JMS: related question on writing (was Re: ATT JMS: Writing and visualization. )

[b5jms-owner at cs.columbia.edu]

Subject: JMS: related question on writing (was Re: ATT JMS: Writing and visualization. )
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 No. | DATE        |  FROM
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+  1: Apr  8, 1996: Leanan-Sidhe <lily at arh0248.urh.uiuc.edu>
*  2: Apr  9, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)

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From: Leanan-Sidhe <lily at arh0248.urh.uiuc.edu>
Lines: 18

> scene I'm working on later in the day, I'll rip out a PostIt and slap it
> on my monitor, but that's about it.  Sometimes I'll write down the act
> breaks on a sheet of paper, but even that I haven't done in a long while;
> I usually just sit down at the keyboard and start rolling the "film"
> through my head, no outline, just a sense of where I have to go.
			       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

do you ever find your characters almost outright refusing to go where you 
want them to?  this happens to me from time to time, where I want her to 
go one way, and she decides to go another.  It's rather annoying.

Becky
REPLY TO: rlehmann at uiuc.edu NOT TO THE ADDRESS IN THE HEADER!
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~rlehmann

"I have ... a terrible need ... shall I say the word? ... of religion.
 Then I go out at night and paint the stars."
                                -- Vincent van Gogh

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 27

"do you ever find your characters almost outright refusing to go where you
 want them to?  this happens to me from time to time, where I want her to 
go one way, and she decides to go another.  It's rather annoying."

Yes, but it means you're doing it *right*.

Yeah, it happens.  Every once in a while, a character will go left instead
of right in my head, and I'll try to yank him back, and he'll refuse to
go, and I'll get into this sort of weird mental dialogue trying to find
out what the hell's wrong and what's going on.  I've now created the
characters sufficiently well now that they're alive, and I've come to that
point now where, if a character says "I want to do X" in a script, I'll
tend to go with it, figuring it may work and take me in some new
directions.  Every once in a while, we'll get to the end, and it won't
work, and I'll have to backtrack to where we went off the road...and,
natch, the character just sits sullenly in the back of the car, refusing
to admit he read the map wrong.

But when it *works*...the character surprises me, and if I'm surprised,
the odds are good that you're going to be surprised.




 jms


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