30 days of fanfiction meme (day 4)
Jul. 4th, 2011 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia4 – Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the fic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
The "muse" concept always struck me as overbearingly twee, like carrying around a stuffed toy that one talks to, as an adult. :P That being said, I have this mental mechanism, I just choose to frame it differently. There's a sense in which character-centric writing is just method acting (improv?) pointed inward instead of out; it's easier to play a role that's congenial to one's existing patterns of thought... not always the obvious ones. I like rationalists, of course, and aesthetes, and the self-aware. But the characters I really enjoy writing tend to be happy - healthy, or bogglingly resilient, or at least able to repress and ignore their issues. XD; (I would define Schuldig as "happy", for instance.) I don't think I would be able to stick with a depressed or neurotic POV for very long; I can't even do that as a reader.
The way I write, it would be impossible for a character to push their way in where they're not needed - but for a story to exist at all, I'd surely have to have something to say about someone. I'm most liable to construct characters as distinct entities in their own right when they're taste-nexuses, because that information is basically mysterious. You can assume things about characters' interior lives and even relational history, based on how you see them act and react in canon. But how/why do you "just know" what their taste in music is like?
The "muse" concept always struck me as overbearingly twee, like carrying around a stuffed toy that one talks to, as an adult. :P That being said, I have this mental mechanism, I just choose to frame it differently. There's a sense in which character-centric writing is just method acting (improv?) pointed inward instead of out; it's easier to play a role that's congenial to one's existing patterns of thought... not always the obvious ones. I like rationalists, of course, and aesthetes, and the self-aware. But the characters I really enjoy writing tend to be happy - healthy, or bogglingly resilient, or at least able to repress and ignore their issues. XD; (I would define Schuldig as "happy", for instance.) I don't think I would be able to stick with a depressed or neurotic POV for very long; I can't even do that as a reader.
The way I write, it would be impossible for a character to push their way in where they're not needed - but for a story to exist at all, I'd surely have to have something to say about someone. I'm most liable to construct characters as distinct entities in their own right when they're taste-nexuses, because that information is basically mysterious. You can assume things about characters' interior lives and even relational history, based on how you see them act and react in canon. But how/why do you "just know" what their taste in music is like?
