Wordsmithing: Can YOUR MC see what no one else has noticed?

Thursday, 2 May 2013

Can YOUR MC see what no one else has noticed?

MAY IS HOSTED BY WRITING TIPS BY WRITERS, DONALD MAASS' TWEETS ON CREATING THE PERFECT NOVEL ;) & SECTIONS INSPIRED BY THESE:

“Write even when the mood isn’t right. You can’t tell if what you’re writing is good or bad while you’re writing it.” ~ Cory Doctorow

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP 76

Character-drive WIP? How can your MC’s family, friends, town, times or way of seeing become odd, unique, less ordinary?

“Yes, we butt our houses up together to cling on but while we shine up our windows – supposedly so we can see out – we hang our curtains facing in to give us something safer to look at. But the shadow of the mountain falls over us, tree roots break our best laid foundations, springs erupt, the roads crack, weeds push through wherever they please. Can’t you see what’s happening? It’s only a matter of time Earth claims back what we took.”

Are you writing character-driven fiction? How did your MC notice s/he notice his view of the norm was not in step with everyone around?

6 comments:

Golden Eagle2 May 2013 at 22:44
That's a great quote from Cory Doctorow.

My current WIP is more character-driven than anything else I've worked on. It's interesting to see things differently through her perspective.
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John Wiswell3 May 2013 at 02:46
In my most recent WIP, I had multiple points of view. One character, a member of a cult, becomes very uncomfortable that she sees things differently than her beloved fellow cultists, and tries to suppress difference. Another POV, the leader, disdains and longs for individual thought among her followers. POV elements often bleed into personal struggles. I think those work out naturally.
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Jemi Fraser3 May 2013 at 12:37
That's a geat snippet! I love the viewpoint - we are becoming more and more internalized!
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RETURN: YA Paranormal Romance

I was running late. But, it was nothing I couldn’t make up with a bit of effort. I shook my head. Confident and happy? I smiled. Increasing my stride, I pushed until the muscles in my legs burned. I kept up the pace even when the hill grew steeper.

Magpie Lane was hardly wider than a ribbon that edged the woods but that didn’t stop traffic using it to get to the motorway quicker. Large trucks and fast cars loved Magpie Lane. They sent vibrations running through me rising from the soles of my trainers. I felt the disturbance in the ground, even before the air pressure tried to knock me off balance. I hunched my shoulders as the cab hauling a container spat stones up at me.

Jogging on the spot, at the entrance to woodland, I ached to leave the road and go inside. My Mum was probably still asleep but I could hear her you-never-know-what might-be-in-there lecture buzzing on repeat inside my head. I should run safe. Not even I would argue that running through the woods on my own was the best definition of safe but I wanted to run-wild and the woodland offered me that. This early, I should be safe from axe murderers or perverts in the trees and besides, I was fast.

I jogged down the slope into the trees. From two paces in, I felt different. Freer. It felt so right. Running in the woods did great things for my style. Avoiding the roots and dodging branches forced my stride longer, I had to step higher. The woodland, The Weald, was only a sliver of ancient woodland that the developers forgot to build on but it felt like it could have been anywhere. Everywhere. At any time. The oaks and beech trees dominated the space and the skinny, silver-birches squeezed up beside them. I laughed. For a second, the woods reminded me of school and I needed to run a lot faster.

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Thursday, 2 May 2013

Can YOUR MC see what no one else has noticed?

6 comments: