Processing My Fiction – When Not One, Not Two, But “Six” Characters Grab the Story 😉
Pictured Left : “The Children.”
Multi-generational fun when the family, and their children, arrive to join the grandparents to participate in a children’s festival.
The first third is preparations for their arrival, and, when the children arrive, things get really cranking! 🙂
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“the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and the arts – it’s a process…”
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Processing My Fiction –
When Not One, Not Two, But “Six” Characters Grab the Story 😉
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Categories : Fiction – Author Bio Info & Updates
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Characters Run Wild
What to do? What I did…
What I did when I wrote my third novel, “The Children,” featuring a family cast of characters I thought would each have their own book, was find I really liked the ensemble process.
Not that I don’t do, or like, individual protagonist work, it’s just what’s perking in my creative soup right now.
Or maybe I should say salad, since it’s hot here in Texas, and, salads tend to mix but retain the individual components. 🙂
Essentially, what I did, when I got to “The Children,” within a wide-mesh outline process I had first started trying out as a guide, was let them go.
Like real children though, one is always worrying and happy at the same time over all the mixtures of people you care for one can’t control or direct. Which knowing our own lives, might be just as well. 🙂
And there are plenty of story writing warnings about this.
Head hopping fears? Fix it later, if really needed.
Point-of-view shifts? Find the focus in something else, something they’re doing, or the setting they’re in, and their reactions to that.
Competing interests and story lines? Yeah? So what else is new with having kids!
The drive to have these characters interacting together, in varying degrees and intensities, was too much to continue to try to resist.
I gave up caring. Caring what a fictional reader or critic, including myself, might think.
And just wrote.
And a funny thing’s been happening.
Threads to tie the differing lives together began to appear. And continue to.
More questions arose. How to re-write those ideas into the current story. How much to re-write to do the same.
The answer, one answer, a partial answer, it turned out, was pretty simple.
Create short stories.
More questions. Should the short stories be prequels? sequels? within the same storyline time?
Geez!
What was this! Real life? 🙂 Sorta, I guess.
So I gave up, again. Caring that is.
Now I have short stories with the same characters set in the past, the future, and soon (I’m working on it) within the time frame of the body of my novel in progress!
The big surprise? I really like it like that. 😉
Yes, if the six “spots” above are the characters, some of the characters are more prominent than the others.
But…who’s to say which character will play the dominant role(s) at any one time.
I’d like to say the author, who does have a say…
But, I’ve found I better listen to what the real characters are saying. 🙂
With the above in mind, below is a short poem, linked to dVersePoets OpenLinkNight # 103, hosted by Grace, celebrating a little of what writing is for me.
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Writing Is…
Writing is, feelings
put into motion
catapulting
with words…
Writing is memories
stitched in new clothing
hiding a secret
in red…
Writing is
when words
become pieces and chunks
of
new life, baked and simmered
under the heat of self
scrutiny…
And writing is
moments of poetry
mixed with the doings
and dialogs of sounds
words
we
couldn’t wait to hear
again…
© felipe adan lerma
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Free Opportunity
This won’t always be the case at the end of any of these “Processing My Fiction” posts, but if you’ve read this far, this week that I’ve posted this article, you can grab a copy of “The Children” free at Amazon. 🙂
Other Posts You May Like
Processing My Fiction – Or Why Does It Feel Like I’m a Teenager in Love, Again
Choice and Intent, the Creative Challenge in Yoga Sports & Creativity
My Writing History, the Road to My First eBook (Sports Poetry)
Dance and Musicality .^.^.^^ My Poetry from Yoga — ~~ — Making My First Music Video
I’m a WHAT Kind of Writer! Romance? – Part 7 Conclusions
Love Before the Fourth of July – Prequels, Stories, and Sequels
Titles You May Like
Love Before the Fourth of July (Texas Shorts)
Four Shorts, Prequels to “The Children”
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namaste´- con dios – god be with you
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*** INTEGRATING YOGA FITNESS AND THE ARTS
© Felipe Adan Lerma - All Rights Reserved - Blogging at WordPress Since 2011 :) 
Writing has been a new journey for me and I have discovered a whole new world with writing ~
Thanks for linking up and wishing you happy week ~
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Writing is all those things, and sooooooooo many more too. It’s amazing how often we live with the conceit that we are completely in control of our characters; some of the best writing prompts just put two characters in a situation and ask, “What happens next?” Each person writing to the prompt discovers that something different happens in their story than in everyone else’s.
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Writing is all these things! Well said sir.
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thanks so much jennifer, and gotta say, your moom poem has a beauty of a feel to it, a pleasure to read 🙂
http://www.poetlaundry.com/2013/07/moonwhistle.html
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Very much enjoyed your writing metaphors, Felipe. That could make a fun writing prompt. Writing is….!
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well certainly feel free to use it anytime 😉
when i began writing “a lot” of poetry, back in the early 90s, that was one of my favored ways of finding what images i related to a subject, ie, “my mom is…” etc
it’s pretty revealing what / how we associate, and it’s fun
hope people go to read your poem, so soothing, so beautiful, best wishes victoria 🙂
http://liv2write2day.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/summer-heat/
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we could not wait to hear again…for sure…i like the mystery of writing…sometimes we start with an intention and then the story just kinda goes where it will…and when we let it out of the box and dont know how to get it back in…it finds a way you know…some interesting thoughts man behind your stories…
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“it finds a way” –
and that is what’s taken me so long to realize, though i’d often allow it, out of anger i couldn’t consciously figure it out, or voices of criticism in my head were “extra” loud, lol! we can plan and plot, but til we also allow, it seems it just ain’t gonna happen, thank brian 🙂
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feelings
put into motion…memories
stitched in new clothing….i like that image much….writing is something so soothing and nurturing for the soul…
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“writing is something so soothing and nurturing for the soul…” –
without expression, fulfilled or not, even if there is a dream, my guess we’ll never nourish the soul as needed, thanks so much claudia 🙂
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