So I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks, since my life at school has gotten really... unfortunately weird. A few weeks ago my roommate and closest friend on campus decided to leave school for mental health reasons. She was my companion in this adventure and her absence has been really hard to get used to, especially since we had no warning of this decision, and only two days afterward to pack up the room and say goodbye.
To make matters even more ridiculously hard I was just diagnosed with mononucleosis the other day. Basically this means that everyone expects me to be pretty much bedridden for a while, and I'm really really tired and feel like something is rotting inside me.
But this experience made me think of something I don't think I've treated very well in writing. Loss, especially of another person or relationship, can be a debilitating thing to go through. In Elle's journey she goes through multiple kinds of loss, be it losing her old life outside of the castle and her friends, losing her reputation, and even the death of a friend.
Everyone deals with loss differently; whether it be immersing themselves in work and being productive (a habit that I very much wish was mine), or lying in bed for days in sadness, or even going out of their way to avoid anything that would remind them of their loss. It's these differences and reactions to hardship, especially hardship regarding interactions with others, that show a character's inner self. A person's true character can be seen in times of hardship.
As for myself, I will be dealing with this hardship by spending a lot more time in bed with hot beverages and good bread and working on my nanowrimo attempt this year.
Happy Halloween and First of November, everyone.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Real Villains
Recently I submitted my prologue to my writing club to have it workshopped, and I learned a few things.
First of all, that the writing is older and more immature than I'd thought. But hopefully they didn't judge me terribly for that.
The majority of the comments, however, were focused on one character that is briefly introduced in the prologue and later becomes very important, and is in many ways an antagonist. I've been thinking now how to flesh him out more in the prologue and what else it takes to make a proper, realistic villain.
My favorite villains have always been those I could sympathize with. I think it's a mark of great writing to be able to get writers to feel torn, especially when in regards to a villain. To have my heart broken between hating and loving a villain is one of the greatest pleasures I have experienced in a story.
A trend I've noticed recently is that there are two types of villains: outrageous, evil creatures who have little or nothing in common with the protagonist, and whose motives are sometimes otherworldly; and more human characters, who started off as or seem as regular people, though corrupted.
The absurdly "other" villains can be fun to write; they can be exaggerated, outlandish, and completely crazy. However they seem to lend themselves to lazy writing. When a creature is just simply evil, there is not moral struggle or doubt when it comes to the quest to defeat them. There are many villains that seem otherworldly that work just fine, but I prefer to write the other kind.
The relatable villain is more of a challenge; you have to pay close attention to where they came from and their motives and everything they say to achieve that balance between making a reader hate them and feel sympathy. Most of my villains come from the same stock as the other characters, and become corrupted through their lives.
In my prologue someone dies-in one of those slow painful ways with the family by the bedside, and I introduced this character then to show how they would deal with that kind of emotional situation. It's subtle differences in priorities and views of justice that make my villains what they are, and open the opportunity for protagonists to question who is really in the right. To me a more realistic world is one where the line between villain and hero are a little blurred- where you can see clearly how the villain is the hero in their own story- because that's how it is in real life.
There's one villain in my story that I have done a bad job in developing, I now realize. The character that appears in the prologue doesn't come into play until after the events of the first book and its war. However the main villain of the first book remains nameless and faceless until the very end- and I am thinking that I should give them a voice earlier on and make them less sympathetic, because I've given them possible too-valiant a cause and too short a time in scenes. Villains need also to be hated.
I recently wrote more on villains and how I see other people treating them on my tumblr, at wilsathethief.tumblr.com
First of all, that the writing is older and more immature than I'd thought. But hopefully they didn't judge me terribly for that.
The majority of the comments, however, were focused on one character that is briefly introduced in the prologue and later becomes very important, and is in many ways an antagonist. I've been thinking now how to flesh him out more in the prologue and what else it takes to make a proper, realistic villain.
My favorite villains have always been those I could sympathize with. I think it's a mark of great writing to be able to get writers to feel torn, especially when in regards to a villain. To have my heart broken between hating and loving a villain is one of the greatest pleasures I have experienced in a story.
A trend I've noticed recently is that there are two types of villains: outrageous, evil creatures who have little or nothing in common with the protagonist, and whose motives are sometimes otherworldly; and more human characters, who started off as or seem as regular people, though corrupted.
The absurdly "other" villains can be fun to write; they can be exaggerated, outlandish, and completely crazy. However they seem to lend themselves to lazy writing. When a creature is just simply evil, there is not moral struggle or doubt when it comes to the quest to defeat them. There are many villains that seem otherworldly that work just fine, but I prefer to write the other kind.
The relatable villain is more of a challenge; you have to pay close attention to where they came from and their motives and everything they say to achieve that balance between making a reader hate them and feel sympathy. Most of my villains come from the same stock as the other characters, and become corrupted through their lives.
In my prologue someone dies-in one of those slow painful ways with the family by the bedside, and I introduced this character then to show how they would deal with that kind of emotional situation. It's subtle differences in priorities and views of justice that make my villains what they are, and open the opportunity for protagonists to question who is really in the right. To me a more realistic world is one where the line between villain and hero are a little blurred- where you can see clearly how the villain is the hero in their own story- because that's how it is in real life.
There's one villain in my story that I have done a bad job in developing, I now realize. The character that appears in the prologue doesn't come into play until after the events of the first book and its war. However the main villain of the first book remains nameless and faceless until the very end- and I am thinking that I should give them a voice earlier on and make them less sympathetic, because I've given them possible too-valiant a cause and too short a time in scenes. Villains need also to be hated.
I recently wrote more on villains and how I see other people treating them on my tumblr, at wilsathethief.tumblr.com
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