Write On! :: Comments :: The other person in your head - characters with minds of their own

The other person in your head - characters with minds of their own | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

The characters don't like my jokes (5.00/1) (#1)
by Roonblah on Mon May 28, 2007 at 07:31:42 AM PST

I don't often mind when the characters run off and do their own thing, except when I want to make a joke. I'm not particularly funny, so I plan my jokes with great care... but they still refuse. I'd call them rude, but I doubt they'd listen to me then either. Other times, characters slip in jokes that I never noticed at all on first read. I like them better when they do that.

At a writing group I was at, we were asked if we could hear and see the characters (which I do) and it was with some surprise that most of the writers in the room, said they didn't see the characters but saw the words instead. I wonder if that has some relation to disobedient characters.

I've linked this.
"There will be an occasional happy, so that it might be crushed under the boot of the writer." Tim Minear

: Entirely possible that there's a relationship (3.00/0) (#2)
by janra on Mon May 28, 2007 at 08:33:11 PM PST

It is sort of a circular definition, but a character that you see and hear and feel is alive is the one that does things you didn't plan on; that's what makes him alive.
I expect some of those who don't see and hear living characters still have trouble keeping their characters on the plot, and some of those who do can keep their characters on track. Not all characters come alive in my head, but those who do are the most interesting, I must say :-)
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]
: jokes (3.00/0) (#3)
by sabeth on Sat Jun 23, 2007 at 02:16:11 PM PST

Since you have a Minear quote in your sig, you might be interested in the blog of Mutant Enemy veteran Jane Espenson. The focus is mainly on writing TV spec scripts, but she spends a lot of time analyzing jokes and what makes them good. One of her big points is that jokes should reveal character -- perhaps that's why your characters balk at some of the ones you engineer and put into their mouths, while they come up with much better ones on their own.

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
[ Parent ]

The other person in your head - characters with minds of their own | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

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