Well now I've gone and done it.

[Bramandin]

Advice welcome, but mostly I'm just ranting and maybe providing a cautionary tale about overthinking things.

I found an exercise where a character is supposed to believe a lie as a personal value, I guess to create conflict when that belief is challenged. I'm supposed to then write when this belief got cemented. My issue is that I'm not smart enough to do that part of the worldbuilding. There's a religious belief "duty and self-sacrifice" that I've glossed over, one result is that their troops are willing to use kamikaze tactics. For this character, I have to work out scientific morals that are almost religious in their fanaticism with a good dose of being safety-obsessed.

The other problem is that I started trying to get more in-touch with this character during a scene, but the scene requires her to violate her values by taking an unnecessary risk. For all of her talk about her mentor not holding the same values as her, I could make her not as rigid as she pretends to be, but I don't want it to come out of the blue.

I was just going to do a scene from her childhood where anything can happen just to loosen up and keep my fingers going, hope that maybe something useful comes out, but I'm a bit stumped. Looking through writing prompts doesn't seem to give me the sort of dull everyday scene that I'm after. I was going to write a scene where four of them are doing homework together, well three of them because the one is 'proud warrior race' and is already better at reading than he needs to be. The daydreaming phase got overwhelming.

 

[The Judge]

I'll move this over to Writing Discussion, Bramandin, as it seems to me to be more of a request for help/commiseration than a communal exercise/game which is what Workshop is for.

Meanwhile, if it's of any help, what works for me is just letting my characters do things without much input from me. Instead of trying to force a situation on them, just let them wander and see what happens. So put one or two of them in a garden, or a ruined castle, or by a lake, or in a factory/shop/aquarium/whatever. Don't ask yourself "What would X do in this situation?" just let the characters decide what they want to do. If they just lounge about soaking up the sun, well, let them. There's no need to write it down, just sit and close your eyes and watch them do things in your mind's eye.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I found an exercise where a character is supposed to believe a lie as a personal value, I guess to create conflict when that belief is challenged.

This one's easy. To be blunt, stop doing the exercise. If one does not know the reason behind an exercise; if the provider has not explicitly given the reason(s) behind it, then it is highly unlikely that whoever may be doing the exercise will benefit. The writer is unlikely to either learn anything about a specific character nor any general truth about writing by doing the exercise.

For me, I often find it useful to stop and write a background piece about a character or a past event that will not appear in the story or novel I am writing. Some people may be able to do this intuitively, but I find that by committing something to paper, I force myself to make some tough decisions about a character and those decisions will affect the role the character plays in the plot. That is just me. I throw that out as a suggestion of something to try, but everyone is different. If this approach doesn't work for you, don't feel obliged to use it.

 

[Wayne Mack]

The other problem is that I started trying to get more in-touch with this character during a scene, but the scene requires her to violate her values by taking an unnecessary risk.

This one is a little more of a challenge. I suggest that it would break trust for the reader if a character arbitrarily actus against his or her values merely to forward the plot. One option would be to use another character to perform the needed action; use a character where the action feels more in line with the previous presentation of the character.

The other option is to provide another pressure that causes the character to act against his or her values. It could be peer pressure, questioning of the core values, drugging or mind control, fear of an even worse consequence, or a myriad of other driving factors. Whatever the choice, however, it needs to be foreshadowed so that the reader sees the choice as a logical extension of what has come before. I favor the 'rule of threes' and like to present the motivation at least twice (and overtly) before the character violates his or her beliefs.

After the fact, there needs to be remorse or consequences or something detrimental to the character arising from the violation of his or her values. Whether it is the character or an associate, the violation can not come with a 'get out of jail free' card and be forgotten.

I hope this gives some ideas in laying out a plot like for a violation of a character's core beliefs.

 

[Bramandin]

This one's easy. To be blunt, stop doing the exercise. If one does not know the reason behind an exercise; if the provider has not explicitly given the reason(s) behind it, then it is highly unlikely that whoever may be doing the exercise will benefit. The writer is unlikely to either learn anything about a specific character nor any general truth about writing by doing the exercise.

For me, I often find it useful to stop and write a background piece about a character or a past event that will not appear in the story or novel I am writing. Some people may be able to do this intuitively, but I find that by committing something to paper, I force myself to make some tough decisions about a character and those decisions will affect the role the character plays in the plot. That is just me. I throw that out as a suggestion of something to try, but everyone is different. If this approach doesn't work for you, don't feel obliged to use it.

I'm not sure it's the fault of the person who gave the exercise, but you're probably right in how if I get anything out of it, it would be the same thing as I would get from doing something else.

I figured that I just needed to go back into their background for something that will probably not make it to the story proper.

I first thought that this creative writing kit that I bought was a waste of $7, but it came with prompt cards. Five of the cards have the generic instructions "write a character type that you know in a situation you're not used to seeing them in" before the more specific prompt. Another card is a world-building exercise about a traveling circus and it might be fun to do an alternate universe where characters with those same personalities ran away to join the circus.

I'll move this over to Writing Discussion, Bramandin, as it seems to me to be more of a request for help/commiseration than a communal exercise/game which is what Workshop is for.

Meanwhile, if it's of any help, what works for me is just letting my characters do things without much input from me. Instead of trying to force a situation on them, just let them wander and see what happens. So put one or two of them in a garden, or a ruined castle, or by a lake, or in a factory/shop/aquarium/whatever. Don't ask yourself "What would X do in this situation?" just let the characters decide what they want to do. If they just lounge about soaking up the sun, well, let them. There's no need to write it down, just sit and close your eyes and watch them do things in your mind's eye.

Good idea to just let them run lose a bit instead of trying to impose things on them.

 

[Bramandin]

This one is a little more of a challenge. I suggest that it would break trust for the reader if a character arbitrarily actus against his or her values merely to forward the plot. One option would be to use another character to perform the needed action; use a character where the action feels more in line with the previous presentation of the character.

The other option is to provide another pressure that causes the character to act against his or her values. It could be peer pressure, questioning of the core values, drugging or mind control, fear of an even worse consequence, or a myriad of other driving factors. Whatever the choice, however, it needs to be foreshadowed so that the reader sees the choice as a logical extension of what has come before. I favor the 'rule of threes' and like to present the motivation at least twice (and overtly) before the character violates his or her beliefs.

After the fact, there needs to be remorse or consequences or something detrimental to the character arising from the violation of his or her values. Whether it is the character or an associate, the violation can not come with a 'get out of jail free' card and be forgotten.

I hope this gives some ideas in laying out a plot like for a violation of a character's core beliefs.

I'm not sure that I'm making a mistake by still trying to make the scene work. It was about seven years previous when she was ten, but she did break a rule that she felt was unfair. There are a lot of people who are all about rules and morality when it doesn't inconvenience them, but will easily fall to the slightest temptation. I'm beginning to think that her morality is more about what she feels that she and everyone else should be like, but part of her realizes that maybe those rules are not for her.

I'm not sure that there should always be a detriment to the character every single time they violate their values. I think her values would erode more readily if the worse she suffers is another character yelling at her and it's not even for violating the rule that she shouldn't take unnecessary risks. He's mad because she's being dishonest and she was taught that sometimes dishonesty is okay.

 

[DLCroix]

How are your readings of philosophy and metaphysics going? Complicated, right? My advice is that it is good for a writer to expand on the thoughts of his characters, the inner worlds please the readers, those kinds of stories somehow seem to them with more substance. But when the writer has to explain the premise of the story he gets into quicksand. The story should be self explanatory.