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The musings of a madman. Not really, just my ideas and thoughts. |
| Thousands of ideas that never come to the light of day. This statement seems to be an accurate depiction of my mind. It feels like a shame to waste all of that. So here they will all go, for your viewing pleasure. |
| We, as writers, want to paint with our words a beautiful picture of what is inside our minds so that others may share our dreams, musings, and experiences. While attempting to facilitate this goal we will often become overly elaborate in our descriptions or detailed mannerisms. I like to compare drawing or painting to writing. In particular I remember hearing a story that I think is applicable to this discussion. A man and a woman were on a date. As they walked down the street to meet their reservation for the evening they noticed an artist doing portraits. After negotiating a price the artist took a picture of the woman for reference and the couple continued off to their destination. After eating their dinner they came back to the artist to pick up the portrait. Upon looking at his work the man and woman were astounded at the quality and beauty of it. They were quite happy even though it had costed a fair amount of money, that is until the man looked closer at the portrait. In total this beautiful piece of artwork was comprised of six simple lines. Confused the man asked the artist, "how long did it take you to do this?" The artist's response, "twenty years." I believe this story expresses the general point here. Just as with the artist we too are making our own pieces of artwork. In the beginning it will take us many lines to properly portray a vision or idea, but as we become more comfortable and competent the number of lines needed lessens. Just as the artist used the blank pieces of page, or negative space, we two learn to rely upon the minds of our readers. We operate with intent, but we also realized that very little is needed to prod the mind into creating a stunning image. The minds ability to draw conclusions, connections, and visualize is far beyond our ability to write in most cases. So use it, don't cloud your pages with needless words and phrases, choose your strokes carefully and deliberately. Work with the readers mind and interpretations, not against them. |
| Often as writers we hear advice on how to write better. The number one that I hear most often is to write "real" characters. It seems many people take this as meaning to write characters that are like everyday people. In reality this is not what we mean generally. Think about it, if I was writing a fantasy story and the main character was just like my neighbor, he would probably have little to nothing to say, and would probably run from any danger immediately. On this topic my advice would be to write fully realized characters. That is to say our characters should be well rounded, these characters should be complex and interesting, but also have traits that real people have. The obvious traits that come to mind are things like motivation, weakness, and a fully developed emotional base. Most people don't have a problem with the weakness part, but the motivation and emotional base are difficult to wrap your mind around. Motivation is meant to be that the character should have a goals, or at least a rational for why they are doing thing, this includes the antagonist. Writing an antagonist who is properly motivated in a realistic sense is hard, short or making them a psychopath, sociopath, or even narcissistic finding realistic reasoning for why someone would do something horrible is difficult. The second and even more difficult part is creating a proper emotional base. If your character has this trait he/she will be able to "move" in your world organically. What I mean by this is that the character you have created will not need prodding to do something, the character will naturally react and act in this world in a way that fits with his/her overall character. This may seem like an obvious and simple thing, but in reality this is, in my opinion, the most difficult objective when making a character. Stories, especially fantasy, tend to devolve into a plot driven archetypal snore fest. Where the protagonist is pure and unremarkable, and the antagonist is fictitiously evil. This happens because the "move" properly in this world, they are missing a proper emotional base that would make the characters have realistic motivations and reactions. So to get the characters moving the writers of these stories end up using plot devices to force stereotypical responses from their characters to progress the story in the direction that they want. My advice to new writers would be to spend time with your characters. It sounds silly but have a real dialogue with the character, set it up as a kind of interview. These questions should be answered by the character, and you will quickly run into inconsistencies or contradictory answers. This is where you begin your work unraveling your characters motivations and emotional basis. By the time you are ready to put pen to page you should have such a flushed out idea of the character that they seem almost like a real person. I don't want to come off as an expert on this or any issue but if you have any questions or need help with these ideas send me an email or post a comment below. |
| Lately I find myself searching for change. Some way to make myself better, either physically or emotionally, but I don't know where to start. There is so much to fix. The task seems so daunting that I dare not even start. Even worse I fear where this chain of thought may go. As a person who at times battles depression I fear these thoughts more than almost anything else. They are a slippery slope down the dark rabbit hole of depression, but they are also the only insight into much needed change. I currently walk on the edge of of this hole; fall in and face possible months of arduous battle to regain my footing, or see the truth in the darkness and take that insight back out into the light. Melodramatic as it may seem, this is the truth of my life as a person dealing with depression. At least I know the risks and rewards. I go, not blindly, into that darkness. It will test me, and try my limits. I will fall, but I must pull myself back out. This path is the one I must tread, for it leads to my future and the man I want to become. |
| Inspiration, I chase it, I need it, I love it. It is more important to me than I would ever like to admit. I have found a muse that brings me inspiration. If this muse was something, like music, a place, or some activity then it would be very lonely. Spending all my time writing alone, just me and my writing. I am lucky, in that my muse is a person, in fact my muse is a wonderful friend. I have not always been a good friend to my muse, but I have always tried to follow my heart. Though it is no excuse it is the truth, now I know better. I used to think that being friends meant that you can be whoever or whatever you truly are with this person, more than any other. I realize now that my definition was not quite right, and also quite childish. To be more accurate, I was being selfish. A real friend is someone you can share your true self with, and is also someone you care for more than your self. If by showing how you really feel, or by following your true intention you hurt your friend, or force them into a position that is hurtful or potentially problematic then can you say that you care for them more than your self? |
| I find more and more as I write here in my blog that I see myself pontificating, or waxing poetic. I don't know why that is. I think that this outlet for me has become a place where I can put my ideas on life and people out into the ether. I think that I do this hoping that it will resonate with someone, or help someone, or maybe just make them think for a few moments. Sometimes I wonder, am I really doing this for someone else? Am I really hoping to be of use? What is the real reason that I choose these topics? Could it be that I am hiding my true intentions, even from my self? To these questions I have no answers, but I hope that by thinking of them and honestly questioning my own intentions I am weeding these other reasons out of my thoughts. I believe that while what we do is important, what is paramount is the intention behind it. This is and easily agreeable sentiment, but think in those special cloudy situations. Everyone has had someone lie to them, steal from them, or hurt them. Life is being affected by others, and their actions. What I am saying is that even if they hurt you, even if they do something horrible, can you still just judge the situation based on their intent? Can we ever really know their true intentions? In those situations I can not say I have the answers. In our everyday life though I have seen how this is true. Who hasn't had a son, daughter, niece, nephew, or grandchild suddenly spout a curse word? Often we tell them these are bad words and that they shouldn't use them, or that they should say something else instead. Is the issue the word though? Sure we don't want them cursing it is not appropriate in most situations, but the intent behind the word is the real issue. Changing the language to "gosh darn it" doesn't change the meaning, sentiment, or intention. This superficial change is often all that we care about, not the deeper meaning of how to properly deal with things like anger, pain, or disappointment. If intention is truly what matters, if we are to be judged base not on circumstances, but on intent, then an already difficult task of teaching a child how to deal with pain becomes that much harder. |
| Some times we feel lost, but when we do there are others around us that guys us. Not necessarily in the right direction mind you, but they give us direction. They are like sign posts, or oracles in the past. Even if they don't know it. They may be a good influence or bad. Sometimes they may be a bad person that has a positive influence. How many times have we made split second decisions only to think well I don't wanna be like ______. I wonder how many times I have made decisions in my life simply because someone else had shown me who I don't want to be? I think that is worthy of writing about, and I think most of us are not fully aware of how often this happens. Why not try it? Here is a challenge to anyone reading: Write a poem, short, long, no matter and send it to me. I want to see how others have grown from such "bad" influences. You cannot defeat your shadow. That doesn't mean you shouldn't fight. The pen is our sword, and the page our battle cry. |
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