Activity

Well, I have a couple ideas, and a couple questions, for that… seeing as im only 16 myself, they might not be useful, but I’ll give it a shot.

So, do you plan your story and characters first and then start writing, or do you write and learn who the character is as you go?

If the former  more fits you, I might think about how they relate to the story itself and to the reader, and then dedicate a notebook or just a page to that character. I tend to use people that I know well as models for my characters, especially pertaining to their role in the story – if I have a guy in my story who is not actually the hero but a loyal sidekick, but he makes the moral point, I would look for someone in my life who isn’t a front and center stage person but does have the right ideas and is an excellent cheering squad, be the person male or female.

If you’re more of the latter type of writer, (I am) I might suggest writing several different scenes with the characters, some scenes with them interacting together and other scenes with each character without the other major characters, like with their family, roommate, at the grocery store, or something else that removes them from the overall story but really sheds some light on who they are.

Personally, I am super disorganized in my own writing and just learn about them as I go for the most part. I do plan them out somewhat, but only with the help of my writing buddies. We always brainstorm stuff together, and so we might all use the same model for a character in each of our different writings. For instance, X, Y, and I always work on stuff together, and if we’re all looking for a good model for a big-headed hero, we might look at Iron Man… or Y’s younger brother(nothing against him – he’s just a great character model).

So I guess that my point is that there are a number of ways to do it, but without knowing how you roll I really don’t know how best to advise you. I’ll ask X and Y what they think about this and get back to you soon, @kr-lalaonde!

What do you guys think? @gabriellepollack, @jenwriter17, @libby, @dekreel, @dakota, @fawxofthecomics, @martina, @dragongeek, @sleepwalkingmk, @sam-kowal, @christianna-hellwig, @natalie-marie, @gabrielle,  @law0413,  @child-of-god, @katherineh,  @brookewolf, @millennium-m, @miriam-smith, @anna_b_cole, @kay, @storyseeker, @h-jones, @storyjoy, @bookcrazygirl