choco
Full Member
Posts: 135
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Post by choco on Jan 21, 2011 14:07:27 GMT -5
I was unsure as to whether or not to write this under authentic character development or start a new thread. Hopefully some of you can use this to your advantage too.
Writing about the happy stuff can be easy, especially when they evoke such positive memories that you could talk (or write) about them forever. I would imagine that portraying your own happy experiences might be hard to write about because you would have to pick a character to use. Or, perhaps, having to write about happy experiences are hard to write about because of the fact that they might feel so personal or there's a worry about making a character too "boring." I've read that some authors have this problem.
The hard stuff, the painful experiences, might be easier too but is that necessarily a good thing? Can it hurt the development of the character? Is it easier or harder? Have any of you found that, especially if you've read some rules of writing (whether through a formal book or a favorite author), this might be advised against this? Personally, I think that it might be quite interesting to at least use some varied version of your own experience. But how much is too much?
If you can't tell, I'm at this point. I don't know how soon I would publish a post like that but it's definitely something that I've flirted with and have been wondering about doing at some point. So what have all done when dealing with this? Did you just let it flow naturally and use your experiences as necessary?
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Post by sb on Jan 21, 2011 14:35:49 GMT -5
I don't how to write without drawing on personal experience because, well, you have to own some kind of understanding of the world and art is a way of expressing it. Why would you write if you didn't have something to say about how you felt, how you filter what you've experienced and how you interpret it? Creating a character and making her 'you' is a different thing, and I don't think the bad or the good makes a difference. If I wanted to write an autobiography, I would write one. I don't. I make a careful and deliberate effort to avoid making any characters 'me'.
And I hate saying anything about writing because I haven't read books on writing and I don't know what I'm talking about.
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Post by laura on Jan 21, 2011 15:01:49 GMT -5
Beth, if you've read fiction at all, then you know what you're talking about. I own plenty of books on writing, but I rarely read any of them, lol! ;D
Choco, I think every single one of my characters has some little piece of me, or one of my experiences, in them. Even Max? lol! I'm sure, if I dug deep enough, then yes, even Max. We can really only understand the world as we see it through our own eyes. If we're lucky, we can add to that understanding the world through the eyes of people we've known closely - through empathy.
"Can it hurt the development of the character?"
Yes, it can, if you forget that she isn't *actually* you. She (or he) might be like you in one or more aspects. But in other aspects, she is not like you, and those differences could end up mattering in a big way.
So I think it's a good thing to give our characters personalities and experiences close to what we know in our lives - but just remember to let the character evolve genuinely, with no judgments or strings tied to yourself, and then what you'll have is an organic human-like character, with her own genuine life that stands apart from the author.
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Post by qui on Jan 24, 2011 10:42:37 GMT -5
I personally incorporate a small amount of myself and my experiences in my stories. I like to focus on making my characters and their lives as real as possible and in that, I must cover the good, the bad, and the very ugly sides of life. To avoid getting too personal, I switch some things up. Have them go through the experience but change the outcome. Change the way they handle it or if they are going through it alone.
Like you said, it is easy to write about happy experiences. In my eyes, it is just as easy to write about those not so pleasant ones as well. If you're anything like me, you may have to stop and get yourself together and then go back to writing but I feel it is all worth it.
At the same time, I agree that you should write what you're comfortable with and what you know.
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Post by thelunarfox on Jan 24, 2011 11:52:37 GMT -5
I always draw on personal experience even with my stuff, and my stuff is set on a completely different world. But it doesn't mean that my characters will go through the exact same things I did. Just that I'll remember how an experience made me feel, and I'll draw from that feeling rather than the experience itself.
I will also use RL details to flesh out something. Like I was reading this story once that someone wrote for fun, and she had inserted this detail about a cup in the shape of a cactus the characters had picked up on a trip to Vegas. It was a very solid detail, and I thought she was so clever for adding that in. (It doesn't sound clever the way I write it, but she really gave it some breath and I can't remember how.) It turned out the reason her detail was so strong was because it had actually happened to her and some friends. There was a real cup they'd happened along and so she'd used her memory of finding it with friends and put it into the story, and it worked.
So it's really all about deciding how much to use and when, and like Drew says, doing what makes you comfortable.
Also, forgot to add, SB, it's okay- I've never read a book on writing either but Writing Down the Bones, and that's not really about technique. I still add in my two cents, lol.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 24, 2011 20:31:54 GMT -5
Beth, you don't need writing books, omg. Writing isn't from a book. It's from your soul. It's from the world's soul, the universe's soul, the soul of all that is. Yeah, trying to finish this stupid tea so I can write for real but look at my fingers flying. Words be coming through tonight!!! I use personal experience all the time. That's what experience is for. To be used. Like the conversation in 10.07 about eating - I've had that conversation many times IRL. With me doing both the asking and the answering and I've answered both "parmesan parmesan" and "the shrivelled hearts of my enemies". John doesn't play along, alas. And Andrew's cheer about pink in my first legacy - it was the cheer about green, the dorm color, one year at TIP. The bit about using your mouth for a force against goodness in my first legacy - taken straight from my second grade journal. The Nerds joke in 10.05 - I came up with it back at UNC when John and I first started dating and we were looking at the candy in the campus store and I pointed out the Nerds and said "It's unnatural to eat your own kind", quoting a M&M commercial that came on before movies then. And I totally draw on all of my life - like Jason and Lilith at the Goth house, where Lilith is going crazy and Jason is being supportive. Freaking story of my late teens/early 20s man, as John will tell you. I live to write and write to live, and I pour my soul and my life and my heart and my blood out here at this keyboard, because that is what it is for!! Tea done. Off to write Seth, mofuckas.
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dinuriel
Full Member
Torturing characters? Me? Nooo...
Posts: 374
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Post by dinuriel on Jan 24, 2011 20:42:22 GMT -5
I actually don't draw much on my own experiences. Feelings, perhaps, as well as physical actions, but actual experiences? Almost never. Frankly, my life is terribly uneventful and while in some respects I suppose I should be grateful for that, it doesn't exactly work with the idea of "write what you know" unless I decide some day that I want to write dull little snippets of ho-hum existence. Even with things I have experienced, I try to write them differently--my characters may be little aspects of me to some extent, but they're certainly not the whole me and nothing but me.
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Post by scrim256 on Mar 13, 2011 6:42:21 GMT -5
I always try to incorporate little of myself to each characters I made. There was never a one character that is entirely me. I try to mix a lot of inspiration in one character but also consider consistency of his personality, etc. In contrast some characters I made was pertaining to one specific person in my life that is not me. Usually they have a great impact in my life and they play the role in a situation that I also based in my personal experience. Just like other sometimes I chsnged the outcome of this situation which is sometimes morally accepted or the reverse. In RARE cases I based one story from my experience but was presented in much different view but will present a parallel "meat" to how i want the reader feel or thought about it.
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Post by rad on Mar 13, 2011 7:36:20 GMT -5
There's a lot more of this in Taken than I first realised or first planned - their situations are so alien to mine in many ways, but a lot of different characters share emotions and thoughts I've had at one time or another - I guess sometimes you have to know enough about how something feels to write it?
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Post by jennifer on Mar 15, 2011 6:00:38 GMT -5
All my characters do definitely have a little bit of me in them. I'm mean I created these characters so of course they're going to. The experiences they've had though are more fiction than anything. I look to books or movies for interesting experiences. Sometimes though if something triggers a memory of mine and it made me feel a certain way then I will draw from that feeling too. A bit like what Luna said. It does help you to get inside your characters head and really think how they would feel, except it's really kind of how you felt, but just written differently. Gosh does that even make sense?
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