Stuff

[guanin]

I read an odd thing once in a writing manual. It was something about needing to let your characters be wrong once in a while. No need to worry about that on my part. I disagree with my characters all the time. My hands always still when I'm about to write a particularly off thought of theirs, but write it. Else writing Adam would have been impossible. There was also another section about not babysitting your characters. Apparently some people love their characters so much that they can't bear to see them hurt and will not write them hurt. Once again, I stared and shook my head because while I have much more fun and even prefer to write my guys all happy and smiling, for some reason the angst takes over my brain and I wind up with tears and trauma. Funny how the mind works.

We had the birthdays yesterday. My cousin, my dad, and me, plus my niece and nephew who tagged along in the picture, but they get theirs celebrated separately for some reason. Though I haven't heard anything about a party for Andres, whose birthday is this week. Not that anyone tells me anything. We have the worst communication problems in this family. I don't know how anything gets done. I'm afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself with the kids yesterday. I was in the midst of an attack of depression, so in no mental state to deal with children. I need to have full toleration mode for that. Or for the kid to be my niece Ortensia (guess why the "H" was removed from the front of her name). Her I get along with just fine. Okay, so she's older now, but she was never loud. No shrieky screaming. That helps a lot. And I've had intelligent conversations with her. When she was nine. She's great. I wish she and her mum didn't live so far away. Her mum (my cuz) is the one I have to talk to about this future career of mine that I have no idea how I'm going to do. I need to do that soon.

Comments

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

I think the tricky thing with Heroes characters is that their lives tend to suck so much already that writing them more things to be angsty about feels like overkill. To me, anyway. Like, I have no problem writing about Claude and all his considerable issues as they stand, but adding to them seems...unnecessary to me. I have that problem with a lot of fics, especially ones in fandoms where canon is generally light-hearted or at worst dramedy (hate that word) level, because it's much too easy to over do the angst. And then it becomes, sure, you shouldn't babysit your characters, but neither should you give them a Spartan upbringing.

As for the letting them be wrong thing: I think I need to write that more often. Claude is just so awesomely fantastically competent in my mind that he is always right, no questions asked, as long as he does/thinks/says it, it's not wrong. *laughs* I'm a little too in love with his character.

We have the worst communication problems in this family

Hah! My uncle (my dad's younger brother) got divorced, and we didn't find out about it for one year. A whole year! Phone calls back and forth, emails, all that, and he never mentioned it.

Was it your birthday? Did you get clothes? I know you hate that.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

Unless your characters are Spartans!

Sorry, couldn't resist. With me and reading angst it depends so much on the quality of the writing, what mood I'm in, how coherent the plot is, etc.that even when I say that I'm not going to read a certain kind of fic anymore, I wind up reading it eventually. On writing, sometimes I do have to pull back. My mind goes to really dark places at first. I have no idea why. Perhaps that's why I don't deal much with light hearted fandoms. I'm odd. In original fiction, I tend to like a lot of life and death conflict, probably because I love writing tension. But then I need light stuff to cheer me up. It's a balance, really.

Oh, I do disagree with Claude sometimes, like with every character I write. It makes writing more fun for me.

Oh god. Okay, that's worse than anything I've had to deal with. Well, my godfather disappeared for half a year without telling his kids where he was going. All we knew was that he was somewhere in Texas.

It's the 17th. One week from now. Wow. 26. I feel liek my grandmother. Another year goes by and I still haven't done what I wanted to do. No clothes yet, thankfully, but I'm my grandmother's present and she loves to give me clothes. Otherwise, i actually got a nice spread this year, save for the weird new age "realize your potential" books one of my cousins dumped on me because she's moving. Her sister and my nephew also got books like that. I don't what she was doing with them to begin with. We were all looking at them, going, "The hell?" Not our kind of stuff.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

Naturally, the "no Spartan upbringing" caveat is invalid if you write 300 fic ;)

I've become such a fandom isolationist; I don't read any pairing other than Plaude (for the most part), and I only read angst etc. when it comes from people I know. As for writing it, well, I prefer the little, day to day tragedies of the world to the big ones; for one I understand them better, and feel less disingenuous about using for fic. And I am unabashedly fond of fluff. Writing it, reading it, whatever, I wish I could do more of it but it doesn't come as easily as angst.

I think there's a difference between disagreeing with a character and thinking they're "wrong"; I come from an entirely different point of view than Peter's in just about every way possible, but that doesn't mean I think he's wrong. Of course I also have him do really stupid stuff sometimes, because he's Peter.

Well, my dad's family is like that. They're very reserved about sharing personal information. And feelings.

*laughs* Well, you never know when the new age "realize your potential" books will come in handy. You can use them to prop up wobbly desks!

[guanin.livejournal.com]

I only sometimes write about stuff I've experienced and then it's only little things. I think it's because I don't like writing about my own life in fiction form, even indirectly. But then again, sometimes I do, so I don't know. I do prefer things that have no relation to my life precisely because of the escapism. Escapism is my drug. I get so few fluff bunnies that when I do get one, I notice I can't write it for very long before angst grabs me again, which is horrible because I do like writing it. Just in short spurts. But it does depend on how fluffy it is. I'm not fond of excessive fluff even if I'm sometimes guilty of writing it. I once published a Kiro fic that I couldn't bear the ending of (still can't) because it's so sappy, but I left it because I knew people would like it. And they did.

Mostly I just disagree with characters. Only sometimes (like so many in times in Adam's case when he was in deep, over-dramatic denial) do I think they're flat out wrong. It doesn't happen very often.

[rampant-chaos8.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I've never really thought about it, but I do wonder if I'm sometimes guilty of not letting characters be wrong. I'll have to keep that in mind :)

[guanin.livejournal.com]

I disagree with mine all the time. I don't even plan it, it just happens. It gets a bit tiring for me if they're always right.

[drakochi.livejournal.com]

It was something about needing to let your characters be wrong once in a while.

I agree with that. I think it makes the characters more 3 dimensional, also it is a way to be realistic because no one is perfect (except Mary-Sues).

There was also another section about not babysitting your characters.

In my opinion writing angst and finding ways to torture your characters is easier than writing them in happy-land. There is so much more to explore with those situations. To write agony and pain is good. And it is also much more interesting to read.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

Very true. Characters who get everything right aren't real. Besides, writing a character's failing is often one of the most interesting things for me.

I try to find a medium. Sometimes I'll write happy stuff and sometimes I'll write angsty stuff. I get overwhelmed with too much of the same after a while, but that happens to me with everything. But even the happy stuff (unless it's really short) has a trace of something more serious running through it.