Tuesday Tip: Why *do* we do what we do to our OTPs?!

[thtwzjustadream.livejournal.com]

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?

Comments

[goneahead]

I don't think there should be absolutes, but I will say it certainly does help to have guideposts!

One of my guideposts is to always have a character arc in every chapter/scene - at least one character should come out of each chapter/scene changed in some way, even if its a small or subtle change.

I bring this up because knowing that one teeny tiny tip would've have saved me many years of sweat, tears, and most likely even blood. Personally, I find that if I have a part of a fic that is not working, when I go back and check for character arc/change? Sure enough, the character(s) is not actually doing anything but just bobbing along. So then I smack myself and ask, 'OK, what is the character(s) learning, figuring out, deciding, refusing to decide, etc' - and voila! I usually have a much better idea how to actually fix it.

I hesitate to mention how many fics I've scrapped, screwed up, or wound up not being happy with because I didn't know this one small, but oh so vital, bit to storytelling!

**eyes the dead plot bunny pile in the backyard**

[thtwzjustadream.livejournal.com]

That's a good one. I've certainly heard how at least one major character should change by the end - usually the protagonist, except maybe in the case of a story like Gatsby where Gatsby dies because he doesn't learn/change, and it's the narrator who grows in the end. Someone's gotta grow, that's the bottom line.

A change each scene is ambitious - but as you say, it doesn't have to be huge. Even a character entertaining a thought he wouldn't have harbored at the top of the page is change. Forward motion.