But my characters didn't cooperate.

[Bramandin]

Exactly. It has to work. At the end of the day, whether you want to use a metaphor about characters doing their own thing or not, you have to be honest and ruthless in getting rid of stuff that doesn't work.

MC doesn't know this yet, I just justified this sometime between last night and now, but he's going to reject his foster-dad. There was no point in introducing the elfi if they're not going to be a significant part of the story until he's an adult. The conceptual "what he's going to be" was trying to tell me that for several days.

 

[Toby Frost]

Exactly. It has to work. At the end of the day, whether you want to use a metaphor about characters doing their own thing or not, you have to be honest and ruthless in getting rid of stuff that doesn't work.

That was a general "you", by the way, not specifically aimed at anyone.

 

[The Judge]

You'll have to fall back onto legal training and the use of the passive voice, Toby, as well as the use of "one"!

At the end of the day, whether one wants to use a metaphor about characters doing their own thing or not, it's necessary to be honest and ruthless in getting rid of stuff that doesn't work. ​

 

[Bramandin]

You'll have to fall back onto legal training and the use of the passive voice, Toby, as well as the use of "one"!

At the end of the day, whether one wants to use a metaphor about characters doing their own thing or not, it's necessary to be honest and ruthless in getting rid of stuff that doesn't work. ​

Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a back massager... always use the indefinite article a back massager, never your back massager.

 

[Toby Frost]

No, no! That sounds like my day job! (recoils in horror like Dracula confronted by a crucifix)

 

[Swank]

However, the thing that you have to realise when attempting to give writing advice is that different people think and work in different ways, so just to say "No, stupid, they're not real" doesn't really achieve anything.

I don't see anyone saying that. The middle ground is that characters are not physics models that have to obey a narrow trajectory of behavior to satisfy the model they are built on. They aren't wind-up toys. If you want to think of them as real, then we ought to think of all the different ways a real person might act in a situation rather than just the one that ended up on the page.

So if we are sticking to the "real person in my head" technique, the solution would be to keep re-running the scene to allow other possible responses to come out of the characters instead of the one that has shown up so far.

 

[Bramandin]

I don't see anyone saying that. The middle ground is that characters are not physics models that have to obey a narrow trajectory of behavior to satisfy the model they are built on. They aren't wind-up toys. If you want to think of them as real, then we ought to think of all the different ways a real person might act in a situation rather than just the one that ended up on the page.

So if we are sticking to the "real person in my head" technique, the solution would be to keep re-running the scene to allow other possible responses to come out of the characters instead of the one that has shown up so far.

This is a good point. My strategy when they don't cooperate or if something doesn't feel right is to back up and have a character say or do something else at the point where I think something went wrong. They do have sliders where they could be in a better or worse mood or be more or less diplomatic or insightful.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Has anyone seen the 'Inside Number 9' episode 'Nine Lives Kat'? I won't spoil it by saying too much about it, but it covers some of the aspects covered in this topic.