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1_million_words2013-02-19 02:12 pm
Tuesday Tip: Why *do* we do what we do to our OTPs?!
I've been slacking on the Tuesday Tips, my apologies for that. I'd planned to use the class I'm taking as fodder,but we've reached the point where it's mostly critique. So today I thought I'd toss up a tip from the web and see if it inspires any conversation....
It's from author Kurt Vonnegut and his much-republished "8 Basics of Creative Writing." If you haven't seen it, it's a fun read in itself.
Tip number four really jumped out at me the first time I read it. It states: "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action."
Every single sentence! Wow - there's a goal. In one way, it makes perfect sense- you wouldn't send your character around the corner for coffee unless something will happen on the way that adds to your tale. It might be that the conversation he has while running the errand provides clues to what's coming next. Or maybe the coffee shop's about to get held up, a-la "Pulp Fiction" and all manner of craziness ensues.
The other piece of the directive is a little more subtle and, to me, more about craft and the reason we write. Do you consciously work to reveal character in each of your stories? Does it happen naturally for you, or do you have to look for ways to bring that into play?
I think it's one of the trickier things to do but one of the more compelling reasons to write fan fiction; to take a well-loved character and put them through something, see how they react/cope/act - and ask myself what it says both about them and why I care about them.
So what do you think? If you read the most recent thing you wrote, do you see every sentence either moving things along or saying something about your characters? And what proportion would you say you focus on each of those goals?
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It's wonderful to see your tips, and really, creative writing and learning the craft are fantastic, don't get me wrong. I certainly don't think I'm above learning about how to write or any other pretentious bullshit I could spout to make myself sound wonderful, but honestly, I just don't think most of the time. I just write and see where the muses take me. If I think too much, I tend to trip over and land in a big heap. Crash and burn.
Having said that, I do edit and re-edit, and hope I haven't put too much extraneous crap in the story, but then sometimes it's inevitable, and I'm a hopeless case at allowing my stories to go sideways, or in a completely different direction from what I'd thought they would.
I doubt I could follow a rule to save my life with writing, but if it happens by accident, then I know it's one of my better stories. If it doesn't, and yes, I know it's not all wonderful (HA!), then yeah, that's what happened.
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