News from the writing front: Sudden inspiration

“Always make your opponents think you know more than you really know.”

News from the writing front: Sudden inspiration

5 August 2008 105 views 3 Comments

Following Chris Baty’s advice from his book “No Plot? No Problem!” I started to carry pen and paper around with me where ever I go (actually, I managed today to actually have both with me) and it has come in handily. As I was walking home sudden inspiration struck me. I almost dropped my jacket, lunch left-over and George Orwell’s “1984” to get to my pen quickly.

Without even giving it conscious thought I had found a plausible way my male main character had become the person he was in my story. All the contradictions I have struggled with over the past two weeks just resolved themselves right before my inner eye, leaving only the wonderful solution I had been looking for all the time. That was absolutely amazing, to watch your own story and characters change on their own.

Until a couple of days ago I didn’t understand what the Great Maker meant when he said:

“I open a window to that world, peer inside, slam the window and write down what I saw as fast as I can. I don’t sit down and try to figure out what they might say, I just listen. I know it sounds vaguely psychotic, but I hear their voices in my head as clearly and distinctly as if they were real people standing in the room beside me.”
Joe Michael Straczynski, Creator of Babylon 5, »The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski«, Vol. 11

Now, I would never be so presumptuous as to say that I had a shred of the talent that JMS posses, but I can understand what he means by that and I couldn’t do that before. So, that’s pretty cool.

Another thing I stumbled upon today during my lunch break was a website that listed questions you should ask your character and yourself about the character to better flesh him or her out. Since I found this very interesting and helpful, I will post the link here.

Link to the questions page

Further down on the page they refer to “The Book of Questions” that can be a real asset, has anyone of you ever heard about that? I checked out Amazon, but I am not sure which book could be meant by that. Any ideas?

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3 Comments »

Jarsto said:

I know exactly what you mean about sudden bursts of insight into characters. It’s happened to me quite a few times now. For that matter I’ve had characters walk up to me and demand their own story line. And I’ve had characters appear out of nowhere and suddenly stand my story on its head. So like you I definitely know where JMS was coming from with that quote.

BTW there’s a great short story on the relationship between author and character out there, written by Lazette Gifford. Author versus Character takes the concept a little further than it goes most of the time, but it’s great fun to read. In fact, I think I’ll go and re-read it right now.

[Reply]

# 6 August 2008 at 10:20 am

Jarsto said:

Another thought just came to me. I’m not usually the type for asking my characters questions, for some reason I get their background better when I write third person biographical pieces on them. But if you do like asking questions there are worse places to start than the opening sequence for Crusade: “Who are you? What do you want? Where are you going? Who do you serve? And who do you trust?”

[Reply]

Starstuff Reply:
August 6th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Thanks for the link in your first comment, I will check that out when I am back home today.

And, to be honest, the B5 questions you mentioned were some of the first on my list Though I am not really sure there is a definite answer to some of them, I regard them more as “checks” along the way. As a character (any I myself, of course) changes, so does the answer to those questions.

As for the principle of asking questions and viewpoint: I am having trouble to find out how to write the story. On the one side I want to give much insight into the emotional side of my main characters, on the other side that results in extremely long text passages. I am surprised how hard it is for me to write interestingly. A twelve year hiatus probably isn’t the best of ideas.

[Reply]

# 6 August 2008 at 11:41 am