Sheesh. Between updating Perfect Dark, writing an interprative essay and college in general, I sometimes wonder how I find the time to write my current fanfic.
But that's another topic. I'm here to talk about BreakABone's fanfic.
BreakABone, your writing has improved dramatically. Generally, there's nothing wrong with the way you construct sentences now. Your flow is not perfect, but over time, I think you will be able to figure things out for yourself. At times like this, it's best for me to just get out of the way and let you discover your own way. Time to talk a little about character development (I can't talk about plot since I still don't know what it is). About the only piece of advice I can offer now is the fuzziest and hardest to implement. It's the part of writing that will take the rest of life for most of us.
I call it "writing observation." There's probably a technical term for it, but I don't know what it is. At any rate, the key to writing observation is, you guessed it, observation. What you have to do is watch people and things, taking note of the impression you get from them and then thinking hard about what it is that's giving you that impression. The small details are best.
I think that if I show you a few examples, you'll get the idea.
Quote:
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Peach sat down in her chair without looking at Mario, smoothed her skirt and pulled her gloves tighter on her hands. Then she brushed a few stray locks of hair from her face and adjusted the crown on her head. Finally, she took a deep breath and began to speak.
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Most people, upon reading this, will immediately think, "Aha. Peach is nervous." And yet, the quoted passage doesn't ever use the word "nervous" or any of its synonyms. Let's look at the same passage written a little differently.
Quote:
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Peach smoothly sat down in her chair and smiled at Mario as she crossed her legs and clasped her hands in front of her.
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This is even more succinct than the first passage, but I think it succeeds just as well at getting its message across: Peach is confident and comfortable.
As human beings who have seen other humans sitting down on chairs before, we instinctively know that people who don't look at us and adjust minor things around them are probably nervous and distracted while other people who look directly at us and cross their legs without adjusting are confident. The thing is we don't really know it. We just get a general impression that we are able to give to other people without always being able to say exactly why we got that impression. Your job now is to pick up on the little gestures—slight nods, tapping feet, forming hands into fists—that characterize people in various emotional states. You can try just watching and remembering like I do or bring along a note pad and scribble down what people look like when excited, nervous or depressed.
This doesn't have to be applied simply to people. You can also use it to describe objects. Now, inanimate things don't have emotions. But the people observing them do. If Mario eats his breakfast and observes that it tastes bland although Luigi is an excellent cook, we know that Mario is distracted. If he feels the sun's rays soaking him in warmth, he's probably happy. But if those sunrays feel like an oppressive weight beating down on his shoulders, causing him to sweat, he's probably tired. It's harder to describe the mood of your narrator or the person through whose eyes you are seeing the world. In order to get the right effect, you have to basically wait for a genuine emotion to arise in yourself and then take a step back and look inward to see what's going on with you that makes you feel that way.
Why does this work? Why not just say "Peach was nervous" or "Mario was confused"? I'm not really sure what the answer is. All I can say is that portraying a the world through these little details produces a better response in readers than simply spelling it out for them. As human beings who have seen people sitting down, we know the subtle cues that indicate nervousness or confidence. Maybe describing those little details makes reading them feel a little more like actually being there, seeing all the signs for themselves and interpreting them in the brain to produce a general impression. Perhaps details can produce subtler effects than a general overarching adjective. I'm sure a psychologist would have some theories. All I know is that describing your characters through detail rather than simple adjectives makes them feel a little more...alive.
This trick isn't restricted to just single passages either. Character development works in part because you build consistent themes for different moods in your characters. Have Mario always remember to grab his hat and put it on wherever he goes, and then just one time, have him forget. Have the Mario brothers use certain mannerisms when they are alone together and use different ones in different company in order to establish that they have a close relationship. Your readers will pick up on it even if they aren't always aware of it.
That's about the best advice I can give you for character development.
Deadly Alliance-Chapter 3
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