The Importance of Characterization

I'm bad at backstories.

Notoriously so.

I've come to realize that there are two parts to any character, their history, and their personality. Both have a massive influence on who they are, how they act and dress, what drives them, what their goals and dreams are. But I seem to be far better at pinning down a particular look, feel and persona for a character than what happened to them in their past to get them where they are now.

I can imagine up countless details of their costume, hairstyle, eye color, the way they walk, what weapons they carry, how they talk, and on and on. But ask me where they were born? What defined their childhood? What their job was before this? I have no earthly idea. And coming up with a complicated or even just layered backstory when I create the character in my mind is seemingly beyond me.

That's not to say my characters are all history-less personas with no past whatsoever, I simply tend to create backstory as I go, filling in events and past meetings as needed for the plot. A character needs to sympathize with another? Add in some past shared experience. The protagonist needs a good-talking to learn a lesson? Boom. Side character had a father who told stories, and she proceeds to give him one.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the best way to go about this, for a number of reasons. Continuity... Oh, of course these two characters have met before! Wait... they can't recognize each other later... Never mind. Progression of character arcs, clear ideas of goals and dreams, knowing how a character would respond to a given situation... the list goes on.

So I don't know which way is better. And I doubt I'll get any better without actually doing it, which I seem unable to do, so I don't know if the problem will ever solve itself.

Who knows? Maybe someday, but for now, I'll stick to what I do best. Picking out hairstyles and trench coats.

Of Versions and Trying Again

I had the wonderful opportunity to return home this weekend to join my fellow homeschooler friends in a performance of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Which was awesome enough in itself, but I also got two 2.5 hour trips there and back, which passed surprisingly quickly this go around, mainly due to the fact that I spent the hours brainstorming, plot hashing, troubleshooting, and generally working through stories.

Now, all this work is cerebral, not actual pen-to-paper, but its definitely worth doing. (Especially when there's not much else to do). I ended up working through several different stories all told, but the one I spent the most time on was the umpteenth version of a story I now call Hoprerise. (To differentiate it from the dozens of other versions).

But to explain what Hoperise is, I have to go back to 2012, to a little story attempt called Deep Red. What started off as a novel, morphed into a Lego stop-motion, transitioned quickly to a Lego comic book and then sat on a shelf for a year, until late 2013, when I decided to try to write a script off the idea.

Substituting walking for planet-hopping, and shotguns for plasma rifles proved a unique challenge, but also provided a place to develop a particularly gritty, almost western-style of sci-fi I found immensely enjoyable to create.

Retitled Hopefall, and fresh off the success of filming Shadowland, I set out to film my new script with conscripted college buddies, locations in and around my tiny apartment, and costume and props gathered from my parent's old stash of military gear.

I actually got one day of filming in before the project flopped. Mainly due to scheduling issues, but there were also problems with the script and my innate tendency to try to do everything myself. After that, it sat on the shelf again until I returned to college in the fall of 2013.

Over the summer, I had written and shot with far more success a short film called Minefield, set in the same world I had created for Hopefall. Armed with that experience, and a shiny new version of the script with most of the bugs worked out, I set out to try again.

One week out from commencing filming, things fell apart once more. Scheduling a film in between multiple college student's classes and other commitments proved to be too difficult a task. After that, I set Hopefall back on the shelf, I thought for good.

However, in my recent forays back into writing, the elements and ideas I had begun working with in those multiple previous versions kept coming back, and I decided to give it another shot, starting completely from scratch instead of trying to retrofit the previous version to fit a new set of criteria.

One of my good friends, after reading many of the earlier versions, had given me his opinion that a story dealing with the Bible as an outlawed, drug-like substance in a dystopian society warranted a far more serious story than I had been giving it. My tendency as a writer is to epicfy things, in the process missing the true point of the tale.

Taking this into consideration has been key as I have re-explored the different pieces that make up Hoperise. And mulling through it over and over again in the car has made me see things I never saw before, as well as realize just how intense the story can be, without adding in action for action's sake.

It's still going to take a lot of work before it'll be ready to do anything with, but I certainly have a better grasp of what needs to be done than I ever had before. I've also realized that setting myself on one outcome will only end in disappointment. So whether the story ends up as a novel, comic-book, film, play or puppet show, or nothing at all, it shouldn't matter to me. My job is simply to tell the tale in any way I can.

Surety

I sound so sure of myself in blogposts. Perhaps it is because I tend to speak and think in absolutes and generalizations, and that flows through strongly into my writing. In other words, don't trust what I write... I tend to be wrong. Especially about goals and dreams.

In other words, things did not go as expected. They never do, I'm beginning to realize that now. For one thing, architecture school tends to get more intense as one progresses through it. Which means more time spent drawing and modeling in studio, and less time writing.

Despite that, my writing has continued, in tiny spurts and minuscule bounds, less of the slow and steady march I promised myself last January, and more of a spastic energy bunny who is slowly running out of energy.

Last month I had the great honor and privilege to be a part of a feature film production of The Scarlet Letter, turning my architectural skills to set design in what was possibly the most fun I've ever had. And considering The Scarlet Letter is a rather dark and depressing story by its very nature, that's saying something.

But the important thing as far as my writing is concerned was the three day trip up and back. Long hours in the car meant time for writing and reading, things I hadn't had time for in a long while. Christmas, to be exact.

Jumping back into three jobs while prepping for grad school has made writing difficult, but I continue to do so while I have time. And even if I'm not actually setting pen to paper, (or keyboard to document), I am constantly working through bits of story in my head, fixing problems, having lightbulb moments, and generally making sure I keep my imagination active.

All that being said, blogging is one more thing on top of all that, and I doubt I shall be able to continue with any sense of regularity, but sometimes it is good to simply sit down and verbalize the thoughts that have been running through my head, even if they are only read by me six months down the road.

Resolutions

Another year, another adventure. A fresh slate, with no mistakes in it. Not yet, anyways.

Another college semester started today, and soon I'll be full swing into regular schedule nicely full of classes and projects. But rather than let something like that get in the way of my writing, I intend to use it to help push me into writing a little bit every day.

So a New Year's resolution, if you will, to write more and dawdle less.

Not a lot of writing, mind you, perhaps no more than a paragraph a day. But writing non-the-less. I don't think I will be able to keep it up for long, but I shall take it as far as I can. And who knows? Maybe some good will come out of it.

I recently started reading again, after a rather longish hiatus from anything good, and that coupled with dozens of writerly friends back home over Christmas break has given me plenty of impetus to actually begin and possibly finish something after all.

The road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began
Now I must follow if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it with some larger way meet...
And wither then? I cannot say.

Litters

So I was going along, minding my own post-Nano business, finishing off architecture finals, when I noticed something.

There was a tiny bunny following me. Now, this bunny was of the rare Ploteus Bunnius species, the kind that won't stop following you till you turn and give them attention.

So I did. I stopped, filled half a page with scrawled notes on the interesting creature, and moved on. However, much to my surprise, I soon found another, possibly related to the first, following me as well.

Accordingly, I filled up the rest of the page with illegible scrawlings on the exact nature of this one, and moved on once more.

Imagine my surprise, when a third bunny hopped out of the bushes and joined the gathering crowd. At this point, I realized that not only had my brief foray into writing reawakened normal writing tendencies, it had only produced a litter of plot bunnies.

And bunnies tend to breed with surprising rapidity.

I shall have to fill up my wall with these if they continue to come.

Welp.

Well, if you haven't guessed, I didn't quite finish Nano this year. In fact, I threw in the towel about the fifteenth. There are a lot of reasons why, but the least was the busyness of school. While definitely a contributing factor, there were other, more serious problems with my story.

As evidenced in previous posts, I lost my sense of direction on The Imaginarium/Fair too Far/The Farthest Mile fairly early on, and it was only after fifteen days of wrestling with a story that was fighting tooth and nail to go a different direction that I realized my mistake.

See, the story I had set out to write was far different from the one I found myself writing, and while that can often be a good thing, in this case it left me hogtied, trying to finagle characters and settings into a plot that wasn't theirs.

In addition, by the fifteenth, even though I was a good deal behind on my word count, the story was gearing toward the final act. Which meant that the story would be a great deal shorter than 50,000. That was the final piece of a rather complex puzzle of problems that contributed to my decision to stop and try again later.

Because that's what I plan to do. And though planning and writing have not always seen eye to eye in my mind, there are two full-fledged stories floating around in my brain right, just waiting for me to sit down and write them. One of them is The Farthest Mile, the final iteration of the story I settled on.

Mashing together themes from the parable of the prodigal son and awesome setting of steampunk, coupled with some good old-fashioned story tropes turned on their head will make a wonderful story, once I can separate it from The Imaginarium in my head.

So we shall see. I've been writing a bit since, in tiny spurts and leaps, and plan to continue doing so for some time, perhaps even setting a much smaller goal for myself every other day or so. And since that is the case, the blog shall remain open for a bit longer, though I highly doubt regular posts will become... regular again.

All said and done, I had a blast Nanoing this year, and thoroughly enjoyed diving back into writing. I'm already looking forward to next year!