I am teaching a course on characters and came
across this quote from Bill Eaton: “Some writers start thinking about their
story in terms of a plot; something to give them a map to write by. Others will
not start writing until they have a setting for their piece established in
great detail. Personally, I think the best starting place is in the characters
you are going to write about.
“According to the great American writer F
Scott Fitzgerald, "Character is plot, plot is character." There is no
fiction without characters, so this seems to me to be the ideal place to begin.
“Stories do not exist in a vacuum. It is
through the interaction of characters with a variety of needs, situations and
personalities that stories emerge and develop. Get a few characters together,
give them conflicting motivations, don’t give them a chance to escape and you
will have a compelling tale in the making!”
Me, I start with place but character
follows very quickly and I am one of those writers who takes them from real
life.
In the same way that you can base
characters upon yourself, you can use your observations and knowledge of others
as starting points. Perhaps as little as
a snippet of overheard conversation, or a hair style, or bits of several people
mixed together, can be enough. By fusing these traits together the sources of
your character will be left behind and a new person will emerge.
John Dean
No comments:
Post a Comment