Wed: Writing Tip #4 Character Matters
This from the site Terrible Minds and I highly recommend you go read the whole post. It's fantastic!
The author, Chuck Wendig writes: Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of "us" staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.
This is a fantastic tip, for fiction writers and for all writers and certianly, without exception, the memoir writer. I will say it to writers again and again, "you must make your narrator someone we want to take a journey with." And yet writers are more concerned with telling the truth or backfilling a ton of tragic details or telling everything but the story of the narrator (ie: THEMSELVES). And here were go! It's not what happens to you (or your character, if you write fiction). What matters is that you write your well developed take of what happened. Your insight, as a questing, lost and even cynical soul--this is what makes you human on the page and what will have us travel with you through the complexity of your journey.
Enjoy Wendig's tips. He's a bright bulb-even if he swears a lot!
The author, Chuck Wendig writes: Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of "us" staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.
This is a fantastic tip, for fiction writers and for all writers and certianly, without exception, the memoir writer. I will say it to writers again and again, "you must make your narrator someone we want to take a journey with." And yet writers are more concerned with telling the truth or backfilling a ton of tragic details or telling everything but the story of the narrator (ie: THEMSELVES). And here were go! It's not what happens to you (or your character, if you write fiction). What matters is that you write your well developed take of what happened. Your insight, as a questing, lost and even cynical soul--this is what makes you human on the page and what will have us travel with you through the complexity of your journey.
Enjoy Wendig's tips. He's a bright bulb-even if he swears a lot!
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