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attn jms: writing

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Shadyce

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00
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Can you tell us a little bit about the way you write your storys?

How do you get your ideas for stories and characters and how do you handle
them?


Jms at B5

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00
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>
>Can you tell us a little bit about the way you write your storys?
>
>How do you get your ideas for stories and characters and how do you handle
>them?

I always start with character. Character gives you plot; if you start with
plot and try to back your way into characater, you can go afoul very easily.

You have to know who your character is, what he wants, how far he will go to
get it, and how far someone else will go to stop him. Answer those questions
and 90% of the plotting work is done for you.

jms

(jms...@aol.com)
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Blair Leatherwood

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Jan 6, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/6/00
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Jms at B5 wrote:

Case in point: we had a movie marathon on Saturday, playing catchup. "There's
Something About Mary" is full of plot and no character (I've never seen an
orthopedic surgeon with that much free time). It got tedious very quickly; not
to mention the fact that new events had to be created at great effort. "Analyze
This" has characters--the plot comes out of them effortlessly (for the most
part)--and, it's funny! Why? These characters are "real".

John W. Kennedy

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Jan 14, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/14/00
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Jms at B5 wrote:
> I always start with character.

I appreciate the point you're making, but surely this cannot be
literally true? Doesn't the _kernel_ of the story -- the momentary
thing that makes you say: "Hum! I have an idea for a story!" (and
which non-writers think is the hard part, poor dears) have to be plot
related? Most of us, after all, are not lucky enough to have a Joseph
Bell in our lives, and even he had to be transformed from a doctor into
a detective before he could be Sherlock Holmes.

By all means, one must know who the characters are, what they want,
etc., before starting to write or even outline. Heck, the author may
not even know for sure where the plot is going; my own best work, having
been for Int'l Wizard of Oz Club competitions, has been in picaresques
where I frequently had less than a single page of foreknowledge --
that's half the fun of writing an Oz book. But even then, I had a "what
if?" or two before I had any notion of who the characters were going to
be.

Or am I totally off-base?

By the way, I've just been reading Beresford's "Writing Aloud", an
interesting journal kept by a minor British novelist of the 20's, about
one novel that he played with for years, but never wrote. I notice that
he _did_ start with his leading ingenue -- but I also notice (as did
Dorothy L. Sayers) that the poor girl never develops into much of a
character, mostly because his leading idea about her was that she would
be "completely normal". (I wonder if that's the problem with Fanny
Price?) The book's well worth the reading, but hard to find in the USA
without resorting to the Inter-Library Loan system.

--
-John W. Kennedy
-rri...@ibm.net
Compact is becoming contract
Man only earns and pays. -- Charles Williams


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