fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2763 ]

[ SECRET POST #2763 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2763 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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I tend to see the opposite. People talk about how their characters just come to them fully-formed and claim that my way of building them from the bottom up is mechanical and dull.

When it comes to writing advice in general, I hate how it's assumed that every single writer is too wordy in their first drafts. There's advice that says to cut 10% or something like that. But some people, like me, tend to be too sparse in their first draft. I have to go through and add description to make things less confusing for anyone who doesn't live in my head.

Ahh. I can understand not getting a certain way of building characters, but I wouldn't say another way is dull unless I meant "dull for me" *shrug*. But eh

I'm somewhere in between. I start with an idea of the character and the more I work with them the more they are built until they start becoming an actual 3-D character to me. Sometimes they even do a total one eighty and other times understanding them more will change something I had planned for them.

Yeah....that sounds stupid. You can't assume every writer does things the same. when I was writing my work I would sometimes be too descriptive and other times be too simple.

That's pretty much how I go about it too. They start out completely in my control but then as I'm writing I start to understand them better and certain plot points and bits of characterization I had planned because pretty much impossible because I realize it would be out of character. But some people act like I'm trying to fulfill some kind of quota just because I consciously say at the beginning "let's make her bisexual" along with a bunch of other starting points, and they act like my writing will automatically be stale and preachy because of that.

That sounds about right.

But some people act like I'm trying to fulfill some kind of quota just because I consciously say at the beginning "let's make her bisexual"

I don't see any issue with that. I only start to suspect that the person is being preachy when they make their whole identity about it not just going "I want my character to be this" . I know that I have made quite a few characters on the autistic spectrum because I wanted to write diverse autistic characters. I also remember that when I started planning the main cast -seven kids- for my wizard school , the first thing I thought was "there's no reason all seven of these kids need to be white". But knowing that was only a starting point for their entire character.

certain plot points and bits of characterization I had planned because pretty much impossible because I realize it would be out of character.

I remember for my first developed work , I originally planned what would happen in the whole series, but recently I ended up having to redo it all because after character growth half of it was either OOC or ideas that, while being appealing to a more immature me , now seemed really dumb. Or sometimes I had unwittingly used really unappealing tropes that I didn't want to invoke. (I know their was one minor character whose conflict at one point with friends of his came off really Nice Guy-ish. I zapped that right away, and as of recently since I changed his orientation (for other reasons) , he wouldn't even be attracted to that character at all anymore)

For me, half the fun is developing all the characters, so having characters come to me full formed, it would kind of bore me.

People talk about how their characters just come to them fully-formed and claim that my way of building them from the bottom up is mechanical and dull.

Out of curiosity, do they change as you go? I don't necessarily mean in the sense of internal character development, but in the sense that your conception of them changes. Do you build the character to form first, and then set the story in motion, or do you start with a vaguer idea and see how the character and the plot change each other once you get going?

I ask because I'm primarily the latter. I start out with a situation I want to see, pick out a few character roles/types to fill the starter plot, and then start filling things in as I go. Sometimes (or even most of the time), this results in characters wildly diverging from their initial conception, disappearing, being divided into multiple characters, or randomly switching roles with other characters. I made one character up on the spot a third of the way into the story to fill a suddenly apparent gap in the cast, and they subsequently ended up in control of huge swathes of the plot and retroactively responsible for several key events, while also changing gender twice and ending up in one of the sole romantic plots in the story.

I'm always slightly confused when people talk about characters 'springing fully formed' versus characters being systematically built, because I don't think I'm either? The characters evolve too wildly to be fully formed, but I'm not exactly building them either so much as throwing vague roles into the plot and seeing what they end up as.

I feel like I take a slightly more definite role in the process than you but mostly we seem to be on the same page. They definitely change and surprise me sometimes, but it tends to be the subtler aspects of their personality that changes most. The basic facts about them tend to stay the same.

Ah. I think part of the reason I might have more basic divergence is because I don't usually have an actual physical concept of my characters until fairly late in the game? It's their roles they're defined as primarily, while things like names, gender, race and occasionally species are filled in later down the line. Personalities actually usually stick harder than other attributes, although they take on different facades and contexts once the other details come in.

I actually tend to retroactively fill in massive world-building details based on what the world would need to do to allow a character of a late-decided race/gender/species to fill the role I've had them in from the beginning. In one case, that completely opened up an entire plot, because a law change in the backstory to delineate a chosen heir rather than a patrilineal blood heir (to allow a female warlord to take her father's lordship instead of her less powerful/sane brothers) allowed me to grant a kingship to an adopted rather than blood heir as well, which gave me a lot more openings during the succession crisis and meant I could have one completely separate (male) character openly take the regency rather than having to try and work behind the scenes. None of this was even remotely in my head when I put the law switch in the backstory, that was all purely so I could establish a precedent for several of the borderlords, and also establish that particular lordship as having an alarming amount of influence over the crown.

As another interesting effect, it also rendered one pair of characters' tragic backstory as a completely military/political issue rather than an issue of heredity, which did cause some interesting changes in their personalities and the longterm nature of their goals.

As I said, this is probably the main reason things shift so wildly in my stories. Single changes tend to snowball, sometimes massively, and mostly because I don't generally physically imagine my characters until relatively late in the game.

That's interesting. We seem to be exact opposites. I do discover some of the world-building along the way but I also tend to work on that in the beginning along with the things like gender and race that you said tend to come later for you. I like to figure out in the beginning how patriarchal the society is (if at all) and how isolated or multicultural it is and things like that because it will influence the character differently depending on the other choices I've made about their background.

I do tend to draw up some broadstrokes worldbuilding first. For example, in the story I mentioned, while gender was a late gamechanger, species was fixed almost immediately because it defined a massive section of the overall political situation, which was what was driving the intial starter plot. I don't think any character in it changed species (there are two dominant ones, with political subdivisions within them) anywhere along the line. The starter plot and its requirements tend to drive most character considerations, although once I've started defining characters more, the plot itself also starts shifting.

It ends up that I usually don't start the actual writing phase until I've gone through about four or five divergent iterations of the story, and in some cases the story diverged enough that I've gotten two completely different stories out of the same starter plot as a result of throwing different characters into it.

I sometimes wonder if any two writers ever write the same way, or if it's all just a myth and everyone muddles along at their own pace/in their own style regardless.

I tend to think we're all different and that's a wonderful thing. I'm always fascinated by accounts of how other writers do it.

Personally I tend to dive right in to the writing part once I have the basics down and figure things out as I go rather than doing the different iterations before writing that you do. I do this though: and in some cases the story diverged enough that I've gotten two completely different stories out of the same starter plot as a result of throwing different characters into it. That's always fun.

"But some people, like me, tend to be too sparse in their first draft. I have to go through and add description to make things less confusing for anyone who doesn't live in my head."

This. My first draft is kind of like an outline or a screenplay, which I then flesh-out.

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