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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
25 posts |
Sep-17-13, 08:23 PM (EST) |
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"A Question About Characters"
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Apologies for putting another writing topic on the pile, but something I remembered from reading the other threads: Has anyone else had a character just take control and run away with the story? I ask because over the course of my last project, I had two different characters promote themselves from "window dressing" to "I now own a major part of this chapter, worship me!". Does this happen for anyone else, or should I be skipping the writers' workshop in favor of the shrink's office? "It is a pink slip, hence why it is pink." |
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Mercutio
Member since May-25-13
322 posts |
Sep-17-13, 08:53 PM (EST) |
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2. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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Honestly? This is so common that it is weirder for it to NOT happen. -Merc Keep Rat "The SPCA has several one-sheets on preventing heartworms and using pets to grow small replacement organs." |
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Peter Eng
Charter Member
927 posts |
Sep-18-13, 03:47 AM (EST) |
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5. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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> >Has anyone else had a character just take control and run away with >the story? I ask because over the course of my last project, I had two >different characters promote themselves from "window dressing" to "I >now own a major part of this chapter, worship me!". Does this happen >for anyone else, or should I be skipping the writers' workshop in >favor of the shrink's office? >Professional writers speak of this. You're not only not alone, you're in some pretty good company. Personally, I like reading books by writers who have this happen to them; generally, it ends up making better stories. Peter Eng -- Insert humorous comment here. |
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BobSchroeck
Charter Member
1942 posts |
Sep-18-13, 08:56 AM (EST) |
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6. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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>Has anyone else had a character just take control and run away with >the story? Oh, dear god, yes. When I first started laying out Drunkard's Walk II (set in Bubblegum Crisis) way back in 1997, Lisa Vanette was almost an afterthought, thrown in for continuity's sake. Somewhere along the line she became the number two point of view character for the whole story, my lead character's next-door neighbor, and the only person who was hip deep both in his adventures and in the Knight Sabers' activities. And then I wrote a silly scene, completely without context, where she temporarily gets telekinetic powers and uses them to simulate being a Sailor Senshi, and deciding to actually use that ended up adding a whole 'nother level to her personality, not to mention being directly responsible for turning one of my villains into a sympathetic character who actually did the heroic thing at the end... ...and also spawned two sequels written by other people plus an entire parallel series of my own which itself already has had multiple payoffs. Oh, dear god do I know about characters running wild. -- Bob ------------------- My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite. |
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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
70 posts |
Sep-18-13, 01:52 PM (EST) |
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7. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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All the freakin' time. More to the point, they actively change aspects of their characterization behind my back, so when I go to reference how they'd respond in a given situation, suddenly they're acting differently than I thought they would. This can occasionally be somewhat disconcerting when, say, the hard-boiled detective's sassy secretary decides that she wants to drive an AMC Gremlin because it's "ironic"--and now I've got a fantastically ugly car in the story--or when the villain of the piece decides that he wants a much more hands-off approach to management, so there's really no need for him to appear in a scene at all, thus ruining a perfect dialogue setup. -- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea |
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JeanneHedge
Charter Member
780 posts |
Sep-18-13, 05:36 PM (EST) |
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8. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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LAST EDITED ON Sep-18-13 AT 05:37 PM (EDT) I know I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall comments on this board about the original plan for the Symphony calling for Utena to be, if not a 1-shot character (part of a joke about Kate's roommates at WPI), then a character that was very much in the background. Also IIRC, didn't Rina Dragonaar come on stage and refuse to leave?Jeanne |
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Mercutio
Member since May-25-13
322 posts |
Sep-18-13, 07:32 PM (EST) |
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9. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #8
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You know, I've heard the thing about Rina before, and from my perspective if she 'took over' she must have been basically a faceless non-entity before, as I've never found her all that overwhelming. She was part of that one heavily Amanda/Devlin arc back in the day, and then after that tended to only show up with... Amanda and Devlin. She's pretty cool but as a reader I've never found her all that center-stagey. Strictly supporting cast. Heck, almost supporting cast TO supporting cast. -Merc Keep Rat "Stay tuned now for an hour of dead air, with the occasional hiss and crackle." |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13025 posts |
Sep-18-13, 08:42 PM (EST) |
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10. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #8
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>I know I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall comments >on this board about the original plan for the Symphony calling for >Utena to be, if not a 1-shot character (part of a joke about Kate's >roommates at WPI), then a character that was very much in the >background.That was indeed the plan, though I hasten to stress that it was only the plan before actual construction began. You know the old saying about battle plans surviving contact with the enemy? :) >Also IIRC, didn't Rina Dragonaar come on stage and refuse >to leave? Also basically true, though that's a slightly different situation. Rina wasn't a secondary character who suddenly and violently became primary, she's a character who was intended to be incidental - just somebody who was there to direct someone else from one place to another - and instead she developed into a solid supporting castmember. She didn't elbow anybody else in the eye to get there. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13025 posts |
Sep-22-13, 12:13 PM (EST) |
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21. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #11
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LAST EDITED ON Sep-22-13 AT 12:14 PM (EDT) >>That was indeed the plan, though I hasten to stress that it was >>only the plan before actual construction began. You know the >>old saying about battle plans surviving contact with the enemy? :) > >I seem to recall you telling me in email some ten years ago that the >Kate-Juri relationship was also something that the characters went >ahead and did on their own without your involvement beyond just typing >it down. Yes, quite. I find this often happens with characters' relationships, in particular, more so than with, say, events, career choices, that kind of thing. I query them as to what they want to be when they grow up and they shrug and leave it up to me, but for the really personal stuff, they want to drive. And that's fine... usually... except when it creates awkwardness, but then, that's true to life, so I shouldn't complain about it too much. I should've come up with a much more reasoned and serious answer than "HA" to the original post, and I apologize for that. It's just that it's happened to me so many times in the past - for that matter it is, I fear, in the process of happening to me right now - that I could come up with nothing beyond a Hollow Bark of Laughter when confronted so open-facedly with the question. :) Well, I say "fear", but really, it's one of the best parts of being a writer, to me, when stuff is just living. But at the same time it's a little like being the UFO driving instructor in that one episode of Robot Chicken. "Dammit, no! Not that one! That's the CLAW! You DON'T NEED the CLAW!" Complex feels, as the kids probably don't say these days. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Terminus Est
Member since Nov-4-04
237 posts |
Sep-19-13, 01:28 PM (EST) |
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12. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #0
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I dunno about running away with the story (largely because I haven't actively written anything in a while that wasn't RP), but I've got a character in my headspace that absolutely refuses to leave, no matter what I threaten him with. Unfortunately he's a canon character from the Castlevania game that some people wish didn't exist (Lament of Innocence, namely Joachim Armster), so I can't just toss him wholesale into my novel-in-progress and see what happens, though I've been toying with an adaptation of the core concept to fit the setting (and, y'know, avoid lawsuits). I know I'm outing myself as a bigger-than-average-even-here geek by admitting to online RP, but has anyone else here ever had that problem? |
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Mercutio
Member since May-25-13
322 posts |
Sep-19-13, 08:30 PM (EST) |
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14. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #13
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>All's well and >good there, but she's about a swap of weapon proficiency feats away >from one of the girls from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which is giving >me no small amount of heartburn. That's good, though! The girls from Madoka Magica were good characters. You should steal them in the night, file off their serial numbers, slap on a new coat of paint, and then see where they take you. The more art you consume, in general, the less original your own production of art is going to seem to you, because you'll see pieces of it everywhere and will, in fact, rip it off without even realizing you're doing so. And that's okay. Nobody is original. -Merc Keep Rat "Wheat and wheat by-products: by Americans, for Americans, in Americans, watching Americans."
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BobSchroeck
Charter Member
1942 posts |
Sep-20-13, 09:16 AM (EST) |
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16. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #14
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>The more art you consume, in general, the less original your own >production of art is going to seem to you, because you'll see pieces >of it everywhere and will, in fact, rip it off without even realizing >you're doing so. This is one reason why TVTropes.org is dangerous to the beginning writer; if you start paying too much attention to the building blocks of fiction, you start developing the erroneous impression that you cannot be original, because you're only recycling stuff that other people have used for millennia. This is pure bullshit; it's like being a chemist and thinking you can't create a brand-new compound or synthetic because the hundred-and-someteen elements have been used in so many other substances already. It is never the building blocks that are original. It is what you combine them into that is. -- Bob ------------------- My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite. |
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Terminus Est
Member since Nov-4-04
237 posts |
Sep-21-13, 04:20 AM (EST) |
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20. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #18
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I'm also fond of Mai-HiME (and quite a few other things, but let's not get into the fact that I'm far too invested in anime here), and the ending did feel a bit cadged. Then again, I've always been a fan of the idea that the hero is supposed to triumph and somehow Make Things Work Out, so I didn't -hate- it. Sword Art Online is, I feel, one that got the equation just about perfectly right. First 13 episodes, there's no backsies - if a character dies, they're gone, and they're not shy about killing off someone that's likely to have grown on you. And then there's the later half of the series, which... well. Let's just say, you don't want to watch episodes 15, 23, or 24 if you're easily triggered or squeamish. They handle the ending really well in that one (both of them, actually), though, so it's worth the suffering in my (admittedly not-easily-triggered) opinion. |
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pjmoyer
Charter Member
1160 posts |
Sep-19-13, 08:37 PM (EST) |
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15. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #12
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>I dunno about running away with the story (largely because I haven't >actively written anything in a while that wasn't RP), but I've got a >character in my headspace that absolutely refuses to leave, no matter >what I threaten him with. >I know I'm outing myself as a bigger-than-average-even-here geek by >admitting to online RP, but has anyone else here ever had that >problem? My online writing and RP characters are long-term residents in my head. I had to build a character lounge for the lot of them, and every few years I need to install an addition. I should be due for another upgrade in less than a year, though at least at this point, Korra will be available to help with the foundation laying. (Nobody wants to live in a reinforced igloo, though, so she can't help there.). --- Philip
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Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" | |
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The Traitor
Member since Feb-24-09
614 posts |
Sep-25-13, 04:56 AM (EST) |
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24. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #23
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Agreed. Of course, it's easier for me, because I write crackfics that are, my more charitable readers assert, dumb as a box of hair, but you still get people going "No, Hermione wouldn't act like that, she'd use magic and not stomp them with her gigantic clockwork mecha!" Then I point them to the second half of that sentence, and they feel silly. --- "She's old and lame and barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory The phrase of the day is "just go with it"! Can you say "just go with it"? Very good! |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13025 posts |
Sep-25-13, 06:22 PM (EST) |
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26. "RE: A Question About Characters"
In response to message #25
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>I once received a complaint that the way I presented a scene differed >from how it originally happened in canon, to which I wanted to reply, >"Isn't that the point?!" In situations like that, I often have recourse to one of my favorite film-and-television lines: Denis Lawson as Dreadnought Foster in Hornblower: The Fire Ships, bellowing to a fellow officer who has accused him of making an insulting remark, "I congratulate you on your perspicacity, sir!" --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13025 posts |
Dec-12-13, 12:33 PM (EST) |
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30. "RE: A Simple Request"
In response to message #29
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>I suppose I could arrange for somebody to beat you to death. Assuming >that you're using the definition of "beat" that is used in "I beat him >at poker." Man. Imagine being beaten at a game so badly you die. That's some serious losing. I'm reminded of that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide about shame still being a terminal condition in some parts of the galaxy. Then again, I suppose for some values, Wild Bill Hickok was beaten to death at poker. Or actually, he beat the other guy. To his own death. Hmm, no, that metaphor doesn't work at all. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
25 posts |
Dec-12-13, 02:05 PM (EST) |
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31. "RE: A Simple Request"
In response to message #30
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To paraphrase a set of lines from Black Dragon: "He was found floating in the river with his neck snapped. I thought you said he died of natural causes!" "He crossed the Yakuza. Around here, that is natural causes."In re: the originating circumstances of this subthread, there is definitely something in the wires that leads internet critics to be more belligerent with authors. A notable case is in the Horus Heresy series of novels, where a commentator told one of the main authors to his face that his (the fan's) own theory of how things happened was more correct than what the author actually wrote. In some respects, I'm glad my work hasn't become that popular. I salute you, Gryphon, for remaining sane after dealing with the critics for this long. "This is probably a stupid question, but . . ." |
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Eyrie Productions,
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