Yes it's better to start there, although my suggestion was to back up slightly and start with the narrator in the apartment ang leaving it to go to the dojo. And I meant continue from 03.

My personal opinion is that it is just bad to start with a flashback or a retrospective from an older version of the narrator. I have never seen a book where this device did anything positive.

ok, I will continue writing from what I have now, instead of from the old 03. I have bent the content to show what happened between the roommate and the narrator before going to the dojo.

1.02

Quote: Original post by Wai
ok, I will continue writing from what I have now, instead of from the old 03. I have bent the content to show what happened between the roommate and the narrator before going to the dojo.

1.02

I like that. [smile]

Mare: I have a nit to pick...

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
...
I believe the archetypes approach is the simplest and the easiest to study in examples of fiction and emulate if desired. Let me clarify that when I talk about archetypes I am not talking about Jung's archetypes, or his archetypes as adapted by Campbell, Vogler, or Frey. I dislike that system because it is akin to astrology and tarot cards: inconsistent, incomplete, and the symbolism tends to get in the way of actually understanding how the archetypes work.

Er... but then you add:

Quote: So when I talk about an archetype I mean any case in which you can point to several characters in unrelated works of fiction and say "these are all fundamentally the same character"...

Which is, uhm, exactly the same thing. Campbell's works were essentially research in the field of Comparitive Mythology. He literally studied myths and legends from all over the world and compared them to each other to find out what their common factors were.

The very word, "archetype", was coined and popularised by Jung and his adherents. You cannot use the term without bringing in the Jungian baggage and, in fact, you didn't. You may not agree with Jung himself, or Campbell, but do bear in mind that Campbell's theories were written almost 40 years ago. Jung's are even older. The whole _point_ of science is that it never, ever, stands still. It is constantly being rewritten.

I don't particularly agree with Campbell's interpretations of some of the myths, but this is as much because attitudes and our understanding of cultures have changes so dramatically since his day. In addition, we have simply learned more about our species' history since then, so some of Campbell's theories have been disproved.

Nevertheless, there _are_ many similarities in the types of stories and characters we see in myth and legend. To dismiss Campbell's overall theory out of hand on the basis that hindsight's 20/20 vision has made some of his evidence invalid. Even Charles Darwin made some egregious errors that were disproved much later. Does that make evolution any less valid as a theory?

*

The problem here is that there's no magic to characterisation. Just observe the people around you. Not merely watch, but study. Put yourself in their shoes. The hardest part of writing a realistic character isn't coming up with a cast of thousands, but in ensuring each one feels 'right' in the context of the story, and doesn't do something so out of character that it shatters the reader's suspension of disbelief. Novelists often have to write about characters whose views they would not, personally, agree with. That is the hardest thing for some writers to do as it's very hard to avoid putting your own bias and spin into your characters' mouths.

Many writers -- particularly in this industry -- like to play with fantasy tropes, but they're not that easy to pull off successfully. If you read a later Terry Pratchett novel, such as "Thud!" or "The Truth", you'll find he doesn't treat his characters like 2D cartoon characters: each has a past which narrows down his choices in the novel. Granted, Pratchett's had over 25 novels in which to tell us about many of his recurring characters, but his more recent novels have moved away from these, telling stories from the perspectives of new characters. Giving your characters _depth_ is not optional.

To pluck some examples from Pratchett's works: _why_ would someone choose to become a night watchman in a city like Ankh-Morpork? Why does Chrysoprase, a gangster troll, do what he does? What motivates these people? Why are they making these decisions?

Even if you never, ever give your readers a full, frank, highly-detailed biography of each and every character in your story, this doesn't mean your characters shouldn't have one. If they're only bit-parts with maybe a line or two of dialogue, then obviously it's a waste of time to go into much detail, but for your major characters, you really do need to consider their backgrounds and motivations.

Here is my character charts and update outline.

I made some changes to the plot per your suggestions(which I'll quote below to save you time from finding the other thread)

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Other than sounding like a depressing read, that plot looks well planned. [smile] One suggestion I would make if you're interested is trap your two characters together somewhere for a few hours - due to a power outage or a contamination threat or something - so they can talk. You might want to reveal that the accident which almost killed the main character was a trap which was supposed to kill the other character, a character who sees nothing wrong with his action and is annoyed at the main character for messing it up, and the accusation of terrorism was also set up by the same man. This would help put a human face on the conspiracy of bigotry and anti-terrorism.

My changes to the plot are colored in red for extra emphasis. I couldn't find a logical place to put my protagonist and his accused friend together because they would both be in federal custody by the time they realize(if I decide to let them realize) who and how they were set up. I figured there is no way that our government would allow two conspirators to converse while in custody. Besides, they probably wouldn't be held at the same detention facility for the same reason.

I also put the additional feelings/thoughts of the characters in blue for just for this exercise, again, for extra emphasis.

1.03. The next page doesn't exist yet as usual.


Re:

Somewhere along the line in these workshops, I realized that I am not in a position where I need to know how to analyze characters or plots. What I needed first is writing practices. So far, I had mostly written to protrait characters. I was wondering whether the story has any hook at all, although I don't plan to rewrite anything now.

Quote: Original post by cyansoft
Here is my character charts and update outline.

I made some changes to the plot per your suggestions(which I'll quote below to save you time from finding the other thread)

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Other than sounding like a depressing read, that plot looks well planned. [smile] One suggestion I would make if you're interested is trap your two characters together somewhere for a few hours - due to a power outage or a contamination threat or something - so they can talk. You might want to reveal that the accident which almost killed the main character was a trap which was supposed to kill the other character, a character who sees nothing wrong with his action and is annoyed at the main character for messing it up, and the accusation of terrorism was also set up by the same man. This would help put a human face on the conspiracy of bigotry and anti-terrorism.

My changes to the plot are colored in red for extra emphasis. I couldn't find a logical place to put my protagonist and his accused friend together because they would both be in federal custody by the time they realize(if I decide to let them realize) who and how they were set up. I figured there is no way that our government would allow two conspirators to converse while in custody. Besides, they probably wouldn't be held at the same detention facility for the same reason.

I also put the additional feelings/thoughts of the characters in blue for just for this exercise, again, for extra emphasis.

This all looks good. [smile] The only question that really occurred to me when reading it was, why have the husband and wife not been sexually intimate in years? That's a strongly symbolic situation (usually symbolizes a failure of communication which is the fault of both parties), so you have to be clear what it's symbolic of, and that it's a better choice than having them stop sleeping together during the course of the book. One other random thought it that it would be nice to have another incident or two between the protagonist and antagonist, building up the antagonist's desperation and resentment against the protagonist. Since in your story the protagonist remains steadfast unlike the main character of 1984 who breaks due to brainwashing, you probably should show your antagonist breaking, choosing to save his butt and even make a profit by conforming to social pressure.

Quote: Original post by Wai
1.03. The next page doesn't exist yet as usual.


Re:

Somewhere along the line in these workshops, I realized that I am not in a position where I need to know how to analyze characters or plots. What I needed first is writing practices. So far, I had mostly written to protrait characters. I was wondering whether the story has any hook at all, although I don't plan to rewrite anything now.

I didn't really get the point this section was trying to communicate with the water bottles. I see the story's hook as the inappropriate reaction to the announced death, although you could rearrange things to make the avatar's existence the hook. _A Beautiful Mind_ is a movie that would be a good reference for what you are trying to do, I think.

What sort of writing practices? You've been a writer for years, I would have assumed you had enough practice by now?

I guess my question was, if you didn't know what the story was about, and you read from page 00, would you have stayed till page 03?


I think what I am doing right now, is to position the announcement of death at the climax of chapter 1. So the role of the first half of chapter 1 is to show the narrator as a normal, calm, somewhat likeable person. This way, when the reader (and the narrator) discovers that the narrator is emotionless about the death, it would create a better conflict.

Well, I always research what stories are about before I read them, for example by reading the back cover copy. I'm also not in your target audience, because your story is not what I typically read for pleasure. My point was that I think scene 3 failed at getting your point across, and if I were you I would just make a note on the bottom of scene 3 about what the point was supposed to have been and that you should remember to clarify it whenever you get around to revising. Your plan for organizing the first chapter sounds good.

Edit: one point I wanted to add is that while the first part of the chapter should show your narrator as his normal self in comparison to his later state after being disturbed by the death announcement and his own reaction to it, the first part of the chapter should not show the narrator as normal in the absolute sense, but instead, since he is a change character, it should hint that he has a problem in his philosophy or way of doing things which is affecting his life even though he is not yet conscious of it as a problem.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on September 10, 2007 3:38:27 AM]