So I was floundering around for excuses to actually get focused on writing again. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
athenrys gave me a big boost with some of their 10 minute exercise prompts. The first one that I did was more meditative, but I really enjoyed just getting to stop, think, and write up what I was feeling about the location that I'd picked. My other prompt I did tonight was more writing related.
I think that I convinced her to post some of her prompts as well. She's run some classes before on writing, so I thought it could be useful for other DW users as well :)
Pick a character you love, it can be your own or someone else's. Why do you like them? What tropes do they fall into? Maybe map their character arc
Taylor Blakely: (my OC from an urban fantasy series that is in the early stages)
Tay is what I thought a graduate student would be like – confident with what to do and determined to make things happen. Returning to her character after having experienced some of background, I think that I want to step back from that. She’s got confidence, but that isn’t something that is necessarily instantly present. When pushed into the unknown I want her to be ideal and to push back. But that shouldn’t always be the case. There needs to be pressure from that unknown which molds and shapes her until she can explode forward with earned confidence.
Background-wise, I want to lean more into what she was like before she met Simon and before the events of BW occurred. She doesn’t have a shape to herself other than her actions while under incredible duress. Those actions should have a depth that harkens back to who she is, not just who the scene needs her to be. Her family issues, for example, color how she deals with her grief. Expanding on that, pushing it to the forefront of what makes her pursue actively “fixing” what happened with Simon would strengthen her. Keeping that grief on the backburner and burying herself in the hunt would also allow for that emotional cocoon to form that needs to be broken during SoL.
As far as her dynamics with the other characters, I find that Tay melds easily with her eventual crewmates of Piper and Marcus. Overall she’s an easygoing gal with comfortable, close friends even with her fiance’s original friends. She still needs to have more of a network of people she would obviously know from her extended period of time in Scranton – school, work, outside activities, online – and those can help to shape how she sees herself within the world even more. She doesn’t have perfect relationships though. Again with her tension with both her mother and her never-to-be-mother-in-law, she chafes against a certain kind of overt, forced affection and performance-ism. She’s got the guts to hang up on people and the heart to wait out Carlos’s careful, slightly-too-early reaching out.
It’s easy to put a main character or heroine to be brave. But I think that Tay walks the line of bravery, honesty, and recklessness in an affectionate way. I want her to be desperate in a relatable fashion. She’s fighting to get justice for the man that she loved. She’s willing to sacrifice her time to grieve – unhealthy though that may be ultimately – because she can’t let him have put himself on the line for her without paying forward that effort.
I think I'll be doing a few more of these, if I can pry them out of Athenrys' mind ;D
athenrys gave me a big boost with some of their 10 minute exercise prompts. The first one that I did was more meditative, but I really enjoyed just getting to stop, think, and write up what I was feeling about the location that I'd picked. My other prompt I did tonight was more writing related.I think that I convinced her to post some of her prompts as well. She's run some classes before on writing, so I thought it could be useful for other DW users as well :)
Pick a character you love, it can be your own or someone else's. Why do you like them? What tropes do they fall into? Maybe map their character arc
Taylor Blakely: (my OC from an urban fantasy series that is in the early stages)
Tay is what I thought a graduate student would be like – confident with what to do and determined to make things happen. Returning to her character after having experienced some of background, I think that I want to step back from that. She’s got confidence, but that isn’t something that is necessarily instantly present. When pushed into the unknown I want her to be ideal and to push back. But that shouldn’t always be the case. There needs to be pressure from that unknown which molds and shapes her until she can explode forward with earned confidence.
Background-wise, I want to lean more into what she was like before she met Simon and before the events of BW occurred. She doesn’t have a shape to herself other than her actions while under incredible duress. Those actions should have a depth that harkens back to who she is, not just who the scene needs her to be. Her family issues, for example, color how she deals with her grief. Expanding on that, pushing it to the forefront of what makes her pursue actively “fixing” what happened with Simon would strengthen her. Keeping that grief on the backburner and burying herself in the hunt would also allow for that emotional cocoon to form that needs to be broken during SoL.
As far as her dynamics with the other characters, I find that Tay melds easily with her eventual crewmates of Piper and Marcus. Overall she’s an easygoing gal with comfortable, close friends even with her fiance’s original friends. She still needs to have more of a network of people she would obviously know from her extended period of time in Scranton – school, work, outside activities, online – and those can help to shape how she sees herself within the world even more. She doesn’t have perfect relationships though. Again with her tension with both her mother and her never-to-be-mother-in-law, she chafes against a certain kind of overt, forced affection and performance-ism. She’s got the guts to hang up on people and the heart to wait out Carlos’s careful, slightly-too-early reaching out.
It’s easy to put a main character or heroine to be brave. But I think that Tay walks the line of bravery, honesty, and recklessness in an affectionate way. I want her to be desperate in a relatable fashion. She’s fighting to get justice for the man that she loved. She’s willing to sacrifice her time to grieve – unhealthy though that may be ultimately – because she can’t let him have put himself on the line for her without paying forward that effort.
I think I'll be doing a few more of these, if I can pry them out of Athenrys' mind ;D
