 For Authors: March 29, 2006 Issue [#952] |
  For Authors
This week: Edited by: archgargoyle
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I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it. -Garrison Keillor
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. -Edwin Schlossberg
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
Joan Didion (1934 - ) |
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Have you ever dissected your favorite story to see what made you love it? I've found that one of my favorite story-telling techniques is the use of omniscient third person. This is a great way to add complexity to any story and to involve your readers in the lives and minds of your characters. It's also a great way to remind your readers that even the antagonist has real, human emotions (or is devoid of real, human emotions.)
Consider the war movies that show both sides of conflict. There are always the leaders who are convinced they are right. There are always the men and women on the ground whose only job is to obey the leaders and try their best to stay alive. After a point, the side they are on doesn't matter - it's the fact that they have families at home that they are worried about, they have sons that are too young to be alongside them in danger but have come along anyways. It becomes a story of shared tragedy instead of a history-book story of how good conquered evil. Those are the ones that leave you thinking in your seat long minutes after the show is over.
In one of my favorite book series (The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind) we meet a woman whose sole purpose in life is to kidnap and torture those with magic. At first, it's very easy to hate her for what she does to the main character. Only when we learn how she was abused as a child and turned into this monster can we learn to forgive her for her actions and even love her despite the woman she was made. It's those kinds of moments that teach us something about life - not everything is black and white and sometimes the outside is not enough information.
We see this kind of character development in many stories by our favorite authors. Well-known authors know that in order to envelope their audience, they need to make both, protagonist and antagonist, believable and/or likeable in some sense. Well, maybe not always likeable, but maybe more in the way that we can relate to why they are who they are.
As a struggling author, I know that my writing will really “click” when I recognize how my characters relate to one another, to my audience, and to the story as a whole. We always like to portray the story around one or two main characters, but it’s when the complexity of several protagonists and antagonists takes place that we find ourselves drawn in to the lives of our characters, not just reading another story.
I know each of you have situations in your life where you can pull this kind of background information and incorporate it into your characters. Try making even your "bad guys" multi-dimensional (and even likeable!) and see if your readers don't get pulled deeper into your story. Also, remember that reading is the best way to learn how to write so pick out your favorite books and read them again slowly to see what makes it magic. You can definitely apply those same principles to your own writing once you realize what they are.
~archgargoyle |
| | Possession [18+] #1028269
In an asylum for the criminally insane, a young orderly discovers true possession...
by W.D.Wilcox  |
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