Thursday, October 20, 2011

Blogging and Character Creating Help

Hallo!  I am sort of new to this blogging stuff even if I already started months ago.  I don't exactly know how put a playlist(a music thingy that plays a list of music for free) on here or other things but...  If you know how to, could you comment and tell me how?

Character Creating:

Creating Characters is more than just describing him/her and giving him/her a list of things to do within the book according to plot.
In writing, many authors say that Characters come first.  Characters make your story(name of a book that I'm reading.  It has a blue cover and is by Maren Elwood in case you want to go looking for it), and plot doesn't make characters. 
I also got some help from a clean video series on Youtube made by Scottishbooktrust about writing books.  The person who made it has a Scottish accent which made it even more cool.  The video was called Creative Writing Masterclass 2. You can look that up if you want.  I got a lot of this from that one.
Characters develop through plot just as we ourselves develop through crisis.  I have read in the book that readers are more interested in the characters than in the plot.  You could have a character hanging over a cliff and readers might not even care because the character might not have much color or character, being not much more than a puppet.
To change that, you give that character different traits.  Is he or she shy?  Or is he/she very talkative?  If you choose one or the other, they should keep that character trait unless they go through something that helps them to overcome their shyness or realize that not talking as much is better than talking a lot.
If one is shy, then show your reader that he/she is shy and why they are shy, or why they avoid talking as much; the character's reason for avoiding talking.
Another thing is talent: what is their talent?
What is their passion?
What is their secret?
Who do they look up to?
Who do they try to avoid at all costs?  Who is their worst enemy?
What have they lost?  A parent?  A sibling?  A toy?  An heirloom?  A key?
What do they keep in their pockets?  If they carry a guitar pick, than you will probably think that they are a musician.  If they carry an American dime, then you know they're American.  If they carry a rock, then you'll think they're a rock collector.  If they wear a wedding ring you'll think they're married.  And so on.
I hope this helps you in creating good characters.
God bless you!

6 comments:

  1. Ok, to make a playlist, basically just follow this link: http://www.playlist.com/ and there should be instructions there. Do you know how to do a HTML gadget?

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  2. Hmm, interesting! You brought up a few good points here as to how you can go along in creating characters. Thanks for the suggestions!

    ~SOTK~
    New post up on CWH

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  3. BohoRose:
    I know how to make a playlist but I don't know how to put it on here. I'm not sure I know what you mean by a HTML gadget unless you're talking about what they call 'gadgets' in the editing page on here.

    You're welcome SOTK :)

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  4. Ok, when you're on the design page and it shows you the layout, which will show you where everything is in the forms of tan boxes, you can click "add a gadget". When you click on that, scroll down the page until you see the one that says "HTML / Javascript". Click it and paste the code for your playlish in the text box.

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  5. Thankyou! My sister was going to tell me but she's been so busy lately with college.

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  6. "What do they keep in their pockets" - great question to ask while planning your characters! I think that both character and plot are equally important, but you're right - if I don't care about the character, I don't care if they are about to fall off a cliff! :)

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