From: A_Tina_Hall@kruemel.org
mumble wrote:
> Is storytelling a talent one is born with, or is it a skill that can
> be developed?
> Aside from autobiography, where do the stories come from?
For me the initial ideas come from what annoys me in other stories or
what people claim should be in stories, what I'd want different or
definitely DO. NOT. WANT.
Formeost of course, characters have to be the way I want them. No
plotting against each other among the good guys, getting in the way of
fighting the bad guys. No 'internal conflict' whining on about what they
can't do. (Doesn't mean I have no whining, but only because the
situation is nowhere near happy shiny even when choices are obvious.)
No changing of characters' core personality and views. Even someone
going from neutral gender to male gender stays himself at the core. Even
someone going from near no magic to overblown magic doesn't change what
he sees as right and wrong, he just has the means to do something about
what he sees as wrong (within the limits of what he can do while others
with the same overblown magic like things as they are). This particular
character actually can't change due to how he was made.
There's more, but I'm already rambling on.
Beside the characters is setting, backround, and stuff based on what I
want different. A proper evil overlord (what I'd consider such), or a
non-human species (because humans in stories usually annoy me). Things
that random strangers on Usenet claim has to happen on every world (like
people settling near water, so one of my stories has that be a bad
idea).
They worked out best, while I still had ideas. Sooner or later a scene
would turn up (that I'd see the same way I see stuff I read), and
writing that started a story and then it just continued with what
happens next.
I guess part of the reason I'm out of ideas is that I did everything
that annoys me in a way I would want it done differently in one or the
other story.
Trying to force ideas, stories, scenes, they didn't get rolling.
And then I have 6 different starts of fantasy with gods that all petered
out sooner or later. I guess gods don't work for me. Proper gods have to
be sensible, which either makes the story pointless (nothing dangerous
could happen to people - I have a beginning in such a setting that ended
with me realizing there's not really a story there), or they are the bad
guys, or they are both bad guys and good guys fighting (but then why did
the 'good' gods sit on their bum until things went downhill? means
they're not good after all). Motivation for those gods, and origins, in
the different forms, all didn't work for me.
> Are they imagined up out of thin air?
Once I got the start, yeah. I just follow the characters around and see
what happens next, while writing. Finding out stuff while writing. Ever
amazed at how things turn out to tie together, or even be clues to what
came later. (At one point somewhere in book 2 of ME I realized that
there was something in book 1 that was not possible as shown, within the
setting. Turned out it was a clue to what happens at the end of book 2.)
In the S&E I first thought the Summer tribe was the bad guys, maybe even
in part because they're kinda opposite of the Winter tribe (where the
story starts[*]) but then realized they couldn't be, as the whole world
was defined to be good guys, so the source of the bad had to come from
somewhere else. But of course the leader of the Winter tribe isn't
jumping to conclusions and keeps looking for more clues. And even the
Autum tribe that no one understands are good guys![#] (It's fun to have
a bunch of very differnt kind of people all with the same core instinct
of what's right and wrong.)
[*] Plus I didn't like summer much until last year where we had none at
all and I vowed to never complain again. Before that you'd have me
yelling for snow right now.
[#] "Whatever you see is probably not what you think it is." That counts
for me too! (The Autumn tribe are all about deception, in a way that
harms no one. Because of course they must meet the definition of the
world, but even when they're helping they do it through lies and
appearing as other than they are.) I thought I knew who their leader is,
but of course that was just deception. Then I found out who their leader
is, along with the other characters, but that of course is just the next
layer of deception... I now have suspicions, but well, that'd just turn
out another deception if I did anything about it. :)
Which reminds me how I got those 10 tribes. (What with where ideas come
from.)
I started with the 10 resistor colours (black, brown, red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, white), then put names to them and
sorted them until I was happy (Night, Earth, Autumn, Fire, Summer,
Water, Spring, Magic, Air, Winter), then put Magic at the end of that
row because that way the odd Season and the odd Element frame the
others, with alternating them in between. I twiddled a bit more with a
table on how 2 of any would mix into one other (which turned out really
useful).
From those basic words the personalities just grew. The tribe name is
part of their nature (it's the magic in them that determines it). More
so the older they get. Winter people like it cold and snowy, are
comfortable and usually calm, but can be a fierce blizzard too. Summer
people _need_ wide hot lands or they'd wither, they're wild,
unpredictable, stoic about the situation they're in.
Autumn for me associated with harvest and changing leaves, which has
their region overly fertile (they fight to not be overgrown) and them
deceptive. Which actually turned out one being the cause of the other,
but I'm rambling.
--
"Being raised by the secret order of not-being-very-informative
doesn't mean you can't tell us."
-- Ranes, Magic Earth 7/6
Excerpts at:
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