Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2013 13:42:25 GMT -5
Gelquie - Re: exaggeration: It's difficult to know when you're over- or under-emphasizing something. On the one hand, I'm strongly opposed to the idea of writing to the "lowest common denominator", overemphasizing so much that you're practically inserting a neon "THIS IS IMPORTANT" sign in the text so the reader won't have to do the work of figuring things out themselves. But on the other hand, if you go too far in the opposite direction, you run the risk of confusing even the most observant readers.
My best advice for this is to run your work past people you trust to give an honest opinion. If you get feedback that points were over-exaggerated or under-exaggerated, you'll know which way the balance needs to be nudged, and eventually you'll start to get a feel for a happy medium.
Omni - Unfortunately, I don't have a good deal of advice for you, I'm sorry. =/ I have a friend who struggles with the same thing, so it's not just you. Maybe you could look for worldbuilding and character-creating advice from your favorite authors. Also, figure out what elements you enjoy both in our world and the worlds in things you write fanfic for, and see if you can't come up with an original world that employs those elements. There's no sense in making up a world if you can't have fun with it. Said friend does not write original worlds often, but when she does, they're amazing and marvelously original. For example, for some sort of NaNo a few years back, she wrote a story about sapient dinosaurs on a desert planet with medieval-Islamic-style culture. It was a wonderful read.
Breakingchains - First passes at writing are usually unsubtle for me, too. That's what editing is for.
I know I seem to have "observation" as my manta, but I've found it works just as well for writing as for drawing. Study how real people act and how their personality traits manifest in their actions and interactions with others. The media is generally not the best place to find realistically subtle personalities.
As for getting them to sound different, might it help to compose a list of characters' speech patterns, to help remind yourself how they should sound?
--
Okay, so I've got a problem I was hoping this board could help me with: the main character in this enormous roleplay/novel project I've been working on with a friend for years might be a Mary Sue. And I'm the one writing her. *buries face in shame* The problem is, I'm not sure if she's actually an unbearable Mary Sue who kills the story, or if she just happens to be a character with several Sue-like traits that would go over badly if I was a worse writer. Maybe most of this will just be me rambling to myself trying to analyze her Sue-ness. I dunno. At least this is an appropriate thread for that.
So here are several things I've termed "problem areas" that I find vaguely Sue-ish:
My best advice for this is to run your work past people you trust to give an honest opinion. If you get feedback that points were over-exaggerated or under-exaggerated, you'll know which way the balance needs to be nudged, and eventually you'll start to get a feel for a happy medium.
Omni - Unfortunately, I don't have a good deal of advice for you, I'm sorry. =/ I have a friend who struggles with the same thing, so it's not just you. Maybe you could look for worldbuilding and character-creating advice from your favorite authors. Also, figure out what elements you enjoy both in our world and the worlds in things you write fanfic for, and see if you can't come up with an original world that employs those elements. There's no sense in making up a world if you can't have fun with it. Said friend does not write original worlds often, but when she does, they're amazing and marvelously original. For example, for some sort of NaNo a few years back, she wrote a story about sapient dinosaurs on a desert planet with medieval-Islamic-style culture. It was a wonderful read.
Breakingchains - First passes at writing are usually unsubtle for me, too. That's what editing is for.
I know I seem to have "observation" as my manta, but I've found it works just as well for writing as for drawing. Study how real people act and how their personality traits manifest in their actions and interactions with others. The media is generally not the best place to find realistically subtle personalities.
As for getting them to sound different, might it help to compose a list of characters' speech patterns, to help remind yourself how they should sound?
--
Okay, so I've got a problem I was hoping this board could help me with: the main character in this enormous roleplay/novel project I've been working on with a friend for years might be a Mary Sue. And I'm the one writing her. *buries face in shame* The problem is, I'm not sure if she's actually an unbearable Mary Sue who kills the story, or if she just happens to be a character with several Sue-like traits that would go over badly if I was a worse writer. Maybe most of this will just be me rambling to myself trying to analyze her Sue-ness. I dunno. At least this is an appropriate thread for that.
So here are several things I've termed "problem areas" that I find vaguely Sue-ish:
Arin is very vocal about her ideals and has turned several of my other characters over to her way of thinking throughout the narrative, but spreading her ideals and overturning the (dystopian) world order is one of the primary themes of the entire story, so I'm not sure how much that counts. I am careful, though, to try to make these characters' changes of heart realistic--for example, one of them was her own cousin who realized he just had misplaced priorities, while another was a girl who was jealous of Arin until that girl found a friend who satisfied her emotional needs. I've also left some characters unwilling to change because they simply disagree with her, and I try to give their arguments validity from their point of view.
She is also fluent in the two main languages of the story, which is an extremely rare and desirable trait, and she acts as a translator on many occasions. I'm not sure whether to consider this a problem area, because her knowing the other language is crucial to the events of the plot and sets the entire thing in motion. Her being one of the only people in the world who can translate between the two languages might also be crucial to the plot because it explains a lot of the actions of the other characters and gives Arin an interesting place in the cast dynamic (and actually the concept of it being rare and valuable was my co-author's idea, and I am loath to call anything my co-author does a "problem area" because she's honestly such a fantastic writer).
I also feel like I adequately explained Arin's fluency: since she was a child, she studied under her grandmother listening to and translating radio transmissions in the other language, and later took over the job solo as a teenager. And she's not native-level fluent--her speech in the other language still sounds a little stilted at times and her vocabulary is limited, but she's conversational and can translate adequately (which, again, is necessary for a plot that revolves around the idea of two races separated by a language barrier who have to learn to cooperate).
Here's where the Sue meter goes off the charts: Arin turns out to be a psion capable of immense displays of power, which she uses to save her entire group from mortal peril.
Okay, that sounds pretty bad. Let's elaborate. I'd had the idea bouncing around in my head for a while that people in her community have had their brains subtly evolve over a period of centuries to make them susceptible to psionic powers, but very few of them ever have these powers "unlocked", and when they do it's because of a combination of their own willpower and some dire, life-threatening circumstance. I wanted Arin to be the first of these "awakenings" that would then start manifesting in some of the other characters to help them achieve their ambitions. Later, though, I scrapped the idea of other characters becoming psions because it was much more satisfying to watch said characters have to work for what they want.
All right, Arin didn't have to work for what she wanted. But what she wanted was to rescue herself, her friends, and her family from imminent death. When a tornado is bearing down on you, you don't really have a whole lot of time for character development. It was an emergency situation to the extreme, and although I'd never told my co-author about my ideas (she was the one who sicced the tornado on everybody, that madwoman), I think she might have picked up on the hints I'd been dropping.
Like I mentioned before, this wasn't an out-of-the-blue situation. I began by making Arin have headaches throughout the day due to an immensely stressful, but not immediately dangerous, situation she and the others were in, and when she was given medicine to help alleviate them, the medicine made her groggy and she had some strange and prophetic dreams. When she woke up, she continued to have headaches, and I continued with this until we reached a point in the plot where I could have her powers manifest--i.e. the tornado.
Her abilities are not without consequence, either. Using them sends Arin into a comatose state for several hours, and my co-author elaborated on the idea by having one of her characters relate the tale of a psionic human he'd known who died as a young adult, her powers having eaten away at her body through continued use. There's also the fact that Arin now runs the risk of being taken and experimented on. Now coming to terms with her powers and trying to figure out how not to die from them has become a major goal for Arin and has forced her to do some deep soul-searching, re-evaluating herself and her place in the world.
I'm trying really hard to take this problem area in stride and give it as realistic and thorough a treatment as possible, but I'm not quite sure I'm succeeding, because even if it is an interesting plot point, I'm unsettled by the super special person suddenly becoming even more super special. She's a translator, which is rare, and a psion, which is even more rare. Two wrongs don't make a right, here. There's also the fact that a segment of her group now fears and distrusts her, which I feel is appropriate for someone who essentially has superpowers and is on the side of the hated other race, but I'm really worried about the whole "people hate me because I'm so super special" thing. Even though it's psychologically well-founded, it's still a Sue trait, and it doesn't help that Arin was already seen as quirky and strange and never had many friends growing up.
I'm also worried about the fact that I've been neglecting and/or mistreating her relationship with her parents. Arin is an adult and thus is not reliant upon her parents--her parents also do not get along with each other and generally did not pay much attention to Arin when she was growing up. So I don't want to make her seem super attached to them, especially because they are really very ancillary characters to the plot and Arin has a lot of other, more important people to interact with and things to do. I'm not sure if her nearly ignoring them is realistic--but I'm also not sure her constantly worrying about them and doting on them would be realistic, either, because they're in good health and being well taken care of and she knows it, and she honestly just has other things to do besides attend to her whiny, demanding parents every waking hour, like try to save their race from destruction and promote equality and understanding between two races that have been at odds for centuries.
I do have them interact occasionally, and Arin does try to be there for them when they really need her, like when her grandmother passed away, but I wanted to give the impression of stubborn parents who don't want to let their child grow up, and who don't realize that they have their priorities all out of order as they left her to her own devices when she was younger and needed them most, and now they're paranoid about her safety and trying to restrict and manipulate her when she's under no obligation to obey them any more and she has better things to do with her life than waste away being kept under their collective thumb.
I'm just not sure if that's coming through the way I want it, or if I've inadvertently made Arin seem like a rebellious punk who doesn't care about her parents. She's supposed to be generally a very compassionate, kindhearted person, but she encounters a good deal of bitterness and frustration within herself whenever her parents come into the picture. I'm hoping that's realistic, but I'm not entirely sure. I also don't want to make that family drama a very large part of the plot, but I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to resolve it in a way that won't be either melodramatic, or having her parents say "okay Arin, you were right and we were terrible people, please forgive us o flawless one".
So yeah. Those are my grievances. Problem is, I'm not even really sure if they are grievances, because my co-author, whom I respect immensely as a writer and think her characters are absolutely wonderful and not Mary Sues in the least, thinks Arin is a wonderful character and several of her own characters absolutely adore her. I'm sure if I was doing something wrong, she would tell me, especially because we've been hard at work editing the first segment of the roleplay into a novel manuscript and we've actually started to send out query letters to agents.
So is all of this just in my head? Have I become so paranoid about making a Mary Sue that I shun Sue-ish traits like they're infectious diseases?
I don't knowwww aaaaggghhh
Okay I'm done.
She is also fluent in the two main languages of the story, which is an extremely rare and desirable trait, and she acts as a translator on many occasions. I'm not sure whether to consider this a problem area, because her knowing the other language is crucial to the events of the plot and sets the entire thing in motion. Her being one of the only people in the world who can translate between the two languages might also be crucial to the plot because it explains a lot of the actions of the other characters and gives Arin an interesting place in the cast dynamic (and actually the concept of it being rare and valuable was my co-author's idea, and I am loath to call anything my co-author does a "problem area" because she's honestly such a fantastic writer).
I also feel like I adequately explained Arin's fluency: since she was a child, she studied under her grandmother listening to and translating radio transmissions in the other language, and later took over the job solo as a teenager. And she's not native-level fluent--her speech in the other language still sounds a little stilted at times and her vocabulary is limited, but she's conversational and can translate adequately (which, again, is necessary for a plot that revolves around the idea of two races separated by a language barrier who have to learn to cooperate).
Here's where the Sue meter goes off the charts: Arin turns out to be a psion capable of immense displays of power, which she uses to save her entire group from mortal peril.
Okay, that sounds pretty bad. Let's elaborate. I'd had the idea bouncing around in my head for a while that people in her community have had their brains subtly evolve over a period of centuries to make them susceptible to psionic powers, but very few of them ever have these powers "unlocked", and when they do it's because of a combination of their own willpower and some dire, life-threatening circumstance. I wanted Arin to be the first of these "awakenings" that would then start manifesting in some of the other characters to help them achieve their ambitions. Later, though, I scrapped the idea of other characters becoming psions because it was much more satisfying to watch said characters have to work for what they want.
All right, Arin didn't have to work for what she wanted. But what she wanted was to rescue herself, her friends, and her family from imminent death. When a tornado is bearing down on you, you don't really have a whole lot of time for character development. It was an emergency situation to the extreme, and although I'd never told my co-author about my ideas (she was the one who sicced the tornado on everybody, that madwoman), I think she might have picked up on the hints I'd been dropping.
Like I mentioned before, this wasn't an out-of-the-blue situation. I began by making Arin have headaches throughout the day due to an immensely stressful, but not immediately dangerous, situation she and the others were in, and when she was given medicine to help alleviate them, the medicine made her groggy and she had some strange and prophetic dreams. When she woke up, she continued to have headaches, and I continued with this until we reached a point in the plot where I could have her powers manifest--i.e. the tornado.
Her abilities are not without consequence, either. Using them sends Arin into a comatose state for several hours, and my co-author elaborated on the idea by having one of her characters relate the tale of a psionic human he'd known who died as a young adult, her powers having eaten away at her body through continued use. There's also the fact that Arin now runs the risk of being taken and experimented on. Now coming to terms with her powers and trying to figure out how not to die from them has become a major goal for Arin and has forced her to do some deep soul-searching, re-evaluating herself and her place in the world.
I'm trying really hard to take this problem area in stride and give it as realistic and thorough a treatment as possible, but I'm not quite sure I'm succeeding, because even if it is an interesting plot point, I'm unsettled by the super special person suddenly becoming even more super special. She's a translator, which is rare, and a psion, which is even more rare. Two wrongs don't make a right, here. There's also the fact that a segment of her group now fears and distrusts her, which I feel is appropriate for someone who essentially has superpowers and is on the side of the hated other race, but I'm really worried about the whole "people hate me because I'm so super special" thing. Even though it's psychologically well-founded, it's still a Sue trait, and it doesn't help that Arin was already seen as quirky and strange and never had many friends growing up.
I'm also worried about the fact that I've been neglecting and/or mistreating her relationship with her parents. Arin is an adult and thus is not reliant upon her parents--her parents also do not get along with each other and generally did not pay much attention to Arin when she was growing up. So I don't want to make her seem super attached to them, especially because they are really very ancillary characters to the plot and Arin has a lot of other, more important people to interact with and things to do. I'm not sure if her nearly ignoring them is realistic--but I'm also not sure her constantly worrying about them and doting on them would be realistic, either, because they're in good health and being well taken care of and she knows it, and she honestly just has other things to do besides attend to her whiny, demanding parents every waking hour, like try to save their race from destruction and promote equality and understanding between two races that have been at odds for centuries.
I do have them interact occasionally, and Arin does try to be there for them when they really need her, like when her grandmother passed away, but I wanted to give the impression of stubborn parents who don't want to let their child grow up, and who don't realize that they have their priorities all out of order as they left her to her own devices when she was younger and needed them most, and now they're paranoid about her safety and trying to restrict and manipulate her when she's under no obligation to obey them any more and she has better things to do with her life than waste away being kept under their collective thumb.
I'm just not sure if that's coming through the way I want it, or if I've inadvertently made Arin seem like a rebellious punk who doesn't care about her parents. She's supposed to be generally a very compassionate, kindhearted person, but she encounters a good deal of bitterness and frustration within herself whenever her parents come into the picture. I'm hoping that's realistic, but I'm not entirely sure. I also don't want to make that family drama a very large part of the plot, but I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to resolve it in a way that won't be either melodramatic, or having her parents say "okay Arin, you were right and we were terrible people, please forgive us o flawless one".
So yeah. Those are my grievances. Problem is, I'm not even really sure if they are grievances, because my co-author, whom I respect immensely as a writer and think her characters are absolutely wonderful and not Mary Sues in the least, thinks Arin is a wonderful character and several of her own characters absolutely adore her. I'm sure if I was doing something wrong, she would tell me, especially because we've been hard at work editing the first segment of the roleplay into a novel manuscript and we've actually started to send out query letters to agents.
So is all of this just in my head? Have I become so paranoid about making a Mary Sue that I shun Sue-ish traits like they're infectious diseases?
I don't knowwww aaaaggghhh
Okay I'm done.