I'm not sure that's exactly what she's talking about, actually.
She's kind of describing how I tend to write too. It's just... perhaps a bit of an abstract way of doing it? I always tell people that I can't say exactly what's going to happen later in a story, because it depends on how the characters interact with each other. It's not that you only really "create a situation for them". Perhaps that's what happens at the beginning, such as making a setting, and maybe having some kind of history for both the setting and the characters involved, but after that it's basically just letting the characters go at it, maybe with a little guidance from you if you have some ideas of where you want things to do, but mostly just letting the characters guide themselves.
...What I mean by this, is to begin with a bit of dialog or action. Have a character comment on something involving the situation, or have one of them do something that you find interesting or might help lead toward a plot goal. After that though, just let the characters go. If there's someone else involved, how would they respond to what the first character does or says? Have them respond that way, and throw it back to the first character. As this exchange continues, eventually things will occur and happen, but it might end up in at least a bit of a different place than you began.
For example, an idea I thought of a little while ago...
Aichan has just bought a house on Fiji that really is more an expanse of ancient stone ruins than an actual "house". She'd just come off of a bad breakup with Risa, and also recently retired from the idol industry after it was discovered she had a scandalous affair with super-idol Reina Tanaka as well as ten other under-aged mistresses. She took her yacht to Fiji looking for a quiet life in the tropics to retire and disappear for a little while.
Once she gets there and buys her ruins, she makes friends with two Chinese expats named Chun and Lin, and she tries to begin her life anew... as well as discover whatever secrets might lie in her new "resting" (Rest In Peace?) grounds.
Goals I'd initially like to work toward in the story are maybe an AiLin relationship since it's intriguing with the talk about it in here recently. I'd also like them to find that there really are some hidden ancient secrets to her ruins, like it used to be an old castle built by European seafarers in the sixteenth century. She'll maybe discover new evidence of who REALLY were the first to sail around the world - like that they were really Japanese or something, forever altering what was thought about the course of history....
Anyway...
So I begin to write that. HOWEVER, as the characters interact and things develop, Aichan in her curious nature finds Chun's fascination with the bananas that can be grown on the island fascinating, and they begin to learn together what fantastic uses the "forbidden fruit" can actually be put to, and this leads yet to another illicit affair, something that Aichan tends to be prone to. Needless to say, this doesn't really help promote the AiLin dynamic I had originally been aiming for, and in fact those two may just never get together cause they might seem to work better as just friends. Or... Maybe there is still something going on with them, and that helps some drama develop with a kind of interracial love triangle in the Bermuda Triangle... er... I mean Fiji.
The point is that because of the characters' interactions as I write, it ends up in a completely different place than I originally intended relationship-wise. Also, because of the story that developed around the relationships, that became the main focus of the broader fic in general, and the whole deal about the ruins and rewriting history that I was so excited about gets put on the back-burner, if much happens with it at all. Why did this happen? Because I had a kind of setting to begin with, put the characters in it, and then pretty much set them free. That's how the story was made...
That kind of thing has actually happened in a few of the stories I've written so far
and I'm sure they will in the future too. I think this is more what Essy was talking about... though... *looks at what he just wrote* um......... >.>
Topic: Fanfics Review / General Discussion Thread (Read 310728 times)