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Writing Workshop Notes
Jan. 7th, 2015 09:19 amI had my monthly writer's workshop last night. It was a productive session, in which one of the last chunks of the fully-operational Death Star newly completed WIP One of Our Spaceships is Missing was discussed. There were several useful comments, three of which I'll discuss.
The first was that "none of your characters think." Now, this wasn't saying that my characters were Too Stupid to Live (that's a technical term, BTW) but rather that I hadn't shown them thinking. That's a valid dig, although somewhat of an artifact of my first draft process. I tend to puke out the plot onto the page in Draft 1.0, then 2.0 gets prettied up with description, thoughts and emotions.
The second comment was one of my characters did something out of character. I personally liked that scene, which was an homage to a scene in a movie. However, the comment was correct, and was an example of the writerly saying "Kill Your Darlings." Just because you The Author think a turn of phrase is clever doesn't mean you The Reader agrees.
The third comment is "you have too many characters." I'm on the fence on this one. Partially, I've got a metric shitload (technical term) of stuff going on. There will be a lot of characters. On the other hand, when I go to buy a new book and they have a List of Characters in the front I tend to find that off-putting. So, I'll have to cogitate on character.
The first was that "none of your characters think." Now, this wasn't saying that my characters were Too Stupid to Live (that's a technical term, BTW) but rather that I hadn't shown them thinking. That's a valid dig, although somewhat of an artifact of my first draft process. I tend to puke out the plot onto the page in Draft 1.0, then 2.0 gets prettied up with description, thoughts and emotions.
The second comment was one of my characters did something out of character. I personally liked that scene, which was an homage to a scene in a movie. However, the comment was correct, and was an example of the writerly saying "Kill Your Darlings." Just because you The Author think a turn of phrase is clever doesn't mean you The Reader agrees.
The third comment is "you have too many characters." I'm on the fence on this one. Partially, I've got a metric shitload (technical term) of stuff going on. There will be a lot of characters. On the other hand, when I go to buy a new book and they have a List of Characters in the front I tend to find that off-putting. So, I'll have to cogitate on character.
