I am a solitary type of writer. A hermit writer, if you will. And yet, even hermits need to go trading goatskins for matches and toilet paper (this hermit has a delicate bum, thank you very much).
Away from the metaphor a bit, and moving to reality, there are times when I need to talk about my various attempts at scribbling to other people not already in my head. Those are some of the most difficult conversations!
A lot of the difficulty stems from the fact that they aren't in my head. The people I'm talking to have no idea of the chunks of backstory I'm dealing with, and they don't immediately understand the motivations of my characters. But why should they?
I'm asking them to talk about characters who don't exist outside of my grey matter. When I think of Taliesin, I know exactly how she puts her hand on her hip, and the tilt of her head. I know which of Absinthe's jokes made Dace laugh even when he is angry enough to ask for his key back. How can people _know_ what I'm talking about?
Part of me concludes that I just shouldn't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated. The more sense-filled part of me admits that if I can't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated, and make them understand where my characters are coming from, if I can't get them to love Simon and his complaining as much as I do, then do I really know my characters as much as I think I do?
What do you think? Let's chat.
2 comments:
You're speaking to a problem I had. I know what motivated my characters, but I didn't convey it well enough to my audience. Great post. :-)
Thanks! :) I'm glad you liked it.
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