what Eliot or Hatter or anyone else looks like... Unless there's something different. And I do love me a good AU. The Firefly/RPS or steampunk aus (either Leverage or RPS) are established as something apart by two things - descriptions and tone in the writing. Goggles, masks, gloves, corsets... these things, and their combination, do as much to illustrate who these characters are in this new place just as much as throwing them in an airship.
As for how I design looks... Physical looks, biologically speaking, are how the characters come to me, unless I need to hard tweak something as they clarify themselves. When I started generating my steampunk au's, I went on a binge of steampunk culture online. I've got a window full of nothing but Etsy tabs of steampunk clothes and jewelry and accessories that evoke a sense of personality and environment. Google images was a boon as well - it's how I found the sort of standard mode of dress for Eliot and Parker when they're on Leverage and not necessarily on a job. It's always that sort of thing - building up an internal catalog of concepts.
But on the flipside of that I don't do a lot of hyper description unless it's important or I'm really trying to establish something. I'll talk about Parker's corset but you may not know about the material or if it uses whale bone, even if I know it in my head. Or, say, goth!Chris - he's got chipped black nail polish on most of the time, but I don't always talk about it. It's something that changes the landscape of imagining what's happening, but I don't want to hit you over the head with it. Sometimes I wonder if I don't do enough...
... and... I'm totally babbling now.
It's late. Way too late for me to try and write a review of Inception. But I'll say here what I said in Twitter.
Go see it.
No. Really.
It's a gorgeous blend of heist movie and speculative fiction (and yes, I say this specifically, because it's not simple sci-fi). It's beautiful and well wrought, well written and well cast. It's elegant and well timed and pulls you through an amazing landscape.
It's a pinnacle of the genre. I don't think it remakes the genre but I think it's everything the genre wants it to be, what it needs to be. And the ending, without giving anything away, is goddamn lyrical. To do it any other way would be lesser than it is.
So yes. Go see it.
And if that's not enough... David never wants to see a movie more than once in theaters, for a number of reasons. He wants to see this in theaters again.
I haven't walked out of a movie that satisfied, that thrilled, that... I don't know. Excited? In a long, long time. Maybe never.
This is one of those things that's a yes and no, sort of sometimes, depends on how they generated and what I need to establish for the reader type of answers.
Original characters usually come to me, in many ways, fully formed. Sometimes there's information I need to discern, but I can see them in my head pretty clearly. For Strays, one character in particular, in the opening scene (yeah, those of you who read it, I mean the dumpster scene) I saw utterly perfectly. Per-fect-ly. From his hair color to his eye color to the shape of his goddamn hands. In the case of steampunk, I had a dream, and literally I woke up with my muse screaming in my ear "write them before you lose them!" Their clothes weren't perfect, sure, I didn't know it was steampunk yet. But I a couple of the characters are... cast in my head, so to speak. I couldn't leave the details the same or it wouldn't diverge clearly enough as who they are versus who they were cast as, and that's not fair to anyone.
When it comes to fanfiction, there's a lot of the appearance already built in. I don't need to establish what Eliot or Hatter or anyone else looks like... Unless there's something different. And I do love me a good AU. The Firefly/RPS or steampunk aus (either Leverage or RPS) are established as something apart by two things - descriptions and tone in the writing. Goggles, masks, gloves, corsets... these things, and their combination, do as much to illustrate who these characters are in this new place just as much as throwing them in an airship.
As for how I design looks... Physical looks, biologically speaking, are how the characters come to me, unless I need to hard tweak something as they clarify themselves. When I started generating my steampunk au's, I went on a binge of steampunk culture online. I've got a window full of nothing but Etsy tabs of steampunk clothes and jewelry and accessories that evoke a sense of personality and environment. Google images was a boon as well - it's how I found the sort of standard mode of dress for Eliot and Parker when they're on Leverage and not necessarily on a job. It's always that sort of thing - building up an internal catalog of concepts.
But on the flipside of that I don't do a lot of hyper description unless it's important or I'm really trying to establish something. I'll talk about Parker's corset but you may not know about the material or if it uses whale bone, even if I know it in my head. Or, say, goth!Chris - he's got chipped black nail polish on most of the time, but I don't always talk about it. It's something that changes the landscape of imagining what's happening, but I don't want to hit you over the head with it. Sometimes I wonder if I don't do enough...
... and... I'm totally babbling now.
It's late. Way too late for me to try and write a review of Inception. But I'll say here what I said in Twitter.
Go see it.
No. Really.
It's a gorgeous blend of heist movie and speculative fiction (and yes, I say this specifically, because it's not simple sci-fi). It's beautiful and well wrought, well written and well cast. It's elegant and well timed and pulls you through an amazing landscape.
It's a pinnacle of the genre. I don't think it remakes the genre but I think it's everything the genre wants it to be, what it needs to be. And the ending, without giving anything away, is goddamn lyrical. To do it any other way would be lesser than it is.
So yes. Go see it.
And if that's not enough... David never wants to see a movie more than once in theaters, for a number of reasons. He wants to see this in theaters again.
I haven't walked out of a movie that satisfied, that thrilled, that... I don't know. Excited? In a long, long time. Maybe never.